Holly and Molly found that fame was not all that wonderful at times. Playboy had a picture of them walking across campus in their ‘Girls of the ACC’ article. Thankfully, they were fully clothed, and they told Marilyn they hadn’t even known they were photographed, or been asked to do anything, not that they would have. Marilyn would have killed them! Meanwhile, Penthouse had a standing offer of $500,000 to each of them if they did a centerfold. The twins asked if I would match the offer not to do it; their mother moved to smack them both, but the girls laughed and scampered away.
That fall Ari Fleischer brought me a new crisis to deal with. Saturday Night Live had invited the twins to guest host in November! Worst of all, the girls knew about the invitation, so we couldn’t just sweep it under the rug and forget to tell them. “I don’t suppose that they are going to make our lives easier, and decide they don’t want to do it?” I asked him.
“I got the overall impression that they wanted to know how soon they could go,” he replied.
“Great! By the time those two are through with New York, we’ll end up with another Civil War!”
“Don’t be so negative, Mister President. I’m sure we’ll be able to limit the damage to your resignation or impeachment.”
“You are not making any Brownie points with me, Ari!”
I tried a number of things when we called the girls that night at college. First I suggested that Marilyn travel with them, but that went over like a lead balloon. They were 19 years old and didn’t need their mother to hold their hands everywhere! I played the ‘you’ve got classes’ card, but they trumped that by replying they would do it when school was out for Thanksgiving. Then we tried to guilt them into not going (Thanksgiving!), but they weren’t buying that one, either. We hung up in defeat.
Marilyn looked at me and I just threw my hands up in surrender. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked.
“I don’t know. They could be arrested? I could lose the election? New York could secede from the Union? Either one of them is bad enough, but together they are dangerous!”
Marilyn laughed at me. “Just tell them their Secret Service detail has been authorized to shoot to kill, and that you’ve promised them all executive pardons. Face it, Carl, your little girls are grown up.”
“Bah humbug! If they are grown up, what does that make us?!” That would make us old, was the answer.
“Wait until the press finds out they registered as Democrats, just like their mother,” she teased.
My eyes popped open at that! “No! They didn’t! Traitors!” Marilyn laughed even harder. I wasn’t sure if this was true; it would be just like her to lie about this in order to tease me. It would end up a running family joke!
Saturday, November 29, Marilyn and I watched Saturday Night Live to see what our daughters would get into. I should have gone to bed. Ari Fleischer was going to kill all of us on Monday morning, if he didn’t die of laughter before then. The opening sketch involved a variant of the ‘bring your dog to work day’ they had pulled on me, only ‘Stormy’ got loose, rampaged through the Oval Office, peed on the Chinese ambassador, and pushed the big red button on my desk, launching the nuclear missiles — “LIVE FROM NEW YORK, IT’S SATURDAY NIGHT!” The twins did an opening monologue about living in the White House, and then later were in a sketch where they were going out on a double date, and were being shadowed by their Secret Service details, only their bodyguards were literally so close they were rubbing shoulders, and stayed between the girls and their dates the entire time, even when dancing.
We called them after the show, and spoke to them briefly. They were very excited, and heading out to a party with some of the cast members. Their mother and I just rolled our eyes, and prayed they didn’t end up on the front page of the New York Post. It’s not like I was going to win New York in any case, but I didn’t need the grief.
A week after the girls went on SNL, I was back in the news. Saturday, December 6, was the Army Navy Game. Marilyn begged off, but Charlie and I took Marine One up to Philly for the game. I had a standing invite to the game, and had attended in 2002. This year it wasn’t an option; I had named the bet and I had to go! Charlie and I were escorted to the center of the field and flipped the coin at the start of the game. To reflect my ‘non-partisan’ position as Commander in Chief, I spent the first half on the Navy side, and then moved to the Army side at halftime. Charlie stayed on the Navy side the entire time, the rat! Worst of all, Navy handed Army their ass, winning 34-6! Oh, the shame of it!
Two weeks later I made good on the bet. Friday night, the Buckman family hosted the Navy team, players, coaches, and all, at the White House. We served coq au vin, which had been added to the White House repertoire of official recipes. I had Charlie wear his miniature Silver Star ribbon on his suit coat. He no longer looked like a hard core Marine, since he had grown a Fu Manchu mustache and his hair was now long and curly. Those boys were Charlie’s age, but they saw that Silver Star, and tended to stand a little straighter around him. The girls liked it too, since pretty young girls liked being around a bunch of big hunky guys in uniforms.
The next day I took Marine One up to West Point, where the staff had set up a mess tent in Michie Stadium. It wasn’t ‘Fort Frostbite’, but it was cold enough. I ordered that all honors be dispensed with, so the football team had no idea I was coming. The boys took it with a lot of humor when I showed up in a BDU and jump boots, complete to the black-on-camo rank badge of a captain, an 82nd Airborne patch, and the appropriate qualification and award patches. They might have been dining on MREs, but the Commander in Chief was dining with them, and we had secretly set up a very nice dessert (cherries jubilee, complete with flaming Kirschwasser over ice cream) in Washington Hall. I sat with the cadets and they showed me how to eat an MRE. I told them, truthfully, that no matter how bad they were, they were still a whole lot better than the Lurps I had dined on in my time in the Army.
I had one interesting conversation with a few of the cadets over dessert. Cadet Lieutenant Miller asked me, “What is the insignia for a Commander in Chief, sir?” after looking at my captain’s railroad tracks.
I smiled. “No idea, Mister Miller. Five stars makes you a General of the Army, but I think Bradley was the last one of those. I don’t think we ever had more than that.”
Another cadet piped up and said, “Technically there is a higher rank, a General of the Armies, which has been granted to Pershing, Washington, and MacArthur, which is theoretically six stars, though nobody ever issued the rank badges.”
“Huh! Well, I suppose the Commander in Chief outranks them, so what does that make me? Seven stars? Eight? Sounds silly to me.”
Miller asked me, “You were a captain, right?”