My debate performance was uninspired, at least to my way of thinking. We spent half the time on domestic issues and half on foreign policy. Neither one of us truly beat the other. Regardless, since this was the first debate I had ever been in, and expectations for me were extremely low, the fact that I walked out on stage without my pants falling down around my knees benefited me. The pundits ruled the debate a draw, and congratulated me on my performance in the face of personal adversity. Good grief!
The idiocy mounted through October. Angelo DeSantos was going full bore New York crazy on me. He filed an injunction against the Secret Service to prevent their harassment of his client, which was insane, since the Secret Service had never even talked to his client. He filed a paternity suit against me, claims against Marilyn and the kids so that I couldn’t hide my assets with them, liens on my home in Hereford and my jet, filed suit against Suzie and her family for some damn reason, and half a dozen different law suits against me for harassment and civil rights violations. I was going to be spending my fortune fighting the court cases.
I took a day off and met with my attorneys and the White House Counsel, John Weisenholtz. The Counsel’s office wouldn’t fight my battles for me, but they would protect the office of the Presidency. Their joint verdict, on everything, was that this was all smoke and mirrors. None of this would ever go to trial, and would all get thrown out in any pretrial stage. I could tie this up in court until we all died of old age. The claim for half of my assets was based on the nonsensical legal theory that Jeana Colosimo and Michael Petrelli formed a ‘second family’, and therefore deserved half of my assets, just like Marilyn, Charlie, Holly, and Molly who would split up the other half. There was no possible way that I owed thirty years of child support that had never been sought by his mother.
On the other hand, this was America. Anybody can sue anybody else for anything whatsoever. I could stand on my good name and spend the rest of my life fighting this asshole, or I could buy him off. I might have the law on my side, but Petrelli had a certain vestige of public sentiment, and he had some extremely racy diaries that I didn’t need to see the light of day,
We waited until about a week before the election and then flew DeSantos down to witness a cheek swab being taken for a DNA test. This was placed in the hands of a pair of Secret Service agents, who then escorted DeSantos off the premises and flew him back to New York. DeSantos protested that he wasn’t allowed to speak to the press in the Press Room, or from the South Lawn! Back in New York, they went with DeSantos and Petrelli to a lab, where a cheek swab was made of Petrelli, and they turned over my sample. Results were promised on Wednesday, November 4.
This all played fairly well in the press. My ‘openness’ in taking a paternity test was reassuring. Hogwash! I just wanted this over with. One thing I was sure of was that if this turned out to be an elaborate hoax, or the DNA test turned out to be negative, I was going to destroy DeSantos! He would be lucky to practice law in Cuba by the time I was done with him!
What would I do if it was positive? I just didn’t know.
The election was on Tuesday, November 3rd, and for the first time I wasn’t sweating out the results at the Best Western in Westminster. No, this time we set up in the Hyatt Regency in Washington, which was just a few blocks from the Capitol. Marilyn, the girls, and I flew home to Hereford to vote in the afternoon after the girls got out of class, picking up Charlie at the house, and then took the motorcade to our regular polling place at the high school. We voted, and then drove back to the house. Charlie joined us as we flew back to the White House. He had stayed out of the campaign as much as possible. His opinion? “How you put up with this is beyond me, Dad!” Good question!
Despite all that had been going on with this sideshow, the economy was humming along, and the world was relatively peaceful. By the end of the evening it was obvious I had won reelection, or election as President. I had a 5 % margin in the popular vote, 63.5 million votes to Kerry’s 57 million. I had an even bigger margin in the Electoral College, 334 to 203. The only states Kerry had taken were the three on the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, and California) along with Illinois (Chicago, strong Democratic bastion) and Minnesota in the Midwest, the Northeast (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut) and a piece of the Mid-Atlantic States (New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland). I took the South, the Rockies, almost everything in the center of the country, and a big chunk of the Rust Belt. I lost Maryland, but favorite son or not, I hadn’t expected to win it anyway.
By 10:00, as the Rockies began reporting their results, the projections had me winning. They refused to call it until the West Coast polls closed, but it was a mathematical lock by then. John Kerry called me about 11:15, just a few minutes after the networks called it for me. He congratulated me for winning and I congratulated him on a hard fought and clean campaign. We kissed over the phone and promised to work together and make sweet, sweet political love on a bed of roses. Blah blah blah! Kerry had run a relatively clean campaign, as had I; if I ever saw John Edwards I would drop kick him into a greasy dumpster and weld the lid down!
Some of the pundits were calling it a mandate, but that can be a very slippery slope for a politician. The most dangerous thing a politician can believe is his own press clippings.
Any relief I had was short-lived. The following morning I got the results of the DNA test. I was a father again, thirty years after the fact. I showed Marilyn the results and we both shook our heads in disgust and disbelief. How I was going to explain this one to her parents was beyond me!
The election results were almost drowned out by Angelo DeSantos crowing the results of the DNA test on national television. By now he was playing the sympathy card, how being an absentee father had left my son without the support and guidance needed to make him a success. This was somewhat muted when the New York Police Department picked up Michael Petrelli with a bunch of his buddies while tearing up a bar in celebration of his soon to be billions in wealth. Petrelli was a moron.
I met with my lawyers and decided to put this all behind us. I would make an offer to buy out any claims from this clown and get him to shut up. Needless to say, DeSantos publicized this as my ‘surrender.’ What a putz! I agreed to a meeting the Monday before Thanksgiving in Washington. DeSantos wanted it in New York, and televised. We laughed that off and said if he wanted to see a payday while he was still young enough to enjoy it, to be at the Hay-Adams at 10:00 AM on November 22, and to have his client with him, or there was no deal.
I met with my staff briefly that morning, but simply to make sure the world hadn’t blown up overnight. At 9:45 I left the White House and went with the zoo over to the Hay-Adams, where we had a conference room booked. We entered the room at 9:55 to learn that DeSantos was still coming down with Petrelli; they wanted to be the last to arrive. I looked at the others and just rolled my eyes.
Angelo DeSantos came into the room first, looking oily and smarmy. He reminded me of a used car salesman. He looked like the kind of lawyer who chased ambulances, pleaded out mobster wannabes, and made bad deals with insurance companies. He was wearing a shiny suit, had some garish jewelry on his fingers, and his hair was oily and slicked back.