The word of the day to the agents was, “Lighten up!” I didn’t need a phalanx of bodyguards in black suits, earbugs, and sunglasses shadowing us. They could dress a little more casually and blend in, and hide the War Wagons around the corner. The University knew the girls were attending, and there were some special security arrangements needed. For the first time in their lives they weren’t rooming with each other, but had regular college roommates. Across the hall from each room was a dorm room containing a young female agent assigned to each girl and commo gear, and they were already in place. Security would be light, but there would be security.
Thankfully my ribs were healed up by then, at least so that I could carry some boxes around. I didn’t have to carry many, though. Shortly after taking the first load up, several helpful young men magically appeared, offering their services, free of charge, to any of the pretty girls moving in. What wonderful examples of American youth! Marilyn and I quickly found ourselves abandoned. I don’t think they realized who they were helping until they went out to the War Wagon and saw what else was inside.
Marilyn and I just walked around the dorm area for a bit. She had been the one to take the girls on their college visits, and get them through the registration process. This was helped immensely by the fact that they were straight A students and we were paying cash. Still, I thought she had done a fine job getting them ready and told her so.
Our reverie was interrupted by a young woman bustling up to us with a notepad in one hand and a microphone in the other. I saw one of the agents move to intercept her but I waved him off. She was oblivious to this, and simply came up to us and stuck the microphone in my face. “President Buckman, how do you feel the Secret Service presence on campus will affect campus life for the rest of the students here? What about the chilling effect on academic freedom it will cause?”
I looked at my wife, who seemed perplexed, and I gave her an amused look in response. I held my hands up in a time-out signal. “Who are you?”
“Why do you need to know that?”
“Because I like to know who I am talking to. Don’t you?”
The girl’s brows furrowed at that. She looked a bit stumped. “Oh.” She thought for a second, wondering, I am sure, if by giving me her name she would be somehow violating the freedom of the press. I just stood there and waited for a response. After a moment, she capitulated and said, “Marcy Brennan,” and then thrust the mike back at me.
I smiled at Marilyn and shook my head. To Marcy I said, “Is this the first interview you’ve ever been part of? Who are you interviewing me for?”
“I’m with the Diamondback. Why won’t you answer my questions? What are you hiding!?”
“Oh, dear,” I said with a sigh. “What is the Diamondback?”
“It’s the student newspaper. We’re an independent student newspaper, protecting the freedom of the press!” answered Marcy, a touch fiercely.
“Good for you. I try to protect it, too, in my own way.” I turned to Marilyn. “She just has to be a Democrat!”
“You just behave yourself,” answered my wife.
“Yes, dear.” I turned back to the microphone, still in front of me. “Marcy, let’s make this simple. You want an interview and I want to sit down for a bit. My ribs are still bugging me. Let’s go sit down over there.” I pointed to a bench in a grassy area. Before she could protest, I led the way over to the bench and sat down.
Marcy was starting to figure out that she wasn’t the one in charge of the interview. She scurried along after us and stood there in front of me. I just pointed at the bench and she sat down at the other end. In so doing, she lost her grip on her notepad and I picked it up. Before she could grab it back, I looked over the questions she had for me. I showed them to Marilyn and said, “I don’t get this many questions from the Washington Post!”
I handed Marcy back her notepad. She was starting to look flustered. “Now, let’s do this the right way. You ask me a question, politely, and I will give you an answer, politely. You were asking me something about my daughters attending school here?”
“What do you feel about the dangers your daughters are bringing to the campus here?” she asked, reading from her notepad.
“What dangers? I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“The armed security guards who are surrounding your daughters,” she pressed.
“Have you actually met my daughters? We left the storm troopers at home. While there will be security around them, it will be barely noticeable. There should be absolutely no effect on the campus at all.”
By now a number of others had noticed who was being interviewed, and about a dozen students and parents were gathered around us in a circle. I smiled and waved at them, and did the politician thing. Marcy kept asking me questions, some of them ridiculous. I was guessing that the school paper had sent her out with a list, in the hope that she might find me. In between I would shake hands and say hello to those around us.
“Is anybody here a Republican, by the way?”
One of the mothers pointed at her husband and smiled. “He is.” Her husband blinked in surprise at being put on the spot.
“Oh, good! I was wondering if I had ventured into enemy territory. What about you?”
“I’m an Independent,” she answered.
“Well, there’s still hope for you.” Marilyn elbowed me at that, on my left side, and I winced. “Watch it! I’m still healing there.”
“Ooh! Sorry! I forgot!” she said.
“If you don’t behave, Marcy will get to report on how the Secret Service took you down!” I turned to the reporter and said, “I bet that would make the front page, wouldn’t it? If you have a camera you’d probably get a Pulitzer!”
Her eyes opened wide at that. I reached into a pocket and pulled out a business card holder, and handed her my card. “Listen, we need to go find out what our girls are up to and leave. If you want another interview, you call my office and ask for Ari Fleischer. Heard of him? Good. Ask for him and tell him I said you were the new White House Correspondent for the Diamondback. You can come over and get a nice formal interview, okay?” There is actually a protocol for this sort of thing, and it wasn’t unheard of.
Marcy’s eyes widened at the idea, and Marilyn and I stood up. We shook a few hands and headed back to the dorm, surrounded by our storm troopers. The girls were wondering where we were, so I told them I was out hustling votes. We kissed them good-bye and headed back to the White House.
The hustling votes remark wasn’t far from the truth. By now it was an open secret that I was going to be running for reelection. While I had been ducking the question and officially stating that I would make a formal decision in 2003, the word had gone out. John McCain was not running, and he had announced that, and while Dick Cheney wanted to, a convict was about as welcome as toxic waste. Nobody else was making any kind of noises about running, and if I announced early in 2003, I would block them from the moneymen in the party. Running for President was a whole lot bigger than running for the Maryland Ninth. In the ten years I had been in Congress, I had spent about $10 million in campaigning, and surprisingly little of that, under $1 million, was actually my money. Running for President in the 21st century was going to start at $1 billion, and go up from there. I was not about to spend that kind of money out of my own pocket.
The actual announcement was somewhat anticlimactic. Unlike a regular election, where I would be vying with another dozen candidates, as the incumbent I was the presumed nominee. I didn’t have to do much more than actually say, ‘Yes, I’m running.’ After that it was just a matter of signing the paperwork to get me on the ballots. It was going to be a big job, and would involve a huge organization and a lot of help. For my main general, however, I called Brewster to the Residence one evening (not the Oval Office, since that would be electioneering on work time, a big no-no) and asked him if he wanted a shot at the title. If you are a political operative, running the Presidential campaign is playing for all of the marbles. The only bigger thing than my reelection would be a first time election of somebody else. If Brewster was campaign manager for me and I was reelected, he was automatically in the big leagues as far as politics went. He could name his price after that.