rlfj: Blog

Several people have asked when somebody was going to catch on to Carl’s broken nose. I had this planned all along.

150 has a bunch of different things going on. Some people like the political stuff, some like the speeches, some like the humor. I think there’s a little of everything in 150.

I had one reader comment on my ‘love affair’ with John Boehner. Personally, I have no love for the man. Carl, on the other hand, considers Boehner a personal friend. Carl can also distinguish between being a friend and being an effective leader. They are not the same thing.

Well, 146 proved pretty popular. A common comment was that it was too bad a real President couldn’t give an interview like that. Well, as I mentioned early on, the character traits necessary to become President are precisely the traits least useful in being President. By the time a politician actually gets to that point he and his entire family are highly trained professionals, portraying something quite bland and insipid, without any spontaneity or real feeling.

Then again, every once in a while, something different happens. Jerry Ford had never really intended to run for President, but Nixon plucked him out of Congress to replace Agnew. He and his family were surprisingly open to the public. Betty Ford admitted to being an alcoholic, and that she had gotten a mastectomy. They also admitted that when they moved into the White House they had moved out the separate beds that Richard and Pat Nixon had used, and they shared a bed. She had been a dancer and model prior to her first marriage, which ended in divorce. She also made comments on her children’s possible use of marijuana and pre-marital sex. In 1974 this was all rather scandalous!

I am sure there will be arguments about some of the programs Carl is killing or keeping. I think one thing which is sure is that GWB was much too impressed with the Pentagon and all the wonder weapons and didn’t have enough experience to know that most of the stuff wouldn’t work and would all come in for much more in price. Let’s see how that plays out.

Chapter 146 should be a lot more amusing for everybody and will play a part in future chapters as well.

I had an interesting question from a reader, who commented on how callous Carl was about Russian human rights violations. Did I approve of violating human rights? Well, no, of course not. I’m not a monster and neither is Carl. However, he is the President of the United States, not of Russia or China or Iran or Chechnya or any other place. If he spends the next four years squawking about human rights all over the globe, he won’t accomplish anything and won’t be re-elected, either. Remember Jimmy Carter? Great human being, shitty President! I have no doubt that Jimmy will loudly and publicly disapprove of Carl’s performance at some point. I am also sure that Carl couldn’t care less.

Quite a few comments on who Carl was picking as VP and Cabinet heads. McCain was a great choice; McCain was a disaster! Pick this guy or pick that guy! Too late, folks. Just like Carl, I had to make a pick. None of these people, Carl included, walk on water. Just like Carl, you will have to live with the choices. As Carl told Charlie, “Suck it up!”

I am amazed that nobody picked up on President Blue. It felt like the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when Johnny and Doc Severinsen played ‘Stump the Band’ and dared the audience to come up with requests for little known songs. I actually beat you guys on this one!

President Blue refers to a very old comedy album. In the early 1960s, a Boston stand-up comic named Vaughn Meader began doing a routine impersonating President Kennedy’s very distinctive Harvard accent. In 1962 he joined with a bunch of writers, and they created a comedy album, The First Family. It was an overnight sensation and sold over 7 million copies. It was an absolutely hilarious parody of the Kennedy family and administration. In one segment, ‘Jackie’ is giving a tour of the White House, and said, “This is the Blue Room. We've tried to keep it just the way President Blue left it originally.” My parents (nowhere near as nutty as Carl’s!) owned a copy. As a child, I listened to it many, many times, and memorized huge parts. One favorite spot was when the neighbor’s kids came over to play, and when being told that Caroline wasn’t home, asked, “Can Lyndon come out to play?” Is it any wonder I ended up a hard-core political junkie? I think we can take it for granted that more than a few people who work at the White House (like the Secret Service agents who were laughing) would know about the album.

On a tragic note, JFK was killed a little over a year later. Suddenly you couldn’t give the album away, and Vaughn Meader was out of a job. He was totally typecast and never really had a good job afterwards. He sank into depression and alcoholism and drugs, before reinventing himself as a very small-time country music singer in Maine. He died in 2004.

Several people commented that American aircraft carriers can’t go anywhere near Pakistan because the Pakistanis are a nuclear power. How come a smart guy like Carl doesn’t know that? Well, the fact of the matter is that we don’t care and have never particularly cared. We have had more than a few disagreements with them over the years, but we have never backed down because of Pakistani nukes. We routinely maneuver carriers in the northern Arabian Sea. So a few things to remember: 1) The Pakistani’s true enemy, at least in their minds, is India, not us. 2) Yes, they have missiles; no, they don’t have targeting systems capable of hitting maneuvering American ships out at sea. 3) The Pakistani military runs the country, not the other way around. They have a very realistic expectation of what would happen in a non-land engagement with American forces.

The indoor White House swimming pool was covered over by Nixon, and the room was converted to the Press Briefing Room. A few years later Ford had an outside pool built. As for the indoor pool, it is still there, and empty, and the deep end is under the podium. BTW – Johnson really did go skinny-dipping in the indoor pool.

Not a whole lot to blog about. Everybody seemed to enjoy the direction I took the story.

The Al Sharpton episode was suggested by a reader, and I thought it was delicious and hilarious – and probably quite accurate. Mister Sharpton has a flagrant disregard for the facts if they get in the way of his narrative. I remember the Tawana Brawley case quite well.

A surprising number of questions have been raised as to Presidential succession. Several readers have argued that Carl is not allowed to name a new VP. Let’s set the record straight! Presidential succession deals with two specific pieces of legislation. The Presidential Succession Act of 1947, passed after the death of FDR, outlines who becomes the President, and in what order. If the President dies, the VP gets the job. If both die, it’s the Speaker of the House. If all three are gone, we go to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. After that you go to the Cabinet, in the order of seniority of the department: State, Treasury, Defense, etc. That’s the sort of thing that happens only in thrillers about Washington being destroyed.

However, if the VP slot is empty, which has happened several times, the 25th Amendment applies. Section 2 states that the President will nominate a candidate and then both houses of Congress vote on him/her. This has happened twice since then, when Nixon named Ford, and then when Ford named Rockefeller. Several people stated that Ford got the job because he was the Speaker of the House. That is incorrect. Ford was the House Minority Leader; the Speaker was Carl Albert, a Democrat.

One of the more controversial aspects of 9-11 was the Able Danger issue. There really was a DIA program called Able Danger, relatively new, that used data mining techniques to try and identify terrorists. In 1999 this was a very new idea. It came to light in 2005 and the DIA ordered it shut down and the records destroyed and the operators to refuse to testify. Supposedly the program identified some possible terrorist names, though it never determined what actions they were going to commit. I am not a conspiracy theorist! This was a real program with a real Congressional investigation. It never went anywhere, and without any records, it was a dead end. However, if Carl were to learn about it, I think his actions would be as I’ve described.

Bonus points if you recognize who President Blue was.