It’s a cold and windy Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001, and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist is about to swear in the new president of the United States, George W. Bush.
Al Gore stands maybe 20 feet away, glaring at the tall and shuffling black-robed man who helped kill a Florida recount. Then he spies Justices Antonin Scalia (flask of scotch and cigarettes jammed into cashmere coat), Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, all of whom voted with Rehnquist to stop the recount.
The fifth vote, Clarence Thomas, is sitting far away, having adhered to his usual practice of not asking any questions, in this case the question being where his seat was. He is thus stuck in the boonies, next to a secretary from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. But Gore sees him.
“Ah, yes, the Five Apostles of Equal Protection,” Gore thinks, recalling the Bush Quintet’s rationale not to count votes. “By that cockamamie logic, the whole election should have been thrown out. Standards vary state to state, county to county, town to town. Who were they kidding? Ah, yes, equal protection. What a joke.”
“And look at him,” Gore whispers to no one in particular as he stares at Rehnquist. “The robe with the silly gold stripes, the grand air of civility, the Bible, all from some guy who was in the tank for Nixon. Had that job at the Justice Department, helping to come up with that absurd claim of executive privilege to help Nixon hide his damn White House tapes during Watergate.”
The president-elect catches Gore’s glowering and smirks. “What a two-faced, insincere s.o.b,” he thinks to himself. “Elitist pseudo-intellectual who doesn’t like people,” says Bush, the graduate of Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School.
Bush shakes his head. “Gore concedes, then calls me back, and wastes a month of the nation’s time and money after geezers in Palm Beach can’t figure out how to punch holes the right way. Couldn’t win his own state, finally gets it stuck to him by the Supreme Court and then calls for unity. Jerk.”
Former President George H.W. Bush is near tears with pride, while wife, Barbara, sits with her frozen smile. Here they are, again, winners, assured of rides on Air Force One and the chance to say good riddance to the devil from Arkansas, the draft dodger who made a mockery of the office.
“And look at the trailer trash,” Barbara thinks as she looks at the senator-elect from New York.
Barbara still fumes over Hillary’s firing of a White House usher named Chris Emery for maintaining contact with the Bushes. A onetime computer specialist, he helped the elder Bush pick out the laptop he gave Barbara for Christmas in 1992, later giving help to Barbara when she lost a chapter of her book. Hillary worried about his loyalty.
“She can take her liberal activism to the Senate and stuff it,” Barbara says to George, who quickly smiles as he catches Tipper Gore, on her seventh roll of film, aiming her Canon point-and-shoot camera his way.
George the elder is spotting friends everywhere, giving a quick wave to Thomas, whom he picked for the court, and Nicholas Brady, his treasury secretary. Then his old Houston chum, James Baker, who ably assisted their son during the Florida mess, surfaces to give him a hug and a chaste kiss to Barbara.
“Golly, Bar, I know, I know,” Bush says to his wife as Baker exits. “But I’m just sick of hearing it. Stop it. Jim Baker did a terrific job in helping our son win the presidency.”
“He cost you the White House,” she snaps, still convinced that Baker gave a half-hearted performance as emergency campaign manager during the 1992 re-election run. She then smiles and waves at Katie Couric.
President Clinton simply can’t believe how quickly everything has passed and the ignominy of this day for him.
“Al totally blew it,” he thinks to himself. “Great economy, weak opponent, tons of money, on the right side of all the issues. But he had to be his `own man.’ Had to distance himself from me and the Monica stuff. Ran an awful campaign, asked me to stay a million miles away and loses Tennessee! So much for my legacy.
“Bush isn’t that bad a guy. Actually, I had a good time when he came by the other day. Told him how to deal with some of the crazies in Congress, in both parties, and not to trust the scum media for a second, and he was appreciative. Yeah, he’s smug, has a boring wife, hasn’t read a book since college, hasn’t been to Europe and confused Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat. But I’ll follow up to give him some help with Putin and that nutcase with the bizarre haircut in North Korea.”
Hillary stands between her husband and daughter, Chelsea. It’s a melancholy moment but, all in all, she’s feeling fine. After all, she’s sticking around town and Bill is now old news.
“I’m not sure what I should do with him,” she thinks. “Let him hang out in Little Rock with his library, then run to Los Angeles to play around with the Hollywood creeps? I figure he’ll show up in Chappaqua a few times in summer to play golf, then hit on some teens at the Starbucks in town. What a sad, sad soul.”
Virtually unnoticed is Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida.
“I always figured I’d be the one taking the oath,” he says to himself as Tipper trains her camera on him, then his sister-in-law, Laura Bush. “That’s the way it was supposed to be, right? George was Mom’s favorite, I know, and he’s just as suspicious and unforgiving as her. But mom and dad knew, in their hearts, I was the smart one.
“Yeah, the family did think that I would win the governorship in ’94 and that George would lose in Texas to that big-mouth Democrat lady,” he’s thinking. “Then I would be in position to be here. But, somehow, I lost and George won. A guy who’d rather play computer solitaire than look at a budget is now president. I love him, but this is nuts.”
Clinton, who an hour earlier had both pardoned and made a dinner date with Patty Hearst, spies Jeb and knows exactly what he’s musing about.
“They all say how he was the smartest. Fine. But he doesn’t have the fire. The other guy does, that’s why he’s here. And if Jeb had taken care of business in Florida, Al would have been history on election night.
“And there’s mommy and daddy over there, still fuming about ’92, still finding everybody else to blame but themselves. Jim Baker, the debates, the media, the container of milk at the checkout scanner, and Ross Perot. Get over it. But I kinda like the old man. Fought for his country, was loyal to Nixon and Reagan. Likes golf.”
He’s interrupted by a jab from Hillary.
“Would you believe who is sitting over there to the left?” she whispers. “Ken Starr!”
Starr! The man who bollixed up Clinton’s presidency. While Hillary fumes, Bill remembers something: Robert Ray, Starr’s successor, is still investigating. Conceivably, he could indict him for perjury once he leaves office, in about 10 minutes!
“Hmmmm. Maybe it’s a godsend that Bush, not Al, won. No way Al could, or, I suspect, would pardon me. Easier for a Republican, especially one talking about reconciliation, building bridges, blah, blah, blah.”
Tipper Gore is momentarily fearstruck. She’s out of film. Luckily, daughter Karenna, who has been crying non-stop since the Supreme Court decision, fiddles with the family-size box of Kleenex in her lap and finds an extra roll in her jacket.
Tipper knows the big moment is imminent. And, deep down, she’s happy Al lost. She’s had enough of this town. Plus, how many books can one publish of reviewing-stand photographs?
As she looks through her Canon, Rehnquist, who presided over Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial, begins administering the oath of office to Bush.
For the second time in eight years, network cameras catch the impatient presidential father rolling up his sleeve and looking at his watch.
“Another minute,” the father says to his wife, “and Clinton is gone. Bar, vindication is here.”
———-
James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 5:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.
