In fourth grade I wrote a long letter to Ronald Reagan, telling him that, among other things, he was a great man and a “turifeck prezidunt.” I also informed him that if all went according to plan, in the year 2012, I would be elected President, too. That’s when I turned thirty-five, and therefore was the first year that I’d be eligible to run. A few months later I received a letter and a photograph with a blue signature that wouldn’t smear even if you licked your finger and rubbed. I made it a point to personally write back everyone when I was President, especially future presidents like myself.
It never occurred to me, not even once, that I wouldn’t someday be in charge of the United States. This was in part because Mom always told me that I could become anything I wanted, anything at all. Most of my peers wanted to be astronauts or doctors or sports heroes, and while these would surely be fun and important lives to live, nothing caught my imagination quite like the Presidency. Helicopters and jets and secret service men with guns were all a part of a day’s work, although the fame was much of the appeal. The president made big important speeches on the television and next to the old Russian man with the brown spot smattered across his forehead, he was the most recognizable face in the world. According to my mother, I was everything the country needed. I was smart and easy on the eyes, with broad shoulders and something called gumption, which sounded pretty good.
For my birthday I received a book called The Presidents: From Washington to Reagan. The cover featured a painting of our first and fortieth presidents, until I cut and pasted my name and class photo over Ronnie’s. The book, now titled, The Presidents: From Washington to Keneally, was a testament to my destiny. Mom couldn’t have been more pleased with my ambition as it made her parenting duties a little mas facil. She never had to twist my arm to study, because after all, “Do you really think the people would ever elect someone who skidded by with a B average?”
Absolutely not, and that’s why I mostly got A’s on my report cards. Going to Harvard or Yale was almost a prerequisite to the presidency and besides, Mom and Dad offered to buy me anything at all if I earned an academic scholarship. It made learning fun as every ‘A’ was one step closer to that new bulletproof Ferrari or a fridge full of soda in my bedroom.
But grAdes-schmAdes; I knew that I’d never get ahead if I weren’t well-rounded in other areas. In high school I joined lots of clubs and teams and groups and programs and service organizations and stretched myself razor thin. After all, as Mom said, “Nobody wants a president who doesn’t care about others.” By the end of my junior year, all the tutoring and soup kitchens and A’s and my astonishing first place in the NJ Physics Olympics egg-drop contest had paid big dividends. I was selected as a delegate for American Legion New Jersey Boys’ State, a prestigious politics-oriented summer camp.
Every year, kids from every state save Hawaii are plucked from the crowd for their “outstanding qualities of leadership, character, scholarship, loyalty and service to their schools and community.” Mom beamed like a solar flare when I broke the news. She was on the phone with her friends in seconds flat.
“You won’t believe it!”
Mom tracked my movements for all of her friends, family and acquaintances. Whether or not they cared was irrelevant as she boasted to this aunt or that friend about what this teacher or that said about me. No small feat: neither PSAT scores nor report card comments, went unnoticed, unreported, unannounced. I know this because she kept me abreast of it all. “So I was telling Aunt Shiela what your English professor said about your latest book report and, boy, she is so impressed.” Sure, I was a little embarrassed by all the attention, but mostly I craved the validation.
According to Mom, everyone around me saw my star power. Not just she and my father and teachers and friends, but everyone. “Even people in passing cars,” she promised. Why else would my school have nominated me for this distinct honor? And best of all, having this on my resume would surely grease my college application.
The weeklong Boys’ State summer program was essentially a political camp teaching “future leaders” first hand about the mechanisms of state, county and local government. In mock legislative sessions the kids who were elected to the House or Senate drafted bills and acts and amendments that were debated and enacted or rejected or debated more. And if somehow, at the end of the week I distinguished myself enough to be one of the two kids chosen to go to Boys’ Nation in Washington, D.C., I’d get to meet Bill Clinton in the flesh. Back in the early 60s, Slick Willy himself was a former Boys’ Nation pick and had a picture of his brush with JFK to prove it. While I hadn’t a clue how to rise to the top of the 750 others, I had set my sights on the Rose Garden.
Throughout that week at Trenton State College, we were packed into a series of dorms named after different towns in New Jersey. We held municipal elections and I ran for mayor of Jackson Township, while other kids ran for other posts like police or fire chief or city clerk or councilman. During the campaigning we each proposed solutions to the various hypothetical crises facing our city. In my mayoral run I called for the legalization of prostitution and proposed AIDS-safe brothels. I won in a landslide. I also won the next election and the one after that and that, and by the end of the week I was the President of the Senate – the second highest elected official. I was one of seven kids interviewed for Boys’ Nation and got to meet Governor Christie Todd Whitman.
As the top dog in the Senate, I moderated the floor of this branch. And I wasn’t shy about the perks, swiveling in my leather chair with my legs propped up on a burly oak desk, while the twenty other less decorated senators sat in plastic folding chairs. I even sent my Sergeant-at-Arms off to fetch me a Snapple or a snack while I tried looking presidential. While they debated things like the abolishment of teachers’ tenure or handing out free prophylactics in high school, I mostly thought about what I’d say to Bill Clinton next month. I’d talk to him about my letter to Reagan and his own childhood encounter with Kennedy, and he’d wink and teach me a secret handshake that someday I’d pass along to someone else.
Sometimes the debates were fiery and impassioned but if anyone got out of line, I flexed my muscles and whacked my mallet.
“Order!” I’d bang, bang, bang, like Morris Code mapping the frequency of my power trip. There would be no speaking out of turn, or passing notes or nodding off. Like a cat spraying the room with Machiavellian madness, I had no problem letting everyone know that “I’m in charge here!” or “It’s my show!” I exacerbated one kid so much he flung a fistful of papers in the air. His insubordination was met with my orders to have the Sergeant-at-Arms evacuate him from the premises, pronto.
The next morning, the senators rewarded my tyranny in their own special way.
I was impeached.
By an “overwhelming majority.”
In the program’s forty-eight-year history, dating back to 1946, I was the first Statesman ever impeached.
And just like in a game of Chutes-and-Ladders, the beeline from grace to disgrace was fast and slippery, cold and unsympathetic. There would be no brush with Bill, only an airbrush from afar. During the closing ceremony I sat on the side of the stage with the other, less decorated senators, as the new president, my evacuee, gave a speech about his experience as the President of the Senate. Although he had only been in that role for a few hours compared to the two days of my regime, luckily he didn’t mention the fresh coup. And as two thousand fellow Statesmen and parents and others clapped in unison, I chewed on my hubris for a moment.
I couldn’t help but think about how quickly power and ego colluded to corrupt me. Within hours of my presidential post, as I rocked in my leather chair and ordered Snapple and snacks and silence, these kids had already pictured me with the brown spot smattered on my forehead, or perhaps with a little black moustache over my lip. I took it as a warning sign and promptly removed myself from consideration for 2012.
Fortunately Mom was supportive when I tuned out the voices that pushed me toward the presidency. In all honesty, she said, “Anyone who wants all the pressure of running the world must be nuts.” I was happy to hear that and for the first time in my life, I exhaled.
I still went to a fairly selective school and had dreams of success, but my goals had since shifted. For a while, I entertained the idea of becoming a dentist like my Dad or marine biologist or a yuppie, before settling on something decidedly less ambitious.
When I told Mom that I’d like to live in a VW bus and tour with Phish, selling hemp necklaces and grilled cheese and slogan tee shirts in the parking lot, it was immediately apparent that she had lied to me all those years. I couldn’t actually become anything I wanted.
posted by Scott Keneally @ 2:54 AM
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