Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [49]
The little fellow also had a mustache. A grand, manly, granite-colored mustache.
A presidential-looking mustache.
Taft pulled out his phone. He was about to call Rachel, but he realized there were five more messages from Susan since he’d checked his phone at the bar the day before. He got out of the car, walked a few yards into the brown grass along the highway, and hit the key that dialed Susan’s number. She answered almost before the first ring sounded.
“Bill? Oh, God, Bill. Look, I’m sorry I’ve been calling so much. This is big, though. Really big.”
“Susan. Slow down, if you please. What’s going on?”
He heard her take a deep breath. “Bill, they’re trying to get you on the ballot.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? The Tafties. God, I hate that word. I mean, the Taft Party. Them and that kook Allen the Electrician. Not to mention our pal Pauline Craig. They’ve mobilized. They’re pushing to get you put on the ballot in all fifty states. As a third-party candidate. As the head of the Taft Party. Or, failing that, they say they’ll settle for telling the whole nation to vote for you as a write-in candidate.”
“When did this happen?”
“They announced it yesterday. Press conference, media blitz, the works—my God, you really haven’t been watching the news, have you?”
Taft made a small, noncommittal noise.
“But, Bill, there’s something else. Something even scarier.”
He was almost afraid to ask. “Yes? Out with it.”
“The polls. They’re going crazy. I know this is the most horrifying thing you could possibly imagine right now, but the polls are overwhelmingly in your favor. Not just to get on the ballot—to be a competitive candidate. Of course, the Republicans are still all shaking themselves out, but no matter which of those jokers they match you against—you know, Governor Rockstar, Governor Frownyface, Senator Wackadoodle—you’re still holding your own against them, and you’re not all that far behind the president. Bill, somehow you’ve connected. America wants you to run. And if these numbers are to be believed, they want you back. In the White House.”
Taft stood there, blinking. The wind—blowing up from the prairie, perhaps across half the continent or more—poured over him. Above him, the vast American sky stretched like a vaulted ceiling from horizon to horizon. He thought of all the great and bizarre and horrifying things he’d seen and learned about this new United States, but also about how, underneath it all, it was still the country he knew and loved. He felt a sudden chill right down to his bones.
“Bill? Are you there? Bill?” Susan’s voice squawked from the phone.
“Susan. I’m here. I mean to say, I’m really here. I’m coming.”
“What? Bill, what do you mean?”
“I’m coming back, Susan. Hold tight, will you? And get ready. I’m coming back.”
“Don’t sit up nights thinking about making me president, for that will never come, and I have no ambition in that direction. Any party which would nominate me would make a great mistake.”
—William Howard Taft, while serving as governor of the Philippines under President Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
washington, DC craigslist > district of Columbia > personals > rants & raves
I SAW TAFT! (Penn Quarter)
Date: 2012-01-03 4:25PM EST
William Howard Taft was walking around the District today! I almost didn’t recognize him; he’s taken a razor to his ’stache, so now he looks less like Santa Claus and more like John Goodman.
I was thinking about it. You know how the world seems to have gone utterly batshit crazy in the past ten years? We’ve had terrorists smashing planes into our cities, we’ve had the U.S. armed forces in Iraq forever now, we’ve had all these tsunamis and hurricanes and crackdowns in the Middle East and all this horrible, horrible shit. But then now—now there’s this guy, back to life, out of nowhere, and he’s a good guy. You can just tell. Maybe … I dunno, maybe it’s finally a bit of good crazy, to kind of start offsetting the bad crazy. Just a little. Just enough to let us know that it