Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [51]
Taft apparently had a different idea of fanciness, or the lack thereof, than Allen did. The large living room was packed from wall to wall with people. They sat and stood and even crouched in silence, each of them staring at Taft with a frozen expression of slack-jawed awe.
Then the room erupted.
“Taft!”
“Mr. President!”
“Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s him! I can’t believe it’s you!”
The miniature mob moved in, babbling with excitement. His shoulders were patted. A comely middle-aged woman in a “Draft Taft!” T-shirt stole a kiss from his cheek. Clammy palms were pressed into his own limp hand, which was too shocked to shake back.
Within seconds Taft’s muscle memory took over. He smiled that empty yet enthusiastic campaign-trail smile perfected in railcar restrooms and hotel mirrors across the continent a hundred years ago. He returned greetings and humbly parried compliments with the ease of an automaton. Several times, his eyes flicked over to the chair where Allen sat; the man’s face hovered halfway between smirking mischief and beaming pride.
“Okay, everyone, let’s give Mr. Taft some room to breathe here!” Allen got to his feet, raised his voice and hands, and quieted the crowd. “Maybe some kind soul would like to offer the man a seat?”
A loveseat immediately presented itself. Taft offered Susan a cushion, then sank down beside her. Before he’d even settled, a tray of Fulsom PizzaBombs—still in the soggy cardboard box, presumably straight out of the microwave—was shoved under his nose.
“Uh, no, thank you,” he said, waving away the tray and accepting instead a bottle of water. Already sweating due to the surprise as well as the press of bodies in the room, he took a swig—and almost spit the liquid right back out as his tongue registered a strange flavor that had no business being present. He looked at the label on the bottle: Maple Water. Truly, he thought, did the people of this age really feel it necessary to try to improve upon water?
“Everybody refreshed, then?” Allen strode to the center of the room. “Let’s talk Taft.”
“So, Mr. Holtz,” Taft said. “You and your associates in this Taft Party would have me run for president once again. What do you envision?”
“Mr. Taft,” said Allen, “we want to give the American people a voice to say their piece. Because God knows they don’t get to have a say with the Ds and the Rs, the way things are now.”
Taft nodded warily. “I follow you, sir.”
“The Taft Party: now there’s something the players will have to listen to, right? You’re a big man. I mean, not that you’re a big man, but, you know what I mean.”
“Indeed.”
“So we’ve been talking about a hard-hitting campaign. We’d call it the Blunt Truth campaign; we’ll be all about telling it like it is. We’ll start right off, hitting the president where he’s weakest—”
“No.”
Allen blinked. “Uh, sorry?”
“Mr. Holtz, everyone, I must make this perfectly clear. Rachel and I will run under the Taft Party banner; it seems we would be foolish to let our name march on without us, just as it would be foolish for you to try! But I have been through this wringer twice before, and we shall do it my way. And that means, first and foremost, we are not running to bring down the politicians. They can do that perfectly well themselves. No. We are running to lift up the people. We’re here to establish the Taft Party as a veritable bastion of reason and fairness in political life, because Lord knows such a bastion is needed. We’re here, as you say, to provide a voice for the good women and men of America who can’t be heard over the din of all this twenty-first-century madness. And we are here to run the sort of campaign I have always believed in: an honest test of thoughtful discourse.”
“Uh,” said Allen. “Mr. Taft, I’m probably not the person to be telling you this.” His gaze slid to Susan and back again. “But things aren’t as cut and dried as they were back in your day. The world’s a