Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [55]
Trevor smiled. “Well, she is a Collins. And a Taft.”
Just then, the waitress came by with a handful of massive menus. Taft opened his and stared at the glorious selection of savory riches detailed therein.
All in all, Taft decided, the twin thrills of whiskey and coffee stimulating his blood, this trip was starting out swimmingly.
TWENTY-THREE
The rallies in delaware and West Virginia had been warm-ups. The ones in Kansas and Wyoming had been surprisingly comfortable. And now, as he stood on the raised platform in the middle of this weathered county fairground and waved happily to satisfying applause from the fine people of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Taft felt a surge of the grudging, nervous excitement that he’d first experienced while stumping in 1908. He glanced to his left, where Rachel sat beaming; she was feeling it, too.
“As you can see,” he said, his voice booming through the speakers as he gestured to the huge red, white, and blue banners that hung behind him, “great effort has been taken to today to make me appear presidential.” A good-hearted laugh ran through the crowd. “Suffice it to say, I never have. But I take that as a good thing.” He paused for a moment as if expecting to be challenged, but the only sound he could hear was the wind whistling through the nearby trees. “America, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is a democracy, which is much more than a mere political apparatus. At its core, it was intended to be the triumph, the apotheosis, of the people. No despots or tyrants or plutocrats, but people.” A light smattering of applause filled the silence as Taft squared his shoulders. “But I’m not here to reaffirm some image of myself as a common man. Clearly, I am no such thing. In fact, unlike so many of my opponents on both sides of the big-ticket coin, I’m not here to talk about myself at all. I’m here to talk about you.
“You are America. You are a piece of it, and you are the whole of it. And so is your neighbor. Whoever stands next to you is a part of your existence, as is the person who stands halfway across the country. No part of this country works properly if any part of it is failing, just as no body is healthy if even the smallest cell of it is ill. An entire symphony becomes discordant at the creation of one wrong note. And my opponents have been blowing quite a few of them lately.”
The crowd seemed to stir, forgoing a laugh at Taft’s obvious punch line in anticipation of his point. They were here to witness a spectacle, a happening, a moment—and, by God, he’d give them one.
“And just as no man, woman, or child in this country is truly healthy if his neighbor is not, so it goes with two of mankind’s most basic needs: sustenance and education. Trust me, I am well acquainted with both. And I also know, in the essential matters of food and schools, that quantity and quality are not interchangeable. What’s that saying you have these days? ‘Garbage in, garbage out’? For too long, I have come to understand, America has been content to let those in power—the would-be dictators of both the public and private sectors—feed you garbage. This garbage is presented in many forms: lower wages for public school teachers. Political and corporate pressures on curricula. Reckless agribusiness. Relaxed standards and regulations of the food industry. And then there’s the intersection of the two problems: the toxic crossroads we call student lunch. It may seem a small thing, granted, in the grand scheme of this vast nation. But if you want to look at one of the major roots of the lack of self-reliance and the lack of self-regard in this country, look no further. Again, I speak from experience. And if elected, I will not allow such circumstance to stand. It is long past time for the Department of Education to be recognized as one of the most important entities in the entire federal government!”
Taft paused to allow the crowd a chance to respond. He was greeted with a shuffling of feet. A phone rang. Some pro-Taft signs previously held highly and proudly