Taft 2012 - Jason Heller [57]
“Bill. Mr. President, sir. We can’t keep allowing you to be so vulnerable. I already can’t believe I went along with your crazy two-man vacation thing, and that nothing worse happened then. Today was a long overdue wake-up call.”
“Nonsense! And what matter if I had been shot, I ask you. I’m living a charmed second life already. Every day is gravy.”
“Are you nuts? That’s exactly why we can’t let anything happen to you!” The agent stumbled over his words. “I mean, you know, on top of the fact that you’re our friend, Bill. You’re—you’re a one of a kind miracle. We can’t have William Howard Taft magically come back to life and just let him get killed again!”
“Anachronism or not, Kowalczyk, time traveler or not, I am indeed just another man. And don’t forget, I used to travel the country extensively while I was president. And not just in the course of campaigning! I snuck out of the White House every chance I could get, and for as long as I could get away with.”
“Yeah,” Kowalczyk sighed, “you may have mentioned that a few dozen times while we were driving to Chicago. How in hell did you pull it off, anyway?”
“It was a different time then. We had the Secret Service, of course, but even with a recent assassination on our minds—McKinley—security was far less overweening than it is now. Perhaps it was the very fact that we hadn’t yet invented all your new technological miracles, but it simply never occurred to us to even try to fortify every moment of our lives from harm. I’d accept invitations to anything and everything—commencement ceremonies, graduations, ribbon-cuttings, even the bar mitzvah of the son of an old colleague or college chum—just to get out of the that maddening, oppressive Oval Office.” He chuckled. “And I’d take my sweet time getting there and returning. My critics called me a tramp, and I always chalked it up to wanderlust. In actuality, though, I was running away from that damnable cage.”
“But didn’t you get hassled constantly? Not just by random people, but by the press? I mean, we’ve had a recent president who spent way more time on vacation than he should have. But he was almost always hiding out at his ranch. The idea of a sitting president just up and roaming around America whenever he felt like it—it’s just a logistical nightmare.”
“That’s the Secret Service man in you talking, not the Ira Kowalczyk who likes to flail his body around to the strains of banshees holding electrified guitars. Really, Kowalczyk, don’t be paranoid.”
The agent blinked at him. “You are saying that to a man who just tackled a loonie who could have been pointing a gun at you from the middle of a crowd. Hell, what am I even talking about—you’re saying it to a man who shot you myself not six months ago, because you just suddenly turned up somewhere you had no business being.”
Taft chuckled. “Yes, but neither of you actually meant to kill me, did you? Our friend today was merely making an ill-advised political statement with a child’s toy—and you, sir, were defending your president! I dare say, that nick in my leg notwithstanding, I’ve been as safe with you by my side these past months as anyone possibly can be in the world. The world today, or the world a hundred years ago, or the world ever. It is an unsafe life, Kowalczyk. Every damn one of us—president, schoolgirl, ditch digger—we could all breathe our last at any time, and hiding from death does not a damn thing to alter that fact.”
Kowalczyk was quiet a moment. “You really are a pretty remarkable guy, Bill.”
“And you, my friend, have a remarkable flying tackle. Come—let me take you to dinner.”
Transcript, Raw Talk with Pauline Craig, broadcast March 12, 2012
PAULINE CRAIG: And we’re back with more Raw Talk. In the wake of Thursday’s frightening threat on the life of Taft Party presidential candidate William Howard Taft, we’re speaking with several members of the Taft Party to find out how, if at all, this changes the game for America’s most unexpected dark-horse candidate. With me now via satellite is Professor Susan