The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [23]
Well of course, what else I could say to those guys but "Sure!"
I'll never forget the day of my investiture. The first female President of the United States of America! I appreciate that that is of great significance to some people, and I'm no feminist, but I can see that it's a giant leap for womankind.
But more important than any of that were the proud, teary-eyed looks my Ted, Brian and Carol Ann gave me as I strode up to the podium to deliver my inaugural speech. That, to me, meant more than anything - my family being so overjoyed at what I'd done, what I'd achieved in just a few short years, how far I'd come.
I've heard a lot from the carpers, the naysayers, the critics, the commentators, all the heathen so-called intelligentsia who talk down my policies time and again. They say my pro-life and anti-gay-marriage bills - passed through both Senate and House of Representatives with scarcely a murmur of dissent, I'd like to remind you - are an affront to human rights. They say my giving increased powers to the police to stop, search, arrest and robustly interrogate whomsoever they like, as a means of preventing Terror, infringes civil liberties. They say my proactive approach to overseas military intervention is hawkish, anti-UN, inflammatory, and possibly illegal under international law, and that my doubling our annual defense spending budget to two trillion dollars is unsustainable and threatens to derail the economy.
I have a number of counterarguments which I will set out below. But mainly, in response to the people who make these accusations, I have three words.
Get. A. Life.
Was it wrong of me to send US troops to Venezuela to root out political corruption there? Was I mistaken to invade Iran in order to put a stop to their uranium enrichment program and head off the prospect of nuclear conflict in the Middle East? Was the bombing of North Korea an act of warmongering?
As far as I'm concerned, these aren't even questions. They don't merit addressing. The answers are obvious.
Growing up in Wonder Springs, I used to hear this saying a lot: Good fences make good neighbors.
I would add to that.
If your neighbors misbehave, sometimes you gotta aim the garden hose over the fence and give 'em a darned good soaking!
I'm just an ordinary girl still, even after all that's happened to me. Come the evening, when the workday's done, all the paperwork's been gone over and signed, the staff have been dismissed for the night, I check on the kids, make sure they're keeping up on their homework and not just goofing around on Facebook, and then Ted and I curl up on the sofa together with a glass of Chardonnay and catch up on TiVo'ed Judge Judy and watch Fox News (which always gets it right, unlike the biased left-wing liberals at CNN and CBS). We devour DVD box sets of our favorite series. Leno is the late-night chatshow we like to round off our evening's viewing with - I adore Jay's jokes, and he's been kinda sweet on me ever since I went on the show and launched the old Lois charm missiles at him.
I'm usually worn out by bedtime, but never so much that I'm not up for a little cuddling and canoodling. Ted and I are still very much active in that respect, thank you very much, even after nearly twenty years together. In fact, since I got sworn in Ted's been even more of a tiger in the boudoir than before. They say power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, and boy, are they right! Ladies, if your husband's letting you down in the divan department, let me tell you - just get yourself elected to high office and those he-turns-out-the-lights-rolls-over-and-starts-snoring nights will be a thing of the past!
I still feel I have much to offer, and if it is God's will that I get a second term - and I know it is - then I'll gladly show the American people that their First Lady has plenty of fresh schemes bubbling away on the back burners of her