For use: Monday, April 1, 2001 and thereafter

mfinley.com: "Mister Finley Goes to Washington "

by Michael Finley

I was stunned to find myself in the Oval Office last week, being asked by the President himself for occasional consultation on image. He felt he wasn’t successfully communicating who he is.

As it happens, I have done that kind of work. I have advised a group of area chiropractors, and I helped a prosthetic limb maker in Milwaukee achieve a higher profile. But nothing like this. Frankly, I felt I was in a bit over my head.

"I'm honored to be invited, Mr. President," I said to him over coffee. I had a high school moment, suddenly wishing I had worn darker socks. "I really don’t understand why you chose me. I, uh, voted for the other guy, and I even said some pretty terrible things about you during the campaign."

Mr. Bush, to his credit, played with a football the entire time we talked, faking passes to different parts of the room.

"You’re more influential than you know, Mike. But you know that. The point is, this administration is in jeopardy, and we need you to put us over the top."

Now, in business, you never act like you don’t have a clue what the client is talking about. But I was making an exception. "Sir, I just don’t know if I'm up to this. I'm pretty intuitive, and it seems to me the last thing you need is a counselor that shoots from the hip."

"Give me an example, Mike. Hit me with your best shot. What would you like to tell me."

He seemed sincere. I could hear the Eisenhower clock ticking on the mantle. OK, I'd tell him what I thought.

"Well, sir, the overriding impression I have been getting is that if people supported you in the election, good things happen to them."

"How so, Mike?" The President put his index finger on his chin and sniffed. It was a compliment that he was paying such attention. I started to think I was all wrong about the guy.

"Well, take the last two weeks," I said. "And think about what happened from the other side's perspective:

• "You clamp down on orders protecting workers from repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel. That seems like a gift to business, and a real slap to workers in pain.
• "You reject a million efforts to reshape the tax cut so that the people most likely to go out and spend their refunds -- middle income people -- get the least.
• "You let out word, after campaigning for a patients' rights bill, that neither of the two plans under consideration will escape your veto.
• "You remove the American Bar Association from the judicial screening process as too liberal, despite the fact that they vetted the current conservative court which put you in office.
• "You're doing your best to kill Clinton's last orders on roads in national forests, because that's what the lumber companies want.
• "You spurned efforts to get the amount of arsenic in America's drinking water down to the level of the rest of the world.
• "You decided your earlier call for reduced CO2 emissions was a mistake.
• "And you backed the just-passed bankruptcy rules ensuring that big companies get first crack at people in financial trouble.

"Put it all together," I said, "and you don’t seem like you’re trying very hard to be president of all the people."

After all, I said, there are still millions of people who don’t think he necessarily should be living in this building. Why not give them something a little reassuring? Better yet, why not disappoint your supporters on some matter at some point. Wouldn’t that show better leadership than slopping the same hogs every day?

Bush sprang to his feet and gazed out the south window. "Mike, this is so fascinating. I felt there was something a little out of balance, but no one here would agree with me. I really need a man like you here to keep me honest."

"Mr. President, I'm tremendously flattered. But, my life is in Minnesota, and I have kids in school, and a dog, and I write poetry, and I have these chiropractors and wooden leg people that really need me, and --"

"Tut, tut, Mike," the President clapped me on the back. "Or perhaps I should say, Mr. Special Assistant to the President? You'll be part-time, and we can whisk you back and forth to Saint Paul. Your dog travel by jet much?"

He looked me dead in the eye. "You can’t know how valuable it will be for me to have someone like you to talk to. I want to be a good president, and with your help, I just might make it."

My head was swimming. My whole life was about to change. I was finally going to get the recognition I've always wanted. This would show people. I pictured the faces of my seventh grade class dropping. Yes, that's right, Gerald Kopinski. And hell yes, my dog would go ape on Air Force One. That was when I noticed the webbed feet.

Whereas a moment earlier I was wearing my brown shoes, now my feet were naked and very broad, with a leathery orange membrane splayed between the toes. "Aw, crumb," I said.

"What is it, Mike?" the President inquired.

"This is a dream," I said.

"That's what 83% of appointees tell me," W said to me. "I tell them, This is where wings take dream. Now let's get you set up with the office staff."

"Oh, bite me, George," I said disgustedly. "You really had me going, didn’t you? I so hate when this happens."

"I don’t understand," the President said. "Did I say something to offend you?"

"Give it a rest, rich boy," I told him. "I gotta split."

Out on the great mall I looked on as workmen lowered the Washington Monument to the ground. It's not so big once you have it on its side, no longer than a lamppost. I guess they do it with mirrors. I sighed as a family of giraffes drifted by the acacia trees alongside the Tidal Pool.

"Washington is beautiful this time of year," the man on the bench beside, behind a newspaper, said.

"Uh huh," I mumbled, and stepped naked onto the sandy Ellipse.

  Copyright (c) 2001 by Michael Finley

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