The President
When I met the President that evening in late summer, no more than a stone’s throw from the spot where he gave his inauguration address, he confided that it was far from the best speech of his short career. “One of the teleprompters quit working, so I had to keep looking to the left,” he said in all seriousness. Karen and I had watched the event with passing interest, but if there was anything unusual about his delivery I did not notice. After being sworn in, the new President, tall, lean and handsome but with an incompatibly shrill voice that found its best comparison with a calliope, recited the promises that helped get him elected. The usual axioms of balanced budgets, getting people off welfare, reducing inflation, creating more jobs and finding new sources of energy while preserving the environment were well-received by the crowd on hand, who seemed not the least bit annoyed at hearing them sounded one more time. For our part, Karen and I chose to meet his words with skepticism, which was simply a conditioned response in our generation to anything promised by our elders. The problems of a sputtering economy and a bankrupt government were workaday in national politics, and to expect them to be resolved before we inherited them was too much to ask.
The one thing Karen and I were inclined to feel supremely cynical about was his stand on abortion. “It is time for us to launch a crusade on behalf of those denied a chance to breathe the air, to feel a mother’s touch, to work for and enjoy all the comforts of life, because of the selfish attitudes of those who believe the powers of life and death are theirs to command. We will take up the fight for those who cannot defend themselves against this merciless massacre committed in the name of choice...”
“I know a thing or two about crusades,” was Karen’s comment as she reached for the remote, passing on the marching bands and displays of military prowess. There would be fireworks and balls later.
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