CHAPTER SEVEN

“I don’t claim to be a well educated man. I’m no lawyer or doctor. But I do

think I’ve got a fair amount of common sense. I don’t wrestle with big

equations and mounds of papers in making up my mind on issues. I get

my answers the same way my grand-daddy did, with a little bit of

thought and a lot of heart. And when those men in their three-piece

suits and their PhD’s do all their thinking, all their examinations

and computer simulations and then come up with the same idea I’ve

already got—well, I feel really proud.

Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“Those of us in the American West understand fully that the days of shooting

from the hip are over. The attitude that gave us such things as the

Lincoln County War and gunfights at high noon has been

supplanted by the law of civilization. We have learned to

amicably air our differences in a peaceful and legal manner.”

Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Hal was in his office even earlier than usual the morning following General LaMonde’s speech. He had made his obligatory good-byes and left the building as quickly as he could. When he said under his breath that the man was a lunatic, he was talking to himself more than to Ruthie, but she heard him and thought he was making an attempt at some kind of conversation. He’s no lunatic, he’s a committed American, she had said. An American who should be committed, he thought to himself. To an asylum. He had a few more words with Ruth on the way home. She went to bed and he retired to his recliner. He slept fitfully, his slumber punctuated by bad dreams.

LaMonde in storm trooper uniform followed by the faces he knew from Fox News, all goose stepping to a melody he couldn’t identify. Behind them marched hundreds of young children, all in school uniforms, all with closely cropped hair. All marching forward, forward. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere but they marched ever forward.

Hillary gesticulating wildly on his television screen, but there was no sound. He kept punching his remote. A red danger light went off every time he pressed the damned button. But no sound. She seemed to be calling, pleading, cajoling. What was she saying? He moved to the television and placed his right ear to the screen. Nothing. He looked at the screen again. Hillary’s eyes closed and there was suddenly static. But still no sound.

Susan telling him they must move. Where, he had asked, but he couldn’t hear her reply. There was an immediacy in her demand, like she knew something awful was about to happen. Sounds far away, he could just barely make them out. What were they? Footsteps? They seemed to grow louder. And louder. Thousands of footsteps. He looked out the window. Children marching. Banners unfurled and blowing in the wind. He couldn’t make out what they said. Three-legged dogs chasing the marchers.

Christ, I’m lucky I slept at all, he thought to himself.

He signed off on the article about LaMonde’s speech. He didn’t agree with his reporter at all, but what the hell, he’d say what he had to say in his editorial. Advertising was a little off, nothing to worry about. Another rabbi attacked in Princeton; one witness, a homeless man, said he saw a man in black running away, that someone dressed like that had hassled him earlier in the day. Twelve more people murdered in Juarez. A few dozen people arrested in riots in Beijing. Another cop shot in a Seattle coffee shop. A man sentenced to the electric chair for the rape and brutal murder of his best friend’s grandmother; the lawyer who represented him was pinned down outside the courtroom by a crowd that then covered him with feces. Apparently, a couple cops watched from down the block and made no effort to interfere.

Another typical day at the races.

By the time Frank and Allen sauntered into his office at 4:30, he’d already finished the better part of a six pack.

“And the flavor of the week is . . .?” Allen asked.

“Tsing Tsao.”

“Good Lord,” Frank said. “Now even the beer is made in China? What the hell?”

“Hey, a little respect for your future masters,” Allen barked. Hal smiled.

Hal pulled two green bottles out of the fridge and removed the tops. Frank and Allen took their bottles and the three of them clinked the bottles together. “To better days,” Hal toasted. “To General LaMonde,” replied Frank. “May you live long and kiss my ass every morning,” Allen retorted. They each took a swig from their bottle. “Not bad,” said Frank. Out of the corner of his eye, Hal saw a blonde figure approaching his door.

“Gentlemen,” she said as she tapped her knuckles on the open door. “Is this a private party or is the bar open?” Susan paused to gauge Hal’s reaction. “I had to put an ad in about a change in clinic hours, so I thought I’d pop in and say ‘hi’,” she explained.

“C’mon in, Doc,” said Frank. “Grab a beer from Hal and you can sit by me.” Frank pulled the only other chair in the room next to his. Susan took the beer from Hal, smiled demurely and sat next to Frank. “You know, Sue,” Frank said slowly once Susan had wiggled comfortably into her chair, “they say behind every great man is a great woman.”
“Yeah, and they say behind every great woman is a great behind. Frank, you’re not still coming on to me, are you?” Susan fluttered her eyelashes as she finished her admonition.

“Would it get me anywhere?”

“Absolutely nowhere. Where’s your girlfriend?”

“Oh, she went to some kinda meeting the church was having to raise money for the Parsons campaign. Guess I’m on my own for dinner. Hey, did you see the General’s speech last night?”

Susan smiled. “Me go to that fascist lovefest? No, I had more important things to do. I spent the night watching Dick Van Dyke reruns.”

Allen smiled. He knew Frank thought Susan was a lesbian. “So’d you guys see Pat Robertson called Obama the antichrist yesterday?” he asked while handing Hal his empty bottle in exchange for a fresh one.

“Well, heck, he’s already damned the gays and everybody in New Orleans, Haiti, and the entire Moslem world,” Hal said. “Who else was left to damn?”

“How old is that guy now?” asked Frank. “He must be at least 90.”

“You know,” Susan said in a soft voice as if she was sharing a secret, “the only reason he’s even still alive is that God doesn’t want him in his neighborhood any more than we want him in ours.” Frank looked at her. She grinned. Hal and Allen snickered. Frank groaned. “I don’t know that it matters what Robertson says,” Allen said, suddenly serious. “We all know the election already belongs to Parsons.”

“The only question is who he’s going to pick for his running mate,” Susan said. She was examining her beer bottle, seemingly deep in thought.

“He’s got a big speech scheduled in two days,” Hal said. “Maybe he’ll give some indication which way he’s leaning, but it’s a little early for that. You know, guys, my money’s on LaMonde. With all the brouhaha about how dangerous the world is, what better way to make your point than to put a military man on the ticket? He doesn’t bring onboard any particular state, but there’s a lot of support for LaMonde’s stand on nuking the Taliban. He could be a swing factor across the board. As if the swing was even necessary.”

“It’s like Parsons is the illegitimate love child of Nixon and Rove,” Allen said. “He’s full of spit and fire and in-your-face with the what-the-hell you’re doing wrong. But he’s put forth no alternative suggestions.”

“I dunno. Nuking the diaper heads sounds good to me,” Frank said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Hal.

“Well, yeah, a little. But there are a helluva lot of people out there who like that idea and besides, Holder said a few years ago we’d never take bin Laden alive. LaMonde’s a real force in the boonies.”

“You know,” Hal was speaking again, “I’m no Hillary fan.” He turned to Susan. “And she doesn’t have a great behind, either. And I’m definitely no Parsons fan. But I’ve followed every election since Johnson in ’64, and I think each one is a little seedier than the one before. But even so, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the grass roots . . . I don’t know. It’s more than discontent and unhappiness. Disgust? Hate? You know, as recently as when Bush Junior was in office, people would say whether or not you voted for him, he’s your President and he deserves your respect. They don’t say that with Obama in the Oval Office. Suddenly he’s your President, not mine. He’s not deserving of praise or respect or even the time of day. He’s different. He’s . . .”

“Black?” Susan offered.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Liberal used to mean pinheaded or naïve or Communist. Now it’s used to mean something sinister, something evil. Ask Rush whether he’d want to be known as a mother humper or a liberal, and he’ll pick mother humper every time. I don’t know. It’s like a scarlet ‘L’ they want to burn on your forehead. There’s just no civility.”

“I think I’m more scared than most people around here,” Susan said after a few moments silence. “I’ve been thinking about selling some property, becoming a bit more fluid. I’m truly worried about what Sam Parsons will do to this country.”

Hal sat upright. Canada. Anywhere but here. That’s what she’d said in his dream last night when she pleaded with him to move. Could she really be thinking that? Had she said something to him about this before and he missed it? No, he was sure she hadn’t. When the hell were Allen and Frank leaving so he could ask her?

One beer and two Hillary jokes later, Allen stood up to leave. Frank grabbed his jacket and gave Susan his best you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing look and followed Allen out the door. Susan said her good-byes and left Hal’s office with them, though not before she nodded to Hal without being noticed, a sign that she would be home later that evening if he wanted to come by. Hal had stood up as they were all leaving, then he fell back into his chair and stared blankly at the wall, not focusing on anything in particular. When was the last time they’d discussed anything besides politics? He sighed, thought he’d have another beer and then thought better of it, wondered whether Ruth would even really notice when he’d say he’d have to come back to the office after dinner, and sighed again. He got up, pulled his windbreaker off the back of his chair and hit the light switch as he walked through the door.

The phone rang. He pivoted, turned the light back on and returned to his desk.

“Hey, Fuckwad, how ya doin’?” asked the voice at the other end. Fuckwad always sounded like the name of a jihadist when pronounced by his brother.

“Uh-oh, it’s the Feds,” Hal said smiling.

David was two years younger than Hal and had become the attorney Hal and his father always wanted to be themselves. For awhile, he had gone back and forth between private law and various district attorney positions, but he had been tapped to be a federal prosecutor in 2009 when the Democrats returned to the White House. He lived in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, and seemed quite happy with his single life and the freedom it held. Denver was close enough to visit on major holidays, but far enough away that weekend trips were impractical. The two brothers were close, but most of their contact these days consisted of tasteless jokes they forwarded to each other on the Internet. Phone calls weren’t frequent, but when they did happen, Hal always felt a warmth that he missed with his current family situation.

“Yeah, the Fed. Fed up, more likely.” Hal reached around, opened the refrigerator door, and popped open another beer. He could tell David wanted to talk. He got the obligatory small stuff out of the way. David was dating a cute brunette, her three kids were royal pains in the ass, an opposing attorney had come on to him, he wasn’t making enough money for the headaches he had. Then, cut to the chase.

“Look, Big Brother, I know this sounds dopey, but I’ve got to tell you, off the record, that I’m seeing a crapload of stuff that scares the shit out of me.” There was a pause; like in those movies, Hal thought, where the character everyone wrongly thinks is crazy pauses before telling the psychiatrist some deep dark secret. “The Parsons people have been here in force. The sonofabitch isn’t even nominated yet, let alone elected, and he’s got his people on the ground in our office wanting records, telephone conversations, all sorts of stuff. And not on the bad guys. On us. It’s happening in all sorts of federal offices all over the country.

“They’re sounding us out—what would we do if this law or that one was overturned or ignored. Do we feel guilty prisoners are entitled to all their rights? It’s like if they’re charged, they’re guilty. No mistakes. No trials. Slam, bam, you’re in prison, man. They’re like fucking Nazis or something.

“We’ve sent them packing every time they’ve shown up. But I hear some federal marshals and prosecutors and cooperating fully. I’ve heard even county and city attorneys have been visited. Mind you, none of this is sanctioned by the powers that still be.

“I’ve never seen organizing on a scale like this. I know these guys are the presumptive movers and shakers after January, but they’re not even waiting until November to hog in.”

Hal was quiet. Canada. He wasn’t sure where this was going. Away. Far away.

“Bro, these guys are going to win in November and they’re going to turn our world upside down. I’m just giving you a thumbs up. You might tone down that liberal rhetoric of yours and start saying nice things about King Samuel. These guys are likely to have a long memory. You don’t need to get in their way. After all, I may have to come to you for a job. You need to be there.”

“Surely it’s not that bad. We go through this pendulum swing every election. We bounce back every time.”

“Hal, I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s different this time. Listen, did you see that some rabbi got smacked royally a few blocks from my place in Aurora? We had the son of a bitch who nailed him. The fucking prick is the son of a Republican state congressman. The Parsons people told us hands off, leave him alone, anyone who fucks with him gets fucked by Washington after the inauguration. I’m going to bust him anyway, but I feel like I’m taking my career and flushing it down the toilet. One of us needs to stay above the toilet water line. It should be you. Parsons’ people will make Ashcroft look like Alan Dershowitz.”

Hal wasn’t sure what to say. It was one thing for him to tell Frank and Allen how dangerous Samuel Parsons was, but it was another to hear it himself, from someone he considered “in the know.” He swung his chair around and stared out the window. Odd. No one was left in the office but him, and the other buildings on the street would have emptied out two hours ago. What was that guy doing in the car parked across from his office? He was just sitting there, in the driver’s seat, dome light off, smoking a cigarette, looking at the newspaper building. Hal lowered the light in his office and looked at the man who seemed to be looking at him. He was just sitting there. Waiting.

CHAPTER SIX

“My first love was Lady Liberty. In paintings and on coins, she stood in

that flowing white dress, arms outstretched, offering new hope to

people in places like western Europe when their hopes were gone.

No woman alive can match that angel of opportunity and hope.

That I have remained single and dedicated my life to her service

are testaments to my awe of her.”

Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“Too often in this country, the public careers of great men have

been destroyed by their private sexual appetites.”

Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

It always felt a little strange. Though Hal had known Susan Davis for only six years, he felt he had known her forever. Susan was, in so many ways, the way Hal felt himself to be—a fish out of water. In an overwhelmingly conservative environment, she was unabashedly liberal. In an area forming the buckle to the Bible Belt, where pro-life, pro-capital punishment ministers gave their sermons twice a week, Susan was pro-abortion and anti-capital punishment. In a town where parents still dressed their children up in Sunday finery as a sign of their respect for God and His apostles, Susan regularly made jokes about “JC and the Boys” and “god” being the name of her dyslexic dog. In a place where women were expected to be barefoot, pregnant, and if not down on the farm, at least quiet and respectful, she was the town’s go-to physician in addition to being a successful artist, black belt in karate, and regular contributor to a number of women’s magazines. Living in a town where families planned their vacations around Sea World and Six Flags Over Texas, Susan took month-long sabbaticals to provide free medical care in places like Haiti, India, and Nepal. At forty-two years old, some twenty-two years younger than Hal, she could not quite understand why the men she went out with never called for a second date or why she never seemed to have much in common with her associates and neighbors.

This was all quite obvious, of course, to Hal, who always found it cute when Susan referred to him as “Chief” of the Carlsbad Constant Anguish. It took him months to realize that “Chief” was Jerry Siegel’s nickname for Perry White, editor of The Daily Planet.

He first met Susan in 2010 when the Current Argus was doing an extended article on the free health clinic she had just opened. When his reporter reported she couldn’t make the interview, Hal went to Susan’s office himself. Her office seemed sparse; dozens of medical books and journals, of course, but only a single framed diploma hanging on the wall. In a corner of the room, he noticed a pile of certificates and awards gathering dust, belying her achievements. He found himself taken with Susan’s openness and easy going personality; her outspokenness, so off-putting to others, was immediately attractive to him.

They soon found they had much in common. Their short chats when they would see each other around town gave way to long discussions which gave way to happy hour cocktails, which soon freed them to admit their mutual affection. When Susan so nonchalantly asked him if he wanted to “try a tryst,” Hal thought she was asking him to sample a new cracker. But try he did, and soon the two of them found they could schedule a few hours alone together every week.

It helped that Susan lived on a ranch a few miles southeast of Carlsbad. There would be no prying eyes. Both understood the implication their affair had on their professions and standing in the community if they were caught. Hal knew how crushed Ruthie would be if she knew, but their bedroom activities had dwindled to a few tepid sessions a year, and those seemed more like biological obligations than true lovemaking. As for his daughter, Larissa, he always felt she’d likely take a comme ci comme ça attitude to their affair. And it was she, he thought, who was the only person that even suspected his indiscretion; she seemed to divine from the sideways glance or the carefully modulated tone of voice that Susan and Hal shared that something concealed was going on.

The long-dreaded conversation with Larissa came a few months into his affair. He knew something was up when she showed up unannounced at his office, plopped down into a slouch on the chair usually occupied by Frank Greene and offered to share a beer with him. She came out and asked about his relationship with Susan; actually, he realized, she was not asking, she was telling. She had no dates, no times, no places—but she had the knowledge of his affair. At thirty-six years old (that sinking feeling every time he realized how close she was to Susan’s age), she had long ago abandoned her childhood construct of mommy, daddy, and the perfect home. Looking a dozen years younger than her true age, she had gone through a number of lovers; Hal felt she was judging (more analyzing) his affair as an equal rather than a daughter.

She understood the distance that had grown between her parents. She knew her father often fell asleep in the recliner in his study rather than go to his bed. She heard the superficial conversations, watched the evolution as “love you” said as a good-bye became “see you.” Larissa jokingly told her father she defined relations sexually in three stages. The first stage, loving sex, was the nightly roll in the hay in which both partners vied to make the other feel better. The second stage was bored sex, where the roll in the hay occurred once in awhile and the attitude was get in, get out, and get away. The third stage was hall sex, when you and your partner passed in the hall and would say “fuck you” to each other.

Hal grimaced every time he heard his daughter use the F-bomb, but Larissa had ignored his face and went on to say she saw her parents as stalled between the second and third stages—unable to do anything about the second and too proper to fall into the third. She did not judge; she neither condemned nor approved his relationship with Susan, she simply understood it was the way things were. She wouldn’t tell Ruthie, but she didn’t want to be around when her mother found out.

Neither do I, thought Hal with a sigh. Neither do I.

CHAPTER FIVE

“General LaMonde is, in my mind, the greatest military mind in our country
today. He is a worthy successor to the legends of so many earlier
great men, men like George Patton and Douglas MacArthur.”
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“I have seen the future, and it is filled with people making the
mistakes of the past.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Lyceum lectures were usually held at the middle school auditorium, a structure more than large enough to house the audiences that would attend the high falootin’ speakers the group would generally bring to town. The large demand for tickets to the LaMonde talk required it be moved to the Desert Fiesta, a large pre-fab structure built on the outskirts of town on the highway to El Paso. The building had been intended to do for Carlsbad what Palo Duro Canyon had done for Canyon, Texas—provide a venue for a song and dance production (in Canyon’s case, a play appropriately entitled Texas) that would keep tourists and their dollars in town for an extra night. It proved to be a popular idea with everyone but the tourists, and the venture closed its doors its first summer in production, leaving a building which had eventually housed city storage, an occasional “Up With People” production, and most recently, a bedrock Christian church. It was the largest meeting place in Carlsbad, and tonight it was standing room only.
Hal had seen no reason to arrive too early, knowing he held reserved seats in the front row. But he did not anticipate the draw that General LaMonde would have, and after circling the parking lot twice in a futile effort to find a parking place, drove his Camaro back down the road a half mile before pulling in between two white pick-ups. He locked the car doors and held Ruth’s hand as they began walking toward the lecture hall.
Hal’s thoughts wandered as they ambled toward the building’s front entrance. Were gun racks de rigueur for pick-up trucks with Texas license plates? Who owned the single Prius he saw on the road dominated by trucks and SUV’s? As he neared the front entrance, he wondered where the long black Hummer limousine had been driven in from. When Ruth misstepped and almost fell in the gravel near the entrance, he wondered who had invented high heeled shoes and why. And more importantly, how had they been so successfully marketed? They certainly didn’t look too comfortable. Then he thought about his tie and loosened it a bit more.
He shook a few hands and nodded acknowledgement a number of times as he and Ruth navigated the crowded aisle toward the front of the auditorium. All seats were filled. There was a sea of t-shirts and cowboy hats. There was a long haired character in sunglasses, his motorcycle mama standing closely next to him, each missing a front tooth, each holding a beer in a plastic cup, each with the stars and bars brightly emblazoned on the backs of their vests. He had written “LUV IT OR LEVE IT” in chalk under his flag; were the misspellings intentional? A little kid dressed up in an army camouflage suit, perched on his father’s shoulders, waving an American flag. Three “Fuck Obama” t-shirts, another with “What Should Obama And Lincoln Have In Common?” Hal was certain that Presidential libraries in Illinois were not the shirt’s intent.
Toward the front, the crowd seemed more subdued. The first ties, a number of suits. A magistrate judge, the chief of police, a half-dozen lawyers, three doctors and most of the Lyceum members. Hal saw Pete Price, a distant cousin of the country and western singer Ray Price, slouching in the second row, resplendent in his white shirt and red, white and blue bow tie. Hal called him “Goober,” his nickname for everyone that reminded him of Andy Griffith and Mayberry RFD.
Five minutes after the scheduled beginning of the speech, Gayle Jerrells, the Lyceum’s president since its inception, approached the podium. A tall, thin, somewhat stately woman with dark grey hair, Gayle rarely agreed with Hal’s politics but each shared a mutual respect for the other’s ideas and ideals. Hal had once wanted to ask her if she had ever owned a pair of pants; neither he nor anyone else in Carlsbad had ever seen Gayle in a pair of slacks. Actually, he remembered, he did ask her once. He wondered whether she just hadn’t heard the question or thought it too silly to bother answering. Either way, Hal mused, she did have great legs for a woman her age. Course, shouldn’t a woman her age wear skirts that extend over her knees rather than to them? As if on cue, his answer came when he heard whistles and cat calls from the back of the auditorium.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to a very special program brought to you by the Carlsbad Lyceum.” Then the predictable acknowledgements and thank-yous, the recognition of the area dignitaries, the voices of the disinterested in the audience. It dawned on Hal only now that he had seen only a couple of Hispanic faces in the crowd. There were no blacks. Like a Jimmy Buffett concert, he thought, only way scarier.
“Our very special speaker tonight is known to all of you. General Kurt LaMonde is a true American hero who has seen fighting on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and behind the desks in Washington, D.C.” Applause and snickers from the audience. “I need not give you a long resumé of his accomplishments for they’ve long been reported in national media and our own Current Argus. So without further ado, our man of the hour, Marine General Kurt LaMonde!” Loud applause. Cheers. Syncopated foot stomping. I’m getting a headache, Hal thought. He looked left at Ruth, who was smiling broadly and, he thought, clapping too vigorously. He felt his necktie tightening.
LaMonde walked onto the stage from behind the worn purple velour curtain to Gayle’s left. He strode toward the podium forcefully, back erect, in long steps, seemingly oblivious to the applause that greeted him. He did not smile until he took Gayle’s hand and shook it; she seemed to grimace slightly, Hal thought. Maybe the General was using a real Marine’s let’s-show-you-early-who’s-boss handshake. LaMonde weighed more than Hal thought he would. Maybe that D.C. infighting allows long lunch hours. Still the man looked—what would the word be? Dangerous.
It wasn’t until Gayle moved away from the podium that LaMonde turned to face the audience. He didn’t seem to focus on anyone, but he seemed to see everyone all at once. A bit unnerving. He made no attempt to quiet the crowd. Shit-eating grin. He had no notes. He simply stood at the podium, taking it all in. Reconnoitering.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for that welcome. And thank you, members and of the Carlsbad Lyceum, for this opportunity to speak to all of you today about the dangerous set of affairs now facing our country.
“Those of you who know of me know that I place the honor of my country above all other things. Of course, to serve that country and help preserve its honor, I must admit that I have bent the rules a time or two.” Chuckling from the back rows.
“I had a horrible family life growing up in southern Missouri. My father was abusive and would often take his shortcomings out on my mother and me. When I was fifteen, I knew I could take it no more. I could have moved out, gone to Hollywood and a few years later written some tell-all book in which I blamed my parents for all my problems. Or I could take my life and my future into my own hands. I did that. I obtained a fake driver’s license showing me to be three years older than I actually was and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.” Hoots and hollers from across the hall.
“In the Corps, I discovered the importance of camaraderie of those with a common goal. Our goal was to protect America.” Loud applause. LaMonde looked like he was irritated by the interruption. “To protect America against all costs. Even if that cost was laying down our lives. We found no sacrifice to be too great to be offered up to this noble land of ours.
“Without belaboring my history in the Corps too much, I can tell you that I was an apt student of its procedures, values, and judgments, and over the years, as you all know, rose to the rank of general.” The syncopated foot stomping again. Loud applause and cheers.
“This country now faces threats as serious as any ever confronted before in our two-hundred and forty year history. We are at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. But, my friends, make no mistake about it: we are involved in a World War.” Silence.
“We have the resolve, we have the resources to win this war. We can beat those who want to see this country brought to its knees just as we defeated the Axis powers in the last World War and the Central powers in the World War before that one.” Loud applause. Chants of “Kurt, Kurt, Kurt” from the back rows.
LaMonde held up his arms to silence the crowd. He slowly surveyed his audience, passing his gaze from left to right. Reconnoitering. “No one recognizes this ability better than Samuel Parsons, the great senator from your neighboring state of Texas. Senator Parsons, as you all know, is currently seeking the Republican nomination to run as that party’s candidate in November, and he has amply demonstrated in his many speeches, his support of various bills in Congress, and in his private conversations with me, his total commitment to the future of American interests, both at home and abroad.” Loud applause again. LaMonde sipped from a glass of water and cleared his throat.
“It has been well reported in the media that I advocated the limited use of nuclear weapons in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We can win our war against the Taliban and Muslim extremists. We can bring to an end the number of brave young Americans giving their lives to achieve this victory. Harry Truman was not afraid to use the full power of our military strength against the Japanese.” A formulaic pause. “Neither will Samuel Parsons hesitate to use that power against our enemies around the globe.”
People jumped to their feet. Even the lawyer to Hal’s right, usually so dour and devoid of emotion, shot up and applauded vigorously. The cry, “Parsons, Parsons, Parsons” was almost deafening. Hal loosened his necktie again. Was he sweating? The second coming couldn’t elicit this type of enthusiasm. What the hell are they thinking?
The rest of LaMonde’s speech was predictable enough. Obama was timid, Parsons would be brave; Obama was weak, Parsons will be strong. Yada, yada, yada. Vote for a great American. Vote for Samuel Parsons in November.
Gayle returned to the podium, grinning broadly. Now she took LaMonde’s hand and shook it forcefully. The predictable questions: Will Samuel Parsons stand up to China? Will Parsons reinstate the draft and make out military great once again? Will Parsons tap Sarah Palin as his running mate? The predictable answers: Yes, Yes, and No.
A few words from the president of the Carlsbad Young Republicans, Reggie Campbell, decked out in a shiny black leather jacket. Good God, he looks like the Reggie in the Archie comics, Hal told himself. Then Campbell, LaMonde, and a couple of other teenagers also in black leather jackets left the stage together.
Huh, Hal thought. Weren’t black leather jackets mentioned in news feeds over the last few months? Small bands of young people in black leather jackets had been seen running away after a synagogue was firebombed in Atlanta, mosques were destroyed in fires in Detroit and Los Angeles, and a Chinese man was attacked and killed in the Chicago subway. Odd.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’ve always considered myself a fair student of history. And one thing I’ve
learned is that nations and empires get just plain lazy. People get lazy. It
begins at the bottom and works up to the top. For instance, the liberal
agenda is to make our schools nothing but some kind of centers of
learning; they couldn’t care less about physical education and
sports. Apparently, they think if we graduate liberal weaklings rather
than students with strong healthy bodies, we can handle our lives
better. They take this attitude all the way up the line to our
foreign policy—but history has shown that a strong army beats
talks and embargos at every turn."
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Zero Hour

“Civilization itself is man’s crowning achievement. A few thousand years
ago, we lived in caves, clubbed our women, and instinctively killed our enemies.
The weak died silently and the strong were feared. Civilization allowed the
evolution of morality, and with morality came the acceptance of our obligations
to the weak, the sick, and the poor. Perhaps the greatest culmination of this is
seen in the America we know today”.
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

Unlike its sister city of Hobbs, located some seventy miles to the northeast and subject to the boom and bust vagaries of the oilfield, Carlsbad’s economy for many years had been based on potash mining. Whereas in Hobbs, families moved into town with each boom cycle and moved away when the oilfield would again go bust, Carlsbad miners had jobs with year-round work and security. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the city had been the strongest union enclave in the state.
Hal had always credited the mines with the mindset that cities like Hobbs seemed to lack. Because people had their jobs year in and year out, they were able to stay in one place and thus took pride in community. Neighborhoods were stronger. Lawns and houses were better kept. The performance of children in schools was important. People knew each other.
Over the years, however, the quality of the potash ore had diminished. Canadian potash could be produced and shipped to American markets more cheaply than the Carlsbad miners could deliver it upward through their own mine shafts. An anti-dumping suit filed against Canadian potash companies in 1987 could not stem the tide, and over the next two decades jobs dwindled and people disappeared.
Though still a key player in the Carlsbad economy, potash mining was now only slightly more important than its traditional also-rans—tourism, ranching and farming, and oilfield production.
Hal had covered it all many times in his editorials. The town was in trouble, new sustainable industry was needed. Too many homes were being vacated and allowed to become run down; too many neighborhoods saw home values fall too far. The fights, the robberies, the rapes and the murders—why couldn’t he leave his front door unlocked when he went out as did his parents thirty years before?
Hal often felt like a throwback to more simple times. His friends kidded him that James Cameron would one day make a film of his life and call it Atavist.

Hal grimaced as he stood in front of the mirror trying for the third time to get just the right length on that tie he was knotting. He wanted the tip of the tie to reach just above his belt buckle; any farther down and he’d look like an old man. Any farther up and he’d look fat. He hated ties. And suit jackets. And polished shoes. Most of all, he hated formality, because formality meant neckties, suit jackets, and polished shoes.
But, hell, he was the editor of the newspaper, and that meant that dressing up was part of the game. He finished tying his silk knot and examined himself in the mirror, then loosened the tie from around his neck and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Comfort—one; formality—zero.
“I’m ready if you are, Houseboat,” came a chirpy voice from behind him. His wife, Ruth, walked into the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom. She had once shortened Houseboat to Homer; perhaps he was too brusque when he told her Homer does not go with Simpson and she was never to call him that again. His name was definitely not Homer, Homebody, or Homeboy.
“I really hate these things, you know,” he said, trying not to sound judgmental.
“Oh, do try to stay awake and not fidget, Houseboat. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something new,” Ruth replied with a grin.
The thing was the monthly meeting of the Carlsbad Lyceum, a group whose stated purpose was to provide the community with knowledgeable speakers to discuss politics, economics, science and religion. Hal had always felt this was a commendable idea, even though no world federalist, socialist, anthropologist, rabbi or Buddhist monk had ever been invited to speak.
Tonight’s speaker was to be General Kurt LeMonde, who up until a few months ago had been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. LeMonde was a third generation military brat who was born into and would have died in the Marine Corps had he not tried to run an end game around the White House and convince a half dozen senators to authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan. When the President tried to rein him in, LaMonde did what any good Marine would do—he stood his ground and told the enemy to go to hell. He was forced to withdraw from the field.
It was a scandal, Bill O’Reilly charged, and within weeks, LeMonde was one of America’s most popular speakers on the lecture circuit. Some went so far as to advance his name as a candidate on the ticket with Samuel Parsons.

CHAPTER THREE

“It might sound odd, but as a kid, I was fascinated with ants. I would watch
them for hours. It was amazing what they could accomplish working
together the way they did—under all those anthills were huge cities with
endless tunnels going in all directions. They could accomplish this with
brains no larger than the head of a pin. But I think what I really admired
was their marching. They’d crawl in single file lines, one after the
other, half way across the yard, all following a leader to some place
he alone knew existed”.
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At The Zero Hour

“We live life as if were a carnival. We give our attention not to he who
has something to say, but to he who yells the loudest.
We listen not to those who can speak with authority,
but to those who tell us what we want to hear. We elect
not those most qualified to serve, but those who are most popular.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

The 2012 presidential election was pretty much typical in every way. The Republicans condemned the Democrats, with a great deal of truth, as the party of the tax and spend. Democrats, as is their knee jerk reaction, condemned the Republican Party as the mouthpiece of the rich and famous. Republicans reminded the populace over and over that “liberal” was a word that meant intellectual (not like you and me) agent of (malignant) change; below the Mason-Dixon line, it was synonymous with an odd-sounding New Yorker-type who doesn’t know shit about what life is really all about. Democrats called for an election of inclusion, one in which all people of all parties could come together, all the while casting the Republicans as those cold uncaring in-laws who could tell you everything you were doing wrong yet somehow could never stop to help you make things right.
Both parties played the old time-tested charges and arguments. But Samuel Parsons played the game on a level that made Richard Nixon and Karl Rove seem like touchy-feely California new agers sitting down to a spot of organic tea.
While many thought Parsons was an unthinking loose cannon, to Hal Simpson, it appeared that he had willfully taken a page from Spiro Agnew’s 1972 game book. Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism” became Parsons’ “palpable pulse of piss-poor political palaver.” Just as Agnew was happiest serving as Nixon’s attack dog, Parsons found he relished his role as his party’s hit man—his shoot from the hip, take no prisoners attitude fit him like a glove. There were recurring rumors Romney and his staff were disenchanted with the name calling, the quoting of statistics that could not be found, and the presentation of truths that were, at best, deliberate fabrications, but no one would say so on the record. After all, it wasn’t like he was waving a paper in front of the cameras with the names of hundreds of subversives in the State Department.
But did the voters know that Obama had promised the ayatollahs in Iran enough uranium for six nuclear weapons so they could destroy Israel, thus drawing America into a war in order that Nancy Pelosi could be installed as the American Governor in Tehran? That Obama had secretly colluded with Yemeni pirates to board only vessels of companies that had refused to pay tribute to the Democratic National Committee? That the liberal media that had so punished Tiger Woods with stories of his indiscretions with white women refused to do the same to Barack Obama, even though the two of them had spent a weekend in Chicago with three of Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends?
That the Democrats had included a secret provision in their Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 to create death panels in which doctors could decide who would live and who would die, even if you were sick with no more than a common cold? That if the Health Act were overturned, the government would be able to give $75,000 to every man, woman and child in the country between the ages of nine and ninety?
Or that the CIA had photographs of Obama’s mother in bed with Leonid Brezhnev? (Stories about Ann Dunham being in bed with the pope that first showed up on Facebook and then spread around the internet were apparently posted by a minor Republican office holder in North Carolina when he “sort of” got his facts wrong in his post.) That Mexican drug cartel thugs had crucified three Border Patrol agents when they attempted to arrest a drug runner from Juarez?
These and other such rantings were carried in daily news reports, were replayed dozens of times every day in paid political ads on televisions and radios, and were related and repeated thousands of times in internet blogs and postings. At first, the Obama campaign, against the advice of Secretary of State Kerry, ignored these ridiculous charges, discovering only too late one of the unalterable laws in the age of mass communication and questionable media coverage: many will think that if it’s in the paper and on TV, it must be true. Others might be dubious, but just as they are accustomed to think where there is smoke, there must be fire, so will many voters feel that behind each overstatement, there must be some element of truth. After all, if Obama and Bill Clinton smoked cigars in the Oval Office as they watched secret tapes of a tryst between Nancy Pelosi and Hillary, then something must have happened, right? By the time the Democrats began denying the silliness threatening their campaign, their denials were seen as admissions of guilt. After all, if nothing had happened (and by now many voters were convinced something had), why were they denying it?
In the end, as in so many recent elections, the victor came out on top by the narrowest of margins, a winner in name only. In the weeks following the election, many feared the real winner was Samuel Parsons. Though Obama had been re-elected President, the media credited Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate to Parsons’ coat tail. While exit polls showed he was shunned in the election by the better educated, by the more affluent, and by minorities across the nation, early December post-election polls revealed an astonishing level of support for him to be the Republican nominee for President in 2016.

CHAPTER TWO

“For months, the talk at our dinner table was all about what a mess the
world was in, how Washington didn’t seem to know what to do about
it, how we needed new blood in that stale capital. Newsmen all said
we needed to elect as President someone familiar with the world,
a senator or an ambassador perhaps. But we knew a governor would
make a darn good President. Growing up near Lubbock, I could almost
see Mexico. And as governor of Texas, a state with an international
border, I came to understand how governments act with one another.”
--Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At The Zero Hour

“Perhaps we in the media are to blame for the current dearth of
satisfactory Presidential candidates. We report the comings and
goings of reality show stars when the shows are not reality and
the participants are not stars and they themselves are
not really news. We give time to the fringe
believer equal to what we give the studied government official.
We have created a world in which mediocrity is something to which
our youth aspire and our learned accept.”
--Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus

As was his habit every day at 4:30, Hal Simpson was sitting in his office, his legs stretched out before him on his old mahogany desk, the backs of his brogans resting on a stack of wrinkled papers. He had a Landshark, his beer of the week, in his left hand and a half smoked cigar in his right. His chair creaked each time he leaned forward to set his beer down or pick it up.
Carlsbad, New Mexico, was a city of almost 22,000 inhabitants when Hal had moved there with his family in 1959. There were four of them then. His father, whom Hal worshipped, was a tall thin man whose hair had grayed in his early twenties. He had wanted to be a lawyer; in his youth, Hal had thought his father looked like a thin grayed Carl Betz in Judd For The Defense. He had met Hal’s mother while a sophomore in college in New Jersey; when she became pregnant in his junior year, he dropped out school and began what would be a succession of jobs—short order cook, record shop manager, trucker. He took college classes whenever he could and eventually became a successful paralegal. By the time Hal turned twelve, his father was the office manager of the largest law firm in Carlsbad. One day in July, returning to his office after securing a deposition, his father's car was struck by a drunk driving a company truck. Hal saw him after the accident only once; he had walked to the hospital and sneaked by the nurses to get into the room where his father lay in a coma. He sat for what seemed like hours, saying nothing, holding his father’s hand. He still remembered how cold and clammy his skin had felt, how shallow the breathing seemed, the constant beep-beep-beeps of the different monitors. He didn’t cry; he only sat there, staring at his father, somehow knowing he would not see him up and around again, trying to almost to breathe in the way his father looked, the way he smelled, the way he felt; knowing that those memories would stay with him forever and would be a sad substitute for the time he could never share, the attention he would never have. He remembered the prayers he whispered, the deals he offered if only God would make his father wake up. Did he whisper to his father that afternoon how much he loved him? To this day he wasn’t sure.
The managing partners of his father’s firm were only too happy to sue the company that owned the truck that collided with his father's car. Hal was never sure it was fair that they should pay for an errant employee over whom they had no control, but fair or not, the partners did and obtained for Hal, his mother and his younger brother a multi-million dollar judgment.
The settlement meant nothing to the remaining Simpsons. Hal’s mother saw no reason to change her lifestyle with blood money. Though she was quite possibly now the richest woman in Carlsbad, there was nothing to prove to anyone. She was dedicated to her children but saw to it that they would grow up without airs and develop into responsible adults unaffected by the wealth that had taken so much to obtain. Her pet name for Hal was Halbert. His brother didn’t seem be able to pronounce that and always called him Houseboat, a nickname that stuck.
Like his father, Hal saw himself as a lawyer. Throughout high school, he had rather grandiose schemes about graduating from law school, joining the ACLU, and proceeding to save the world from itself. Once in college, though, he found it was more fun to have fun than to study, and he realized law school would not be his future. He thought perhaps being a newspaper reporter might be to his liking--after all, he was good at English, could sort through people’s b.s., and liked to be at the center of all sorts of happenings, both large and small.
He was en route to an interview with the St. Louis Post Dispatch when he received a phone call that his mother had suffered a stroke. He turned his blue Ford Falcon around and managed getting three speeding tickets as he headed west on Interstate 40. From Amarillo, he headed toward Lubbock, from there to Hobbs, New Mexico, and then to Carlsbad.
He sped through town and west on Pierce Street to Memorial Hospital, a one story, red brick structure that always seemed to smell of sick people. At the nurses’ station, he identified himself to a portly redhead with a stethescope dangling around her neck that made an odd clanging sound each time it hit the countertop. The nurse did not look him in the eye, but she really didn’t seem to look away either when she told him his mother had passed away a few minutes before. She conveyed no warmth, no sorrow. Only a look that said death happens.
It seemed full circle as Hal sat by his mother’s bedside. The cold, clammy skin seemed too familiar to him as he sat and held her hand. He combed her hair, still dark, so much like his, but it was full of static electricity and would not obey the commands of his brush strokes. He finally just sat there. Should he say a prayer? He had not prayed since his father died. Why believe now that there would be anyone out there who would hear him? Where is the logic in the universe when the good are taken so early?
Now it all seemed so long ago. When the estate was settled, Hal decided to stay in Carlsbad. He quickly became the Current Argus’ star reporter. He was proud of his achievement, even though he knew the only other reporter never left his desk, ferreted out his news only by telephone, and made up as much information as he discovered. Late in his second year at the paper, irritated over an editorial change in the flavor of an article he had written (okay, it only took five minutes to write, but that wasn’t the point), he bought the paper. At age 23, he was owner, editor, and publisher of the largest newspaper in Carlsbad, New Mexico, albeit the only newspaper in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The city’s high and mighty and its lowdown and dirty all looked up to him. He wanted to say he could make or break people, but he really didn’t think he knew how.
Hal had discovered he had a deep, almost reverential, respect for news. News is facts. Facts is truth. Truth needs no blandishment, it needs no editorial gussying up. Yes, the Argus had an editorial page, and yes, he knew he was known around town for his often wordy editorials, frequently out of step with local opinion. But page one and all the other pages were for news. Hal knew that while a lot of people in town subscribed to area papers like the El Paso Times and the Albuquerque Journal, they still read the Argus. It was homey. It was truthful. It could be trusted.

Now it was 2016, and he had been editor of the Argus for 41 years; looking back, he’d say most of those years were good ones, both professionally and personally. Yes, there was that disastrous first marriage, but the second one had been a charm, more or less. True, he was a bit bored at home, but he had a wonderful child, a damn nice house, a brand new Camaro, a kick-ass AV system, and unknown to almost everyone, a special friend in whom he could confide, let his guard down, and be himself.
He took a deep puff on his cigar. He wasn’t really sure why. Cigar smoke is such a nasty taste. A nasty manly taste. Oh well, that’s why I’ve got the beer, he thought; it makes a great cigar chaser.
He tossed the empty beer bottle into the trash and turned to his credenza, in which he had a small refrigerator stocked with a couple dozen more bottles. He popped the top off another Landshark and asked the two men sitting in front of him if either wanted another. This is the life, he thought. Where else can you drink beer, talk politics, say whatever you want and not have to worry about who agrees with you and who doesn’t? Freedom to kick back, freedom to mouth off. What were the words of that CS&N song? “Find the cost of freedom, hiding . . .” Hiding where? He was trying to remember the next line when he heard,
“Yep, I woulda been damned if I'da thought Obama had a snowball’s chance in hell in ’12. I still don’t know how he pulled that election outta his ass.” The political commentator was Allen Jeffries, a friend of Hal’s since elementary school. He was a regular at these 4:30 smokefests. Four years younger than Hal, Allen had never married. He often talked about living la vida loca, but Hal and everyone else knew he hadn’t had a date in five years. Hal never thought of Allen as particularly articulate, but he gave him high marks for common sense. And while Allen’s reasoning may often have been somewhat circuitous, Hal found that the two of them agreed on most things.
“He won because this country isn’t ready for a Mormon President,” came the reply from Hal’s left. Somewhere behind a climbing waft of smoke sat Frank Greene. “He plays well in Utah and I guess Massachusetts, but there was no way this country would elect him. What’d he take in the Electoral College? Six states?” Hal liked Frank’s company, but he found him to sometimes be a bit of a bore. Like Allen, Frank kept abreast of news and happenings, but whereas Allen could explain both sides of an issue, Frank generally found his own to be the sole compelling argument.
Allen blew out a mouthful of cigar smoke. He always looks so ridiculous when he tries to blow those smoke rings, Hal thought. “Yeah, but six states don’t tell the story. Remember how close the popular vote was? What was the difference? Like 0.5% of the total? That’s a helluva lot of non-Mormons voting for the guy.”
“You know,” interjected Hal, “I truly think the Republicans could have won in ’12. I think the reason they lost was Parsons. He scared away the independents.”
“Where do you get that?” demanded Frank. “Parsons is the best damned governor Texas has ever had.”
“Well, compared to Bush . . .” began Allen.
“Don’t even go there,” said Frank. “Parsons turned that state around. Crime dropped . . .”
“Frank, crime dropped because under Parsons, Texas judges incarcerated more people than at any period in the state’s history. And early parole became almost non-existent. More people were in prison and people in prison were in there longer. Hell, there wasn’t anybody out on the street to commit any crimes,” Hal said. He knew he didn’t believe what he’d just said, but heck, he knew Frank would take the bait. And he wasn’t ready to go home yet.
“And you have a problem with that? Damn guilty people need damn longer sentencing. And besides, they built six new prisons under Parsons’ term. Lotta new jobs. More than your boy Obama can say for his policies.”
Hal and Allen exchanged glances, both rolling their eyes upward a bit. Frank always carried his arguments too far, Hal thought, but he was never really sure how much of what Frank said was real and how much of it was . . . well, bait.
“C’mon, Frank-o, get real.” Allen took another swig of beer. He liked these afternoon bull sessions, even if Hal’s taste in beer was a bit strange; Landshark this week, Red Label last week, what was it the week before? “The only reason Parsons was even tapped was because Texas has one helluva lotta electoral votes. Pure and simple. The guy’s a bozo. They didn’t even know each other before they met on the day of the announcement.”
“Al, buddy, think about it. Doesn’t matter if they knew each other. It’s all the staff guys that do the research and all anyway. Look at the facts. Parsons is one fine law-and-order man. Hell, every time I hear that theme music to Law & Order, I think Governor Parsons and get goose-bumps. Look how he shored up security at the border when the feds couldn’t do it. How he cut back on welfare and got the cheats off the rolls. Too damned many of those blasted welfare recipients driving Cadillacs.”
“Get real, Frank.” It was Hal’s turn again. “Next you’ll be telling me welfare mothers have all those babies just so they can get another $80 a month. I give credit to Parsons for firming up security at the border. Lord knows we needed it. But what about all those reports of shootings by state militia? These aren’t army guys. They’re not National Guard. They’re a bunch of trigger happy NRA guys concerned that someone from Mexico or Central America is going to come across the border and take their jobs. Parsons did nothing to keep those people in line.”
“There’s a song that reminds me of Parsons, too,” piped up Allen. “Theme from Sesame Street.” Both Hal and Frank looked him. “What? I missed the moment?”

Samuel Parsons was born in Post, Texas, where he was an indifferent student before he graduate from high school twenty-first in his class of thirty. Post was a small town of about 3500 people, dependent on agriculture and the vagaries of the weather. Voters elected Parsons mayor in 2008. Post mayors generally had little to do other than occasionally direct a letter to the state utility commission or attend a monthly council meeting. Fortunately for the future Presidential candidate, however, he was able to show his mettle when a crime spree occurred in his town. After car window was shattered by a rock and a motorcycle was stolen, Parsons ordered the sheriff to place anyone out after dark into jail for the night. He gained regional attention when it was reported in Dallas newspapers Post had no curfew hour and that 95% of the people jailed were either Hispanic or black. Within a year, he resigned his position and moved to Lubbock, a city of about a quarter-million people about forty miles west. Buying a percentage of a local television station (Hal thought it odd no one had ever explained where the funds had come from), Parsons gave himself prime time airplay, using his time to interview guests, the locally famous and the not-so-famous, extremists from both the left and the right. He patterned his interview style after Joe Pyne, one of his childhood heroes. He rarely subjected militia members, pro-life, pro-death penalty, or anti-immigration guests to any particularly deep questions. He reserved his grilling and name calling to those guests who were pro-choice, anti-death penalty, or just plain pinhead liberal Socialist Communist anti-American pink namby-pamby jackasses. He insisted he slipped when he called Howard Stern a motherfucker on the air, but he was quickly developing a reputation as the Texan Rush Limbaugh. Even Glenn Beck traveled to Lubbock to be on his program and call him “Lubbock’s answer to the sissified Obamafied politics that have taken over our country.” Parsons’ television exposure and his reputation for straight talk allowed him to stage an upset victory over incumbent governor Rick Perry to take the Republican nomination for governor of Texas in 2010.
The election pitted him against Democratic nominee Kinky Friedman, a relative newcomer to politics whose main claim to fame was a song titled, “They Don’t Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” Parsons won a lopsided victory in November.
While governor, Parsons pursued a law and order agenda. (Hal saw this as right-speak for the whittling away of civil rights.) He spoke out against the ineffectiveness of the federal government’s domestic and international policies in the weekly television addresses he used as his pulpit. His detractors were “jackasses,” liberals were “dangerous morons,” pro-choice adherents were “cold blooded baby killers who would stick a vacuum cleaner hose in a women’s body for a few lousy dollars.” It was insinuated, though never quite said, that all Latinos (Parsons labeled everyone in this category as “Messican”) were thieves, Jews were bigger thieves, and blacks were murdering thieves.
And the public just ate it up. A year after his election as governor, Texas’ junior senator died when his plane crashed in Bermuda, where he was en route on a fact-finding tour. Samuel Parsons appointed himself to fill the now empty senate seat. When informed he was unable to do this by Texas law, Parsons resigned his gubernatorial seat. His successor’s first job in office was to appoint Samuel Parsons the new junior senator from Texas.
When the Republican National Committee helped cast about for a vice-presidential candidate in 2012, Parsons was regarded as a Texas hick, opinionated and quirky, a man who liked his alcohol (too much) and his women (dangerously young). But he was a populist in a state with big electoral votes and someone the powers that be thought they could control. For this he was crowned the nominee for vice-president.
He was off and running.

CHAPTER ONE

"Barry Goldwater said that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
He said that in 1964. Many people scoffed at him, but now, fifty-plus
years later, I see the wisdom in his advice. Namby-pambies say to
me I must be careful what I wish for lest it come to pass. I say that
if we occasionally ignore the civil liberties of one or two of these
namby-pambies and throw them out with the bathwater, then at
the end of the day we will have saved both the baby and
democracy.”
Samuel Parsons, A Rogue At Ground Zero

“The true believer may see more than coincidence in words that
begin with the letter ‘D’: dialogue, decency, and democracy.
Without dialogue—the uninhibited exchange of thoughts, feelings,
and information--there can be no decency. Without decency—the
respect for the opinions of others, the willingness to listen open-
mindedly to ideas other than our own—there can be no
democracy. Dialogue, decency, and democracy are thus intertwined into
more than a one-letter alphabet soup. Without these three
important words, the other letters of the alphabet and the words
they form—extremism, fascism, and the like—become a true
threat to the American way of life. These threats, as Sinclair
Lewis so ably pointed out in 1935, can happen here.”
Hal Simpson, Editorial in The Carlsbad Current Argus


“What the hell were they thinking?” Hal Simpson thought to himself for at least the third time as he perused the news feeds in his office that morning. The night before, he and a relatively small number of Americans watched as the delegates to the Democratic national convention voted to name Hillary Clinton their 2016 nominee for the office of President of the United States.
Hillary. Hillary. She had become a one name product. While her supporters compared her to other one name leaders such as Moses or Cicero, her detractors (and Hal was among these) listed her with one namers with more style than substance—Cleopatra and Nero, for instance. What is it with the one namers, Hal wondered. Perhaps he was being too anal; maybe it was because people with full names better suited the columns in his newspaper. And yet, it wasn’t George. It was George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. John frickin’ Kennedy. Last names told you the family from which a person sprang. Family meant continuity with those who had come before you and those who would follow you later. Family meant community. Hal doubted that one name legends in their own minds felt the connection with those before them or even those around them. It wasn’t that Hillary hadn’t run a good campaign—it was certainly tighter and had fewer mistakes than her 2012 run when she had resigned as Secretary of State to challenge the incumbent President of her party for the nomination. That was a bloody contest, complete with the usual name calling and challenges to the seating of a few Southern delegates at the convention. Fights over the platform were particularly acrimonious, and as was the habit of the Democratic Party, these were fought in front of klieg lights and television cameras. The pundits said Obama suffered a few deep cuts, but no terminal wounds.
But to Hal, the cuts Hillary inflicted now suggested the weakness and the vanity of a candidate who had failed twice before to get her party’s nomination for President. How could Democrats forget what Hillary had almost cost them four years before? What were they thinking? All the polls showed she badly trailed Samuel Parsons, the presumptive Republican candidate—what were they thinking?
Of course, any Democrat would have problems in 2016. So much had happened to the country, both at home and abroad during the almost-eight year run of the Obama administration.
At home, an administration that inspired such an initial outpouring of support and good will worldwide had sunk ever faster, ever deeper into a course of ineffectiveness and inaction. The national health plan, for which the president had labored so hard in 2009, pleased no one. The poor still felt they were denied an adequate level of health care. Spiraling costs forced the government to slash reimbursement levels, not just angering doctors and hospitals, but forcing many to close their doors. Waiting lines for medical care grew ever larger and it was not long before people who had access to care felt they, too, were being denied what they deserved. Forced to tweak and re-tweak payment policies, the government turned to private business for assistance. After assigning $2.1 trillion in less than five years to Blue Cross, Aetna, Cigna, and a small number of other insurance behemoths, the government found itself hard-pressed to explain why only $1.5 trillion had reached providers. Stories of insurance fat cats, CEOs and CFOs nailing down seven digit bonuses annually (while the typical American household saw its buying power shrink 12% annually) appeared to put yet another nail into the coffin holding Obama's dream for a new America. Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008 and a Fox analyst (Hal could never say “Fox” and “News” in the same sentence), drove home a message of “I told you so” to an American electorate increasingly disenchanted with Washington.
America's economy, crippled by Wall Street fat cats taking advantage of deregulation instituted by earlier administrations, defied all attempts at resuscitation. Massive infusions of government cash failed to create new jobs, failed to create demands for new goods, and failed to create new markets overseas for exports. Recession remained a worldwide problem; when the Wall Street Journal speculated that an implosion of Chinese markets would force that country to collect the huge debt owed it by the United States, stock markets worldwide went into a panic. It was as if an economy hobbling along on one good leg now discovered that last leg would soon be amputated.
And that was the good news.
Internationally, it appeared that the world had gone to hell in a hand bag. After brokering a shaky armistice between Pakistan and India when fighting over Kashmir again broke out, the Obama administration found itself powerless to defuse tensions between India and China along the border of the Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh. It was Vladamir Putin of Russia, diverting his attention from yet another uprising in Chechnya, who brought both sides back from a dispute that seemed to be spiraling toward nuclear confrontation. Many Americans could not understand how an oppressive Russian dictator could win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
The Mexican government of Felipe Calderon fell in 2013. Calderon had battled drug cartels for a number of years, committing government troops in ever increasing numbers as the cartels became ever more violent. In Juarez alone, the number of dead had risen from 2657 in 2009 to 5831 in 2012. The social and political vacuum created by the cartel’s targeting of police, lawyers, judges, government members and army troops allowed a flourishing of extortion, kidnappings, and murders by many lesser criminals. Increasingly, Mexican kidnappers and hit men crossed their country’s northern border; while murders of Mexican nationals and naturalized Hispanics in El Paso, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angels and Portland caused little notice on Fox News, the murders of an Anglo police officer in Burbank, another in Charlotte, and a judge in Cleveland seemed to put many American communities along the border with Mexico on a war footing. Border crossings at San Diego and El Paso were shut down for months, and without the influx of American dollars, economies in towns like Tijuana and Juarez suffered severely. These towns, and many smaller towns and villages, disintegrated into little more than personal fiefdoms, where criminal militias made and enforced their own laws, where not only local citizens but the regular army was afraid to go.
And on top of all of this, the stakes in the West's confrontation with Islam continued to worsen. In 2011, when Obama's reelection campaign was unofficially begun, American troops remained on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Egyptian government remained weak following its prolonged conflict with Hamas and a half dozen coup attempts in 2010, forcing American troops to occupy the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia, having committed its resources to bail out Dubai after its 2009 financial meltdown, found its economy in chaos when the continuing global recession lowered international demand for oil to 1960s levels. Unable to pump money into domestic programs, the House of Saud found itself more and more isolated from the populace, which itself was becoming increasingly militant, often expressing itself in violent outbursts against its leaders who were seen as too pro-western.
Around the globe, crowds of rioting Muslims burned straw effigies of Obama. Beheadings of American contractors and service personnel became near daily occurrences. Osama bin Laden and a host of lesser known terrorists continued to threaten a rain of fire on the United States. The president, reacting to one such threat, ordered the Air Force to shoot down a small plane entering Florida airspace. Recovery operations the next day revealed its occupants consisted of two families seeking asylum from Cuba; six children were among the dead. (Hal remembered the editorial he wrote noting the international condemnation of the President’s actions and his short-lived paradoxical rise in his domestic approval rating following the incident.)
The administration’s secret efforts to help foment a violent overthrow of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went nowhere. The Iranian president’s grip on the country tightened after its violent suppression of riots occurring though 2010. By the time Hossein Mousavi was shot 32 times at point blank range by Iranian secret police the following year, no crowds went to the streets to protest. The shooter, tried for murder, was acquitted when it was discovered his machine gun had only accidentally discharged.
American news outlets were unanimous in vilifying Barack Obama when news of Iran’s successful detonation of its first nuclear weapon became known. Obama, who had long counseled the value of the international community in applying economic sanctions to the Ahmadinejad regime, found himself increasingly isolated. When he lent only limited support to Israel’s carpet bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, military sites, and capital, he earned no respect either at home or abroad.
By mid-2011, Barack Obama’s smile seemed to remind people more and more of Jimmy Carter. Most man-on-the-street interviews began with high marks for his good intentions; they ended with bewilderment, frustration, or anger with an America where the middle class seemed to be vanishing and a world that seemed to be going to go mad.
Hillary sensed winds were changing and resigned as Secretary of State to free herself to challenge the President in the 2012 Democratic primary. All of Washington marveled at the strength Obama showed in trying to crush his opponent, yet all wondered where was this leadership and resolution in dealing with so many other issues of the day. The pundits all predicted the self-immolation of the Democratic Party.
At the time of the formal kick-off of his reelection campaign, the President seemed to appeal to no one. To many black activists, he was half white. To many white conservatives, he was all black. To conservatives of all colors, he represented tax and spend policies taken to a level they could never have imagined. To liberals, he was bluff and bluster, high on ideas but low on delivery. The industrial North saw an economy in shambles as factories closed; the inability of the government to bail General Motors out of a fourth bankruptcy in 2012 reinforced the perception of the President as an incompetent do-nothing. The rural South with its agricultural economy subject to the increasing vagaries of weather and faced with dwindling government support of its large numbers of poor citizens, saw no hope for any change in the second-term President. The West, where Hispanics and Anglos were growing ever more polarized, showed no interest re-electing a President under whom Phoenix had become first in the world in its number of per capita kidnappings.
Yet, even with the popular dissatisfaction with the sitting President, Clinton found it hard to reclaim the high ground she had tried to hold in the 2008 primaries. The public found her to vacillate on too many issues. She accepted too many large contributions from government contractors. When she and her husband clumsily suggested to a primarily black audience that Obama was not one of them because his mother was a white tramp, a pastor from Birmingham replied that “black coffee with cream is better than white bread covered with green.” Television crews were only too happy to record the name calling that ensued between her husband, the 42nd President of the United States, and the Birmingham pastor, soon to be a guest on an hour-long Oprah Winfrey special on race relations in the United States.
It was the typical Democratic National Convention held in Baltimore in August 2012. The Democrats, long a party of internecine battles and public blood lettings, showed a remarkable consistency in their ability to remain a party of internecine battles and public blood lettings. After all the impassioned speeches and inspired name calling, after the charges of back room deals and challenges of the legitimacy of various state delegations, after the platform fights, floor fights, and fights around the convention hall, neither Obama nor Clinton could claim enough of the 4418 delegates necessary to take the nomination.
After the third ballot, Democratic National Chairman Tim Keane informed the delegates that the doors would be locked and no one would go home until a candidate had been nominated. He allowed more speeches be made as the two candidates used the time to jockey for position, buy votes with promises, and predict victory on the next ballot to any newsperson who would listen.
But it was John Kerry, Clinton’s replacement as Secretary of State, who delivered an impassioned speech on behalf of Obama that finally carried the day. Invoking the spirits of Jefferson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, Kerry had the delegates on their feet crying out “Obama, We Want Ya” for almost twenty minutes.
Media commentators, Hal among them, all agreed on two things. The first was that they never thought they would use the words “impassioned” and “Kerry” in the same sentence. The second was that as the speech was delivered at 3:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, who the hell was awake in television land to hear it?
Barack Obama became the 2012 Democratic candidate for President on the fourth ballot. And now in 2016, Hal mused, like a spurned lover, the Democratic party had forgiven, forgotten, and given all of itself to Hillary. Hillary.