Office of the Independent Blogger

The President sat at his desk, cursing his decision to run for President and damning the Electoral College. Perhaps he’d been drinking, but on today it didn’t appear likely. The President’s suit was crisp, his hair combed, his eyes wide, awake — and disillusioned. One day, when Bess Truman was upset with him, Harry wrote her a letter proclaiming that he longed for her, particularly after “doing a million things I don’t want to do every day,” and George W. Bush found himself knowing exactly what Truman meant by that on this particular afternoon.

His problem, today, was petty. His friends wanted to enjoy themselves at his expense, and asked him to charge their games to his credit card. George had never been able to decline — how could he say no to Tom and Dennis? — but now he was feeling wrong. How would his children feel if they knew what he was up to? How would his wife feel if she opened the most recent Congressional Record and read about the debts amassed? The guilt ate at him, but he couldn’t tell his friends what they didn’t want to hear. Or that was the popular consensus.

A part of him wished that the Democrats could be in control of the Congress. At least then he could turn his enemies down and not have to confront his friends. He had finally understood what his friends were feeling decades ago when they had to confront him about his alcohol problems. One night, after the millionth attempt at intervention, as he lay alone in the closet, his head resting on a soiled sock and his hair matted with dried liquor, the President told the bottle, “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Now he was back to those days, except that the liquor was replaced by big spending and Congress was his dealer.

The President stood up and turned behind him, opening the curtains behind his desk to see the world outside, but all he saw were the no-longer-friendly faces of Secret Service Agents patrolling the lawn. They used to be his friends, but nobody stays your friend in Washington for long, he thought. Pretty soon, being President gets old and all you want to do is go home. George Bush longed for his Ranch, but now he knew that the time had come to do what he had to do.

He reached into his desk and took out the phone, his fingers tracing the old dial of the phone as he penciled in the number of Dennis Hastert. After a few rings the gravelly voice of Dennis Hastert came on the line, the first word spoken being “hello,” and Bush knew the time had come. “Dennis,” he said, “I wish I knew how to quit you. I wish I knew how to quit spending with you. But I’ve got to try. I’ve got to. So I’ve got to let you know. Next time you send me a bill — let me finish! Next time you — I said let me finish — send me a bill that has a bunch of costs I don’t want to pay, I’m not gonna pay them.”

Dennis Hastert, who was also sitting at his desk in the Speaker’s chamber that Tip O’Neill and Henry Clay had previously sat in, found his indignation rising. “Listen, George. You don’t know how to quit me, and your threatened veto is a brokeback. You won’t veto because you don’t know how to quit.” The phone went dead, and George Bush cried without letting the phone go. When Hastert was right he was right, but Bush would have to be strong. He resolved to be strong. He had to be strong for the Love of Richard Nixon, he thought to himself, before renegging on his own personal vow. “How many budgets did Nixon balance?” he asked himself.

As his thoughts turned to Republican Presidents past, none of whom having felt compelled to balance a budget in their terms, he remembered that he had to quit his Treasury Secretary, too. Conservative Republicans insisted on it, and he was in their doghouse enough as it was! He took the phone he had used to tell Hastert who the boss was — or to be told who the boss was? — and dialed Treasury. Getting a “This phone number is not in service message,” he buzzed Josh Bolten and asked him to dial for him. Bolten did it easily, without a problem, and Bush felt his resentment rise but gave a polite thanks. “Next time don’t dial T-R-E-Z-U-R-E,” Bolten said. “If you need help, call…err, buzz me.”

The President called the Secretary of the Treasury and received a hello. He opened his mouth to ask his resignation, but the words didn’t come. John Snow wondered if he’d just been prank called when Bush finally spoke words that nobody expected. “Dennis wants me to spend more money on him, but I don’t think I can. You make the money, right?” he babbled. “You could quit making money if I asked you too, right, and then I could say, ‘Hey, I’m brokeback, don’t ask me for money’?” John Snow told him that he could, theoretically, but didn’t want to go down that road. “It would be disastrous, Mr. President. You should just learn how to quit the Congress’ spending.” “It’s my spending too, John,” the President said, before bidding his Secretary farewell and hanging up.

The President realized that, for the millionth time in 2006 alone, he’d forgotten to ask for Snow’s resignation. “The Beltway’s wondering why I haven’t fired Snow, but the truth is that I don’t know how to quit him. I just can’t. The beltway will have to understand that I just don’t know how.” He remembered that he got Cheney to fire Paul O’Neill, and then wondered whether he should go down that road with Hastert.

Sitting back, thinking about the many ways to quit his problems, the President cursed the Senate for shelving immigration reform, and he thought about that little bastard who told him he should be ashamed of himself yesterday. He looked to his desk, his windows, his portraits of 42 and 41, before muttering softly, “I wish I knew how to quit you.”