The Return to the Present

         “Mr. President.  Mr. President.”

          Screwdge thought at first it was the voice of Esmerelda.  It seemed to be coming from a long way off.

          Then he realized it wasn’t a little girl’s voice at all, but the voice of a man.

          He opened his eyes slowly, because it seemed a very hard thing to do.

          “Mr. President,” said the voice.

          “He’s coming to,” said another voice.

          “Oh, thank God, he’s all right,” said yet another.

          George W. Screwdge looked up into a circle of anxious faces.  Beyond them stood another circle of faces.  And, beyond those, he could tell, there were yet other faces.

          They were all turned upon him.

          “You gave us a fright, sir,” said one of the voices closest to him.

          “Josh,” he said.  “It’s you.”

          “Yessir, Mr. President.  You’ve been out for several minutes.  We were very worried.”

          Slowly, the president’s consciousness returned.  He sat up and rubbed his head where he had hit it on the barrel.

          “Ow!” he said. 

          There was a pump knot beneath his hairline.  He could feel it quite plainly with his fingers.

          “Your physician was off at a party,” said Josh Bolten.  “We paged him and he’s on his way over.”

          “No need,” said Screwdge.  “I’m okay now.”

          “He should probably check you out, all the same.”

          “Well, if he thinks so.  But I’m all right.  I really am.”

          “It seemed like you were out for an age, Mr. President,” said Tony Snow.

          “Yes,” said Screwdge, massaging the knot.  “It seemed like that to me too.”

          He looked around at the concerned faces, which were all beginning to relax now that he had recovered from the effects of his encounter with the edge of the barrel.  He realized how much they all truly cared about him, and it gave him a warm feeling.

          He remembered that it was Christmas Eve, and that made him happy too.

          “Come on, Josh,” he said, scrabbling to his feet.  “We’ve still got some presents to give away.”

          “Are you sure, Mr. President?  They can wait, you know.”

          “I’m sure, Josh.  I’m great.  Don’t worry about me.  But I’m sure everybody has things to do, and we mustn’t keep them waiting.”

          He reached down into the barrel, more carefully this time, and pulled out a package.

          “Umm,” he said, looking at the tag on it.  “Billy Sylvester, this one’s for you.”

          A young man in a checkered sweater stepped out of the crowd, his hand extended.

          “Looks like a tie,” said the president.  “Hope it goes okay with that nice sweater.”

          “Thank you, Mr. President,” said the young man as he accepted the package.

          “Tell you what, Josh,” said Screwdge.  “Let’s tip this barrel over and let the presents fall out on the floor.  I don’t want to pull a repeat of what I did a few minutes ago.”

          “Good idea, Mr. President,” said Bolten.

          Screwdge had already reached down and grasped the bottom of the barrel.  Together, they easily tipped it over, allowing the packages to tumble out onto the carpet.

          “Ho-ho-ho!” said Screwdge, picking up another package.  “This one’s for—let’s see—for Ginny McComb.  Hi, Ginnie.  I’ve seen you around.  You have a nice smile.”

          Ginny, who was a telephone receptionist in the West Wing, curtsied as she received her present.

          Everyone noticed that the president’s mood had changed since his little tussle with the barrel.  Before, he had been tense and even a little edgy, but now he appeared to be very loose and relaxed.  There was even a different tone in his voice, a sort of spriteliness, as if he were really enjoying what he was doing.

          “This one—um, let me see—this one’s for Jenna Screwdge.  My daughter, Jenna.”

          Jenna stepped out of the crowd to accept her gift.

          Screwdge stared at her a minute as if he couldn’t believe who she was.  He was still thinking about the middle-aged woman in his vision who had lost her son in Iraq.

          “What’s wrong, Daddy?” she said. 

          He was still holding on to her present and there was a strange look in his eyes.

          Her question brought him back to what he was doing. 

          “Oh, nothing, honey,” he said.  “But Daddy needs a hug and a kiss before you get your present.”

          She laughed and threw her arms around him.

          He embraced her fiercely and planted a big kiss on her cheek.

          “I love you, dear,” he said.  “You’re very special to me, and don’t you ever forget it.”

          “Thanks, Daddy,” she said, taking her package and stepping back.

          Shortly after all the presents had been distributed and people were having some punch and petit-fours before leaving the party, the president’s physician arrived, carrying a little black medical kit. 

          Screwdge said it was unnecessary, but the doctor insisted that they step into a nearby office and do a routine check of the president’s heart and blood pressure.

          “Nice party?” asked the doctor nonchalantly as he took Screwdge’s pulse rate.

          “Great!” said the chief executive.  “Sorry you had to miss it.”

          Everything checked out fine, but the doctor cautioned the president not to go to sleep for a while, because it was possible that he had had a mild concussion.

          “Sure, Doc,” he said.  “I’ll be up for hours yet.”

          “Going to Camp David now?” asked the physician.

          “You know,” said Screwdge, “I was going, but I think I’ve changed my mind.”

          “Oh?”

          “Yeah.  I just realized, Doc, that I’ve never spent Christmas here in D.C., the nation’s capital.  I’m the president of the United States, and I’ve never celebrated Christmas in Washington.  I think I’m going to cancel my plans and stay here for the holidays.  That goes for Crawford as well as Camp David.  The people of this country have a right to know that their president is on the job in the nation’s capital.”

          “I see.  This isn’t the bump on the head speaking, is it?”

          “No, Doc.  This isn’t a bump on the head.  It’s a bump on the heart.”

          The doctor looked at him quizzically.

          “Don’t worry, Doc.  I didn’t hurt my heart or anything.  That was just a joke, sort of.”     

          “Mr. President,” said an anxious Josh Bolten a few minutes later, after the doctor had left and Screwdge had returned to the remnants of the party, “are you really planning to stay here for the holidays?  I mean, cancel everything for Camp David and Crawford?”

          “Yeah, Josh.  I’m sorry for the hardship that will work on some of you, changing the plans and all.  But that little wrestlin’ match with the barrel must have knocked some sense into my head.  I figure I need to be here in the capital to take care of some things.”

          “Uh, what things, Mr. President?”

          “Oh, a lot of things, Josh.  Most of them can wait till the day after Christmas.  I’m going to spend tonight with Laura and my family.  But tomorrow I intend to go down to that mission where Jenna works and help serve the turkey to all those homeless people.  And I’d like to do a press conference while I’m there, if that’s okay.  Doesn’t have to be a big one—just a few of the regulars.  I don’t think they’ll mind.  Tell them I’ll make it worth their while.”

          “But— but— Mr. President— ”

          “But me no buts, Josh.  I’m not derisional—delusional—whatever I mean.  I really want to do this.  It’s important.”

          “Okay, Mr. President.  You’re the boss!”

          “Darn tootin’!”

          The next morning at 11 o’clock, a motorcade delivered the president, Mrs. Screwdge, and their two daughters to the Downtown Mission of Hope in central Washington, where the line of homeless people waiting to get in already stretched around the block. 

          The Secret Service people appeared very nervous, as usual, dashing about purposefully, muttering into their walkie-talkies, surveying all the rooftops in the neighborhood, and constantly scanning the crowd inside the mission. 

          But the president himself was in high spirits, and appeared to be oblivious to the general ruckus his presence naturally occasioned.  He cheerfully donned a big apron with the words “Hail to the Chef” stitched across the front and stood in the long line of servers dishing up turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, sweet-potato casserole, mincemeat pies, and half a dozen other offerings adorning the long tables.

          Flash cameras went off repeatedly as he paused from his serving to shake hands with homeless persons or question them about how they existed on the streets and what he could do that would help to make their lives more comfortable.  Several times he posed with one or more of the street people, easily hugging them and being hugged in return.

          “I’ve never seen Daddy like this,” commented one of the twins to Mrs. Screwdge.  “He isn’t on pills for that bump on his head, is he?”

          “No, dear,” said her mother.  “He was this way last night, remember?  I think he has just found his groove, as they say.”

          At almost two o’clock, when everybody had been fed and the lines had stopped filing by the food tables, Screwdge and his family retired to the mission chapel, where fifteen or twenty of the more familiar White House reporters were gathered in anticipation of the promised press conference.  Screwdge was still wearing his “Hail to the Chef” apron, and didn’t appear to have lost an ounce of the manic energy that had been propelling him since his arrival.

          “Hello, everybody,” he began, as cameras flashed and videotapes rolled.  “I apologize if I took you away from important family gatherings or other things you planned to do today.  This was very impromptu, and I couldn’t figure any better way to do it. 

          “First, I want to wish you a very merry Christmas.  If you haven’t had it already, I hope you will have one before the day is over.

          “Next, I want to make some announcements about some program changes I intend to institute during the next few days.  I know it’s customary to take a hiatus from such things during Christmas, but these are things that I thought couldn’t wait.  At least, I couldn’t wait to tell you about them.

          “I have done some serious thinking—don’t laugh, Brian—and I have decided that I haven’t done nearly a good enough job as president of this great nation.  You deserve a lot better than you’ve been getting lately.  But I have seen the light, and I want to make some important changes in the way we’ve been doing things.

          “To begin with, I am tired of all the partisan bickering that goes on in this town.  I am the president of all the people, not just of the Republican party.  So I am announcing right now that for the rest of my term in office, I am going to host a two-hour breakfast every Monday morning for the Democratic and Republican leadership in the two houses of Congress, and intend to have my principal cabinet members present to help answer questions and assist in the planning.  We’ve got to stop seeing everything in red and blue in this country and begin seeing it in purple, which is what you get when you mix those two colors.”

          Grinning at one of the reporters on the front row, he added sheepishly, “See, Dana, I did have a normal childhood after all.  I used to break a lot of crayons.”

          There was a general titter of laughter at this.

          “Now, the next thing I want to say is about terrorism and the war.  I admit I over-responded to the terrorist attack on 9/11.  I think I got a little drunk at the image of myself up there with a bullhorn on the site of the Twin Towers, and let myself be persuaded that it would be easier for me to lead this country if we were in a war.  I guess I thought we still had some unfinished business with Saddam Hussein, because, after all, he had threatened the life of my father.

          “But that was not a good reason for riding off like Clint Eastwood and starting a war that hadn’t been thoroughly considered by all the good minds in this country.  I realize now that we should have kept our attention focused on the war in Afghanistan where we were actually in pursuit of Osama bin Laden and the original terrorists.  Then we wouldn’t have lost the support of a lot of other nations and ended up facing crowds of Muslim terrorists who probably weren’t even terrorists in the beginning.

          “I owe the profoundest apology to all of you for allowing myself to be swept into an unwarranted conflict.  Not only has it cost many of our citizens the lives of their dear sons and daughters, and many of our fine soldiers the agony of wounds that may never heal, it has cost thousands and thousands of Iraqis the lives of their loved ones as well.  And the diversion of so much money from our own treasury to wage that war has cost millions of Americans the wherewithal we needed to fund vital programs of health care, education, and federal assistance of other kinds.

          “I’ll be frank with you.  I’m not sure if we will recover from such massive expenditures in my lifetime.  That is an indebtedness I shall go to my grave regretting that I have had any part in laying upon future generations of Americans.”

          Most of the reporters were busy scribbling notes and holding up their small tape recorders.  But some forgot to pay attention to these more mundane matters.  They were clearly astounded to be hearing the president of the United States making such an earth-shaking confession.  And the most incredible thing, to all of them, was that he was doing it unscripted.  He had no manuscript, no notes, and no teleprompter in front of him.

          Two or three of the older journalists were looking around at one another, as if to say, “Am I going crazy or is the president actually saying the things I think he’s saying?”

          If anyone was paying any attention to anything other than the president himself, he or she might have observed an almost stricken look on the faces of the White House staff, from Tony Snow to Gale Norton and Michael Chertoff to Condoleezza Rice.  Snow, who was noted, even celebrated, for playing the White House’s cards close to his vest, could not have appeared more stunned if the president had been removing all his clothes before the cameras that were recording his every word and gesture.

          But Screwdge, now in his element and obviously feeling very good about what he was doing, rolled right along.

          “When Congress reassembles after the first of the year,” he announced, “I intend to consult with the heads of both parties about the absolutely quickest way to bring our soldiers home.  My concern is three-fold.  First, I want to get those brave men and women out of harm’s way.  Second, I want to stop this massive hemorrhaging from our domestic budget.  And, third, I want to give the Iraqis every chance to repair the enormous damage we have inflicted on their society by removing from their midst a presence that, for obvious reasons, is hostilely regarded not only by many Iraqis but by many other peoples in that volatile region of the world.

          “When this is done, I intend to offer a formal apology to the citizens of Iraq and its neighboring countries for having intruded upon their territory and their sovereign rights simply because we were bigger and stronger and knew we could beat them on the battlefield.  I know that I personally behaved like a bully—something I guess I learned down in Texas but that everybody with a little power is probably guilty of becoming—and I am sorry.”

          There were several audible gasps around the room, including one that escaped from the lips of the White House press secretary.  He was trying to imagine the headlines in the evening news that night, and could not predict which of the bombshells the president had dropped would receive the greatest attention.

          Laura Screwdge was shaking her head in amazement, unconscious of whether any cameras might be trained on her.  She could not believe this was her husband, George Webenezer Screwdge, talking in such an open and self-deprecating manner.  He had sometimes done it in private with her, but never before in public like this.

          “I shall propose to the leaders of Congress,” the president was saying, “that we draw up a schedule of monetary reparations for the people of Iraq that will carry us through the next twenty years, until that nation is once more prosperous and self-sustaining in its own right.  I know this will seem excessive to many, especially in the light of our own budgetary needs.  But it is morally right and just for us to do this.”

          At this point, Screwdge paused and bowed his head a little, as if contemplating what to say next.  Most of those present thought he was about to stop.  But in actuality he had so many things to say that he needed a moment to decide on an order in which to say them.

          “We have taken a lot of heat in the last year and a half over our response to Hurricane Katrina,” he said, “and it was justified.  We performed very badly in those crucial days during and after the hurricane.  I performed very badly.  Harry Truman was right—I really admire old Harry—the buck stops on the president’s desk, no matter who else was to blame.

          “To tell you the truth, I was having a bad spot myself right about then.  My numbers were down in the polls, my programs were floundering in Congress, the war was going poorly, Cindy Sheehan and her people were camped outside my ranch, and there were days when I wondered if I could even go on.  Seriously.  I really needed that time on the ranch, riding my dirt bike and chopping wood and just sweating a lot.

          “So I was basically immobilized when the hurricane struck.  I couldn’t seem to get my feet under me and do what needed to be done.  It wasn’t Brownie’s fault—Mike Brown, the FEMA director.  He had sent me some memos earlier saying that his department was ill-positioned to do its work and that they needed a lot of attention I couldn’t give them at the time.  So it was really my fault that we were slow to get things done that might have saved some lives.

          “I don’t take the responsibility for the levees.  That was government inadequacy going back a long way.  Bureaucratic boondoggling, I call it.  But I have to take the responsibility for our sluggish response, and for that, among other things, I apologize to Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin and the people of Louisiana and Mississippi.  Many of the people in those states are still having a hard time as a result of the hurricane, and I intend to redouble my efforts to see that they get some help.  It’s late, but it will be better than not at all.”

          Once more, Screwdge paused as he mulled over what he wanted to say next.  Britt Hume of Fox News took the hiatus as an opportunity to stand up.

          “I’m not finished, Britt,” said the president.

          “Mr. President, I just want to ask if you’re putting us on.”

          There was a general rustle of “mm-hmms” and other murmuring.

          “No, Britt, I am not putting you on,” replied Screwdge.  “I am perfectly serious.  I know it may be hard for you to believe, because I have not always been this candid and forthright with you.  But I have never been more serious in my life.

          “There are a lot of other things I could talk about, and will, in my State of the Union address and over the coming weeks—the continuing problem of drugs and crime in our country, the need for an equitable taxation system, rebuilding our infrastructure that we’ve been neglecting, a prescription-drug plan that really lifts the burden off the poor, some kind of solution to our failing educational system.  Immigration—” He shook his head.  “Immigration, you know, is part of the global economic situation, not just a local problem.  There’s an awful lot we need to do, and must do, for our country.

          “But the one thing I will mention now is the growing sense of a great divide between the rich and poor of our society.  Some of us have always thought that if we only allowed the rich to get richer, their wealth would somehow trickle down to the people under them and everybody would be happy.  That may work for some people in the middle classes, but it definitely isn’t working for the poor and very poor of our country.  There are some people in this nation who are obscenely rich and others who are unbelievably poor.  I mean, it’s unforgivable that we’ve let it come to this.

          “Unfortunately, there is also a lot of white-collar crime and financial scandal attached to this problem.  I don’t mean just Enron, World.Com, and companies like that.  I mean most of the contractors who deal with our government, and a lot of the lobbyists and people in government who get rewarded in various ways for helping them land their lucrative contracts.

          “There is a very low, cynical ethic at work in our financial sector that needs to be corrected.  Even a lot of the drug companies and doctors and hospitals, who are supposed to be in the front line of helping people, are guilty of sticking it to the poor.  I am old enough to remember a time when it wasn’t this way, or didn’t seem so pervasive.  Right now, it’s hard to imagine how we could have become so corrupt and self-centered.

          “We need a new spirit in this country, a spirit of love, compassion, and selflessness that will help us to fix what’s wrong with our own social system and then begin to address what is wrong with a lot of the world around us.  It isn’t any wonder there is so much crime and lawlessness in the world.  Poverty and hunger and disease breed that kind of outlook on life.  It is time we all got down on our knees and asked God’s forgiveness for our terrible selfishness, and the way we’re always contriving to get ahead of everybody else.

          “What do we need it for?”

          Here the president leaned across the podium in his characteristic questioning pose, and waved a hand in front of him as if trying to pull the answer out of the air.

          “I repeat: What do we need it for?  I mean, we’re a land of plenty.  There’s enough of God’s riches here to go around for the entire world, and yet a lot of our citizens think they have to hoard it up and be richer than God Almighty.  Are they afraid of becoming poor?  Or is it a matter of power?”

          Somewhere in the room, in a voice that was easily identifiable as female and African American, there was a loud “A-men!” 

          Several people laughed.

          “That’s all right,” said Screwdge.  “I’m glad to get an amen once in a while.  I know I’m preaching to the choir here—you folks aren’t going to get rich doing what you do.  As a matter of fact, neither am I.”

          More laughter.

          “But I’m really serious about this, people.  We need to address this huge imbalance in our society— not just in our country but around the globe.  And, while we’re at it, we need to do something about preserving the earth itself.  That’s another thing I should have mentioned.  I know I haven’t gotten high marks from the conservation people, and they’re right.  Al Gore’s right, bless his heart.  I’ve had too many other things on my mind.  But we need to rethink this whole ecology deal and come up with some right answers—save our earth at the same time that we save people’s jobs and the economy.

          “Folks, let’s face it, this is a difficult time in which to be alive, and the problems created by a culture in transition are enormous.  But we know we have the intelligence to solve those problems, if we only have the will to do it.  I’m saying it’s time we found the will.  We’ve got to, for the sake of everybody on this earth.

          “I can’t do it alone.  I’m just one man, and a very inadequate one at that.  But we can all do it together.  We all have to do it together.  And I am going to devote all my powers in my remaining time in office to seeing that we do.”

          The president looked down at his hands gripping the top of the lectern and was quiet a moment, as if trying to think if he wanted to say anything else. 

          Then he nodded his head once, as if to say, “That’s it,” and asked the reporters, “Any questions?”

          There was a moment of intense silence, which was very unusual for presidential press conferences, when literally everybody was bursting to ask a whole raft of questions.

          Then Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” stood to his feet, fixing the president with those directional, laser-like eyes of his, and everybody supposed he would ask a question.

          But he didn’t.  Instead, he began to clap.

          One by one, all the other journalists rose to their feet and joined in the clapping.  The room reverberated with applause.

          None of them could remember when something like this had ever happened before.  It was unprecedented in the whole history of modern journalism.

          Finally, when the noise of the clapping had died down, someone said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. President.”

          “Merry Christmas to you too,” said Screwdge.  “And I hope you’ll all have a very happy new year.  Thanks again for coming.  And I want to thank three very special people, who, even though they weren’t present, were very much here in spirit.  José and Cecil and Esmerelda, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.  I will always be grateful for what you’ve meant to me.”

          The reporters looked around, wondering who José and Cecil and Esmerelda were.  So did the members of the White House staff.  But they all shrugged.  It was Christmas, after all, and it had been a very puzzling day.

          Because it was Christmas, there were few regular news broadcasts that evening.  But several major networks and cable shows broke into their programming to show clips of the president’s press conference.  He looked anything but presidential, standing there in his “Hail to the Chef” apron.  But everybody who heard his remarks said it was his finest appearance ever, and that what he said had really made Christmas for them.

          The next morning, all the network news shows were devoted to talking about President Screwdge’s unprecedented leveling with the reporters and the American public.  Those who had been there testified that they had been as caught up in the event as if they had been listening to an angel of God.  They wouldn’t have missed it for the world, they said.

          Politicians all over the country, especially the members of Congress who had gone home for Christmas, listened to excerpts of the president’s remarks and realized that the entire tone of political life in America, and possibly even the world, had suddenly been altered.  They all had an unusual yearning to get back to work as soon as possible and begin to transform their country.

          In London and Paris and Rome, people viewing segments of the president’s address suddenly knew that they had underestimated Screwdge and his ability to set the pace for America and the world.  In Tokyo and Beijing and Singapore, people said their respect for the American president had shot up a hundred percent or more.

          In Tehran and Baghdad, people watched the president’s face and listened to the translations of his message, then shook their heads affirmatively and said, “This is a new day for all of us.  There is hope for the world!”

          And the Christmas barrel, the one on which the president had banged his head—well, nobody but Screwdge understood the order, but he commanded that the Christmas barrel be mounted in a big glass case and carefully stored in the basement of the White House until his presidential library had been built in Texas.  Then, he said, it was to be delivered to the library and set in a very conspicuous place near the entry of the building, where it would be displayed for generations to come as the barrel that changed the history of America!

          John Killinger, a retired clergyman and professor of theology, is the author of such books as God, the Devil, and Harry Potter (St. Martin’s Press), Winter Soulstice: Celebrating the Spirituality of the Wisdom Years (Crossroad Publishing Co.), and Seven Things They Don’t Teach You in Seminary (Crossroad Publishing Co.).  His newest book, The Changing Shape of Our Salvation, was recently released by Crossroad Publishing Co.  For additional information, see www.JohnKillinger.com.