I was driving my son to soccer practice not long ago, listening to a National Public Radio wrap-up of President Bush's first hundred days in office. My son, who was just a baby when Bill Clinton was elected, observed idly: "If Bush stays in office as long as Clinton did, I'll be almost 17 years old before we have someone new."
It was lucky I had both hands on the steering wheel. My heart began to pound, a foggy sense of doom misted my eyes, and random bits of Milton began to echo in my ears. "Help us to save free conscious from the paw/Of hireling wolves, whose Gospel is their maw," I muttered.
My son, oblivious, sat in the back seat playing with his calculator. "Only two thousand, eight hundred and twenty days to go, Mom."
No one on National Public Radio had been grim enough to look that far into the future; I guess they had their hands full trying to sort out the mess of the first three and a half months. But the thought that struck me hardest was: Strom Thurmond will be 106! (For unlike certain foolish prognosticators who would have him with one foot in the grave, I know Faustian fanoodling when I see it. That man is going to live forever.)
I was also thinking about all that Bush has undone in his first hundred days, then trying to multiply it by a factor of twenty-nine and two-tenths. I was envisioning a missile defense shield protecting Texas from attack by Northern liberals. I was seeing corporate lobbyists clinking flutes of champagne in the newly renamed ExxonMobil Bedroom of the White House. And I was imagining oil derricks pumping away on the front lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, brought to you by Beautiful and Profitable America, the First Family's attempt to one-up Lady Bird Johnson. ("National treasures and effective resource management can coexist," Laura Bush would say with Jacqueline Kennedyesque breathlessness.)
Within the first hundred days and while media pundits were absorbed with wondering whether Chelsea Clinton had political aspirations, Colin Powell's son became head of the FCC. William Rehnquist's daughter was nominated for Inspector General with Health and Human Services. Antonin Scalia's son was made Solicitor of Labor. Clarence Thomas's wife was nominated for a top position in the Office of Management and Budget. And Strom Thurmond's son, only three years out of law school, was handpicked by Strom himself to be South Carolina's US Attorney.
At this rate, eight years from now Rudolph Giuliani's son will be our new Decency Czar, Newt Gingrich's fourth wife will head up the Compassionately Conservative Commission on the Alarming Breakdown of Family in the Inner City and Linda Chavez's favorite charitable donees will be directing the Spanish-for-the-House-and-Garden Literacy Campaign.
"That's sixty-seven thousand, six hundred and eighty hours more, Mom..."
In the first hundred days, the United States military had unfortunate accidents involving a Japanese fishing boat, a Chinese jet and, in Peru, a planeload of American missionaries. Salvadoran officials have alleged that USAID-funded relief organizations were dispensing help only to those traumatized earthquake victims who renounced Catholicism and took an evangelical Protestant Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The White House offices on women and on race were abolished in favor of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. And the Supreme Court ruled that individuals do not have the right to sue under Title VI for de facto discrimination in the administration of federally funded programs.
Over the next few years, I fear whole "accidental" wars. I foresee Latin America having the most devout bread lines in the world. And I predict that the notion of equal opportunity will be used to prohibit race-, gender-, age- or disability-conscious contemplation of disparity in any public place at any time (unless you're a frat boy or professional athlete, in which case it will fall into the category of God-given free speech).
If Bush is elected (or whatever) for a second term, it will be the year 2009 before he's turned out to pasture. During the first hundred days, the United States was voted off the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The Supreme Court upheld the right of police officers to arrest people for minor traffic violations. The American Bar Association--denounced by this Administration as too left-wing--has effectively been fired from its role in determining the fitness of nominees to the bench, while the ultraconservative Federalist Society has all but changed its name to the Federal Judiciary. Orrin Hatch has been suggested as an odds-on favorite for the Supreme Court. (I am trying hard not to think about what he will look like in a Justice's billowing black robes, waving that copy of The Exorcist to which he referred with such crazed eloquence during the Clarence Thomas hearings.)
In years to come, it is not hard to imagine Attila the Hun being denounced as too left-wing. We already have serious scholarly discussions about how to make public executions this nation's most civic-minded reality TV. Not a Survivor, I guess they'd have to call it. Taking the lead from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (who suggested that Timothy McVeigh make his last meal a vegan one so as to advertise their cause--McVeigh declined politely, saying time was too short to debate the matter further), I can see Kentucky Fried and Burger King having infinitely more luck with a catchy script like "In thinking about that all-important last meal when off to meet your maker..." Which I suppose is something we should all be thinking about inasmuch as the hole in the ozone seems to be growing in inverse proportion to the Bush Administration's commitment to clean air.
"Only four million, sixty thousand, eight hundred minutes left, Mom..." He'll be driving, I think. He'll be almost old enough to vote. And then, in his persistent, still-a-little-boy voice, I hear a gravitas he cannot fully grasp: "What comes after that?"