Excerpts
Herb’s card-playing skills were remarkably similar to his foreign policy intuitions. He was a unilateralist, thought only about himself, and refused adamantly to team with the other three players to get low man. He’d drop the queen on high man if it saved his butt just as quickly as he’d bomb Tehran. If the Frenchies or the Rooskies disagreed with his play, then he would simply employ a stalling tactic. As the host of his table, he controlled all the levers of power: no one could kick him off because it was his table; and if they wanted to call him names like “ducker” (someone who doesn’t cover their pass) or “ass-wipe” (someone who plays like used toilet paper) or prance around on their high horse (someone who resembles an intellectual elite) pretending there were unwritten rules to the game, well, they could go right ahead. He had a personal assistant (a dog groomer he’d promoted from Houston) who would take over and play a card every three minutes. See how much they liked forty-five minutes a hand. Ha! They’d eventually tire and quit and he’d receive the forfeit points which would just add to his Advanced rating. The President was a competitive man. He liked to win. And he didn’t much care how he won. Politics attracted him for the very same reason.
While he was typing in his password (“LoneRanger”), his secretary notified him that Clayton “Cap” Geiger, his chief political advisor, was on line one.
“Tell him it’s jammed, Ruth. You can’t get through.”
“But Mr. President, …”
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