Taft 2012 Read Free Page A

election?
    JAMES MACKLER: I hardly think that’s on anyone’s mind right now.
    PAULINE CRAIG: I hardly think it’s
not
. Unfortunately, President Taft’s great-granddaughter, first-term Ohio Congresswoman Rachel Taft, declined our invitation to come on the show today. Has the congresswoman spoken with her ancestor yet?
    JAMES MACKLER: Congresswoman Taft is in Mexico right now with a trade delegation. The president has been in touch with her about the situation.
    PAULINE CRAIG: Mark my words, America: if a Republican president from the past is back on the scene, his granddaughter in Congress just got a whole lot more interesting. We’ll be back after these messages.
    FROM THE DESK OF REP. RACHEL TAFT (Ind.–OH)
    To-do list
—
Wed. 9th
    —Tour three more agricultural facilities in Santiago de Querétaro
    —Prep for debate over provisions of International Foods Act
    —Charity lunch for orphanage in San Miguel
    —Phone conference with staff about budget-tightening measures
    —Remind Trevor to pick up birthday cake for Abby
    —Figure out what the
hell
is up with man who appears to be resurrected great-grandfather

THREE
    A s Chief Executive and commander-in-chief of the United States of America, William Howard Taft had been privy to many secrets. Some were trivial. Others were earthshaking. Many, he cringed to recall, still pressed heavily on his soul.
    But as he sat in an unnaturally comfortable chair in one of the West Wing meeting rooms—which was now, he marveled, equipped with an incomprehensibly begadgeted conference table—there was one secret above all that he wished he knew: how in thunderation did they get the meringue inside of these little yellow cakes?
    “What manner of witch
is
this Hostess?” he mumbled, putting down the plastic wrapper and peering at the creamy end of one of the half-eaten pastries. These so-called Twinkie cakes were the cap to the fine, sprawling meals the White House kitchen had been serving him the last two days. A couple of his favorite recipes had proven to be somewhat archaic, just as that Secret Service fellow, Kowalczyk, had warned him. But in the end the intrepid chefs had persevered by consulting an unseen scholar the agent had calledGoggle or Google or something to that effect. God bless this encyclopedic Mr. Google, whoever he was.
    With his stomach near to bursting, Taft’s mood had likewise resumed its full capacity. His mind, though, was still quite a bit hazy—no doubt thanks to the pills the White House physician had been giving him since removing the bullet from his leg. But he’d warily palmed the last two tablets and slipped them into his pocket, and he’d begun at last to clear the cobwebs and gather the rudiments of his memory.
    All he could put together were bits and pieces. Flashes of Cincinnati. Fragments of the Philippines. The stout, sober face of his aide-de-camp and best friend, Major Archibald Butt. The wooden grimace and bad teeth of his victor in the 1912 election, Woodrow Wilson.
    Wilson. He remembered the man’s Inauguration Day, barely. His own last day in the White House. With his head in a cloud of melancholy thicker than the thunderheads that had suddenly marred the bright day, he had wandered into the rain to escape the pomp and circumstance of the coming ceremony. The storm had seemed to descend from the sky and enfold him, calm and warm, like having the eye of a hurricane all to oneself. Suddenly exhausted, he’d lain down in a soft, warm, wet spot, some garden or another on the Ellipse. Content at last to let go of the pressures and stresses and relentless scrutiny of his office, he slept.
    And then he’d woken up. Here. Now.
    It was all so incredulous. Still, he was a rational man. Perhaps it was merely a suggestible demeanor brought on by the pills he’d been given, but there was no doubt in his mind that he must indeed be in the future. This was too elaborate to be a hoax pulled off in the White House. And the taciturn Woodrow