Becoming President

Disclaimer: This work is not intended to offend anyone. Naruto and the United States of America do not belong to me. Naruto is the property of Masashi Kishimoto and Shueisha, while the United States of America is the property of its citizens.

Fun fact: Coffins are cheaper than insulins. If you add the average American usage of an insulin vial.

We're close to the COVID arc.

Did I just say the COVID arc?

……

Naruto Uzumaki

"Holy shit. They're out for blood."

My mouth hung as a coworker of mine just used some obscene word to announce that they would impeach the man, in hindsight this wasn't surprising; there were already calls from before to impeach him, and they always failed since the Republican party still controlled Congress before this year midterm. But not even a year and they already… huh, it's almost a year since I was elected senator that's neat. It was just a few days after the inauguration of a couple of new blood for the Democratic House representatives and they immediately announced that they will, and I quote: "We're gonna impeach that motherfucker."

Wait, why didn't I get to be told about this?! Plans like this should be told by everyone in the democratic party! Especially considering my position as the wild card on the whole show.

Understandably, they want me to be in the dark about some of their plans as I, for the lack of a better word, am a potential enemy. But this kind of political action needs my support. I'm too influential to ignore, and their decision would give the republican party ammunition to attack their plans. I'm famous for not supporting some of the democratic party law proposals and it gave me the expected consequences of becoming ever more isolated, and my uninvolvement and apparent uninformed state right now is not ideal for them. That would just signal to the public that their new political darling doesn't support this impeachment. It's quite brave of them.

But it is still a dumb dumb move. The democratic party, while gaining a momentous (Barely) win in the lower house, their senatorial victory, or rather the limited victory will damage whatever plans they have. The republican party still holds the majority in the Senate; they need to scrap every vote they can find and alienating me in this plan will not help them.

'What's their reasoning anyway to keep me in the dark about this whole debacle? What am I not seeing?' I grumbled and tapped the desk in my office. "What to do?"

It could be that the impeachment announcement was too sudden and there are many in the party who are uninformed about it also, but that would be highly unlikely. 'The democratic and republican parties are incompetent but they're not that incompetent.'

Should I support this impeachment or not? It obviously won't pass. There's no way the republican party would let their presidents get impeached and besides an impeached president would bring instability to the general populace, well half of them but most of those half have more guns, and provoking them is not the best of ideas.

Do I even like Trump?

He's planning to make America more isolationist to focus on ourselves and fix the problems inside America first not some random third-world nation, each year we give out a total of 50 billion dollars annually to other countries if we count from 2000 to 2019 and assume that number stays the same while removing a couple of billions to factor in economic growth than that means since the year 2000 we've been giving almost a trillion dollar, and that doesn't factor in the military and civilian assistance we give to Afghanistan and Iraq which is more than a trillion each. Every goddamn year maintaining our global empire is proving to be less and less of an interesting prospect.

But on the other hand… Trump is not the kind of President we need right now. He's brash, not wanting to play the Game of Thrones, he has some wit but it's the kind of wit that isn't subtle, and right now we need subtlety, especially the way he's handling our global alliance network. In a more peaceful time where America's dominance is secured, he MAY be a good president, his economic policy is sound in the effort to re-industrialize the U.S., but the way he's doing it is too nationalistic and makes Mexico slip from our influence, and right now we need Mexico more than ever. In the next 5 to 10 years they will become our best trade partner in our effort to detach from China. Mexico will become a giant in manufacturing and producing industrial goods that we can't make on our own because of the state's high cost of living.

It's a good idea to not antagonize Mexico with fighting words like: they're not sending their best, and Mexico will pay for it. The immigration crisis, while hurting us on a societal level will be beneficial in the long run. Mexican immigrants and their children make for good recruiting grounds as they are desperate and immigrants tend to be more nationalistic. It's a horrific way of thinking about it, but the loss of potential tens of trillions of dollars in the economy and recruits for our military that are struggling to meet its quota is worth it in my opinion, outweighing any problem like crimes and drug use problem in our society. Well in the short term of 50 years, there'll be no problem, but in 100 years we'll see some problems but it's a hundred years, more than enough time to fix any problem that showed itself. At least I hope so.

Plus the way he's handling our detachment from the global alliance/empire is messy, he has a good intention but the way he's doing it makes other countries like Germany and France more distant from us. We need them to be independent militarily, yes, but not hate us. If there's another war we will need them; ending a good 70-plus-year-old alliance on a sour note is not good geopolitically speaking.

Since when did I think in such a horrific way? Using the populace and other nations as mere resources to exploit for state power. Damn, I hope this doesn't develop more than it already is, I didn't want to be some sort of cold-calculating Machiavellian politician, that sort of person usually doesn't hold on to power that long.

It's not worth it thinking about it right now anyway when I have a far more pressing matter than a multi-month or even a year debacle when I have time-sensitive things.

With that, I turn off the TV

……

Turns out that not thinking about the problem will not fix the problem. That's surprising. It's not like the problem will impact the nation so thoroughly, and has consequences that'll be felt by thousands of your constituents as they strongly showed their opinion via heartfelt and emotional letters and phone calls that make your senatorial assistant (paperboys/girls for senators) has to response with a high degree of understanding using every fancy word in their repertoire. (The art of saying nothing and everything)

Call after call, letter after letter, and add to that lobbyist that at first had given up trying to convince me to fall in line suddenly showed their face again as if they'd forgotten their previous failures to convince me. Fellow senators who even didn't dare to approach me or I don't think will ever approach me because of the way I handled my position suddenly greeted and called me with familiarity.

My voter base, who is more leaning toward the left, of course, urges me to support his impeachment, while the ones on the right wanted me to not support it. Personally, I want to abstain, this whole fiasco isn't worth my time considering the result would be obvious in the end. Even with my support, the Democrats can't gather enough votes to push this, the republican party still holds a majority in the Senate, it's a doomed endeavor that'll only distract me, the government, the public, and anyone who has a stake in this from far more pressing matters like what the fuck are we going to do with you know, anything else?

There's a fuckton more productive thing I could do than wasting my energy on something that is already concluded before it even starts officially. But the thing is, I can't just abstain from this; if I abstain without any reason, the backlash would be unimaginable, I could explain my reasoning and just pray that the public accepts it, but that is a big gamble.

No matter how you see it each step is me losing support from one of the sides or both. Shit man this whole thing feels like an event in an RPG where the devs are intentionally trying to fuck me up.

….

"... He's a psychopath! How is this a hard decision for you? Did you remember when he pulled out our troops from Kurdistan just because Erdogan made one fucking phone call! A fucking phone call! Do you know how crazy that is?"

I cringed when Robert Menendez, the previous head of the senatorial foreign affairs committee made his point. I remembered Kurdistan. That was one of the most braindead things he had done in his administration, even Republicans at that time questioned his decision; there's a reason why the event is such a black mark in American foreign policy. We abandoned an ally, not just an ally, one of our key allies in the Middle East only being beaten by Israel and Saudi Arabia in that region, an ally that follows our principles and is walking the same path as us toward democracy. They truly are one of the few beacons of democracy in that region and we just abandoned them.

"I understand Senator Mendez but I fail to see the importance and reason for this…"

"For God's sake man you fought with them! Side by side against a common enemy, no one in the world truly knows what they've endured besides you!!! And you just gonna throw that away? You're brother and sister in arms? Do you not care for the sacrifices they've made?

"The recklessness that Trump has done in the Middle East, while regrettable; has saved more American lives by pulling out our troops."

Now I'm just deflecting the question, of course, I cared about them, I remember Rojava surrounded by enemies from all sides yet they always put a smile on their faces; they trusted us, trusted that we would protect them, believed us as liberators for their people, a justified war, a war that worth fighting for.

And we abandoned them.

"Nathaniel we all want to leave the Middle East but not like that, not this recklessly, we want to leave that region with us singing kumbaya and leaving with heartfelt speeches, but not like this, this will only make us new enemies. And if you think that's a good sign for his presidency then I don't know anymore how to convince you." Senator Mendez was about to sit up from his chair walking toward the door with a disappointed face.

"Let's say the impeachment managed to pass," Mendez stopped walking and looked at me with hope in his eyes. "Who's going to replace him? I doubt Mike Pence would be a good replacement, a religious person like him would stall our efforts in the Middle East."

"How about you? If Trump is out, Pence only has a year tops, and that isn't enough to change anything, but if he seeks reelection, we will support your campaign. I know you want to be independent, but leadership has discussed; that Biden is too old for the job…"

"I'll be only 27 years old unless you want to change a 200-year-old law. I doubt that I can be president or even vice president."

"Biden will only be a placeholder, same for any vice president he picks, on the other hand, you will be the new secretary of state."

I raise my eyebrow and my mouth is visibly hanging in the air from the sheer ridiculousness of the offer.

"Me, secretary of state?" I left out a chuckle. "You're joking right?"

"This is not a joke, the position is extremely powerful, you'll be fourth in the line of succession, and removing the house speaker and president as they are needed for more important matters in their respective jurisdiction, you'll be the third most powerful man in the whole country. Add to that Biden would only be a figurehead with his vice president running things behind the scenes and taking day-to-day administrative duty, while you on the other hand would do the heavy lifting in foreign affairs and somewhat shaping our domestic policy." he grins knowing that his bait is so close to being eaten.

Rubbing my eyes, I took a deep breath at what he just proposed to me.

Biden is old, he's not the same man he was 8 or 10 years ago. Not the same man who delivers a fiery speech to defend Kosovo from genocide, not the same man who could rouse a crowd of thousands of people. He is a shell of his former self. And if he is the only hope the democratic party has then they are desperate. There isn't any other candidate that can replace him; the only one that has come close is Bernie Sanders but he will not win the election, his plans no matter how well-intentioned are not ready yet for the American people to accept.

And with Biden being essentially almost incapacitated and the Vice President will be the bridge between Congress and the executive office and running day-to-day administration; that left the Secretary of State being the only one who could effectively "advise" the president on policy matters.

"You're giving me a key to the White House?"

"A small key, but a key nonetheless."

"And how do you plan to give me that key? Even if I vote with you that doesn't guarantee your win in this impeachment and the next election, your promises are just that, promises."

A tense standoff between me and him. I resist rolling my eyes. 'Typical of the democratic party, they have plans but no means to do it.' as I waited for his answer, he only smiled.

"Because we have you." not explaining any further, Menendez left the room leaving me too stunned to say anything.

…..

Weeks went by and I expected the Republican party next to approach me, but no, there was no news, no rumor of an invitation for them to want to meet me. I think they're confident they will win this impeachment without a sweat. Oh sure, there's going to be much fanfare about the whole process but it's not going to pass, and they know it.

It's arrogant, but can you blame them, as far as they are concerned they have this in the bag, no matter how fierce and how scathing whatever investigation they'll do and what they find they will not budge their position. For some reason, the republican party saw this moment as a matter of life and death, and at the same time, they were so laid back about it.

I mean Fox News for almost 24 hours news coverage is just talking about unnecessary details, and discussing the whole procession like it is a drama

There's a reason why the Democratic were the ones who first asked for my support: they're desperate, and even my silence of not voting seemed already to support Trump in some ways, but he knew that my silence didn't necessarily mean that I support him, so this action will not gain me his favor. Making me more isolated. Damn, I need to stop isolating myself from the rest of the political establishment.

I need a fucking plan, if I don't support him and he is reelected, there's no fucking way ill be in his good graces. Trump seems to oddly like me and because of that for the past 3 years, he never attacked my political standing and occasionally supported me, of course, the reasoning for his support for him is to show that the democratic party is divided but still at least supports me. When Trump wins this impeachment trial and believe me he will, I don't expect the same treatment in the possible future.

And that is terrifying.

There's a large chunk of my supporters that are MAGA and I don't plan on losing their votes. Sure, my veteran and war hero status will help me, Trump and his supporters have a history of disrespecting war heroes and veterans. ( John McCain cough, cough.)

I need something to soften the blow, what to do?

"What's wrong?" Omar asked while handing me a smoothie.

"I need your help," I ask Omar who is still standing while holding both of our smoothies.

"Sure," he placed my smoothie on the table and sat in front of me while drinking his smoothie.

"Do you want to go to Mexico and help me kill some cartels?"

Aaron Omar, a rising star in the Department of State, and valedictorian of the University of Chicago International Relations spit his drink leaving me drenched with liquefied processed ice cream milk.

"WHO THE FUCK STARTS A CONVERSATION LIKE THAT I JUST SAT DOWN!"

…..

Ok guys this is a vote on whether Naruto should abstain, vote for Trump's impeachment, or should Naruto be on his side. Type the number if you want to vote and give me your reasonings:

1. Abstain. If I don't take sides or promise to support each side I'll be on top. Strategic ambiguity. (Independent, my original plan of making a party from scratch. Governor then president. It's long but it will assure Naruto's dominance for years to come. And he can freely make any policies he wants without any shackles of the two parties. He could be emperor, president for life, or the next Washington. The sky's the limit, or space. I'll probably make another vote if you guys choose this route.)

2. "We're gonna impeach that motherfucker." (The democratic party route; the fastest way to gain power, but it will be rocky to attain it. It's going to be a constant struggle with the democratic party establishment.)

3. For the president of the country. Savior of the nation. (Civil war, straight-up civil war, American Caesar (trump), and his Augustus (Naru). It will weaken America's power and maybe lose its global power status. Featuring Bernie Sanders as Cicero lol. This path will ensure a path of constant war for the United States and the first American empire!!!!! For a safe and secure society.)

(I'm counting both Ao3 and Ffn.)