Sara had her father on the phone, following what soon became known in popular media as the birther revival. Talking to her father was to Sara like the absurdity of eating foie gras for the holidays: no sense in force-feeding a miserable goose until her liver became an overly rich delicacy, but it's Christmas, so tradition bounds you to do it.
Of course, her father was quick to suggest, not how Sara should deal with this crisis, but pointed out instead what she should have done to avoid it, and why all her efforts were now pretty much doomed to failure.
Typical.
Frank Tancredi had wanted the White House too much in his own lifetime that he could stand to be a fair loser to his own daughter.
"I warned you, Sara. You keep a slack hand on your enemies, that's what you get. Even in war, you have to get your opponent to respect you."
Sara didn't say the reason why people like Bagwell would never respect her had nothing whatever to do with anything she might have said or done.
I'm a young woman, sitting in the highest office in the land.
Some would never agree with that image of power, would sooner make it look like she had none. And it was frustrating enough to realize the extent to which they could paralyze her –
If they took lawmaking away from her, even if she could use executive action to get things done – they would be things that could easily be changed by her successor.
Considering what had followed Obama, she'd sooner not give thought to what would follow her.
"With all due respect, dad," Sara said, "I get all the advice I need from my team."
Condescension crackled in her father's laughter. Of all the people who had never been able to see power in her, she knew him to be among the first.
And part of him hates me for being where he never managed to get himself. In his own days, her father had run for President twice, losing to George Bush senior then to Bob Dole in 1996. Still, he'd never manage to admit to himself that Sara wielded more power now than he could ever contemplate –
To his mind, his governorship is worth ten of my presidencies.
But that was all right. It had been a long time since Sara had stopped trying to prove herself to him. Some struggles are a sheer waste of energy, and the sooner you stop engaging in them, the better off you are.
At this stage, Sara tolerated her relationship with her father out of necessity. Having none at all wasn't exactly an option: if she cut him off, it would come up during an interview, and she would know better than be mysterious. Explaining the break to a presenter would be just as bad as explaining the nature of the problem to her father. It'd be like having an actually honest conversation with him, mediated by a television screen. Better to endure this once every six months then to try and address their many issues. She only called her father on Christmas – they always acknowledged each other's birthdays through polite postcards – and he only called when some particular crisis demanded it.
Their road to each other was the sort that you can never drive across because it's always under construction, impracticable.
Sara had no interest in going through any particular effort to cross it. Her father's road was on the decline, anyhow. If hers was progress, whatever attempts she made to draw her father along would be vain, and a massive expense of energy she didn't care to waste.
As her father continued his little exposé whose aim was to subtly point out every reason why she was wrong for this office, Sara caught herself thinking about Michael, who wouldn't turn his back on a brother who'd put him through hell and back, who would do anything for family –
But Sara had never managed to feel guilty about the coldness she felt for her own father. He and all those like him, those looking backwards, were like prim old men on a sinking ship, who would sooner sip their brandy than give swimming a chance and change their way of life.
"Un-American," Frank Tancredi sighed contemplatively. "There are few worse things that a commander in chief can be. Consider our last president – clownish, some called him, but that didn't stop him from inspiring prestige. And American, he certainly was. That's how I'd handle this, Sara – stay on the safe side, for once in your life. If anyone in this country went along with the idea that you're half-Russian, and not my half, either, it's that your politics are too leftist for this nation."
Sara had learned to sigh a few inches below the micro on her phone, so her father wouldn't catch it. To argue with him had never seemed more pointless. Sara knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, her father would have been the sort of president whose top priority was showing he owned the office, rather than a deep commitment to do right by it. Because he viewed the nation as something frozen, solid, it was only natural he would think of change as a threat.
A great deal of evils had long been tolerated, not least because they were American. Slavery, for one. Sara's duty was not to those to whom the system ensured a decent middle-class life, those who were fine with things as they were, and whose dread of progress knew no more frightful match than death.
When she had taken office, in her inaugural address, Sara had pledged she would stand for those the system generally disregarded. This time, everybody gets a voice. Everybody.
But this was all on a level of reality Frank Tancredi most likely couldn't grasp.
"Well," she volunteered, with little enthusiasm, "maybe they just like to think of you hooking up with a Russian mistress."
"Humor, Sara? At this time?"
Sara smiled, like those who smile at a funeral.
Even now, he's still convinced his career is more important than mine. What matters is how my presidency will reflect on his good name.
But all of the people who changed the world for the better had to put off with a bad name before they could earn a lasting one.
"Sorry, dad. I have an appointment at ten o'clock."
"If it's Paul, give him my regards."
"Of course."
But Sara's ten o'clock wasn't Kellerman. It was, in fact, the beginning of a series of interviews that marked her first official counterattack move. The oval was a good choice of setting for an interview, at such a time: a reminder of the power of the president as well as her legitimacy. But it was on Stephen Colbert's platform that she gave her most radical denunciation of Senator Bagwell's despicable methods.
"Of course, Bagwell's birther revival isn't really about my being Russian, or my ever having stepped foot in Russia," Sara told Stephen, whose face had turned earnest – she liked that presenter not least because he knew when to crack a joke, and when not to. "It's about my being inacceptable for the presidency, because I'm a woman. When you're in the world of politics, you get used to receiving sexism under a layer of polish. It's not difficult telling what an accusation's really about."
"You believe Senator Bagwell is sexist?"
"I think he perfectly embodies modern misogyny."
Stephen didn't look shocked or try to temper her statement. With eyes that meant business, he looked at her, and allowed her space to finish.
"Bagwell may have gotten hundreds of thousands raging for my birth certificate, I don't believe he cares for a second where I was born. This is about wasting my time. About me, talking about this with you, when we could be talking about things that matter – like the seventy-five cents a woman earns for every male dollar. The undeniable racism that plagues our criminal justice system. The economic inequalities that have so drastically increased over the past twenty years, it'd be shameful to hear the numbers spoken out loud."
Sara shrugged. Was very aware of every muscle she moved, could feel the room holding its breath, while her host struggled for casualness.
"Instead of passing legislation on such issues, it's better I defend my legitimacy to occupy this office. Never mind that I was placed there by the popular vote, unlike Donald Trump and George Bush Junior – because they looked the part, they didn't have to fight for it. Well, I tell you, Stephen, I'm about done with this way of doing things. If people would sooner call me a secret communist than realize that our current capitalist system is broken, and millions of American people are paying the cost for it – then that's their business, isn't it?"
Sara paused. Her mouth was dry and wanted water, but this was no time to have it.
"What do you think would be the appropriate thing to do, then?" Stephen asked.
"The only thing I can do. It can't go on, this dancing around with the Republicans. From 2009, the use of the filibuster got out of control, and it doesn't look like it's going to get any better during my time in office. So," she went on, clear as day, "I think it's time the people of this nation ask themselves whether we still have need for a political device that does nothing but hinder our lawmaking process."
"Are you talking about getting rid of the filibuster?"
Of course she wasn't. She would have looked all the more tyrannical, and all the more Russian for it.
"I'm asking you to talk about it," she said. "In three weeks' time, I'm going to hold a national referendum and ask the people whether they would prefer a political system without the filibuster – it's been in every conversation we've had about politics for years, anyway. What I'm in favor of, is the sort of democracy our forefathers first wrote into law – an executive balanced by a Congress, that'll vote on new laws, but that will not stop that vote from happening. That's just standing in the way of change, Stephen. But the world is changing, and maybe even our country needs to recognize this and change along with it. That being said, when I've heard the people's voice on this, I'll stand by their vote, whichever way it takes us. That's how I think a democracy should be run – and it's time we start acting like one."
Paul was waiting for her in the beast – the presidential limousine, which Sara wouldn't have seen fit to call any other way – which would take her back to the airport.
"You're going to get some backlash," he said, like she needed any warning.
"Naturally."
But at least, she would leave a lasting mark on politics –
At this point, Sara couldn't imagine anything worse than her term coming to an end, these four years flashing her by in the blink of an eye, while she had stood helpless, blocked by the Senate, reduced to impotence.
She had meant what she told Stephen. The only voice she cared about, when it came to the decision, was the people's. In a democracy, all authority should ultimately yield to that voice – even her own, and even senators'. Without the filibuster, Sara was confident she could get even a Republican senate to approve of her legislation, if only because the reverse would make them look unprogressive and undemocratic. In truth, Bagwell's followers in the senate represented but a minority, though large enough to be harmful and greatly influential beyond the senate walls.
If the reform actually took place, then she could carry the hope of passing forward-looking laws, sensitive to the plight of minorities. Though all of them wouldn't pass, they would at least get the chance to be voted, to get past Bagwell's extremist branch.
Over the past few months, Sara had managed to make contact with a number of Republicans who began to dissociate from their leader's controversial position. "I'm a Republican at heart," Senator Henry Pope told her, as he sat in her office, after agreeing to meet with her. "My family's voted for the GOP for generations, and I've always held true to its core values. But what we've been getting, since 2016…" Shaking his head. "I don't see what hope we have for the future, if we don't mean to turn into a Republic of fools, apart from adopting a separatist position."
Pope happened to speak the mind of quite a few Republicans, senators or otherwise, who reluctantly agreed to meet with Sara when her team reached out to them.
"I understand your concerns," she told Pope and others like him. "Unity matters, at all times, and in times like these especially. But unity is what I'm aiming for, Senator. Unity beyond partisan allegiance. Unity beyond the imagined barriers of race or gender."
Many of them agreed with her.
Though it would be easy to look at what had happened through recent years in terms of partisan lines, Sara knew better than to paint the Republicans as the scourge of current politics. Throughout the world, the matter was a question of fear and extreme measures, a crisis in democracy, faith of all kind, and individual freedoms.
"Soon enough," Sara thought, "the limits of the earth's resources are going to slap us in the face. We're going to feel it. When that happens, we're going to be headed towards even more division, because people will want to survive, will want to take more than their share, at the expense of others. Isn't that what we've been hearing, the message so many people have been inclined to listen to – America First?"
Alliances mattered, now maybe more than ever.
The evening after her interview in New York, Sara listened to a new podcast by Senator Bagwell – his chilling laughter stiffening the hairs in the back of her neck.
"Abolish the filibuster, hey? Let her go right ahead, then. Let her try. We've got measures of our own up our sleeves, don't we? But let's hear the people's vote. Maybe a majority will be in favor – maybe even by a decent margin. Sixty-to-forty. How does that sound, America? But then you don't have to worry, to wonder what will happen to those remaining forty percent. We'll be there for them. We'll show them the way. After all, forty percent's a lot of people, no? We're talking hundreds of millions. Never mind about putting up a strong opposition." Bagwell chuckled. Sara could see his grin behind her close eyelids. "It's enough people to start a nation."
…
End Notes: Sorry this took so long. Please share your thoughts and thank you thank you for your amazing support!
