In the early nineties, Jim Riggins became a conservative on a bet. He didn't expect to enjoy the ruse but did. Years later, he found himself in the White House working for George W. Bush. Life was good for the GOP, but thanks to the Right's fealty to authority, the party stumbled. As a result, a plan to win back the hearts and minds of America was devised. Along with chicken-hawks like El Rushbo, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and, of course, Sarah Palin, Forty-Three enlists in the Army after his two terms. He does so at the direction of Dick Cheney who also orders Jim to enlist and run interference for the former president. But there's a problem. Americans are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq. Then Vietnam attacks a neighbor and provides the group a warzone where Americans aren't dying. Trained up, the "flock" deploys to Vietnam Part II where Charlie attacks its vehicle and throws its members into a POW camp. Starved and sick, the group is forced to survive in the jungle under the ideological Colonel Mai. But the group can go home if it agrees to do one thing.

The Accidental Conservative

The Improbable Story of My Time in the Echo ChamberBy Jim Riggins

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Jim Riggins
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-0761-2

Chapter One

A television at the foot of my bed blinked to life and Nora O'Donnell stared at me with those blue eyes. "Early this morning," said the attractive brunette, "Vietnamese forces shot down a Thai helicopter that Hanoi says crossed into Cambodian airspace or what Hanoi now claims as its own since it took control of its western neighbor three months ago. Details are sketchy at this hour," continued MSNBC's chief Washington D.C. correspondent, "but one source stated that at least three Thai soldiers died in the attack. As a result, Thai leaders have issued a formal complaint with the U.N. and recalled its ambassador to Vietnam. A spokesman for the communist government in Hanoi had no comment except to say that his government will take all measures necessary to protect its borders."

I go by a lot of names—Jimmy, James, Riggins, Riggs—but sign my checks Jim Riggins. The night before, I went out with friends and got carried away. I'd been doing that more and more—the getting carried away part, not the going out with friends.

Usually, I was too tired to go out after work and, like Mr. George Thorogood, preferred to drink alone. It had gotten to where I needed seven or eight beers, sometimes more, to muffle the voices. I say muffle because even deep inebriation was no match for the constant nagging in my head. Go now! Drop everything and run! What are you waiting for?

But I had attained a bit of respectability in my life. As an aide to the president, I had responsibilities to him and to the country and even to myself. I never was the poster-child for responsible behavior, but I was trying. Unnerved by Nora's report, I crawled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom.

Breakfast was cold cereal and banana, and as usual, I sat on my tattered couch in the small living-room of my tattered apartment to watch news. Snippets of the broadcast forced me to pause with my spoon in the air.

According to one, parts of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division had been called up after being home from Iraq for only three months. Unsurprisingly, several top Republicans—none of whom had ever served in the military—chimed in to signal their support for defending Thailand against the scourge of communism.

These same men and one woman also brushed aside calls for an exit strategy or timelines. Sending troops to Thailand, the Republican members claimed, would show the terrorists in Afghanistan that they couldn't win.

In response, Democrats on the Armed Services Committees in both houses asked the Bush Administration to go slow. They didn't want the president to send more of America's children into harm's way without exhausting diplomatic efforts.

But a spokesman for the administration pushed back with the argument that defeating one rogue regime would create a domino effect in the region. First Vietnam then North Korea and possibly even China would topple into obscurity.

Familiar with the debunked claim, I pulled the door shut ten minutes later and walked two blocks to the Van Dorn Street subway station on the southern outskirts of Washington, D.C.

I heeded the weather guy's warning to bring an umbrella but didn't need it. The temperature was only around forty but any rain had decided to hold off. Five minutes into my silent vigil, a train clattered up to the platform and eased to a stop. Pairs of doors slid apart and my little group of fellow commuters boarded the last car.

Allergic to eye-contact so early, I took a molded, plastic seat next to a window and withdrew into my thoughts. The doors swooshed shut then the dozen or so of us in the back car jostled up to speed.

I purchased a paper from one of those spring-loaded boxes outside the station but didn't feel like reading. Instead, I stared out the window at nothing and wondered where it was that I had taken a wrong turn in my life. I couldn't say for sure, but getting involved in the Republican Party had to be near the top.

I sat and stared without seeing until Arlington National Cemetery came into focus on my left. I gave a cursory glance for visitors among the rows of white head-markers and green foliage but it was still too early. The day needed a couple more hours before mostly tourists, but also friends and family members, trickled in to pay their respect to America's fallen.

As usually, I tried not to think of all the Americans who had died needlessly during the Bush Administration. I had long ago lost the ability to rationalize their deaths.

We raced passed the rolling hills and deciduous trees of the cemetery and I drifted out again. I was vaguely aware of the next stop on our route then sort of watched as we first approached then rumbled over the Potomac River. Below and in the distance, Jefferson's bulbous memorial sat in a layer of fog and also waited for visitors.

The train stopped one more time then slowed for Farragut West. That was my station and by then I had worked myself into a frazzle. A familiar headache—one of the low-grade kind that hammers away at its victim throughout the day—woke up and said good-morning.

According to the doc, stress and probably alcohol caused mine but who really knows? I was a victim of my own stupidity.

Head in an invisible vice, I languished over the addition of more headstones to an already crowded Arlington, and for a moment, entertained the idea of not going to work. Not that I had a choice. Mine wasn't a job one called into and said that he wasn't going to make it.

Oh, good-morning, Betty, I'd say lightly. I'm not feeling so hot and can't make it in today. Could you let somebody know for me? You can? Gee, thanks. Oh, I'm sure I will by tomorrow. Alright. Take care. Bye-bye.

Resigned to the day ahead, I stepped from the car into the cavernous station and followed the muted crowd up an elevator to the surface. An old, black guy in a red beret and white beard stood under an overhang near the exit. He and his dented saxophone showed up most mornings to earn a few bucks entertaining passersby.

By their general state of scruffiness, the two might have been together for years if not decades. Eyes closed and cheeks round, the skinny man played something jazzy that I would have enjoyed in another place and time.

The stooped musician had opened his instrument's case and laid it on the ground in front of him. A few coins and several dollar bills lay scattered over the case's red felt bottom. But with no change or bills of any kind, I slinked by the old saxophonist without slowing.

A coffee joint with a name that doesn't rhyme with barfucks lay on the way. I often stopped in when I wasn't running late and bought a large latte instead of one of those venti things that piss me off so much.

Inside the trendy nook, I got in line behind a nervous little man who kept staring at his watch. Two skimmed-milk, nutmeg, artichoke, sides-of-beef lattes later, I stepped up and flirted with the barista behind the counter.

I went through my entire ten-second repertoire with the chesty, little blond then mumbled something stupid about the weather. The young woman was polite enough to smile but couldn't find the energy for anything more. My flirting always needed work and weather isn't funny.

I paid for my order then stepped aside and waited as a familiar gloom settled in my gut and extinguished what little joy had made it past Arlington. All of a sudden, the possibility of more dead Americans—young Americans, sons and daughters and new parents—not only seemed likely but probable.

I waited and watched the young beauty from the corner of one eye. I was feeling the specter of mortality more than usual and hoped she was too old to be a hypothetical daughter had I knocked up some unfortunate soul earlier in life.

I wanted to believe she was and tried to convince myself by inflating her age. She had that optimistic, save-the-world look of a senior collegian.

But at thirty-eight, I was somewhere in the ball-park of being old enough to be her father. Faster and faster, I was approaching that middle-age thing if I wasn't already there.

Worse still, I was missing out on the opportunity to start a family of my own and enjoy the American dream. Gloomy but with a large latte in one hand, I left the small nook and walked the final two blocks to the White House.

Chapter Two

I unloaded my briefcase in a small West Wing office that I shared with several other aides then checked in with the president's secretary.

Forty-Three had summoned me to a meeting in the Oval Office. That was the sole reason I didn't blow off the day and hit a ballgame or go back to bed. Even if a guy is a clueless dipshit, which I think history will conclude, you don't blow off the president.

Nervously, I turned off my cell phone and reported for duty.

Vice-President Cheney and Karl Rove were already in the storied room and seated across from the president. "Listen, Mr. President," grumbled the vice-president as I walked in and took a seat against the wall to the president's right and the other men's left. "Have I ever been wrong before?" Forty-Three looked up from behind his desk.

With much of his hair now gray and the lines deeper in his face, the president had put on ten years in the past several. He had pushed his leather chair away from the desk and gotten down on his knees in the empty space. Hunched down, only his eyes peered at us over his desk.

The leader of the free world held an orange Hot Wheel Camaro from the late sixties in one hand and a blue Sting Ray from the same era in the other.

He placed the cars down and squinted at the vice-president. But whatever Cheney said didn't register. Confused, Forty-Three rolled his eyes to his senior advisor, Rove, for help. "Hey, Turd," said W in that goddamn twang of his.

"Sir?" said Karl Rove and sat up straighter. Doughy and balding with a weak chin, a roll of fat squeezed over the collar of his white dress-shirt. Rove looked like a guy with something to hide.

I imagined dubious back-room deals or the possibility of a child imprisoned in a hole behind his house. For the tenth or hundredth time, I wondered how the senior aide had cow-towed to a man like Bush for thirty years. But if anybody could kiss ass to get ahead, Karl could.

Early on, the devious man must have concluded that only by latching onto a person like Forty-Three could he ever hope to achieve fame and fortune. Like a human pilot fish, Rove swam along with his host, the president, and drafted off his power.

"Was you lissenin, Turd?" asked the president from behind his desk. He screwed up his face to look serious, which deepened the lines in his forehead.

"Yes, sir," answered Rove and smoothed his red tie.

"Well, then," replied Forty-Three. "What d'you think? Is Dick here a person reflecting a half-glass full of mentality?"

Rove pushed his glasses higher up on his nose with a finger and cleared his throat. "I'm not sure what you mean, sir." Rove presented a bland smile and waited.

"What do I mean, dag nabbit?" shouted the president and waved the Camaro at his top advisor. He stood up taller on his knees so we could see his entire face. "What do I mean?" continued the president. "I mean there ain't no cave deep enough for America or dark enough to hide is what I mean."

"I agree, sir," said Rove with feigned respect. He had enjoyed the symbiotic relationship with the president long enough to feign well.

"Dick," said the president and looked at Cheney. "Would you 'splain to my thick-headed 'visor here what it is I'm sayin."

"Yes, sir," grumbled the vice-president and straightened up his slouch. He had known the younger Bush since Forty-Three's days of snorting coke from the cleavages of call-girls. Over the decades, the former Halliburton CEO had learned to communicate with the president. Dick turned to his left and grumbled. "The president wants to know what you think about my proposal."

"You're serious?" asked Pudge in a shaky voice. He looked at the president then back to the V.P. Rove's gravy train for the past three decades was being threatened and he couldn't help but show fear.

"Very serious," grumbled the V.P, who I'd taken to calling Eeyore for his dour outlook and all-around unpleasantness. Forty-Three had gone back to his Hot Wheels and, once again, only his eyes up appeared over the desk's flat surface.

"You think," said Rove and swallowed hard, "that the president should join the guard again?" The man known as Turdblossom turned to his boss and dropped his chin several degrees to look him in the eyes. This had the effect of squeezing the role of fat from under his chin even farther. Rove ran a soft hand over his bald head then wiped it off on one knee. Visibly scared now, he turned to the vice-president. "But this time as an enlisted member?" The president looked up from his desk where he had created a racetrack of paperclips.

"Yes," grumbled Eeyore.

In response, President Bush shouted a hearty, "Vroooom!" then an equally hearty, "Errrrr!" and, finally, a "Krrrrr!" as the Camaro spun out of control and slammed into a stack of books that had been left on the president's desk to make guests think he was reading them. The top book was Winston Churchill's The War Speeches.

Pudge waited for the ill-fated car to come to a rest then cleared his throat again. He smoothed the red tie and turned his whole body towards Eeyore. A halo of light reflected off his moist head. "The president," started the human pilot fish, "won't go into combat will he?"

Rove's face had filled with some color and he looked ready to attack Cheney if he heard the wrong answer. The career sycophant was smart enough to know that without his golden goose, he would eventually be another hapless casualty of the Bush Administration.

"Of course not," grumbled Cheney from where he leaned forward in his chair. "George will be in-country but away from the danger. "We'll find him an administrative position somewhere safe." Pudge raised a hand to protest but Eeyore was ahead of him and brushed it away. "I'm way ahead of you, Karl," he grumbled. "A position without much responsibility." Rove sat back and pinched what substituted for a chin.

From under the desk now, the president said, "I heard that, Dick." His voice was muffled and echoed in the small space.

Rove dropped the hand from his chin. I knew he was worried about his future but surprised me. "It just might work," said Forty-Three's aid, his eyes blank and mind already running through the pros and cons of his boss' enlistment and how it would benefit him.

Eeyore nodded sagely. "When have I ever been wrong?" he asked Rove. From under the desk, an annoying bray of laughter drifted out. The sound, I had decided, was that of a hyena if played too fast on an old record player.

Pudge ignored the question. "Okay," he said. "A stint in combat or at least close to combat will solidify the president's record for all time. He'll go down in history as one of the nation's greatest statesmen."

"Then it's settled," said Eeyore and nodded as if he never doubted the conversation's outcome. "George," he grumbled. "We've come to a decision."

Chapter Three

From my place in the big car's back seat, I looked out my window as the bald Secret Service agent across from me slowed the black Town Car and turned onto a cobblestone driveway. The man paused for a wrought-iron gate to swing in from both sides then drove into the property.

A hundred yards ahead and surrounded by a sea of green lawn, an expansive, two-story house stood in manicured opulence. The agent gave the big car gas and we accelerated up the stone driveway.

I had seen the fortyish man around the White House and at presidential events but had never spoken to him. He seemed familiar with the routine and maintained a silence he had since our departure from the hustle and bustle of D.C. forty-five minutes before.

Fifty feet from the house, the middle door of the house's three-bay garage started to rise. The burly agent slowed for the door to open all the way then drove into the cavern's murky interior.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Accidental Conservative by Jim Riggins Copyright © 2011 by Jim Riggins. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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