Blue Ribbon President

“Winning the vote required seventy-two years of ceaseless agitation by three generations of dedicated, fearless suffragists, who sought to overturn centuries of law and millennia of tradition concerning gender roles.”  Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour

I rarely remember my dreams, good or bad, but the other night I had a doozy and it has stayed with me. It was the day after Trump launched his Twitter tirade against Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, four duly-elected members of Congress, which is, let’s recall, designed to be a co-equal branch of our government, not subordinate to any president and definitely not the Orange King. I must have gone to sleep wondering how this draft-dodging, philandering, tax cheat, who has failed his entire life at everything he’s tried except reality TV, gets away with it time and time again. There seems to be no circumstance that will either turn Trump’s supporters against him or inspire Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to launch impeachment proceedings.

Anyway, here’s the dream, or nightmare, depending on your point of view, as best as I can remember it. 

The big day finally arrived for the members of the North American Sheep Council. Six grizzled ranchers in two extended cab pickups traveled east from Sand Draw, Wyoming, towing trailers that contained eight award-winning sheep. Though the ranchers despised the Federal government, they were tickled pink to be invited to the White House by President Trump, and couldn’t wait to show the president himself just how wonderful the agricultural sector of the economy was doing. Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade were tingling with anticipation. They had packed their best suits and boots, their MAGA hats and bolo ties. They admired Trump’s no-nonsense style, the way he stood up for America and heaped ridicule on the Democrats.  

The apple of their eye was Elvira, their prize-winning brood ewe, a beauty with a dozen blue ribbons to her credit, the most ribbons won by a ewe in the long history of the North American Sheep Council. On the day of their visit, Cliff led the sheep onto the South Lawn, Elvira ahead of the others, her head up and proud as if she knew she was about to be in the presence of the most powerful man in the world. She had been brushed and groomed, her teeth cleaned, and her hoofs buffed. Cliff was smiling so broadly with pride that his face hurt. 

The president emerged, surrounded by dignitaries and Secret Service, mounted a couple of steps to a stage, gave the thumbs-up sign to the ranchers, looked at Elvira and nodded his head with apparent satisfaction, clapped his hands and gave another thumbs-up. He made a short speech, most of which Cliff couldn’t hear, though he did catch the words “great” and “beautiful” and “our country.” The president then shook hands with Bobby and Cliff and Clem and AJ and Emmett and Wade. He told them he was proud of them and that they were the kind of men who made America great. Then Trump said something to a man in a dark suit and walked away. The man in the dark suit tapped Cliff on the shoulder, nodded his head toward the White House, and took Elvira’s leash and led the brood ewe away. Cliff followed, not quite sure what was going on, but a few minutes later he was sitting outside the Oval Office, and it was much quieter than he’d imagined, kind of like a museum, what with all the paintings on the walls and the chandeliers and the thick carpet, but then he heard a bleat, then another, and he knew it was Elvira, and she didn’t sound right, so he opened the door to the office and got the shock of his life. 

Hours later, when his whole world had turned upside down and reporters and producers from CNN and ABC and CNBC and MSNBC and The Today Show and TMZ and Good Morning America, and outlets from overseas, wanted to interview him, and get a photograph of Elvira, Cliff marveled that he’d had the presence of mind to get his iPhone out and turn the camera on. He wished he hadn’t let AJ and Wade talk him into posting the video he shot on Instagram, and he wished even more that he could get in the truck and hightail it back to Sand Draw, where his life was normal and quiet. And of course he was worried about Elvira, whether or not she’d ever be the same because the poor girl looked morose. 

The media storm hit harder than any blizzard Cliff had ever experienced, and suddenly he was at the center of it, accused by the Trump White House of being a loser with an axe to grind, of being an agent of Iran, a communist, a socialist, and in league with The Squad. The pudgy Attorney General, William Barr, went on all the networks and said that Cliff should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, though he never said what law Cliff may have violated. 

Kelly Anne Conway accused the Democrats of concocting the whole thing in an effort to embarrass the president, and that the video was fake, created in a Hollywood studio. Conway also accused Elvira of pursuing the president very aggressively, with no respect for his feelings. 

Trump then Tweeted that he was claiming executive privilege over the entire matter; William Barr immediately agreed that Trump had the Constitutional authority to do so. 

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News and launched a tirade against Cliff, claiming that the rancher had trained Elvira to seduce the president. Graham called for Cliff to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.

When Mitch McConnell was asked if he planned to condemn the president’s behavior, the Senate Majority Leader replied, “Absolutely not. I’m from Kentucky.”

What really hurt was when Trump Tweeted that Elvira was not his type at all, and that she should be euthanized, and if she wasn’t euthanized, he was going to sue.  

Many Democrats demanded that Trump be impeached, that of all his crimes, high and low, his insults, his racism, his misogyny, this was the absolute worse, cruelty to a defenseless animal being far worse than cruelty to a defenseless Guatemalan or Salvadoran child. 

Nancy Pelosi went on all the networks and said that while she understood the feelings of her fellow Democrats, launching impeachment proceedings wasn’t practical because the GOP-controlled Senate would never impeach Trump. According to sources close to Pelosi, the Speaker was also concerned that if Democrats dug too deep into Trump’s dalliance with Elvira, the Republicans might fling the numerous peccadillos committed by FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton in their faces, hurting their electoral chances in 2020. Though roundly mocked for her cowardice, Pelosi refused to budge. “Don’t get me wrong,” Pelosi told reporters, “I don’t condone the president’s behavior, but I have more important things to do for the American people.”

Meanwhile, Cliff and the boys and the sheep finally hit the highway for home, shadowed for nearly 600 miles by a fleet of black SUV’s and an FBI surveillance drone.