On the Way to a Coup D’Etat: The Shock of President Millwright

By Ron Means

On the Way to a Coup d'Etat is a dramatic story, a searing scrutiny of our politics and
government. Though set in the near future, it is an entirely credible development of the forces that are now in play.
President Millwright, elevated to office by an unusual event, is short, balding, he limps
and has a high squeaky voice (as did Abraham Lincoln). But he possesses something
more essential: character. He is opposed in every conceivable way, some of which are
horrific, by nefarious politicians, truth-distorting think-tanks and media, and by many
members of Congress too greedy or too fearful to align with their consciences-and even
by a bizarre cultural hero. This opposition proves to be successful. But how things turn
is truly convincing as America, while on the surface continues to lie to itself, continues
to decline.
Yet On the Way to a Coup d'Etat is a surprisingly uplifting story, due in part to the believable characters of both President Millwright and his wife, Ann. These folks are more human and more alive than many of our current politicians.
One of the underlying themes in this remarkably astute book is an in-depth examination of what it means to lead a country, especially a country in trouble.
Bob Scher, author of Lightning, The Nature of Leadership

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781477178850

Ron Means

Ron Means built the Michigan Council for the Humanities from the ground up, guiding the development of its numerous programs. For 25 years he served as the Council’s Executive Director. Meeting frequently with members of Congress and those in other Federal agencies, over many years, “left me with a thick catalogue of impressions, regarding the local fauna.” He is a lifelong observer of American culture, politics, and economic policies. As his protagonist, James Millwright says, “I would chuck every label if I could and drive a stake into the heart of every ideology.”

Book preview

2   The Hysteria Takes Over

The hysteria which swept the United States when James Millwright became the President appears to have been a perplexing overreaction of public opinion. As an incident in mass psychology it reminds me of the Great Fear that swept northern France during the French Revolution, the rumor that the brigands are coming, a barbaric horde of riffraff marching on Paris from the South, soon to arrive to murder, rape, and pillage, to kill innocent children in their beds—fears which proved totally unfounded. While the leaders of most countries were appalled by the act of terror that had placed James Millwright in office, they did not understand the uproar. They asked why not give this man a chance. Had he not proved himself in difficult jobs in the private sector? The current President of France grabbed this opportunity to tell his people:

The unstable Americans are undergoing one of their ‘psychotic fits’ not unlike their 16th Century witch burnings, their 19th Century fratricidal war, their 20th Century Red Scares, and their 21st Century terror hysteria, the latter still integral to what we are now witnessing. I believe the Americans will convalesce and will eventually come back to their senses. They usually do. For now let us wait and see. We may have a President of the United States with whom we can do business.

This unfortunate statement stirred the latent anti-French fury in the United States, and it did the American President no good. The French President’s positive rhetorical gesture towards him would make matters worse when it became widely known that the Millwrights had a long standing and surprisingly close relationship with the French. The French ambassador to the United States and his wife, Noel and Emilie de Clergerie, had long been among their friends. The couples had become acquainted in Paris many years before when James Millwright had been posted to France to take charge of his company’s European office and the future ambassador was a rising young bureaucrat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They met informally, enjoyed each other’s conversation, and, as they met again, discovered that they shared an exceptional compatibility of mind, an intense and eclectic curiosity about the world in which they lived. In effect, they became each other’s teachers and sparring partners in the universe of ideas. They shared and deepened their knowledge and understanding of their two countries and helped sharpen each other’s language skills.

As it turned out, it was much the same with their wives, who took turns entertaining, and shared similar interests. Both were literature teachers, Ann Millwright on extended leave from her high school, Emilie de Clergerie then teaching at a Paris lycee. Their relationship became important years later when the two women, much further advanced in their careers, worked together in laying the foundations for the worldwide alliance of master teachers.

Although there were notable examples of restraint among the more balanced media professionals, many others with devoted followings swarmed down upon Millwright like flesh—eating birds. For the most part the hysteria they stirred up was blatantly contrived. Every imaginable catastrophe was foretold amid hand wringing regret that this, that, or some other politician or public figure would be infinitely more able to lead the country. In every tone of voice, from sweet pleading to hate filled peremptory demands, they called upon President Millwright to resign. One extraordinarily creative pundit, his thoughts wrapped as always in the flag, listed eleven separate reasons why the President should gracefully bow out—if he would give serious thought to any one of these, to a single one, he would surely release his country from this anguish and turn the Presidency over to someone qualified.

Certain symptoms of the hysteria could only be expected given the political mentalities of the times. Hate mail directed at the President poured into Washington from every corner of the Internet, from Twitter and the blogs. Apps were created to facilitate this nasty deluge. Letters also arrived in the old fashioned way from the US Postal Service. Envelopes appeared, loaded with a suspicious but innocuous white powder. These were traced back to a sorority house in Texas, but the culprits were never brought to justice. More seriously, in separate incidents, two small packages addressed to the President blew up in the hands of postal clerks, killing one and maiming others.

An attempt was made, mostly through electronic networking, to organize a March on Washington to force the President’s impeachment (exact charges to be determined later). It was billed rather pompously as the March to Eradicate the Present Danger. It gathered momentum for weeks, but by the time it was scheduled to take place, the hysteria was starting to wane and the window of opportunity had begun to close. Nevertheless, about 150,000 marchers showed up on the Mall mostly white men and women. They were rowdy but contained. Their abundant supply of placards and slogans had been thematically contrived to stress in graphic, but unfortunately familiar detail, the eradication of a pest, a risky decision for which the organizers would be sued by the National Association of Exterminators. They presented their petition to the newly chosen Speaker of the House, Albert Teeter, who graciously accepted it. They listened to a few speeches, dispersed, and went home.

Many of the most gifted political cartoonists and humorists contributed to the hysteria. It was not their finest hour. Ordinarily they rendered a valuable service to the emotional balance of the citizenry by injecting humor into the world of politics which was, after all, drowning in the ridiculous, in pomposity and egotism, begging to be made fun of. It was a world which should have taken itself more lightly than it did. But there wasn’t much that was terribly funny about the arrival of the unexpected President. Nevertheless comedians and cartoonists piled on. They found it so easy and so tempting to imitate his voice and mannerisms or to draw him as a cartoon character, to create a caricature of a caricature: an enlarged egg shaped head, bald save for the tufts of hair growing out from behind the ears; a minute body; flailing arms; contorted movements. In most political cartoons, in spite of the differing styles, James Millwright came out looking much the same: a panic stricken bug about to be stepped on—a sadistic image unredeemed by humor.

I am a collector of political cartoons. I have many in my possession from the late 20th through the middle of the 21st Centuries. Through clever stylized distortions they satirize presidential behavior. A prominent old veteran, who had skillfully depicted the foibles of earlier presidents, was more successful than most in integrating genuine humor in cartoons of President Millwright. He did so by changing his approach from the frontal attacks for which he was famous. I have examples of his cartoons on the table in front of me. This cartoonist, shrewdly, and out of a nascent sympathy for the underdog, turned his approach around and, in effect, sided with his subject. He drew James Millwright as a wide-eyed naif, accompanied by a tiny Jimminy Cricket like figure, named Hope, who is always bolstering his friend’s courage against terrible odds. For instance, we see little James Millwright, looking up at the presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore. These look down at him in startled disbelief, a typical cartoonist’s statement on Millwright’s insignificance. But Hope whispers in his ear:

Never mind my friend. They are made of stone and you are not. They have passed out of time and you have not. You are alive and free and they are not. You have a future to shape and they do not. So take heart, my friend, and be yourself, and you will make it through this!

In his memoirs Millwright suggests that Hope became his favorite cartoon character, considered him a comforting friend like an imaginary rabbit.

Books sponsored by the think tanks attacked the President. These rapid response products appeared in bookstores in a matter of days after the Event. Among these books were two unauthorized biographies, two slender hastily composed impressions of Millwright’s life and personality, and of the probable course his presidency would take.

Both authors relied heavily on imaginative elaborations of the biographical data available in a who’s who volume listing prominent people in the business world. They supplemented this material with a few anonymous tell-all interviews. Both authors provided brief though purportedly deeply insightful analyses of James Millwright, though each reached quite different conclusions regarding the significance of his family background, of his early isolated life on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, of his education, of the positions he held in his climb up the corporate ladder, of his participation on non-profit boards, of his relations with his wife and children, of his political credentials. Both found his selection for a cabinet post virtually inexplicable. Both claimed it was a last minute decision and a huge mistake by a preoccupied newly elected President rushing to round out his administration. Both books were promoted with fulsome praise in book jacket blurbs amply buttered with ludicrously complimentary quotes from talk show hosts, celebrity journalists, and public intellectuals who were dependents of hostile think tanks.

Though both books took jaundiced views of the President their conclusions were far apart. In one book he is presented as a harmless drudge, a workaholic who rose in the world, not because of exceptional talents, but because he worked harder than anyone else and was willing to take on tasks no one else wanted to do. As President this boring little work slave is totally out of his depth. His hopeless lack of leadership means that the country is heading into terrible trouble.

This book sold well but not nearly as well as the other biography which was lifted to the top of the best seller lists by its lurid thesis and stayed there for several months. This inflammatory expose proved that Millwright was an immoral fraud, a crafty liar, a merciless hater, who advanced his own selfish interests cost whatever it might to anyone standing in his way. It portrayed him as a master of deception who had ingeniously hidden his real self behind a carefully constructed screen. This book claimed Millwright made it a point to appear extraordinarily busy even when he didn’t have much to do. He dressed himself in a mantle of sincere empathy and forthright honesty. He disarmed everyone who dealt with him directly with his small unthreatening stature, his harmless high pitched voice, and his endearing mannerisms.

This book went further. It was a sustained innuendo that suggested, usually without exactly saying so, that among this impostor’s various sins and crimes, he was a tax dodger with huge hidden sources of wealth. As a corporate chieftain he had profited from cooking the books. Early in his career he had made a fortune in the illegal sales of weapons parts, and there were dark little reasons for suspecting him of pedophilia.

No solid evidence for any of these charges was adduced by this author, not unless one accepts, as millions of readers apparently did, the validity of anecdotal information, acquired through anonymous interviews.

Neither the President, nor his family, nor his friends, nor anyone else who had known him well recognized him in either book. They saw them for what they were: malicious ad hominem attacks. They concluded the anonymous interviews were the convenient products of the authors’ imaginations.

Both the books had traction. The first added fuel to the widely held assumption that Millwright wasn’t up to the job; the second not only added fuel to that perception, but maintained that he was worse than a disastrous incompetent; it proclaimed him evil. For weeks this author could hardly keep up with his appearances on the talk shows. These books, especially the second helped feed the hysteria and convince a frightened Congress that it must investigate the president whom the Senate had confirmed as a cabinet secretary only a few months before after a perfunctory examination of his apparently sterling record.

Other attempts were made to tap into the market for books vilifying Millwright. With a single exception none of these would achieve the success of the instant biographies. But that exception was as blockbuster, a national sensation, ostensibly a brilliant venture in investigative journalism, which, though quickly researched, claimed to prove down to the most insignificant details, that James Millwright had arranged the cataclysm that placed him in office, that the diabolical little actor’s shock at the time of the event was an ingenious pose.

This conspiracy theorist built part of his case on the fact that James Millwright had been a shareholder in one of the companies that routinely supplied the owner of the ill-fated delivery truck. He built it in part on the highly suspicious fact that Millwright had been a trustee of a small college which had once offered an academic position to John Jacob Warden and from that he deduced that the two had become fast friends and future accomplices. In addition, he showed other connections between Millwright and Warden: an individual, for example, who had attended classes with Warden at Yale, had known him there, and had later worked for Millwright.

At the center of this writer’s case were elaborately reasoned deductions that Millwright had triggered the explosion. On that fateful morning it was he who suggested to the President that they take a break and step outside into the spring air. It was he who knew the proper timing of the arrival of the delivery truck. He had placed himself far to the rear of the so-called leisurely parade which was, in point of fact, not a spread out column, but a clustered group of leaders, watched at a distance by little James Millwright, who would, just before the explosion, partially shelter himself by stepping behind a tree. It was Millwright and Millwright alone who could have triggered the blast at exactly the right moment to wipe out everyone who was standing across his path to the presidency. How did he trigger it? With a clever device that looked like a cell phone. The records suggest that he had his cell phone with him that morning.

Once in office Millwright used his control of the FBI to silence the missing Argentine. He knew his whereabouts. He doubted John Jacob Warden, whom he manipulated with grandiose lies, would talk and believed even if he did, he could offer no proof of his involvement. In any event, whatever Warden would say could be dismissed as the ranting of a lunatic.

Months after the publication of this book the author would extend his run of $50,000 speaking engagements by elaborating on his deeply held suspicion that Millwright’s commutation of Warden’s death sentence was a reward for the latter’s silence.

This same author encouraged his wife to write a book which also turned out to be a lucrative best seller. Though quite different, this book was a spin off from his indictment of James Millwright. Several major publishers competed for the contract. In her book she adroitly conflated the warnings of Nostradamus, biblical prophecy, and the predictions of various eminent astrologers. She drew every imaginable threat together to reveal the evil character of James Millwright, to show the sinister intent of his every word and action. She produced a vividly imagined evidentiary stew, proving with terrifying finality that Millwright was the Anti-Christ, and that the world stood on the threshold of the Last Days.

This book so influenced the imagination of one small time preacher and fervent eschatologist that he fell into the most dangerous of traps: he picked a date. He persuaded his tiny flock to divest their earthly wealth and await the imminent arrival of the Rapture (he assured them that no one would be left behind) in open coffins in the graveyard behind his chapel. There they waited in hope and misery throughout a sweaty southern day.

Naturally the media descended in mass on this remarkable demonstration of faith, noting gleefully that the source of inspiration and her husband, though they had been invited most sincerely to participate, had been caught spending that fate fraught day, luxuriating pool side in the Bahamas. It was discovered later that the preacher’s son had received a lavish kickback from the local mortician for the sale of caskets. No returns. No refunds.

The causes that precipitated the hysteria are obvious: the shock of the murderous event, the sudden death of a popular president in whom great hope was lodged, the decimation of other leaders of his new administration and of his party in Congress, the dead President’s obscure replacement and the terrible impression he made. Added were the amplifying roles of the media, the think tanks; various authors, publishers and cartoonists; and, apparently, innumerable sowers of panic on the Internet. A most culpable amplifier was the Congress, the echo chamber of all the others. While most members of Congress were guilty of nothing more than a flaccid wait and see attitude, an hysteria nurturing tone was set for them and for the country by powerful highly vocal members of the House and Senate who sought to exploit the country’s panicky mood to unseat this President and advance their own ambitions.

Although the recognition of these precipitating causes and their widespread amplification is essential to understanding the hysteria, I have concluded that more is required, that it cannot be fully understood without explorations of the culture in which it happened.

The more the hysteria is studied the harder it is to fit it into the patterns of American history, the more it seems incongruous, inconsistent with the past. Given the typical resilience of the American people, it appears to be an abnormal outburst, a unique eruption, not unlike that strange event from the history of France pointed to at the beginning of this chapter, fear that the brigands were on the way. Why didn’t the American people rally to their President in this time of crisis, whoever he may have been, however he may have looked, however he may have ascended to the presidency? Americans rallied to their presidents. That’s what they always did.

They rallied to Harry Truman in the final bloody months of World War II. They had experienced the death of Franklin Roosevelt as a terrible loss, having elected him four times, and were mainly clueless as to who this bespectacled uncharismatic Harry Truman was, except that he was the latest in FDR’s throw away list of Vice-Presidential running mates. Years later they rallied to President John F. Kennedy, young and still untried, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, the most dangerous moment in all of American history and again, almost unanimously, after a particularly traumatic terrorist attack in September 2001, to President George W. Bush, who less than a year earlier had attained his position as the outcome of a questionable election.

Why didn’t the American people rally to President Millwright in spite of his oddities? Down through the years the American people had accepted as their presidents a motley assortment of individuals, a veritable human menagerie: handsome and ugly, tall and short, fat and thin, highly educated and untutored, extremely intelligent and not overly bright, experienced and inexperienced in the arts of government, gifted leaders and inept leaders, successes, failures, and many inbetweens. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest American President was considered notoriously ugly by many; William Howard Taft was notably obese; and Calvin Coolidge relentlessly colorless—but each was found acceptable in his time.

Furthermore, though James Millwright didn’t look like much and had made a disastrous first impression, why didn’t his obvious positives come quickly into play? He wasn’t a nonentity grabbed by the collar and pulled in off the street. He was a cabinet secretary appointed by the murdered President and confirmed by the Senate. He had been a CEO, noted for his private sector successes and for exceptional managerial talent, for capabilities which a country drowning in red ink could certainly use. While the hysteria raged, these strengths were rarely acknowledged.

There were other underlying phenomena critically important to grasping the genesis of the hysteria and its effects on Millwright’s acceptance. These include an emerging presidential type which had given and would give the United States several presidents referred to now as the mediocrities. These include as well the dominant culture of celebrity, and a state of mind labeled the terror neurosis, which, in my opinion, is as important as anything else in explaining the hysteria. These three phenomena interacted in many ways.

Obviously the mediocrities were not clones. Although each was a distinct human being, their similarities were many and sufficiently profound to justify grouping them together as individuals who fit into a relatively common pattern which had emerged and would be carried forward over several presidential election cycles. Typically, a mediocrity was a tall, attractive man, of early middle age. Typically, he was athletic, devoted to golf, tennis, basketball and/or the weight room. Typically, his pedigree was derived more from his academic credentials, his family connections, the money he had made, and his talent for celebrity, than from evidence of an ability to lead the country. Sadly, the mediocrities served their party and their handlers best if there was little substance at the center of their personalities and if their predominant trait was a self-congratulating conviction of personal virtue, easily misinterpreted as strength of character. Most of the mediocrities were unburdened by curiosity, historical understanding, or a firm grasp of the complexities and ambiguities of the real world. Their time horizons tended to be short.

Typically, the mediocrities knew how to give an impression of being in charge, of persistent decisiveness. All had a talent for the forcefully presented sound bite. Their egos were fed by their party’s leaders, by their handlers, their principal contributors, by the swarms of ideologues who stood behind them, by the army of constituents who adored them. The more inflated their egos became the more presidential they appeared. But they were indisputably mediocre no matter how hard their supporters conspired to fabricate their greatness. Typically, the mediocrities derived much of their political leverage by exploiting those fears which were rooted most obsessively in the American people: fear of unemployment, fear of an impoverished retirement, fear of insufficient access to health care, fear of a breakdown in national morality, fear their children would be left behind in regard to education and opportunity, fear of disaster if the other party and its variously tainted candidates won the next election, and all the other exploitable anxieties; but the fear of terrorism, though this fluctuated considerably from time to time, more than any other fear remained the persistent gold standard for fear mongering. While exploiting all these fears, the mediocrities and their handlers responded by reassuring the American people they were slaving night and day to make them safe.

Meanwhile, throughout the administrations of these mediocre presidents, aided and abetted by mediocre Congresses, the American rich grew richer, the poor grew poorer, and power came to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, while truly serious problems, such as global warming and its fallout, the failure to solve the energy conundrum, the failure of education to meet the country’s most pressing needs, collapsing infrastructure, the dangerously fragile economic system, the continuing blind siding impacts of natural and man-made disasters, the world wide shortfalls in food, fresh water, and medical care, were feebly addressed as the United States and much of the world drifted deeper into trouble.

Americans had always been enamored with celebrities. The historical case for this public passion is so strong it need not be repeated here. But in the 20th Century this lively interest in celebrity was transformed into a cultural obsession of immense proportions, thanks to the ever more powerful intrusions of the media into the mental space of most Americans. By the first decades of the 21st Century this obsession had become an essential nutrient to the psychological well-being, to a grasp on life’s meaning, for tens of millions of Americans. It dominated their dreams and emotions with an intensity which for many exceeded their religion. The media grew ever more skillful at identifying and marketing an endless stream of new celebrities, however ordinary they may have been, however brief their moments in the sun. The media fed the anonymous millions with the illusion that they knew and enjoyed personal relationships with their favorite celebrities. As the 21st Century moved along, celebrities were ever more vividly presented in homes and bars until they became virtual occupants of the premises, close enough, real enough, to be touched. The media offered marvelous opportunities for that sense of being someone which arises from virtual participation in fandoms of all sorts.

The death of James Millwright’s predecessor opened up a void in the celebrity culture. In his presidential campaign that attractive, brilliantly managed candidate, had been presented over and over again in the homes and bars of America both as a statesman of great promise and a regular ordinary guy. Everybody who voted for him believed they knew him, and his victory at the polls elevated him instantly into the nation’s most exalted celebrity. He instantly became the lynchpin of the celebrity culture. His pleasure and active presence in that role brought an aura of patriotic Americanism to the celebrity phenomenon. James Millwright tumbled into the void left by his predecessor and failed to fill it. Whether Americans understood this or not, and most did not, this was a major source of their deep disappointment and of their feelings not only of loss, but of being lost, and to feel lost is to be afraid.

The fear of terrorism is a subject loaded with ambiguity. On the one hand it was real; it was understandable; it was justifiable. It had originated in its latter day intensity in the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City on September11, 2001, a mind searing event, watched by the world on television. In the decade before James Millwright became President the fears of Americans had been inflamed by a suicide bombing at the Mall of America at Minneapolis-St. Paul which killed 63 people and injured over 100 others; by a dirty bomb set off in Seattle which might have killed and sickened thousands, but, thanks to poor timing, the apparent incompetence of the bomb maker, the confined location, and heavy rain, killed no one and spread no more than manageable levels of contamination. Each of these events led to new outbursts of fear, and strident demands for improvements in homeland security. But most frightening of all was North Korea’s unanticipated demonstration showing it not only had the bomb but the capability to deliver it by detonating a nuclear device 262 miles off the coast of Southern California, opposite San Diego. No one was killed or injured except for the suicidal crew of the small submarine which had brought the weapon into position, but this strange event stirred up a sense of helpless terror which would die down very slowly and compelled the United States Navy to redistribute major assets away from its San Diego base.

The fear of terrorism was ambiguous. It was rational: next time, where will it strike? Next time, it may be me or those I love. My unease is always with me. This fear was irrational as well. Objectively, it became irrational to a marked degree. It became what a noted social psychologist called in the jargon of her trade, in the title of a highly controversial journal article (for which she would be viciously skewered even by some of her colleagues): America’s Terror Neurosis.

Whatever the phenomenon may be called, she was not wrong in pointing out that this pervasive fear was disproportionate to the risks confronting Americans in their daily lives. 40,000 Americans died in traffic accidents each year, about fifteen times as many as died on 9/11/01, but few Americans let their lives be blighted by fear of traffic accidents. Admittedly, there was sometimes a discernible neurotic element in over-the-top campaigns to ban smoking, but these could be justified by the fact that millions of Americans were still dying every year from smoking.

In her article the social psychologist argues that a watershed event in the history of the 20th Century proves by contrast that the fear of terrorism in the early decades of the 21st was disproportionately irrational and hence neurotic: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a terrifying experience for the American people and the terror was entirely rational. For several days a massive thermonuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union appeared imminent. If it had occurred, it would have meant the instantaneous incineration of millions of Americans, and horrible injuries and fatal illnesses to millions more, most of these beyond the capacity of the devastated medical services to treat. It was an event which would have changed everything. Nevertheless, the Cuban Missile Crisis did not generate a long lasting national obsession with the threat of nuclear annihilation. It did generate an immediate reaction which may be considered irrational but hardly neurotic. There followed, for instance, a spate of bomb shelter building in basements and suburban back yards; of publications telling how to build these, along with recommendations on what to stock them with (canned goods, bottled water, board games, etc.). Considerable public discussion took place as to whether firearms should be included to drive off less prudent neighbors who might insist on sharing the protection of a family’s shelter. And there were nuclear attack drills in the schools; the kids crouched down beneath their desks with their hands behind their heads.

These responses were irrational only because they were self-deluding. There was no safety to be found for the general population in the event of a nuclear war. But they were not necessarily neurotic because the danger of nuclear annihilation was real and ongoing and everyone was threatened by it all the time. Nevertheless, the fact is that the trauma of the Cuban Missile Crisis did not carry over into a protracted nuclear obsession. On the whole, from 1962 to the end of the Cold War in 1989, the American people accepted the possibility of nuclear obliteration calmly, fatalistically, even indifferently. They were not infected with a nuclear neurosis, though the fact that they were not also calls for psychological analysis.

When the Cold War ended the Americans concluded in retrospect that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) had worked, but there had never been any certainty it would work. It could have gone awry: a flaw in the machinery of instantaneous response, tragically misleading intelligence, a leader’s fantasy of victory through a pre-emptive strike, a mere technical glitch. Again, that would have changed everything. But the dramatic, graphically horrible loss of 9/11, and many more like it, could be absorbed by the United States, with great pain to be sure, but absorbed nevertheless, without changing everything, without slaughtering the American people in mass, without devastating the physical infrastructure of the country, without degrading planetary life.

For many weeks after the terrifying event that impelled James Millwright into the presidency the public opinion polls monitored the intensity of the hysteria, though they did not call it that. Generally, the questions were designed to expose people’s anxieties and fears. Unfortunately, of course, as the polls reported their results they tended to exacerbate the anxieties and fears they were measuring. People were asked if they felt secure. At the hysteria’s peak 76.2% did not. Those polled were asked if they approved the direction in which the country was moving. An average 87.5% did not. They were asked if they approved of the new president’s performance. Surprisingly only 69.7% did not, most of the others were undecided (23.3%), leaving a 7% approval rate.

People were also asked to select in order the particular issues which most concerned them. The results across the polls put terrorism first, followed closely by the presidency; after these were many variations in the order of choice: natural disasters, jobs, food and energy costs, taxes, retirement, health care, education, crime, moral values, global warming, environmental degradation, and international affairs.

3   Young James Millwright

To understand James Millwright and his presidency it will be helpful to review his origins, his education, his career in business, and his good fortune in falling in love and teaming up with Ann Price that remarkable young woman who would become his First Lady. For opening a window on James Millwright’s life there are no other sources comparable to his memoirs. From their pages James Millwright speaks for himself.

My friends and neighbors who live as I do on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are proud that a native son has served as President of the United States. I have been welcomed home as a local boy who made good. By returning home, I fit into a common pattern. The U.P. is a poor region. Unemployment is perennially high. Young people join the military or leave for jobs in Detroit, Green Bay, or Milwaukee. Decades later many return home lending support to the claim that nothing can take the yooper" out of a child of the U.P. Life hasn’t taken the yooper out of me. I preferred to retire here to any other place. I love my lakes, my forests, and my relative isolation. While preparing these memoirs, I have enjoyed the extreme cold and deep snow of long winters. They have protected me in my work.

"After my entry into this world on February 12, 1974 I grew up in a sturdy stone house built by my father with my grandfather’s help. It stood and stands today on a high rocky shelf looking down and away across Lake Superior. After my parents passed away my wife and I transformed and expanded it into a more spacious structure, but did so, we like to think, without destroying its original character. At the same time, through some complicated family arrangements, we helped my sisters and their families build their homes in sight of ours at the far ends of our great rocky shelf. These homes were also built with Michigan fieldstone, much of it hauled from a considerable distance.

"I find it very satisfying to have retired to a house to which I have a lifelong attachment. My fondest memory of this home of my childhood reaches back to a winter storm which occurred when I was nine years old. At the time it was called the blizzard of the century, though it would be eclipsed years later by a storm of greater power. After it gathered for hours far out on the lake, the monster attacked the shore with sustained ferocity.

"For three days and nights my family huddled close to our wood stove, listening to the blizzard as it huffed and puffed and roared against the windows and doors of our secure little fortress, whistled across the roof and screamed down the chimney accompanied by the metallic banging of the flue—shifting layers of noise backed by the explosive crashes of the waves against the rocks below—for me a fireworks display for my ears alone. When the storm ended we found our ledge windswept bare, but it took a long day to dig out to the road and another before the plow came through. As President, when attacked from every side, I sometimes calmed myself by recalling my experience of riding out that winter storm.

"My parents were descendants of Finnish immigrants. Also, on my father’s side, were miners from Cornwall. My father’s mother, my favorite grandmother, was French Canadian. Her ancestry included Native Americans. Both my parents were hard working people of the lower middle class predominant on the Upper Peninsula. Culturally the Finnish American connection was most important. My parents were staunch members of the Finnish Lutheran Church, a rigid faith, which they combined without apparent discomfort with an irrepressible thread of egalitarian radicalism. My father got into trouble for aggressive union activities.

"My father worked in construction when work was available and when it was not he shipped out on the Great Lakes. This meant he was away from home for long periods. My mother diligently maintained a warm well-kept home by hard work,