They won’t let you get too close.
The halls of the West Wing are pocketed with dark-suited men wearing wraparound Maui Jim sunglasses. Even the small man who pushes the refrigerated cart of Diet Cokes has a top security clearance.
If you could get a glance through the fogged up windows of the Oval Office, you would see what I see in every photo op.
You would see how curiously unhappy he is. He has had a good couple of months, and things have been looking good for him. The Kavanaugh affair was a dirty business to be sure, an alley fight.
Those after-hours giggly calls to Susan Collins, Fox’s Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson gave moments of joy but were short-lived.
You can’t tell by his walk. There is no swagger. He still ambles. But it’s all in that grimace that Melania thinks is a smile. You would think he’d be feeling really good. His rallies are circus-size. They’re loaded with frantic hyped-up gum-chewing teenagers chanting “Lock her up,” sad-eyed middle-aged blondes holding up “Blondes For Trump” signs and fat men in straw cowboy hats that not even Roy Rogers ever wore.
There is even a skin of color here and there behind him in all of these base states, even though no one seems to be talking to them. What do you say to a prop?
Whispers (leaks) are suggesting that something is amiss. They say in his quiet hours, such as after rapper-promoter Kanye West has been ushered out, he sits staring out at the Rose Garden, watching the trees change color.
There he sits alone in the twilight hours, plopped behind the historic Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, tapping his fingers on that clean, highly polished bare space of the Partners’ Desk that seven presidents leaned their elbows on, propped their feet on, spilled scotch and cigar ashes on.
He, of course, doesn’t smoke or drink, and he knows that Ivanka won’t let him eat his beloved KFC lunches on it. All the Simple Green in the world won’t cut those grease spots.
But that’s not what’s bothering him. I know, because I too was once an emotional 9-year-old, almost up to the time I met She, who whispered in my ear on our first date, “Cut the crap.”
I can see the signs. I can tell what’s bothering him. It’s the “more” syndrome.
You would think he would be satisfied with that historic, overwhelming electoral college vote, the hundreds of thousands of cheering fans at his inauguration, the weekly rallies, the gold toilets on Air Force One.
No. There’s more that he wants, needs, lusts for. I just know it. I had moments like that as a child. I can see him as he opened the chemistry set, the Lincoln Log set and the tiny leatherbound bank book his daddy gave him with the numbers on the first page — $300,000,000. He wasn’t happy. There had to be more somewhere.
Yes, he has the Resolute Desk, the checkers set and collection of Marvel Comics he has to put away when important visitors like Kanye pay a visit. Yes, there is the bulletproof limo, Air Force One, and the phony leather pilot’s jacket, the gold Keurig coffee urn, all the accoutrements he imagines signify power.
But he knows that, in time, “the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they’re only made of clay.”
He needs something his fans will print on their hoodies.
Then he pulls his “I Want” dream pad from the top drawer and studies the rough sketches of his dreams.
There is the Crayon sketch of the Donald J. Trump elementary schools and the Donald J. Trump high schools spread across the nation.
He flips the pages to scan, and there is the real stuff, in sketches he drew himself with the adult-size colored pencil set given to him by Mike Pence’s wife, the really, really, big stuff that he must have if he is to be remembered down through history.
There is the Donald J. Trump aircraft carrier like those that bear the names of John F. Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Despite the rumors, he refuses to include the recently talked about USS William Jefferson Clinton and Barrack Obama carriers.
His reverie is interrupted when Ivanka whispers from the doorway.
“Lindsay’s on line nine. I think he’s crying.”
“Oh, that annoying Lindsay Graham. He wants the complete Judy Garland CD set I promised him for delivering that furious rant.”
He puts his list back in the drawer and drums his fingers on the Resolute Desk. “He may leave, you know. I mean, at some point everybody leaves.”
From the mouths of babes.
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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