DOUG HAWLEY - BIOGRAPHY OF FRANK SPENSER - THE LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENT

​The author has around five hundred publications spread over most genres, lengths from 50 to over 20,000 words, and many countries.  He lives with editor Sharon and cat Kitzhaber in Lake Oswego Oregon USA and spends his time sleeping, eating, writing, reading, hiking, and volunteering.  https://sites.google.com/site/aberrantword/

​BIOGRAPHY OF FRANK SPENSER - THE LIBERTARIAN PRESIDENT
 

 
                                            (A political fantasy / reimagined past)
 
CHRONOLOGICAL OVERVIEW
           
                        1958 born Vernonia
                        1976 - 1980 OSU
                        1980 - 1984 US Army
                        1987 - 2002 NewFuel
                        1987 - 2002 ReFocus
                        1987 married Monique
                        1987 sold Stretchomatic
                        1987 starts New Alchemy
                        1988 Hakeem born
                        1989 NewFuel plant built in Ontario
                        1991 Maria born
                        2002 - 2004 U. S. Representative from Oregon
                        2004 - ? US Pres
 
President Frank Spenser's first speech on his first day in office:
 
"During the next eight years - yes, I said eight because the American electorate will surely reelect me - the United States will experience unfettered freedom and material success.  This success will rest on a few important principles.  To the extent possible we will not keep our rewards to ourselves, but will give the keys to those who would use them.  These wonders will primarily be accomplished by private citizens.  Your government will be supplying freedom and guidance, not laws and regulations.  The federal government will be half of its current size within those eight years and less than half as complex.  As the federal government shrinks, the states will become laboratories in democracy.
 
We are indeed fortunate that there is no credible military threat to the US now.  Why should we spend our tax money on armament that will never be needed?  Why should our brightest minds be concerned with megadeath, either the musical group or global catastrophe?  Since there is no credible answer to those questions, we will begin to finally collect our peace dividend.  We will beat half of our swords into plowshares, metaphorically speaking.  The half which is freed for peace time pursuits will improve our lives markedly.  Closed bases will begin to generate tax revenue rather than suck it up.  A corollary to our policy of sharing will make those nations which have been our enemies, if not like us, at least become non-belligerent.
 
What are to be our alliances in the third millennium?  We will be friend to all that want us to be friends.  Those that would disrespect us will suffer for it, but only by our lack of support.  We will not attack those that do not attack us.  Through our self sufficiency program, we will not be held ransom for imported oil or other commodity.
 
Alas, some countries will behave in odious ways, either internally through mistreatment of their own land or people, or externally by aggression against their neighbors.  We will do what we can to prevent these actions through peaceful means such as technology sharing or trade sanctions, but not through bombs and gunfire.  Dead people may not be bad people anymore, but they also have no potential for good.
 
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the worst facet of the federal government is its income taxes.  Not only are the taxes unfair and far too high , they extract an additional unstated tax on our time.  Those who are smart enough to understand our tax system should be able to invent anti gravity if only turned free.  The income tax will be phased out over four years, and a consumption tax will be phased in.  At no time during those four years will the existing income tax be modified except to lower rates.  Although a consumption tax is vastly superior to our income tax, our citizens need time to plan for the change.  We expect that the consumption tax will raise half as much taxes as now collected, because the federal need for tax will be much less. 
We plan no new national parks or other new designations or acquisitions.  For too many years, existing parks have suffered while we have taken on new burdens.  We will enforce all current standards for land and water pollution, as well as environmental preservation which are truly interstate.  Truly intrastate matters will, as they should, be left to the state.  In the future, money will go to engineers and workers rather than lawyers.  Changes to what we know about building materials and fuels will make our task far easier.
 
Two of the largest threats to the future of the earth are overpopulation and the fossil fuel economy, and many of the other large problems are related to these two.  The first is a partly technological and partly sociological problem.  We have now been adequately fruitful with 6 billion people on this ball of mud we call home.  While Europe, Japan and North America have gotten to replacement levels in non-immigrant population, other areas are rapidly outgrowing their water and land supplies.  We cannot tell other people what to do, but we can lead by example in population control and supply the needed technology.
 
We are fortunate that a sustainable non-polluting solution to our energy needs is at hand.  We are planning a hydrogen system which will complement and perhaps eventually replace fossil fuels.  The changes to our society will be the most revolutionary since the beginning of the industrial age.  You are probably justified in thinking that this is just another 50 mpg carburetor, but watch and learn over the next few years.
 
The federal government will be getting out of the business of pursuing, prosecuting or jailing those who traffic in drugs within individual states.  We will maintain our interdiction of drugs at our borders.  Many of the federal offenses in our code will be terminated.  Our national crime fighting will be used only on truly national offenses such as espionage.  Local crime fighting should be done locally.  The federal prisoner population will peak soon and start to fall.
 
Federal welfare is a thing of the past.  With the smaller federal incursion into the taxpayers pockets, the states can raise their take to handle welfare as they wish.  In order to preserve the integrity of Social Security and remove it from politics, it will be turned into an independent public corporation like the post office.  As the federal government withdraws from welfare, we recommend health care for the poor to follow the Oregon priority system.  We suspect that the states can make programs to fit best the needs of their residents.
 
It will be an interesting ride.  For those that can remember, better than an E ride at Disneyland.”
 
We have to go back in time a bit to explain this speech.
 
FORMATIVE YEARS
 
Frank Spenser (hereafter called FS) was born in 1958 to a family in Vernonia, OR.  His father George was a logger, and his mother Frieda taught at the local grade school.  He was their only child, and as such got a lot of attention.  Both of his parents were bright people who did not go to college because it was not financially feasible or expected in their place and time.  His mother was German and coastal Indian, his father was mostly Irish.
 
They lived what was considered an Ozzie and Harriet kind of life, but with one less brother, a more modest two bedroom wood frame house and parents with actual jobs.  He grew up hunting and fishing with his father and playing the big three - baseball, basketball and football - with the neighborhood kids.  There was not too much opportunity for hockey or tennis.
 
The family was frugal, but there was money in the budget for day trips to Oregon and Washington scenic grandeur (if you have seen one National Park, you have seen one National Park).  Every couple of years when FS was 5 - 18 years old, the family visited relatives in Europe.
 
As a teenager FS was chagrined during those visits that he knew less about American politics than the Europeans that he met.  He found that he could not defend US policies because he usually did not understand them.  As a result, he did independent study for a high school civics class on US treaties since WWII.  Although he had heard good things about Truman and Eisenhower, he decided that they had done terrible, counterproductive things in the name of anti-communism - setting up puppet governments in Guatemala and Iran.  He thought at the time (rather presciently in the early 70’s) that it would be better to let communism collapse on its own rather than spend moral and financial capital on its destruction.
 
Perhaps because the elder Spensers could not afford college for themselves, they constantly prodded Frank to study hard and get good grades.  Frank developed sharp interests in two distinct areas - government and chemistry.  At the time, he saw no connection between the two.  He was fortunate in having a good high school with advanced placement and an effective advisor, Everett Kind, who was a local libertarian politician.
 
By the time FS was in high school he greatly resembled his middle aged self - a little shorter than average, wiry, jet black hair and brown eyes (probably from his maternal grandfather).  He was strong and fast, and lettered in all three of his sports.  At a larger school, he might not have made the basketball team because of his short stature.  At the small Vernonia school he was quite good as the point guard with great court vision, laser passes and long distance shooting which compensated for his defensive deficiencies.  He played shortstop in baseball and wide receiver in football.  His teams did well in his division, but because of the inferior opposition, his athletic abilities were not taken too seriously.
 
The politics of his time disgusted him.  He could not stand Richard Nixon based on what his parents told FS about Tricky's past shenanigans.  Democrats and Liberals were intent on making various special interests - ethnic groups, unions, the caring community, welfare / poverty groups - into clients beholden to the government.  Republicans and right wingers catered to the rich and increasingly to the religious right.  Overall, he slightly preferred the Republicans for what he inferred to be the difference in general philosophy:  Republicans want bigger pie, Dems want to change the split.
 
When one of the town's past high school basketball stars, Jack Scranton, who had been working at the sawmill, was killed in Viet Nam, FS studied the background to the Viet Nam war.  What he discovered about the Bay of Tonkin scam disgusted him.  He would always consider Lyndon B. Johnson to be the worst president of his lifetime given that LBJ's civil rights progress was largely offset by unintended consequences - white flight, segregation academies and the like.
 
The most impressive day in high school was the one that the rock star from Vernonia, Eagle Grant, addressed the high school.  Eagle would later become a big supporter in Frank’s political career.
 
About the time FS was starting to drive (kids in those small towns and their parents did not always worry about all the niceties of underage driving), the gas crisis hit, driven by the Petroleum cartel.  Based on what little he knew at the time, it triggered a lasting interest in energy supplies.  He knew from high school organic chemistry and geology a little about the combustion process and the limits to naturally occurring crude oil.  Most importantly to him at that time, it is really tough to be a teen in a small town without running wheels.
 
Amongst high school girls, he was considered a real catch even though their parents liked him too.  He was bright, excelled at athletics, and rode a motorcycle (which not only gave him a dangerous image, but used less gas).  In athletic parlance, he hit the ball out of the park a lot, but broke few hearts.  He was considerate and ensured that no std's were spread (at the time they were still preciously described as venereal diseases) and that there were no unwanted pregnancies.  After he became well known in politics, his ex-girlfriends remembered him with a smile and no regrets.
 
According to former cheerleader Loretta Grand “Frank was a lot of fun.  We’d go to the movies, the hamburger stand or just drive around.  You could tell he was really smart without him telling you he was really smart.  And he was a gentleman.  All the girls that liked guys liked him.”  She wouldn’t elaborate on what she meant by “girls that liked guys.”
 
SIDEBAR - FS’s high school graduated more car thieves than accountants, despite being a good meat and potatoes institute of learning. The number one occupation amongst graduates was housewife, followed by mill worker and teacher.  Other than FS, a few other graduates went on to notoriety.  Jim Spreewell had a pretty decent crime career featuring not only bank robbery, but also the aforementioned car thievery and amphetamine production.  He also dabbled in Aryan politics.  He was eventually killed in San Francisco in 1988 in a drug deal gone bad.  Cindy Shane, town slut, put her talent to use marrying richer and richer men until she married the owner of the Denver Broncos and became the toast of Denver.  The only other graduate with a high level of success was Jerry Lone, who eventually became president of Brannigan of Kansas City, the third largest benefits consulting group in the US.
 
Of the two best known graduates, Eagle Grant played a role in FS’s political career, and Beau Holley was involved in his New Alchemy movement.
 
COLLEGE AND SERVICE
 
Despite his good grades and athletic accomplishments, he could not get a good scholarship.  Some of the trouble was the impoverished legacy of presidents Johnson and Nixon.  In order to go to Oregon State he agreed to get money from the army in return for joining after he graduated.
 
At OSU he pledged at a good fraternity.  He was a good guy to have around since he liked to have a good time, but generally was sensible and sober enough to keep his buddies out of the most serious trouble.  Yes, he did inhale, but discreetly.
 
He majored in organic chemistry, but minored in politics, a very strange combination.  Benzene and Plato.  Downright weird.  His answer to why he studied in the two distinct areas was "I want to avoid repeating two of the worst things that have happened to me - Lyndon Johnson and the fuel crisis”.  Even by OSU standards, his background seemed to be deprived culturally and otherwise, but he did quite well at academics, athletics and socializing.
 
Despite not getting an athletic scholarship, he lettered in basketball and baseball as a walk-on.  He came off the bench at point guard in basketball and started at shortstop in baseball.  He was known for playing under control as indicated by his high assists to turnover ratio in basketball and walks to strikeouts in baseball.  After a hamstring injury, a girlfriend, Judy Robertson, got him started on exercises which would become known as "new age" - yoga, tai - chi and the like.  Judy later was known for courses in Tantric Yoga which were done in seminar form across the country.  No one but Judy and Frank knows if they practiced Tantra together.  With his lifetime stretching and weightlifting regimen, he always seemed in great shape and in charge.
 
As an athlete at OSU he got to be buddies with some of the few blacks in Corvallis.  He had played some country and rock guitar in Vernonia for his own enjoyment.  Ahmed Black, Willie Roberts and Sean Jones (must have had assimilationist parents) introduced him to some of the jazz venues in Portland, and during spring breaks showed him around Oakland, California where they had family.  Although his buddies liked Frank, the learning experience was mostly one sided.  His black teammates already knew too much about white America, but Frank's eyes were really opened by Black culture - he wasn't in Vernonia anymore.  Although they did not plan it that way, sometimes when they went out in groups and the white girls were with the black guys and the black girl was with the white guy, it messed with the local minds.
 
He cheerfully supported the campus Libertarian party despite very little success.  Those that supported the legalization of drugs generally didn't support welfare cutbacks and vice - versa.  In support of his political organizing (or perhaps the reverse), he took drama classes and played character roles in school productions.  Before the phrase was introduced he was a "compassionate conservative".  He started a janitorial service which largely employed those who had a hard time getting jobs - minorities, felons and so on.  He was a good enough judge of character than he had more hiring successes than failures.
 
Based on his engineering classes and interest in yoga, he worked on sketches for a stretch machine which would loosen tendons and ligaments (but not to the point of tearing them loose).  He had a mechanical engineer work on the first hydraulic operated, whimsically named "Stretchomatic ™" which would keep one physically flexible while allowing the user to meditate, watch porno flicks or even (ugh) compose memoranda.  All major joints were flexed to the maximum degree without rending connective tissue or inducing high decibel screaming.  Fifteen minutes a day did wonders.  Since the first machine was completed just before he had to report to the army, his first million would have to wait for a few years.
 
His college years coincided with Jimmy Carter's administration.  To FS, Jimmy's career was way mixed - good intentions, nice guy, no view of the big picture, unintended consequences or hardball politics.  FS's first year out of college coincided with a political revolution.  He had great hopes for Ronnie based on what he had heard of Ronnie's platform.  It turned out that Ronnie, like most of those before him, would screw up big time because of too little intelligence and too much reliance on capitalist creeps and religious jerks.  We can't blame FS, his cynicism never was fully developed.
 
FS didn't have a lot of time to think about politics after he started his four year obligation 1980 - 1984.  After basic training, he worked in supply.  He was not particularly surprised to discover that the army was not the most efficient imaginable organization.  The placement of army bases mostly coincided with the states of elderly politicians who knew how to land pork for their constituents.  The amounts of fuel consumed was the most depressing statistic for FS.  It reminded him of the "gas crisis" of his high school years.  As a middle ground between pragmatism and idealism, he kept a low profile - ears open / mouth shut, neither bitching nor ass kissing.  During his years in the service, fortunately there was no big war, police action or other action involving killing lots of people.  His conscience would have had a real problem with another Viet Nam (or for that matter the later Iraq or Yugoslavia).
 
STRETCHOMATIC
 
In 1984 after his four year gig, FS was pleased to return to Stretchomatic ™.  He thought he had a real money maker which would actually help people.  He took his old machine to chiropractors; yoga , pilates and other such instructors; as well as gym teachers.  From this he learned that many of them didn’t know jack and didn’t want a new kid on their turf.  Despite a lot of wasted time, he did get some valuable information, mostly from yogistes, about appropriate resistance and range of motion to allow good flexibility.
 
The hydraulic contraption would stretch all of the major joints and connective tissue in about 15 minutes a day.  People who could not be bothered with stretch classes could become as limber as those who did.  FS was fortunate to find a new and hungry ad agency in Portland, Clinton Weederman,  that had a great idea.  C-W enlisted ex-sitcom stars on the skids Wanda Winters (born 1950 Valejo, CA) and Leland Driver (born 1938 Dayton, OH) to pimp for the machines.
 
Wanda had starred in a long running television 1970’s sex farce about the lone female fireperson in a firestation full of firemen with different sexual interests.  Although she was the most popular character on the show, she overplayed her hand by demanding script approval and higher pay than the other stars.  She lacked leverage because she had little prior acting experience and had been lucky to get the role in her mid thirties after mostly tending bar and trying to sleep and party with the right industry people.  The few years she spent on the show had mostly allowed her to consume more and better alcohol and drugs.  Her hubris caused the show producer Ace Sherman to introduce a younger, better looking and acting female fireperson to the show.  She was further encouraged to quit the show by being poorly made up and featured in tight shots which showed copious sagging flesh.  The final push came with a script in which her character pays for sex - one of the other cast members had seen the real life version of the event before it was put in written form.  As a result, she left the show and did dinner theater and personal appearances at car shows for several years after that.
 
Leland had been the second banana on a variety show in the 70’s.  His story was different than Wanda’s but had a similar conclusion.  As the show wore on Leland became fatter and fatter.  Success went to his stomach.  Think early Raymond Burr / Perry Mason versus 1960 - 1995 Raymond Burr.  The romantic songs and sketches were becoming embarrassing.  After several warnings Leland tried diuretics and other drugs.  As a result he collapsed during rehearsal.  He was replaced and written out of the show.  For several years he didn’t even do dinner theater - he just stayed low and lived on residuals.
 
Wanda and Leland had one thing in common, even though they barely knew each other, and it wasn’t talent.  They were very determined to get back on top.  They each knew that their best talent could be looks, even though the last impression TV audiences had of them was gross.  Each spent their time out of the public eye improving their looks - plastic surgery, diet drugs (mostly speed), exercise, they tried anything that promised better looks.  Although their regimens were very detrimental to longevity, mental acuity and karmaic improvement, their efforts paid off - by the time Stretchomatic ™ was available they both had beautiful exteriors. 
 
Their improved appearance, marginal celebrity and desperation played into the Stretchomatic ™ ad campaign magnificently.  Although there was never any explicit claim for the product to do anything but improve flexibility the public was not discouraged from thinking that the product could not only improve looks, but run faster than a speeding bullet, and you know the rest.  In fact, after the first few “straight” commercials, Wanda and Leland did jump high buildings and other heroic chores with the help of special effects.
 
Since timber production had fallen off in the Northwest, FS found plenty of willing unemployed to work cheaply.  By that time, his father had started a video rental store since there was no more mill work in Vernonia and his mother had to keep her teaching job past the time that she had planned to retire because of their reduced income.  Stretchomatic ™ could be built for about 25% of its retail price, so after advertising, overhead and distribution, FS cleared about 25% on each sale.  The product not only went to the people who now buy elliptical walkers and treadmills, but also serious gyms.  Despite thousands of the machines being abused or unused, they did help thousands to improve flexibility efficiently.  Some would meditate while using the machine, some would place important calls or dictate important memos, and some would get in healing nap time.
 
His factory was set up in Vernonia and FS hired his father George to run it.  By that time FS lived in Northeast Portland in the Laurelhurst district where he found a great older house at a very good price, while still being close to downtown and the city’s black area.  Because of the African American friends he made at college, he didn’t want to live in an area that was too white.
 
With the factory about forty miles from his house, FS could combine business and pleasure.  His parents still lived in the area, and when he got to Vernonia he was half way to the coast.  His parents good-naturedly wanted to know when they would get a daughter-in-law and some grandchildren.  Because he frequently came with female dates, they at least did not worry about his sexual orientation.  Like many parents, they think that they would love a homosexual son, but they were glad they didn’t have to put it to the test.
 
While at the coast, FS would walk the beaches, look for rocks and shells, but sometimes just stare.  Despite his interest in yoga, he was never good at being in the moment.  By himself, or with a date, he would frequently “zone”.  While zoning he might be walking, sitting, standing or staring either with company or by himself.  While zoning, he showed no signs of thinking at all, but afterwards he had insights into areas he did not even know that he was considering.  He came back with ideas how to advance libertarian politics (strategic alliances), when to get out of gym equipment (three years after its introduction), and how to improve race relations (the answer was along the lines of a Warren Beattie movie “Bullworth” which was at that time about ten years in the future).  For years he attempted to improve on what he called passive thinking, but never improved on his original approach.  His attempts to introduce the discipline (or lack thereof) to colleagues and acquaintances was spotty at best because of the normal individual’s difficulty in letting the mind relax.
 
Aside from zoning, he spent time deep sea fishing, kite flying and finding the best food and accommodations on the coast.  At times he had problems when his date was non-Caucasian, but he usually kept his cool while making his feelings clear.  There was a very tense incident with a drunk in Newport complaining about Japs in front of FS’s Chinese American date Claudia Yee.  Before there was any chance for physical violence, the drunk’s friends pulled him away and apologized profusely.  The drunk had been self medicating rather than taking his prescriptions.  The drunk  thanked his friends by vomiting on several of them.
 
Even though his machine was making FS rich and helping about as many people as could be expected for such a product, he could see the cycle was nearing an end and he wanted other worlds to conquer.  After a couple of years he sold out to the conglomerate Sanders - Holmes.  S - H didn’t have a clue.  The sales price was high in part because of the rumors that there were some very kinky things that could be done with the machine.  The source of the rumors could never be found.  They increased production, used cheaper materials and killed any residual demand in six months.  Stretchomatic ™ went the way of the hula hoop.
 
SIDEBAR Wanda and Leland did a talk show for a three years, invested wisely, and got canceled.  After the cancellation Wanda became a recluse and Leland got HIV.  They got together once a year over dinner as long as Leland’s health permitted.  At one time before Leland showed symptoms of AIDS their combined weight hit 456 pounds.
 
After the sale of Stretchomatic ™ FS had something like $50,000,000 in the bank and no debts.  Before pursuing his next adventure, he decided to go camping in Idaho.  That was in the summer of 1987, perhaps the most important year in his life.
 
SIDEBAR   S - H had no idea what to do with their acquisition.  They had not done enough research to see that Stretchomatic ™ was at the end of its cycle and they had no upgrade or other product to replace it.  It remained moribund until the mid 90’s when it was purchased by former employees of Microsoft and eventually equipped with a voice operated Internet option.  Based on the new owners huge early losses, the new company had a market value of 1 billion until they attained positive cash flow.
 
NEW ALCHEMY
 
When he got back from Idaho, FS was convinced that he could make a lasting mark on Oregon, the US and the World.  All that he needed to do was apply some of the ingenuity which got him his first fortune to the social, industrial or political arena.
 
So many of society’s problems revolved around addictions that FS funded New Alchemy in September 1987 to study the chemical causes of addictions.  He had been intrigued by research and anecdotal reports of addictions being associated with poor nutrition.  FS thought that supplements or just sound nutrition could cure or prevent some alcoholism and drug dependency.  New Alchemy is still around today.  Occasional news reports show some of the results obtained.  Unfortunately, his foundation was never as successful as he had hoped.  Many of the results showed that better nutrition could alleviate drug problems, but getting people to practice better nutrition was the hard part.
 
FS had a much more lasting mark in the industrial area with his NewFuel corporation.  As people had known since shortly after petroleum extraction began, there was a limited supply.  When the supply ran out, the basis for industrial society would be gone.  After the gas crisis of the 1970’s various solutions had been  proposed - conservation, “green” sources, fusion, production of gas from shale or coal, or nuclear.  Each proposed solution had obvious disadvantages.  On top of the shortages looming, particularly if the third world attained a standard of living like North America and Europe, there was the pollution hazard.  Based on his background, FS decided that the best bet for continued supply and environmental friendliness was a simpler form of fuel - natural gas, methane, propane or even hydrogen. 
 
FS was quite successful in his relationships as he had been in high school.  His changes were improvements - he was more mature and being rich and successful never hurt the dating game.  He had maintained a non-exclusive relationship with Ahmed Black’s sister Monique (mo NEE kay) since his days at OSU.  They not only liked each other a lot, but both were pleased to mess with the heads of racists of all colors.  His family and friends in Vernonia initially didn’t care for her and some were never won over.  Others eventually took pride in their “close black friend” Monique.  It didn’t hurt at all that she was gorgeous and smart and had a brother who had a couple of years in the NFL before becoming a successful LA business man.  Some of her friends and family never took to FS, but most were at least quietly impressed by how successful FS was.  
 
Monique was a couple of inches taller than FS and a year older.  She looked more like Tyra Banks than a hot shot biologist. Together they looked like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman with a really dark tan.  She had in fact modeled some while she was in college, but she could not see it as a long term career.  In 1987 she was working at Biotics, one of the fledgling biotech companies in Portland.  She was engaged in the proverbial hunt for a cure for cancer and other diseases.
 
FAMILY LIFE
 
FS had loved Monique for many years, but the racial difference and his feeling of inferiority in looks and experience had led him to think that she would never marry him.  After his business success, he finally felt worthy and decided he could handle the racial situation.  On October 7, 1987 he asked her to marry him thusly:  “A future president of the United States needs a wife and you are the best candidate I have ever met”.
 
She responded thusly:  “The mother of the children of the future president of the United States needs a husband, and you are the best white one I have ever met.  I accept.”
 
FS:  “Best WHITE one?”
 
MS was laughing so hard, he started to laugh too.  No more laughter for awhile.  FS had a stricken look.
 
FS:  “Mother of WHAT children?”
 
MS:  “Some of the best laid or mislaid plans lead to children.  Or was it misplanned lays.  If no one checks the dates too closely and we get married quickly, we’ll be OK.”
 
They married October 15, 1987 in MS’s Northeast Portland Baptist Church.  Ahmed was best man and MS’s younger sister Yvonne was maid of honor.  The wedding was small with only 50 close friends evenly divided between the families.  At first the groom’s side of the aisle and the bride’s side were quietly hostile.  At the reception afterwards with a few drinks under their belts, they found a lot of common interest.  Clyde Drexler had a lot of fans everywhere in Oregon, and Ahmed and some of his friends hung out with him.  FS’s friends knew some of the best places in Western Oregon for fishing and hunting which impressed many of the bride’s side.  Both sides of the aisle contained proficient and opinionated barbecue cooks.
 
As with any interracial couple, they had their rough moments, but only rarely (let’s be honest - there is no “Happily forEVER after”).
 
Ahmed and other close friends at least claim that is how the proposal, acceptance and wedding went.
 
Monique kept her job at Biotics until shortly before Hakeem was born July 13, 1988 (close enough to nine months since his birth was a little late).  After some discussion she decided to be a Spenser, since she was still black regardless of her name.
 
After Hakeem’s birth, Monique took consulting work in bio tech.  Since she initially only took local assignments or ones she could mostly handle from her office in town, she was able to be around most of the time while Hakeem was a toddler. FS had a flexible schedule at that time, so they didn’t need any outside care.
 
By this time, Frank and Monique had become the star couple of Oregon.  MS’s work as a consultant allowed her to see many sides of bio tech, drugs and nutrition - internet upstarts, old established pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering and health foods.  Her consulting ended up being both higher paid and more interesting that her previous job.  All they had was money, looks and intelligence, but that was enough.
 
Local Libertarians had been talking up FS as a candidate for US rep from Portland.  Frank was frankly flattered, but could not see wasting his time on a pointless run at a “safe” Democratic seat.  He took a pass.
 
After his marriage, he moved to a four bedroom view (when there was a sun break) condo in the West Hills of Portland.  He had a minor mansion built for his parents in Vernonia with a room reserved for himself and his family when he visited.  He continued to go to the Northeast Baptist Church as much for social reasons as religious.  Hakeem went to the Albina rec center in Northeast Portland Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoon for the same games that FS had played as a kid.  Those days were not only for Hakeem, but to keep FS in touch with sports and to find out what “ordinary” people were up to.  FS liked rich people, but could not exist on a steady diet of them.  The rich were a little too different than his background for his complete comfort.  With care, charity affairs and fishing, dinner jackets and waders could be carefully balanced.  He took a stand in rejecting golf.  When some buds really wanted him to golf with them, he would go along, but do handstands and cartwheels when the others took their strokes.
 
NEWFUEL AND REFOCUS
 
Despite his stand against big government, he sucked up big time in order to get grants for his NewFuel company.  Like any rational person, he would prefer to gamble with other people’s money.  He used his army contacts and friends in the Oregon establishment shamelessly.  His big problem was that there was no more fuel crisis, although there would be more in the future as petroleum extraction became more difficult.  Since he couldn’t play the scarcity card successfully, he used the anti-pollution card to the extent that he could. 
 
Broken down into simple pieces, the new fuel problem contained but a few parts:
 
            Synthesize and / or divide readily available, nearly inexhaustible elements (hydrogen, carbon and oxygen) into a useable fuel such as natural gas, methane, propane.  This required vast energy supplies and was pointless if the process polluted or used fossil fuels.
 
            Transport the fuel from its production points to where it would be used.  Transport safety and efficiency depended on the flammability and energy density of the fuel involved.
 
            Produce or modify engines to use the synthetic fuels.
 
The NewFuel approach was to locate a green energy source such as wind, solar, thermal or tidal close to water for hydrogen extraction, produce the fuel at the dedicated energy source and move the fuel by pipeline, truck or train as appropriate to fuel type and transportation available.  With a little seed money and private (oil companies wanted to look at least light green and knew that oil would run out sometime) and federal grants, in 1989 NewFuel built a pilot plant close to Ontario in Eastern Oregon.  The site had abundant blue collar labor since agriculture was in the toilet when the plant was built. It was close to lots of water from the Snake River and was a very sunny and windy site, making for natural materials and green energy for NewFuel.  For several years only small amounts of hydrogen and methane were produced and the venture ate people’s money.  By the 1990’s all anybody wanted to invest in was high tech and internet companies, so NewFuel just toddled along without commercial application.  As different production methods were tried, rejected or refined, the cost of the NewFuel equivalent to a gallon of gas kept dropping.  Unfortunately for NewFuel, the price of gas, inflation adjusted, didn’t move much.
 
Maria was a deliberate addition to the family in 1991.  FS and MS didn’t want Hakeem to be an only child, and a balance to a young boy’s craziness seemed to be a younger girl’s craziness.
 
Both children learned about racism early on.  They went to mostly white public West Side grade schools.  Although there had been some black or mixed students at the schools that they attended, being the children of a rich white father and black mother was very unusual because most of the rich black people in Portland were athletes - typically current or former Trailblazers.  Nothing, no matter how logical, can prevent the hurt feelings of those who are insulted based on their race.  When out with their mother shopping, they frequently were given “special attention” to prevent thievery, or rudely ignored.  When with their father, they commonly got strange looks or weird questions. The time that FS was asked if he was looking after the housekeeper’s children, he answered “yes, and I’m the housekeper”.  When silence didn’t suffice, FS suggested to his kids that a good response to an insult was “I am the wonderful child of two wonderful people” or “We are the future of America - Deal with it”.  Sometimes it worked.  Frank and Monique couldn’t decide if it was better when the family was treated well because of their celebrity.  It helped greatly that the majority of people around Portland mostly thought well of all of them and were pleased that Portland’s number one couple was not as whitebread as the preponderance of the town.  Much of Portland knew that it was diversity deficient and not completely happy about it.
 
New Alchemy had done enough research in 1993 to reach conclusions which surprised a lot of people in and out of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation business.  Success rates for rehabilitation increased 40% if those being rehabilitated ate controlled diets rich in fruit, vegetables and grains with little animal product, salt or sugar.  The results were controversial and difficult to apply to many drug programs which were too strapped for cash to control the diets of their clients.  New Alchemy tackled the diets of those who were currently drug addicts.
 
NewFuel had results in 1993 as well.  Its Ontario facility was producing hydrogen and methane in large quantities without using any fossil fuels.  Flush with success and cash infusions from a Ford - Toyota - General Motors alternative fuel joint venture, NewFuel started on biological generation of hydrogen from biomass five miles north of North Bend off US 101 in Coos County on the Oregon Coast using tidal power.  That location was chosen for the pool of available cheap labor in a depressed area, the same as Ontario, except that Coos County had lost its forestry and fishing.  Monique became involved in that sub-venture because it tied in with her professional background.  With production of fuels increasing, NewFuel still had to find efficient transport and machines suitable for burning  hydrogen and synthetic fuels.  NewFuel’s good fortune was that car makers were looking at fuel cells and other engines capable of using its product, because the car companies had to both look green for political reasons and to stay in business when gasoline would run out.  The literal missing link was getting from the source of hydrogen and other simple synthetic hydrocarbon fuels to the combustion chamber.  In their unpressurized gaseous form they took up too much space to be practical.  Pressurized they were at risk of blowing their containers.  Freezing them and keeping them frozen required a lot of energy and special packaging.  Auto gas tanks in their then current form were useless.
 
Because the Libertarian party eschewed social policy, FS went looking for a tool for improving the human condition outside of politics.  Since Ahmed Black’s business in LA was mostly running itself, Ahmed agreed to run the new ReFocus foundation.  FS was juggling so many things, he had to take a back seat on this new project.  Together Frank and Ahmed decided to steal the best ideas from the new age (including the popular Chinese offshoot Falun Gong), martial arts, Communitarianism,  various Black self improvement organizations (Garveyism, Black Panthers, Muslims) and Promise Keepers while throwing out the many bad parts.
 
First and foremost, they saw that they didn’t want a cult or anything which would be more important than religious faith.  Instead of a Supreme Leader, there would be broad outlines for those who wanted to join.  The organization would provide opportunities for personal and societal improvements but no hard rules or financial requirements.  ReFocus would be more like a combination of a service organization such as Rotary, health club and policy debate society.  The combination mass movement was unique in U.S. history.  No other organization gatherings started with breathing exercises, moved to stretching, debated transit problems and then left after a vegetable or fruit juice toast.
 
Frank and Ahmed decided on a few overall principles for ReFocus:
 
            It would welcome all races and religions.  Beyond that it would emphasize good relations between the groups by emphasizing common interests rather than wedge issues.  Debates on hot button issues such as abortion were discouraged, while exploring ways of averting unplanned pregnancy were encouraged.
 
            Self respect through accomplishment would be key.   
 
            Community help was organized either independently or though existing organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and SOLV in Oregon.
 
            It would maintain neutrality on most directly political issues.  ReFocus would include socialists and Republicans.
 
            Health would be encouraged by moderate diet, drinking and exercise.  Lessons from New Alchemy, Yoga and other disciplines would be used.  Ahmed particularly felt that even slight improvements in nutrition would have a multiplier effect in society - fewer sick days, lower health bills, and better mental health.
 
            Mediation of disputes was preferred over either courts or violence.
 
Because ReFocus did not promise eternal life (either in corporeal form or otherwise), a divine leader or instant riches, it did not become an immediate success.  It got a few entertainment and political stars.  Most, unfortunately, joined for the publicity, but it did help recruitment.  Ahmed was not concerned with the slow start, since he believed it would be better to be a growing concern than a shooting star.
 
ReFocus got some press based on comparisons to various cult groups, but because of the deliberate non-controversial nature of the organization - no shootouts, no orgies - there was not a lot to report except for some thinner, livelier people and neighborhood cleanups.
 
By the year 2000 there were 115,000 ReFocus members in the U.S. and 37,000 outside the U.S.  Some governments viewed it as subversive despite all attempts to avoid controversy.  To the world class paranoid, everything is a threat.  In a strange fit of agreement, China, India and Pakistan banned ReFocus.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, a few in the U.S. claimed that ReFocus  was an anti-Christian organization and were vehemently against it.
 
The most successful ReFocus program was in student / parent / school improvement.  Volunteers stepped in to help where parents and schools did not have the time or money by helping parents who had addictions, and schools with tutoring and arts, music and sports programs where otherwise unavailable.  The programs were based on local student, parent and school advice without heavy-handed central control, but with components proven successful in other areas.
 
All of the programs were graded on a cost / benefit basis.  Keeping one kid in school might be worth $1,000, but not $1,000,000.
           
Before the millennium rolled around FS felt that it was time for him to devote more of his energy to politics.  Even though his projects for personal and economic improvement had some success, his biggest contribution would be the Stretchomatic™ until his ideas gained widespread use.  He could only see that happening through elective office, and he was just too good looking to work from behind the scenes.  At least that is what Monique told him when she was in a good mood.
 
NOMINATION 2000
  
 In 2000 after people sobered up, found out that most things worked and went back to work (some were still living off the land, frequently by holding up stores, convenient or otherwise), politics restarted in earnest.  George W. Bush gained momentum in his quest for the Republican nomination.  He managed not to offend anyone greatly, and was about as popular as any Republican could be with minorities and white evangelicals simultaneously.  He stayed on message:
 
            Big tent
 
            Big Business
 
            Small Government
 
            Compassionate Conservatism
 
Lamar Alexander had the ability to disappear into any background which would have been great as a defense against a predator, but didn't help in politics.  Everyone did think that he was nice and unlikely to start any wars, but that was about the end of it.  The Right (as in wing, but in no other sense) candidates had many passionate followers, but their vote was split too many ways and a lot of Republicans were willing to pick a winner that they could stand rather than a loser that they really liked.  Cain wasn’t much except for being non-Bush.
 
George W. made one big mistake, and that was to underestimate how much Elizabeth Dole wanted the nomination.  Because he felt that she was angling for the VP slot he patronized her too much.  In the candidate debates, he would never directly attack her.  When questioned about her opinion about China, he said "That kind of thinking comes from somebody I want on my team."  His off the cuff remark showed Ms. Dole that he thought that he had the nomination already.  In fact he did think that he had the nomination already and hoped he could gain votes by offering Dole either the VP or a cabinet spot.
 
Al Gore did in fact have the democratic nomination since 1998.  With Gebhart and the other pretenders out of the way, only Bill Bradley stood in his way.  Bill Bradley, for some reason, did not understand that he had the same chance as sherbet in a Saudi summer.  Let us count the ways that Bill Bradley blanked:
 
            Democrats did not like him because he had badmouthed both parties
 
            Gore seemed a sure winner since he was as good as Clinton in all the ways Clinton was good and not horrible in all of the ways that Clinton was horrible
 
            Bradley was just as boring as Gore
 
            Bradley had no issue that anyone cared about
 
On the way to the nominating conventions, Bush and Gore wrapped up almost all of the nominating votes in their respective (but not respectable) parties.  There was a difference - whereas Bush was picking up slim majorities or pluralities with lots of votes going to Dole or those on the right, Gore was decimating token opposition.
 
Once they were nominated, their strategies were clear.
 
ELECTION 2000
 
Gore selected Gray Davis, governor of California for a running mate in order to balance the ticket geographically.  Gray was more defensive than offensive.  He was meant not to hurt the ticket.
 
For Gore:
 
            I'm like Clinton only better.
 
            Since everything is good now, it can only get better under a superior president.
 
He did have some baggage:
 
            Money raising scandals left over from the Clinton administration.
 
            Hypocrisy about tobacco and a lot of other matters (early support of Internet etc.).
 
            Fear from moderates that he would veer left from Clinton / Gore policy.
 
In order to optimize his packaging he:
 
            Always had his photogenic family around to contrast his values with Clinton.
 
            Never was seen in public with anyone remotely Chinese.
 
            Made vague statements about "improving" trade and welfare programs.
 
In a typical speech:
 
"I will be pleased to be the one to continue the greatest surge of prosperity ever experienced in world history.  With what we expect to be a Democratic legislature we can fine tune in the few areas where we currently lag.
 
            A combination of improved regulation and jawboning will reduce our trade gap with the world.
 
            Loosening the rigid requirements of welfare reform will result in improved lives for those at the bottom of our society.
 
            Corporate profits are running at such high levels that American businesses can now afford higher minimum wages, better health benefits and child care.
 
            The health of Americans can be improved by starting with good care at birth.  If we follow that up with 100% prevention of juvenile smoking and drinking, we can have the healthiest society in world history."
 
This, of course, sounded great as it was meant to.  Commentators did notice that it was short on specifics, factually incorrect in places, and short of any certainty of success.  It did, however work like a charm for most Americans, perhaps excepting those who ran or invested in those Corporations making excess profits.
 
Bush had most of the right wingers locked up since they could not go to Gore and there was no feasible third party to go to.  Businesses were scared of Gore more than Clinton.  A lot of people just thought that it was a time for a change.  An irritated Dole would not take the VP spot and therefore weakened the ticket.  Colin Powell was offered the spot, but had too many requirements (choice of chief of staff and secretary of state) to get the spot.  Losing both as running mates hurt a lot.  Dan Quayle had seen enough of second place and wasn't wanted in any case.  Bush ended up taking Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania.  Bush knew that winning a state the size of Pennsylvania could make the difference between winning and losing the election.
 
Bush irritated too many moderates when he ran right to get nominated, and lost too many conservatives when he ran left in the general election. Bush did better with minority voters than most Republicans, but not well enough. Gore sold himself as a less grotesque Clinton, but just as smart economically Clinton.  Most forgave Gore his lack of personality or ideas beyond enlarging the scope and expense of the Federal Government.  He promised something to just about everyone (right to lifers, smokers and gun owners excluded) and enough people bought it. 
 
GORE AS PRESIDENT
 
There were enough people who either liked or forgave Clinton and Gore or didn’t want to break the string of good economic news and no major foreign wars so Gore was elected.  Gore got 48% of the popular vote and 285 electoral votes; Bush got 46% of the vote and 253 electoral votes; other parties got 6 % of the vote (Buchanan for the Reform party; Leineman for the Libertarian party and various socialists and greens).  Bush won the Rocky Mountain and the South, Gore won the Coasts and they split the Midwest.  The public seemed to be ambivalent about how things were going in electing a slim majority of Republicans in the Senate and a slim majority of  Democrats in the House.
 
FS continued his program of uniting Libertarians with socially liberal Republicans.  In many jurisdictions, those who would normally run on the straight Republican ticket ran on the Republican / Libertarian ticket.  Three governors, 25 U.S. representatives and 6 U.S. senators were elected on split tickets.  There was even a Libertarian / Democratic U.S. representative from Boulder, CO.  Her position on marijuana probably did it.
 
Gore 2000 turned out to be the flip side to Bush 1988, the last gasp of a popular administration.  What didn’t go wrong? 
 
Gas prices went up over $2.50 at the pump within a year of Gore’s election.  Because Gore was very sensitive to his environmental constituency he tried to get by with higher CAFÉ standards for passenger cars.  While that helped some, it irritated SUV lovers and did nothing for truck drivers.  Of course, relaxing any environmental standards for oil exploration or building new nuclear plants was forbidden.  Even windmills killed too many birds.
 
The stock market didn’t plunge, it just dropped regularly throughout his administration.  By 2004 the DOW was down to 7522.  As usual, the stock market losses were both cause and effect for a plummeting economy.  Unemployment went to 9.3%.  The economy was officially in a recession.  At least there wasn’t much inflation at first.
 
Saddam didn’t go away in Iraq.  There were more political killings in the Mideast and Ireland and the Balkans in 2003 than at any time in the last 10 years.  With no good options, Gore talked peace and did nothing.  Gore extended full recognition to a weakened Cuba, but Castro put so many conditions on renewed relations that Gore had to recant thereby irritating everyone on all sides.  Under threat of war, Taiwan agreed to union with mainland China.  That really irked all remaining cold warriors.
 
This presented a terrific opportunity for the Republicans in the House.  As everything went into the toilet, they could oppose everything that Gore wanted, lose the vote and then let Gore take the blame and do so in good conscience.
 
Gore had been both unlucky and foolish.  He believed that the economy would stay red hot for at least another four years, so he presented a package of expensive new programs shortly after he was elected.  He talked smaller government, but didn’t mean it for a minute.  His slight majority in the House and enough liberal (or willing to see him fail) Republicans in the Senate allowed him to pass:
 
            No new oil exploration almost anywhere
            No cutting in National Forests
            More limits on fishing and grazing
            Expanded health coverage in both benefits allowed and people covered
            National school curriculum and tests for public schools
            Handgun registration
            Sensitivity and diversity training for police
            Limits of tobacco crops and imports
            Higher minimum wages, more regulations on employers
            A return to much of the old agricultural subsidies and support and many of the recently eliminated welfare programs
 
Politically these moves were targeted to hurt only those who would never think of voting for Gore, and please those who were already for him and perhaps find him a few new voters.
 
Naturally all of the negatively affected groups (cattlemen, police, schools, fishermen, hospitals, doctors and nurses, tobacco growers, oilmen) except for gun makers were given Federal aid to soften the effect of the legislation.  At this point, even with a robust economy the budget would have had a deficit.  Gore’s advisers had not seen it that way because they only could see more government as better.
 
On September 11, 2001 the first major event of the Gore administration occurred.  After the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City, Gore was blamed for being caught flat footed.  His response was to send billions to New York and New Jersey, but as a leader, he failed to inspire.  Despite the overwhelming backing for some sort of military action, he only pursued Osama bin Laden.
 
By 2002 the deficit was back up to 50 billion and headed higher.  Gore could not take anything away from his special interest groups, so he raised marginal tax rates on adjusted individual incomes over $50,000 to 40%.  The tax increase was supposed to mollify those who thought that the economy depended on a balanced budget - Wall Street and many economists.  It hurt too many people and dried up purchases and investments.
 
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
 
All of the bad news led to the Republicans retaking the House and gaining dominance in the Senate in 2002.  In the conservative districts, most of the winners were social conservative Republicans, but in the swing districts Republican / Libertarians made lots of wins.  The Democrat David Wu in Oregon’s 1st District was tied to an unpopular Democratic administration and had irritated the high tech industry in his district by fighting against most favored status for China. Earlier Republicans had been too right wing for the moderate voters.  FS was a social moderate, a successful businessman and, perhaps most important, nationally known.  Fifties, sixties and beyond rocker Eagle, came campaigned for him.  FS had known Eagle since Eagle had given a speech in Vernonia and Eagle very much supported FS politics.  Even though it had been years since he had been at the top of the charts, his continued prominence in Oregon business (he bought a lot of real estate at the right time), arts and charities meant he still had a lot of influence.  As a consequence, FS retook a district which had been held for several years by democrats despite its relatively even voter registration. FS beat Wu by 12%.
 
From 2002 onwards, Gore’s hands were tied.  In order to please his interest groups, he did as much as possible by executive order such as declaring more Wilderness Areas and National Monuments.  Within existing laws, he pushed Federal affirmative action as much as he could.
 
In recognition of FS’s work in the 2002 election and his experience in the energy field, he got the energy committee assignment he wanted.  Even though he was a freshman, his national reputation allowed him to get several energy bills, not only passed out of committee, but eventually sent to President Gore.
 
FS’s two major bills were “Clean Air / Energy Independence” and “Synfuel Infrastructure”.  FS’s standard quip was “They can’t blame us for choosing catchy titles over substance”.
 
“Clean Air / Energy Independence” gave hydrogen and synthetic fuels a five year pass on fuel taxes and federal loan guarantees for small producers and required that cars that the Federal government bought after 2005 would be able to use at least one of hydrogen or a list of synfuels.  In the words of FS “This act will eventually get us cleaner air and independence from foreign oil.  No more will we suffer from a negative trade balance, no more will we have brown air and ozone alerts.  Yes, it will take a few years for this new industry to mature, and we will lose a little gas tax, but the payoff is well worth the gamble.”  The most ardent backers were politicians from states with no oil wells, many greens, some American Firsters and some auto makers who were well ahead on the alternate energy curve.  Critics included those that didn’t want to spend money or lose revenue over aid to a small industry, those that thought it was another loser such as shale oil from the first fuel crisis and oil state politicians from both parties that worried that the plan would succeed all too well and hurt their domestic economy.
 
“Synfuel Infrastructure” funded pioneer fueling stations for synfuels with the intent that they would be sold to the highest bidder when synfuel use reached high enough levels not to need subsidies.
   
President Gore was torn when he learned that the bill would cross his desk.  He did not want to support anything that an up and coming Republican / Libertarian was responsible for, he did not want to waste government money for someone else’s interest group, and he didn’t want to lose Texas votes.  Leaning the other way, he could get a few votes from some greens and those who would produce the new fuels.  In the end, he decided the bills were too big a gamble and vetoed both.  His vetoes were sustained and one of the biggest issues of the 2004 election had been established. 
 
FS did the natural thing in response - he went on the talk shows.  At first it was news shows like “Face the Nation”, “Meet the Press” and “Grilled by Bigfeet”.  Samples FS lines from the shows:
 
            “President Gore doesn’t like cars and his actions will ensure that your children won’t have access to private transportation, and maybe not public transportation.”  Face the Nation November 22, 2003.
 
            “The Petroleum Exploration Group projects that crude oil costs will double in fifteen years and all supplies will be exhausted in 100 years based on current usage trends.  Apparently since the current administration will have their pensions by then, it just doesn’t matter.  They are not doing a thing to keep American moving.”  Grilled by Bigfeet January 14, 2004.
 
            “The US now imports 63% of its crude oil, much of it from nations which have been hostile to us at times in the past and all of it from nations that may be hostile to us in the future.  What if they want to cut us off based on policy differences - do we let them dictate to us, or do we go to war?  That is the position that the Gore administration has put us in.”  Also Grilled by Bigfeet January 14, 2004.
 
As much because of his demeanor and looks as his logic, FS became a frequent visitor to the entertainment talk shows like Leno, Letterman and Maher.  The shows had been looking for someone new and interesting since Jesse Ventura had been overexposed.  FS could make the mundane seem exciting.  He was even given a pass on responding to Leno’s question about the most important current issue - “It’s a gas.”  He didn’t carry the baggage of so many supposed conservative icons.  He could talk about family values without insulting homosexuals or being asked about previous wives or bastard relatives.  Both the Spenser and Black families supported him completely.  He was well spoken, well dressed and didn’t seem mean.  If called upon, he would discuss a new novel or movie rather than politics.  He interviewed with some of the car magazines explaining how a combination of technologies could produce efficient, even high performance, cars which ran green.  He also learned quite a bit about car makers’ efforts to produce practical but socially acceptable cars.
 
Gas prices got higher and FS became the hot commodity for the Republicans.  In just about every area he trumped Gore.  He could eat into traditional democratic minority blocks.  He had a very photogenic and very black wife.  He spoke a little Spanish and had a fair portion of native American blood.  His bills had the potential to not only cut air pollution but make America less dependent on foreign oil.  He was not quite as socially progressive as Gore, but was only against late term abortions and open about college marijuana smoking and his outed gay cousin, Gene Griffin.
 
Working with Mondo-Daimler (formerly DaimlerChrysler), he obtained a modified copy of their prototype family car that got the equivalent of 80 mpg and was pictured with it as often as possible to illustrate Gore’s missed opportunities.  In the interim fuel delivery problems had been resolved.
 
He was not as strong with traditional Republicans as some because of his social views and his marriage turned off some of the more bigoted.  Despite this, most right-wingers, including Trent Lott of Mississippi, approved of enough of his views to prefer him to the hated Clinton / Gore administrations.
 
His views on the Middle East cost him a few votes.  His stance was not so strongly slanted towards Israel as most politicians because he listened to both converted American and immigrant Muslims.  FS was also not as anti-Castro as some would like.  When Castro quit with congestive heart failure he chose Jaime Alarcon as his replacement.  Alarcon was an unknown, which made the Cuba situation hard to figure.   FS’s feeling that the armed forces were for defense and not for starting wars or supporting local economies took some explaining to hawks and pork mongers.  Worst of all for many Americans, he was not in favor of the death penalty. 
 
Between congressional sessions, FS traveled the world.  He spent time especially in Latin America where his rudimentary Spanish improved, in Africa where Monique took the time to teach him what she had learned in her hobby as an amateur African historian, and in Asia and Oceana where he discussed synfuel technology with fossil fuel deficient countries such as Japan.
 
As 2004 rolled around Clinton / Gore fatigue was immense.  Not only were people tired of having essentially the same administration for 12 years (much as it was in 1992), but the economy was a mess.  As a result, there was more poverty and more crime.  The issues that Gore used in his favor in 2000 were haunting him in his attempt at succeeding himself.  Then he was blamed for the failure of the dikes in New Orleans during Katrina and 9-1-1.
 
THE NOMINATION
 
Given the great positive publicity that FS had been receiving the previous two years and the lack of any other credible choices after three straight losses, his Republican nomination for president in 2004 was a cakewalk.  The Libertarians, after much squabbling, decided that it was worth a large compromise with principle to back a winner and nominated him as well.
 
Gore stuck with Gray Davis as Vice President.  FS chose Elizabeth Dole without irritating any of the Dole backers, since Elizabeth knew that she didn’t have a shot at president.  A real coup for FS was his joint announcement with Colin Powell that the aforementioned would be FS’s Secretary of State.
 
Gore’s position was much more difficult.  He was widely viewed as a likely loser, and several Democrats saw a chance at the nomination.  He was challenged on the left by Rep. Gephardt of Missouri and former New Jersey Senator Bradley and on the right by Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.  Fortunately for Gore, Bradley and Gephardt were really boring and had nothing new to say.  All they had was more income redistribution schemes.  Bradley wanted reparations for blacks and Gephardt wanted to legislate ceilings for executive pay.  They respectively appealed to the greedy or vengeful, and thus did get a lot of votes, but not enough.  Kerrey’s ideas to cut regulatory burdens on business and streamline government had little appeal to Democrats and Republican votes didn’t help him in the primaries.  With no really good alternatives, most democrats stuck with Gore and re-nominated him.
 
Gore kept hoping for a miracle, but nothing went his way.  Outside of organized labor and Jews, he could not get solid support from any large voting block.  Even the rank and file of Unions were tired of Clinton / Gore and economic downturn.  Besides getting just about all of the Libertarian and Republican votes, FS could also count on the businesses, many African-Americans who were willing to go for a black first lady, conservative Hispanics (it helped that Hakeem Spenser was fluent in Spanish and Frank was adequate), and many of the greens based on FS’s synfuel proposals.
 
The presidential debates were held in Kansas City in August.  Gore had the clear edge in politic speak, but lost on most other counts.
 
            Gore:  “During my 25 years in government …”
            FS:  “During my years in business, social action, travel and government …”
 
            Gore:  “I will not let the forces of reaction allow us to retreat on affirmative action.”
FS:  “I will support equality of opportunity, starting from birth so that affirmative action will join the history books.”
 
Gore:  “The Gore - Gray administration will continue to make strides in cleaning up the environment.”
FS:  “Unlike Mr. Gore, I will make no attempts to eradicate the personal car.  With Spenser / Dole, you will have efficient, environmentally friendly transportation as outlined in Auto Monthly.
 
            Gore:  “We will continue to support women’s right to choose.”
            FS:  “I will work to end both unwanted pregnancies and the death of viable fetuses.”
 
Gore:  “My opponent will cut taxes so far that the government will have to cut programs supporting schools, police, and defense.  A Libertarian administration would cut or eliminate all the progressive programs initiated by democrats over the years.”
            FS:  Here is how government will be reduced under Spenser / Dole:
 
Military redundancy will be eliminated.  We will no longer run military bases that the military does not want.  We will no longer build weapons that the military does not want.  We will not prepare for aggressive wars, hence our foreign commitments will be reduced.  We will stop wasteful payments for purely local functions such as schools and police.  The states will once more run their business.  We won’t pay out more for health care than we collect in health taxes.  With our debt and tax reductions there will be less debt on which to pay interest.
 
Gore:  The disadvantaged of this country will get nothing from FS.  We should not turn our backs on the great Federal programs.
FS:  Mr. Gore is correct.  We will not be giving the disadvantaged anything in the way of expensive giveaways designed to win votes.  We do promise equal opportunity to all which I fully intend to enforce through the courts as necessary, a job that Gore / Gray has avoided in favor of more programs.
 
FS:  Mr. Gore, I see that at last count there are 335 federal programs to aid state schools.  At what point do you see moving from our current position as a rich nagging grandparent with no particular responsibility to a complete Federal takeover of all education?
Gore:  We will continue to be a helpful partner to local education, and from everything that we see here that is the role teachers, students and parents want us to play.
 
FS:  Spenser / Dole will cure the Gore / Gray recession by turning loose private enterprise, specifically by enabling a new industry for clean power and new forms of transportation.  Will Gore / Gray respond to our situation with the same failed tactics?
 
Gore:  What we won’t do is risk the economy and the ecology on unproved  reckless technologies.  Now that those who have been made prosperous from the last three Democratic administrations are paying closer to their share in taxes, the economy will be put right within a year.
 
Gore:  We have prudently avoided future loss which would have been caused by initiating any unwinable incursion to the Middle East to get revenge for 9-1-1.
 
FS:  I can’t tip my hand on the policy that I will pursue in the Middle East.  I will say that I would have listened closer to better advisers and no Saudi Arabian pilots would have learned in the US how to take off, but not land.
FS:  During the Clinton – Gore years, the dikes in New Orleans were never given the priority necessary to avoid the Katrina disaster.
Gore:  We will never know what would have prevented the destruction from Katrina, but our administration is doing a great job of rebuilding New Orleans and vicinity.
           
Neither candidate had anything helpful to say about drugs.  Gore would offer more treatment and less jail time.  FS would undercut Gore on sentencing for possession of small amounts of drugs - no jail time at all, but fines would be permissible.  Generally, FS preferred a very short list of Federal crimes as opposed to the feel good legislation that congress loved - FS would let the state handle most property and drug crimes.  Anything that was local should be kept local.  Gore was pretty much status quo.  Gore picked up a lot of votes for being in favor of capital punishment.  FS was against, but would not interfere in states’ jurisdiction.
 
Gore had no choice about supporting all of the National Education Association positions on education.  FS had no hope of getting many of the votes of government employees (he did better than he expected), so it was easy for him to support private school vouchers and privatization wherever possible.
 
The ads were much like the debates.  Gore listed all of the things that would go if FS won.  FS asked if people wanted their taxes cut and debt reduced.  FS ads showed a high efficiency car which could run on synfuel.  Gore ads quoted concerned scientist Fred Bourne “The infrastructure for synfuel cars is years in the future and may never be safe”.
 
THE ELECTION
 
In the words of commentator Bernie Simkins, Gore offered the “Devil you know” and FS offered the “Angel you’re not sure about”. 
 
FS won the election easily.  Gore won California, Colorado, Minnesota, Tennessee, Florida, New York and a few small states and D. C. for 162 electoral votes and 39% of the popular vote.  FS got the rest of the states for 376 electoral votes and 55% of  the popular vote.  Greens, Reform Party and New Age loonies got no electoral votes and took 6% of the popular vote.  Exit polls showed that FS got a large majority of the Anglo vote, close to 40% of Black and Hispanic votes (but fewer Cuban votes than that based on his pragmatic Cuban position), 50% of Asian Americans, almost all Republican votes, 60% of independents, and 23% of Democrats.  He won among Arabs and Muslims and lost among Jews because of his Middle East policy.  Republicans and Libertarians (three representatives elected in strange districts in  Vermont, Colorado and Massachusetts) got a small majority.  The influence of social conservatives and traditional left- wingers was slightly diminished.
 
New York elected a celebrity senator.  She divorced shortly after taking office.  Fortunately for FS, even though she was against just about everything he was for, she was in the minority party.
 
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS 2005
 
“The world faces many challenges.  The most important two may not be what you think they are.  Because you won’t want to listen to me anymore if I dwell on them, I will simply tell you how we will face them.  They are:
 
            Population stability.
 
            Sustainability of resources.
 
In some countries the population is contracting so we know that we can achieve equilibrium.  Using a little sense and technology, we can get to zero growth without abortions.
 
The resource problems are difficult, but solutions will be aided by achieving population stability.  Our team has the talent to excel at sustainability in part by using green methods to produce clean fuel.
 
As a bonus, if we can get Congress to go along, the cost and intrusion of the Federal government will decrease over the course of this administration.
 
Improving our country over the next four years is the easy job.  Keeping it going for the next hundred years is the hard part.”
 
If you are wondering where the promises of new Federal largesse and local pork are, you must be thinking of another administration.”
 
The pundit response was favorable about the brevity, particularly compared to Clinton / Gore.  Other reactions were either disbelief (Jay Grant of the Washington Post “When does he stop doing stand-up and do the real speech”), or wonderment at what was left out:
 
            Gray Ateng of  US News and World Report “What about health care and welfare?”
            James Wiggums of the Springfield Courier “He didn’t mention crime at all.  Or housing.”
            Jay Grant (again) “What of our relations with Japan and Europe?”
 
In response, FS said “I’ll leave relations with Europe and Japan to friendship and trade.  Most police work is local, as is housing.  I have a plan for health and welfare which mostly devolves to the states.  If it was good stand-up, it was much better than a good speech.”
 
THE CABINET
 
 People expected business as usual after his Inaugural Speech.  Only those close to him knew that he meant what he said.  His cabinet choices inspired joy and fear.
 
            State - War hero Colin Powell
            Treasury - Libertarian, lean and mean software pioneer Jane Samuels
            Defense - Friend of FS from his service years, long timer and malcontent Jack Cranston
            Attorney General - Minority Rights Crusader Sayona Wright
            Interior - Pragmatic Green from the Forestry Service Gilbert James
            Agriculture - Agriculture economist from Ohio State Carolyn Kinear
            Commerce and Labor - Columnist / Consultant Rawling Stanton
            Housing and Urban Development - Libertarian Contractor Sheldon Steinberg
            Transportation - Ford Vice President Nabib Ibrahim
            Energy - NewFuel Vice President Julius Morka
            Health and Human Services - Troublemaker from years past Jocelyn Elders
            Education - Traditionalist theoretician Kerry Gaines
            Veteran Affairs - Longtime bureaucrat Frank Grimes
 
These choices immediately got a lot of flack.  None of them favored big government, so they were all disliked by government types and their groupies.  Secretaries of treasury, commerce and labor, agriculture, HUD, transportation, and energy were all too capitalist and anti-government.  The Attorney General was too pushy (or uppity amongst the really politically incorrect).  Educrats hated the Education secretary and the military brass disliked the Defense Secretary.  Even though FS had put his NewFuel holdings in a blind trust, the connection to Energy looked suspicious.
 
Agriculture and Veteran Affairs were the least controversial.  FS did not admit it, but it was largely because he didn’t care deeply about either area, but wanted radical changes in the other departments. 
 
His overall charge to his cabinet was to:
 
Reduce the federal government  in terms of taxes, cost, employment, bureaucracy,   laws and rules.
            Simplify laws and rules where elimination is impossible.
            Reduce national consumption of  limited national resources.
            Stick to national issues, leave local matters to locals.
            Grant no new entitlements, no new rights until we can handle those that we now have.
 
Specifically:
 
The state department would concentrate on free trade, with conditions (limits on partners practicing slave labor or environmental atrocities) and avoid entangling alliances.  Secretary Powell put it “We will neither be the policeman nor the judge nor the jury for the world, but neither will we enrich despoilers of the land nor its people.”  Against the wishes of most Republicans, the State Department supported birth control programs wherever they were welcome.
 
            FS support for world wide birth control through international agencies caused the Conservative Congressional Caucus to damn him to hell as a baby killer.  To make amends, he promised to support only birth control, but not abortion.  Even then, he barely was able to get a majority to drop all of the amendments put on legislation banning money for birth control.  He is known to have muttered more than once “With millions starving, don’t they know we’ve done ‘be fruitful and multiply’ to death”.
 
            Treasury, perhaps most importantly, would work on phasing out the income tax.  After two years, income tax rates would decrease and a national sales tax would increase over a 3-year period until  there would be no income tax and a sales tax of approximately 10% on all sales other than a few exceptions such as food and medical care.  Excise taxes on gasoline used for personal automotive transportation would be doubled over the same period.  Overall taxes would be greatly reduced.  When FS announced his plan, the 1% whose livelihood depended, at least in part on tax planning and calculation wept,  80% of the population cheered and the 19% who were not immediately sure whether it would hurt or help metaphorically scratched their heads.
 
            Defense would reduce boundaries between services.  The number of armed forces and new weapons would be decreased while pay, training and maintenance would be increased.  Defense’s mission would be to be capable of fighting one limited war at a time.  FS had no interest in fighting in Kuwait, Grenada or Kosovo.  The U. S. would withdraw prudently from NATO and other entanglements.  Most cheered the changes, but those with careers in jeopardy or really expensive contracts for very sophisticated, very fragile, and very expensive weapons were in pain for fear they might have to get other work.  Despite being coy about it, FS new that it would be insane to get involved in another war in the Middle East.  Punishing Iraq for the terrorism of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would only help Iraq.  Powell hardily agreed.  Instead the US continued the pursuit of bin Laden.
 
            The Attorney General would concentrate on equal opportunity rather than equal results.  Unequal schools and job opportunities would be attacked, while numeric goals would be abandoned.  As FS put it “There will be no quota for Bulgarians on the Supreme court”.
 
            Agriculture was to shift emphasis to less reliance on drawing down water supplies and overuse of chemicals.  Producers were encouraged to get more of the take by limiting middle men.  If necessary, laws should be changed to allow vertical integration.  FS and everyone working for him knew that his ideas were very unpopular with just about everyone except the greens.  Kinear had to move very slowly.  “Fortunately” there were so many famines going on in a vastly overpopulated world where water and other resources were being rapidly depleted, there was a ready market for American produce and restrictions on U.S. agriculture were balanced by higher prices for crops.
 
            Commerce and Labor’s charge was to minimize new rules and cut back where possible.  FS supported several liberalizations to labor law that big business and Republicans were hot for and that were despised by Democrats and unions.  Quoth FS “The Federal government should have a hand in safe working conditions, but not tell every industry what they must pay for what hours.”  In interviews, he indicated that he found New Deal rules to be archaic and a holdover from a depression which had been over for more than 60 years.
 
            Housing and Urban Development were to devise methods of providing cheap housing which would lower the rent for the lower income people, find lower rent locations and mainly find a way to go out of business.  Gaines’ job was to deal with the states so that federal funding and programs could be moved to the state level for programs that the individual states wanted.
 
            Transportation had a few related charges - change auto rules so that a new class of urban vehicles of low cost, low pollution and low gas consumption would be allowed, similarly change the rules for high efficiency full size family sedans, trucks and SUV’s, and promulgate rules for Federal auto purchases which would require low weight and the ability to run on natural gas and synfuels.  States would be weaned from Federal payments for local transportation over FS’s first four years.
 
            Morka’s job was to work with transportation in providing fuels for Ibrahim’s ambitious undertaking and to work on lower pollution in energy utilities.
 
            Elders of HHS was in charge of cutting back on programs and providing for movement of Medicare / Medicaid and Social Security functions to be moved to public corporations.
 
            Education’s job was to go out of business.  HUD, Transportation, Energy and HHS were all to present plans to eliminate functions or move them to other cabinet sections within four years.  In the case of education, the position of Libertarians in general and FS in particular were that it was constitutionally a purely local function.
 
            Grimes of VA would attempt to hold down costs while neither cutting nor adding veteran’s programs.  FS’s long term view was that reducing the size of the military, staying away from wars, and increasing basic pay while limiting benefits would result in far lower future costs.  There was nothing he could do about the many elderly veterans needing a lot of care, but that problem would cure itself over time.
 
Most of congress and the public didn’t believe that the administration was serious.  Reagan had tried to get rid of various cabinet posts and had failed.  Flat taxes and national sales taxes had not been taken seriously in the past.  FS had to put some coalitions together.  Fortunately some of his programs appealed to moderates, some to liberals and some to conservatives.  His job was to get the right mix for each initiative, and he mostly succeeded.
 
Powell was very well received.  Because he is a black conservative, nobody could be completely against him.  It didn’t hurt that he is very bright and experienced.  As the US progressively withdrew from overseas commitments, he was criticized as being an isolationist.  He pointed out “The results of our incursions into Haiti, Somalia, and Iraq have cost more in money and human suffering than we gained.  In the future we will support the U.N. as requested.  We hope that regional disputes can be handled regionally.  Doesn’t it make sense for Africans to resolve African problems, Europeans to resolve European problems?”  Leaving Korea and NATO was very difficult to achieve, but it was done by the end of the first FS administration.  The logic of South Korea defending itself against a weakened North Korea and removing a military presence from a Europe with no serious enemies sunk in slowly.  Another major move was ending any military support of any country in the Middle East.  FS could see no good in giving crazy people the tools to kill each other.  The worst opponent was the defense lobby.  To some, staying out of war wasn’t as important as getting big contracts.
 
The traditional trouble spots in the Middle East and Ireland waxed and waned.  FS’s support for Palestine nationality would have cost him big except that Israel agreed with lots of the conditions.  As one might expect, the negotiations and the attacks and reprisals continue to this day, but the killing is at a low level by historical standards.  FS risked the wrath of Cuban - Americans by warming relations with post-Castro Cuba, but the situation was made easier by the tractability of Castro’s successor Alarcon.  Fortunately for everyone, Castro died in early 2005 so no one had to worry about his intransigence.  The rapprochement was effected by Cuba giving token payment for the nationalization of US assets over 40 years ago, and allowing limited freedom of expression in exchange for the lifting of the US blockade.  It was winky - winky all the way around, and everyone but the extremist on either side were happy.  The Balkans are still a mess, but now it is strictly a European mess.
 
FS wouldn’t get all that he wanted in his tax deal.  He couldn’t cut all of the programs that he wanted, and he was forced to send money to some of the poor on a means test basis, so some people still had to send income data to the government.  He had to end up with an ultimate tax of 13.5% on most purchases.  He was happy to reeducate tax people - anything to keep them from gumming up his plan to get rid of the multi-billion drag on the economy that income taxes represented.  Most people and companies were pleased as punch to be rid of an annual, or more frequent, pain.  Some business people were set adrift, because their strategy was built around tax planning.  Seth Jones, CFO of Consolidated Synergies put it this way “I’ve laid off most of my staff.  The accounting profession will never be the same.”
 
Changes in the armed forces were incremental.  In order to avoid using up his political capital, he didn’t touch “Don’t ask, don’t tell”.  FS marshaled green and peace support in shutting down and cleaning up old military bases.  Fortunately, he could find examples where closing old bases had been great for the local communities.  He did the dog and pony show to prove how much the Presidio  area (a former military base) in San Francisco had improved when the army base shut down.  If necessary, he bribed local politicians with impact funds.  Foreign bases did not have much political clout and were usually easy to get rid of.  Eliminating inter-service rivalries and inefficiencies was very slow going.  In order to win over the brass about new weapons systems, he promised better pay and maintenance of current weapons and bases.  Because most of the country did not have major military contractors, but did want lower taxes, he was able to prevent the purchase of new weapons systems except for new bombers and submarines.  Demographics favored lowered veterans’ expenses since the largest group of veterans, those from WWII, had mostly died, and Korean war vets were beginning to drop off.
 
Phasing out of NATO was used to get the 2005 Helsinki major nuclear disarmament with Russia.  Support for a Palestinian state defused the worst of the Middle Eastern antipathy towards the US.  Lowered world tensions made reducing the military easier. 
 
Attorney General Wright proceeded to push for equal rights on all fronts.  She sued 15 states for failing to offer equal public education.  The Equal Opportunities Commission vigorously pursued fast food stores, national retail stores and major manufacturers for violations.  Since it is practically impossible to remove a sitting judge who isn’t shooting people on the street or taking bribes during court sessions, Wright assistant George Lee compiled a list of Federal and local judges with a record of unequal sentencing based on race.  The publicity caused some to change, some to get replaced at election time and made no impression on some of the judges.  As Wright said in an interview with Tom Brokaw “Equal opportunity is the number one goal of this administration, but not something that can be achieved overnight, maybe not ever.”
 
Interior’s basic policy of status quo on public lands largely irritated greens and ‘not greens’.  Initially ‘not greens’ were happier after the restrictions put on the lands over the years by Clinton / Gore.  He did please some greens with increased budgets for public lands, even though they did not buy his explanation of not increasing protected lands “We must stop expanding in order to maintain what we have”.  Commercial users of the lands were unhappy about increased grazing fees and continued limitations on forestry.  Fishermen were unhappy with the limits on fishing and Interior Department disinterest in massive dam removal.  In the words of Secretary James “We cannot turn back the clock to the time before the white man arrived, but we can preserve what we have now, and in some cases improve on it.”
 
The Department of Agriculture had some success at preserving water and reducing toxic petrochemicals by increasing prices for irrigation water from Federal sources and either banning or taxing the worst fertilizers and pesticides.  Farmers were not happy, but they never were.  When asked on “Media Massacre” if the administration policy was either Libertarian or Republican, Kinear responded that “I  couldn’t say, but running out of water and poisoning the land should not be anybody’s policy.”  Farmers going out of business today didn’t care if their current practices weren’t sustainable, but Kinear stuck to his position.  Starving India and China where water was running out helped a lot with heavy purchases of U. S. grain.
 
Commerce and Labor didn’t do much of anything.  In a Libertarian / Republican administration, market forces, not government, are expected to rule.  The labor laws were enforced while FS attempted to get as many of what he called the “outdated and unnecessary” laws repealed in Congress.  He didn’t have much luck, but not much was added to the onerous list of laws and regulations already on the books.
 
The approach of Housing and Urban Development was somewhat different than prior administrations.  Steinberg, upon taking office, announced “Urban affairs and housing are the business of local government.  We will carry out existing mandates until the point that we can remove them from the Federal government.  While our department exists, we will form an interstate compact to work with the states and localities.  Until that compact is up and running, we will work on ways of building less expensive housing for those who cannot afford current prices.”  Steinberg’s staff looked at cheaper housing from two perspectives:  Location and buildings.  His research group found cheaper places to build and cheaper ways of building, including materials and methods.  Housing is cheaper in Iowa and Idaho than New York or California.  With cheaper land, lower height manufactured apartments and modular units with high recyclability can be built.  Urban politicians were generally appalled at the results.  “You can’t expect a widow who has lived in Brooklyn for 70 years to be uprooted to Idaho” said Rep. Rivera, D - Brooklyn.  Steinberg’s response “But you can move her to Florida?”  More Steinberg “The Spenser administration does not want to build housing in Idaho for the poor of Brooklyn.  We don’t want to build housing.  We would like local governments, or better yet private enterprise to handle housing.  We deem housing primarily the responsibility of the people, not the government.  We are not going to hurt housing further with more Urban Removal.” 
 
The transportation department fulfilled its charge of staying out of local transportation.  Local roads, subways, ferries and light rail would be the responsibility of the states.  FS and Ibrahim took the separation of powers seriously.  Another or Ibrahim’s projects was to put the finishing touches on the NewCentury prototype cars produced by a cartel of car makers led by Mondo - Chrysler.  By 2005 the production-ready prototypes were unveiled. The very small (two people, a few groceries) “Urbanomic” could run two abreast in a slightly larger than standard car lane, go up to 55 miles per hour and get 100 miles per gallon on a very small turbo-diesel.  It was limited to city surface streets and designated freeway lanes and meant for running errands.  Projected price on a mass produced basis - $5,000.  It looked like a wide motorcycle or a narrow car.  “Domesticus” was made in station wagon form.  It had the interior volume of a Taurus wagon, but weighed a little over 2,000 pounds.  It had a turbo diesel engine which could run on various fuels, including synfuels,  and get the equivalent of 55 miles per gallon.  “Active” was the size of a Ford Explorer, but weighed 3,100 pounds and got 45 miles per gallon on a hybrid gas / electric engine combination.  All of the vehicles had bodies of lightweight polycarbonate and continuously variable transmissions.  Each complied with ultra low emissions requirements.  Transportation worked on the changes to Federal automobile rules which would allow the prototypes to be marketed.
 
Morka worked on getting synfuel pipelines and delivery and the legislative package necessary to deliver new fuels to houses and autos.  The job was largely reworking the laws that Gore had vetoed earlier.
 
Health and Human Services wanted to go out of business.  Since Clinton welfare reform, that prospect was not so radical.  Much of the job of HHS was to move federal money to the states for distribution.  FS’s idea was to stop supplying money to the states and stop taking it away from the people.  His radical proposal was to form quasi private corporations for Medicare and Social Security.  Only a few of the people closest to FS saw that coming.  Initial public reaction was mixed to say the least. 
 
Secretary Gaines went about organizing an interstate education commission.  The membership would include parents, administrators, teachers, students and theoreticians.  Its charge was to study effective school and volunteer programs which would educate students and integrate other services such as daycare so the entire student would be served from infancy through high school.  The programs themselves would be the responsibility of the states.  Much of the developing agenda of the Education department resembled parts of ReFocus.
 
The enabling legislation for the bold FS program had built-in legislative opposition from traditional liberals.  It was FS’s luck that Ted Kennedy and some of his more doctrinaire colleagues who never met a government program that they didn’t like were finally gone from Congress (in some cases gone from this earth).  Of those that remained, some were in awe of his victory, some wanted to give him a chance and some wanted him to screw up big time, so the opposition was limited.  Since his administration was generally pro-business, he had a lot of automatic votes.  Republicans had, to some extent, come around on the green portion of his legislation.
 
His keystone legislation which phased in a national sales tax was opposed by the usual coalition representing seniors, minorities, the disabled and poor plus some accountants.  Secretary Samuel’s counterargument was that it was simple, fair and in essence it let the citizen set his own tax bill by deciding what taxable items would be purchased.  Businesses mostly loved the simplicity, but some worried about lower sales of luxury items.  Perhaps the deciding factor was the estimated 123 billion dollars that would be saved on tax calculation and collection.  Maybe it was 76 billion.  Nobody really knew, but everybody’s number was big.  The companion bill to greatly increase taxes on extracted fossil fuels pleased the greens a lot.  With that change, they saw alternate power sources having a much greater share of the pie.  By the end of the 2005 - 2006 session FS had his tax package.
 
His farm package was generally a success, but he didn’t get everything he wanted.  Agriculture states made it clear that he couldn’t cut out farm chemicals immediately.  The best he could hope for was some decreases, so he settled for banning the most toxic fertilizers and pesticides.  FS really didn’t much care about genetic engineering at least until there was some proof of bad side
effects.  Despite heavy lobbying by food distributors, he was able to pass the Granville - Perkins act which gave some monopoly exemption to farm groups to grow, market and package their products.  By 2007 farmers used the act to get more of the retail dollar for their products.
 
The Clean Air  / Energy Independence and Synfuel Infrastructure acts were passed immediately (by government standards) by the same people for the same reasons as they had been passed during the Gore administration.  This time they were signed into law.  After a lot of debate, FS got legislation which relaxed standards for a class of  car such as the Urbanomic prototype.
 
With advances in birth control, such as the morning after pill and contraceptive injections good for up to a year, FS was able to get birth control into health programs across the boards for the US and abroad after campaigning for two years.  Even without any use of abortions there was too much opposition to birth control  until the 2006 election.  The tedious debate sounded the same on both sides, but the numbers changed.
 
Education’s Gaines lobbied relentlessly to get the Federals out of what the administration viewed as a local function with partial success.  They did a little better than Reagan in that they eventually got rid of the cabinet post, but they couldn’t eliminate all Federal education programs.  Head Start had too much of a constituency.  Arguments that states that wanted Head Start could run their own program didn’t sell.  The congresswoman from Maine was worried that Louisiana wouldn’t fund their own Head Start and she had a lot of company.  Gaines got rid of as many programs as possible, started the Interstate Education Commission run by the states, and folded the remaining programs into the Interior Department.  They were able to get rid of programs that many considered overly expensive and controversial such as the required mainstreaming of  disabled students.  Gaines argued successfully in those cases that the local government knew best about how to use their education dollars.
 
Generally FS was prepared to veto legislation about what he considered a local function such as state and local police, education, intrastate transportation and intrastate water.  He was not prepared to initiate any National Parks, Wildernesses or Monuments until the current inventory was properly maintained.  People in both major parties didn’t believe that he was serious, as a result he vetoed 53 bills in 2005 - 2008 and was overridden 5 times.  Some of the bills he vetoed were supported by Northwest Republicans who wanted Federal pork.  Gordon Smith of Oregon could not believe it when he was told “If you want 300 million for more light rail or 50,000 for a statue, use your own money.  The guy in Fargo shouldn’t be paying for your stuff.  Remember that the total Federal tax bill is going to be cut by 25% in the next few years.  Use that money to fund local projects.”  FS used similar arguments on just about everyone who tried to get him to support pork.  In order to support his fight against pork, he organized the “Porkfree” caucus.  Members debated about spending bills which were found to be local in nature and voted en mass against them.  The caucus had a similar function to armed forces base closing  votes.
 
Fortunately for FS public opinion was trending against capital punishment.   Although no one had been proven to be executed illegitimately, there were many questionable cases and several documented near misses.  FS could not attain a blanket ban on federal capital crimes, but he was able to eliminate some capital crime laws, particularly when he was able to demonstrate they had never been applied, such as killing a traffic controller.  His bid to eliminate or soften federal drug  penalties was supported by a coalition of traditional liberals, black and Hispanic activists, Libertarians, and those simply tired of the waste of lives and money.  He was opposed by social conservatives, but they were outnumbered.  By 2006 laws were changed so that mere possession of a small amount of any drug would not result in jail time, and sales of crack no longer got much longer sentences than other drugs.  These revisions were not in line with the pure Libertarian position that drug use was never a crime, but they were politically feasible and pragmatic.
 
FS lost one battle he really wanted to win.  He had always opposed the Americans with Disability Act because of his mistrust of trial lawyers, the vagueness of the law and both the effect and theory of the law.  He was very whiney when he spoke privately about ADA.  “What if I want to play center for the Trailblazers?  If they don’t give me a tryout can I sue based on my height deficiency?  Must all seats accommodate 600 pounders?  What does reasonable accommodation mean?  Why aren’t there any safe harbors for buildings, restaurants and theaters?  Drunks, druggies and mental cases can all exploit this.  This is another gold mine for ambulance chasers.”  It was very difficult for his team to question ADA because it looked like kicking cripples.  The best they could do was get some safe harbors for building codes.
 
The FS administration viewed much of labor law as way out of date, artifacts from the Great Depression and the Early Industrial Age.  In 2005 their “pure” bill eliminating most hour and pay restrictions never went anywhere.  In 2006 a much tamer bill liberalizing overtime rules with more exceptions for minimum wage and a minimum wage offset for health, pension and other benefit coverage along with an indexed minimum wage passed both houses and was signed into law.  In order to get the legislation, FS had to agree to a $10 federal minimum including benefit costs.
 
FS was normally an easy going guy.  Two of the things that disgusted him were multi-million or billion dollar awards for lawyers, pain and suffering awards and punitive damages; and the loose coalition fighting free trade.  He pointed out many times that there was no reason why punitive damages should go to plaintiffs or lawyers.  According to him, if anything, such damages should go to charity or the government.  He was unable to do much about the plague of lawyers - they could always go round up somebody who had been burned in a car crash (ironic aside - frequently the victim had been drinking a lot or hit by someone who was not sued - somehow the deep pocketed car companies were always at fault).  All he was able to do about awards was get some rather high dollar limits on payments to lawyers (lesser of 20% of  award and compensation for time spent) and pain and suffering awards.  He continues to work towards diverting punitive damages away from plaintiff and lawyer up to today.  He seems obsessed on this point.  His other attack was to veto any “lawyer employment” legislation such as the ADA and other deliberately vague acts which were written to guarantee years of adjudication.
 
As a philosophical libertarian and a student of classic economics, FS was a believer in the global economy with a few exceptions relating to slave labor and environmental degradation.  On the other side, he saw Unionists wanting higher pay and to avoid competition, anti-capitalists, anarchists, Deadheads looking for a party, professional protesters and assorted greens and human rights people.  FS used the usual arguments -
 
            You can get cheap stuff from abroad (classic econ 101);
 
            Globalism is no more responsible for human rights abuses and environmental catastrophes than communism;
 
            The global economy is efficient;
 
            You want strawberries in the winter;
 
            We need to sell airplanes and wheat; and
 
            Those Nike jobs in Vietnam aren’t so bad if so many people want them.
 
His arguments had little effect compared to the emotional outbursts from the schools, from the unions, from Concerned Citizens in general.
 
The Gore administration had been ambivalent about free trade.  Gore wouldn’t back up for fear of screwing up the economy generally and balance of payments specifically, and couldn’t go forward for fear of irritating his core constituencies.  FS wanted further trade liberalization, but saw a growing and well organized anti-global coalition throwing a fit at the mention of trade negotiations.  Powell  of  State came up with a suggestion that very much appealed to FS’s playful side.
 
On September 25, 2005 FS called a press conference in which he introduced Powell’s plan.  Powell said that he wanted FS to take full blame for the idea in case Powell wanted a future in public service.  In effect, the plan called the bluff of the anti-globalists.  It was never meant to be taken seriously, just to embarrass the coalition.  FS proclaimed:  “We in this administration are absolutely convinced of the advantages of the global economy, but we recognize that there are those who have honest if mistaken reservations about our goals.  Therefore, over the next few months we will be preparing enabling legislation for Anti-Global Reservations on Federal land in Idaho, Wyoming and New Mexico.  There are many details to work out, but those who apply will become stewards of the land in these places and be exempted from the Global Economy.  These reservations will be self sufficient in line with the tenets of the Anti - Global Coalition.”
 
The plan, of course, immediately hit the fan.  Most anti-globalists didn’t want to give up their TV’s or their global economy lives.  Obviously, they couldn’t say something like that so they had to have their lawyers offload tons of weasel verbiage such as “We cannot be co-opted in our struggle to free all of the world of globalist tyranny.”  Individuals who had not been coached admitted that they didn’t want to give up TV, but only because of PBS.  Anarchists wondered what they could break on the reservation.  Anarchists without windows to break are sad things.   Generally, the public saw the anti-globalists as poseurs and the Powell / FS Anti - Globalist Reservation plan did public relations job it was meant to do.
 
On August 13, 2006 a few hundred people moved to a small Anti - Globalist Reservation in New Mexico.  It made a few of the really hard core Coalitionists happy and proved that FS had been serious.  He had much less opposition to trade negotiation after that.  At this time, there are 50 campers left on the reservation. 
 
ELIZABETH DOLE
 
Ms. Dole was probably too old to be elected president if FS were to serve two terms, but she was still a good sport and immense help to the president.  She still held out some hope that a scandal might overtake FS, but not harm her so that she could be elected in 2008, but the odds were against her.
 
After conferring with the president, they found three things that she could do better than FS:
 
            Work with state governments on formerly federal activities such as all or parts of police, education, housing and welfare which the administration expected to revert to the state level.
 
            Foreign relations.  FS didn’t like ceremony.  The symbolic value of Dole was about equal to Albright in the Clinton administration.  FS never admitted it, but it also meant that international relations other than trade were not important to FS.
 
            Jawboning business.  FS did not like popular proposals such as expanded health care, mandatory pensions or subsidized child care on principle.  In order to relieve the pressure for those plans, he had Dole cut the best deal with business groups for voluntarily providing those benefits in return for cutting out the income tax.  Dole also was able to apply a lot of the ReFocus ideas with businesses to work with schools and the poor.
 
STATE OF THE UNION 2006
 
“In short the state of the union is imperfect but improving.  Perhaps our greatest success is in moving towards setting America free from the irrationality and incredible difficulty of the Federal Income Tax.  We fully expect huge increases in productivity as this change unleashes the country.
 
We are just beginning to come closer to a truly color blind society.  We will not set quotas and we cannot enforce love of our fellow man, but we will ensure that the laws of the land are strictly enforced and we will move towards the ideal of true equality.  We will do that not by enacting more laws, but by strictly applying those that we have.  This is the number one job of the justice department.
 
We cannot and will not continue to waste lives and resources by putting hundreds of thousands of predominantly minority Americans in jail for possession of minor amounts of drugs.  We will continue to jail the drug pushers, the cause of death and addiction.  As opportunity rises for all, as we move towards fulfilling the promise of America there will be no more reason, no more excuse for the despair that leads to relying on drugs.”
 
We are furthest behind in our program for sustainability.  Every step we take towards population stability is blocked by those who think that we should multiply until we are standing on each other’s shoulders, standing in other people’s excrement.  We will however keep fighting and we must win if the human race is to survive.  We now must admit that adequate truly green energy is at least a generation off.  In the mean time, however, we can simultaneously cut our reliance on imported petroleum and clean the air by producing and running on natural gas, synfuel and renewable energy.
 
One full year into this term we have made great strides and have even more left to do.”
 
Pundit response:
 
            Joe Brigham, Right to Life representative:  “More pressure for increased abortion.  I think that we can all understand the code words.  And yet he doesn’t want to execute mass murderers.  What’s up with this guy?”
 
            Samuel Wilkins, Libertarian party chairman:  “Not everything that we wanted and some of what we don’t want, but better than we could have hoped for.”
 
            Tony Collins, Democratic party chairman:  “He just doesn’t understand government.  The states can’t just pick up all the balls that the national government is dropping.  The administration’s unstated goal is to increase the gap between the rich and the poor.  The only good thing about his program other than cutting prison terms for drug possession is that it won’t get him elected to a second term.”
 
            Shirley Wendell, executive secretary NAACP:  “I’m sure the words were very pretty, but we all know that affirmative action is necessary for racial equity.”
 
            Steve Grinnel, man on the street:   “No more income tax calculations after 2008?  Hot damn, he’s got my vote.”
 
MONIQUE SPENSER
 
The impertinent web site www.celebsurvey.com ran a survey with the questions:
“1.Frank Spenser should have married a white woman”
“2.Frank Spenser should have married a man”
“3.Monique Spenser should have married a black man”
“4.Monique Spenser should have married a woman”
Questions 2 and 4 were motivated by homosexual buzz that both Spensers were too pretty to be straight.  It was largely wishful thinking even though the administration was fairly queer friendly, but drew the line at marriage (at least for themselves).  One of the more radical ideas that FS had which never went anywhere was to remove all legal recognition of marriage and turn it into a strictly religious or ceremonial choice.  Various forms of partnerships would replace marriage for legal purposes.  Fortunately for his continued political success his advisors talked him into holding that thought for his second term.
 
2 and 4 got a lot of yes answers.  1 received 12% and 3 got 8%.  That was the bad news and bespoke lingering racism, but at least the vast majority wrote in “I don’t give a ____” where ____ ranged from “darn” to much worse.
 
The Spensers were in a quandary because if anything Monique was more qualified to influence government policy than Hillary, but they didn’t want to appear anything like the Clintons.  Their compromise was something like the Clintons because they had no choice.  Contrary to the Clintons, they first agreed that neither would commit adultery while Frank was in the White House.  Second, and more like the Clintons, Monique would work in the areas where she had the most experience, but would not have a private job or an official position.  Their third agreement was also like the Clintons - it would be Monique’s turn as soon as Frank’s administration was completed.
 
Monique was different in many ways from the traditional first lady.  Some said that she was better educated, better looking, smarter, more independent and certainly blacker than previous first ladies.  When asked really stupid questions such as “What is it like to be the first African American first lady, she would respond “Why don’t you ask Frank what its like to be the first American president to have married sex with a black woman?  Come on, work on better questions.”  Since she said more interesting things, and looked better she was pictured and interviewed in more publications than Hillary and Jacqueline.  When she was asked to defend Frank’s stand against affirmative action she would say “I don’t defend or even agree with all of his ideas.  I certainly agree with his aggressive work to give all Americans equal opportunity.  To the extent that is possible, it is a better idea than a racial spoils system.  He didn’t get either more or fewer points for his proposal for being white.”
 
Given her background, Monique largely worked on health and energy issues.  It was her idea to work mostly on producing natural gas powered internal combustion engines rather than more exotic ideas like hydrogen powered fuel cells.  She felt that the latter was at least a generation off, while many vehicles were already running on natural gas.  The problems were mostly production rather than extraction of natural gas, and increasing distribution.  She had great luck with accelerated biomass production of methane with cooperative bacteria.  The blue sky, really green and sustainable projects were given more time to develop while natural gas extraction and conversion was substituted for many petrol applications.  She convinced Frank that a sure single was better than striking out going for a home run.  Because of her, Frank could report immediate progress on continued fuel for cars rather than a possible breakthrough by 2020.
 
One of her greatest advantages was that she could talk tough to minority groups like none of the white, male members of the administration could.  Monique on African Americans: “Some whites have made life hell for African - Americans for the last three centuries.  Some of our own have preyed on us with drugs and crime.  And whites didn’t make you do it and society didn’t make you do it.  There are rotten people in all races.  Fight racism, but don’t blame it for all of your problems.”
 
HAKEEM SPENSER
 
Fortunately for the Spensers, they could find a public school suitable for Hakeem.  They didn’t have to go through the public soul searching that attended Chelsea.  A teenage son in the White House hadn’t happened since …. nobody could remember.  The press was avid for any Hakeem news.  Because he had already been big news in Oregon as a part of the beautiful Spenser family, he was able to stay on an even keel.  He never confirmed or denied reports of black girlfriends, white girlfriends, boyfriends of any race, drug taking or drinking.  Girlfriends of several races have been verified, the rest is unproved.
 
When asked if he was black or white, his response was “Both, but mostly teenager.”
 
In looks he split the difference between his parents:  Brown skin and eyes, wavy hair.  He started the white house years at his father’s height and ended them at his mother’s height.  Surveys and quizzes about him were run in all the teen magazines. 
 
There wasn’t much opportunity for family fishing and hunting with FS as president.   One thing that tied in with the father and son’s interest and importance to the nation was cars.  Hakeem got to drive the prototypes of many of the alternate fuel cars.  FS was interested in Hakeem’s opinion about which cars were too dull for production.  A teenager’s ideas about cars made more sense than say the opinion of most “consumerists” because they didn’t like cars.  FS wanted to find green cars that people actually wanted to drive.  After a couple of years the press caught on and Hakeem was through having fun with government - corporate projects, but by then he was hooked.  After being a mostly mediocre high school student, except in shop, he went to Detroit Institute of Technology and planned a future in the auto industry.
 
MARIA SPENSER
 
Maria went to public schools also.  Where the rest of the family was outgoing and outspoken, she was quite reserved, possibly shy, possibly aloof.  She looked so much like her mother and so little like her father, a lot of jokes were made at FS’s expense.  By the time they got to the White House she looked like a not quite fully formed version of her mother - the curves not so pronounced, the features not as sharp. 
 
When asked about herself, she said “My relationship to the first family should not make me newsworthy”.  When asked about her family, she said “They can speak for themselves.”  There was very little in the news about her personal life.  In fact, she was mostly a very serious young person without much of an outside social life.
 
Within the family she shone.  She was the one who excelled at word games and had advice on education and politics.  She was the most musical and led the family band - her on trumpet, Hakeem on piano, Monique singing and Frank on miscellaneous percussion tools.  When there wasn’t anything particularly newsworthy going on FS would hold a concert instead of a news conference.  Depending on who was talking it either demeaned the presidency or made it more human.  Most non pundits thought more human.
 
In high school Maria stood out in academics, band and volleyball.  In her valedictory speech in the last year of FS’s term she talked about overpopulation.  Her audience was either disinterested or stunned.  She received admittance to Stanford and planned a medical career in research about limiting the number of humans. 
 
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION 2006
 
By the time the 2006 election came around, the U. S. was in better shape that it had been under Gore.  Although gas prices had continued upwards, lower federal taxes put more money in consumers pockets.  Employment, except for lawyers, had increased.  Foreign markets saved agriculture.  The new synthetic fuel industry employed a quarter of a million people, had lowered petroleum imports and promised a future fuel supply at fairly reasonable prices.  FS had Reaganesque optimism without his denseness, Gore’s woodeness or Clinton’s psychobabble.
 
The administration mostly had the same opponents and supporters as it did in 2004.  Trial lawyers (known to the administration supporters as ambulance chasers) and union officers were dead set against Libertarian / Republicans.  FS had won over a lot of the greens with his public lands and synthetic fuels policies.  Social conservatives weren’t crazy for him, but had no where else to go and mostly elected conservative Republicans to Congress.  He made inroads in traditional liberal territory because of his green policies, anti - capital punishment stand, de-emphasizing drug possession as a crime, and enforcement of equal rights.  He also continued to lose many traditional liberals because of his small government principles.  He did better than most Republicans with minorities based on his appointments and personal relationships with members of minority groups, most importantly his own family.
 
Libertarians made slight gains to 10 seats in the House, and their first elected Senator in Oregon.  Republicans held their own, and the Democrats lost a few seats, leaving Republicans with a slight majority. 
 
INTERNATIONAL
 
The abdication of the U.S. as world cop had surprisingly little effect.  Most Americans simply did not care as long as they could get cheap coffee and gas, and weren’t at war, which was the case under FS.  Most of the U. S. was happy to have normalized relations with the nominally socialist Cuba.  Like the rest of the world, Americans enjoyed doing business with and vacationing in Cuba.  The reported liaison of Senator Solaris, an anti - Cuban politician, with a prostitute while on a fact finding mission in Cuba was bad public relations, so to speak, for the hard core anti - Cuban lobby.   Ireland, the Middle East and Korea were mostly the same old, but maybe a bit better.  The lesser U.S. reliance on imported oil made OPEC less important.  The Korean peninsula neither hurt particularly nor benefited from the withdrawal of most U. S. troops.  The situation there remained much the same as it had during the Gore administration - lots of posturing, some agreements on trade and visits and no real danger until June 2006 when North Korea lobbed a few missiles at South Korea.  There was some fighting, but with no superpower support for either side, hostilities died down quickly. The United Nations demanded reparations from North Korea, but it was out of money and settled for the destruction of its long range offensive weapons.    With the U.S. largely out of the European equation, the larger nations there continued to joust for influence as they had for centuries before World War II and the beginning of American importance internationally.  After NATO disbanded, Russia and several former Republics of the U. S. S. R. applied to join the European Union.
 
Most of FS’s international trips were about trade and giving the message that you are on your own now, try not to screw it up.  The U. S. as an individual nation ignored all of the local squabbles because none of them threatened world peace, but did take part in joint U. N. actions in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East.
 
STATE OF THE UNION 2007
 
“In prior years, we have talked about our main themes:  Sustainability including population stability, equal opportunity and limited national government. 
 
We are currently working with the governments in Asia, Latin America and Africa where burgeoning populations present the biggest risk to the human race.  I cannot overstate the necessity of limiting population in, for example, the Indian subcontinent.  As you have heard, that region cannot supply itself with clean water, preserve its remaining forests or feed itself.  The great crop failure of 2006 is just a small event compared to a very dark future if changes are not made.  That famine depleted the world’s grain stores.  The next catastrophe will result in mass starvation.  As much as it is horrible to say, if we don’t cut population growth by ourselves then disease, famine or other catastrophes will do it for us.  I hope finally that fact is so clear that we can achieve world unanimity on humane population control.
 
The federal government is now only buying vehicles that will run on natural gas.  The infrastructure finally exists so that we can phase out dependence on petroleum.  We are progressing on accelerated generation of methane from biomass.  Five percent of vehicles nationally, particularly vans, run on natural gas.  We expect to double that in a year and continue to cut oil imports.
 
Reductions to the massive power and expense of the Federal government is happening, but not as fast as I would like.  We really don’t want to tell you what to teach in your schools or pay for your local police.
 
I have deliberately not spent time in past State of the Union addresses talking about international affairs.  Some of you in good conscience deplore our disengagement from alliances and our former  massive foreign presence.  In my view, because of that very disengagement we are less likely than any time in our past to be involved in a war, and are more respected for not throwing our weight around.  We can fight if attacked, but we are not going to be involved in another country’s fight.  Our armed forces are better equipped and better prepared than they have been in years and at much less expense.
 
While some may think that leaving South Korea caused North Korea to mount a craven attack on South Korea, I think moving our troops kept the squabble to a small but regrettable fiasco rather than a major conflagration. 
 
The state of the union is good.”
 
There were not many good targets for the pundits in his speech:
 
            General Roger Blough, retired:  “The criminal neglect of our armed forces will surely result in our being threatened by bullies abroad.”
 
            General Joe Stanton, retired:  “Bullies like Afghanistan?  Russia doesn’t even know where its nuclear weapons are, much less able to use them.  We need to be able to fight against small clever threats, not huge armies.”
 
            Steve Grinnel, man in the street:  “I liked it.  Spenser is the first major politician with the balls to tell it like it is.  All those other jerks act like federal money is free.  It just shows up by magic.  I’ll trade lower taxes for cutting out federal grants for local projects.”
 
JUDICIARY
 
FS had no litmus test for judicial appointments, but he did not want activists.  His typical comment was “The courts should not legislate.  If the constitution is to be changed, it should be by amendment, not by an activist court.”  He also felt that it was wrong to favor the underdog.  The millionaire can be right just as much as the poor guy.  Consequently, while appointing a representative demographic mix, his judges did not find new rights or obligations in the constitution.  Specifically, there was no national right to privacy or other implied (FS called them inferred rights) in the constitution.  His judges (to the extent he could interpret their record) did not allow the taking, including limits on usage, of private property without compensation. Governments had already slowed rezoning and other restrictions because of such decisions even before FS.    His appointments were usually approved quickly because he chose quiet, stealth candidates who had not been involved in high level controversial cases.
 
In 2007 Ruth Bader Ginsburg had to resign from the high court because of recurring cancer.  Every major group came forward with their list of candidates.  Unfortunately, most of the candidates came with major baggage.  Wife Monique whimsically asked him “Are you going for the Latina Lesbian who was for Lesbian marriages, or the Native American who wanted to sell Cherokee brand cigarettes off the reservation with no state or Federal taxes.”  FS responded, “So far none of the above.”  He ended up choosing the heterosexual Latina Josefina Goldstein (she married her professor) because she was a strict constructionist and had nothing on her record inventing new rights.
 
In early 2008, Wade vs. Roe was revisited.  This time unfettered abortion rights were overturned 5 - 4.  As a practical matter, the adoption of near universal birth control and RSU 486 and its successor RSU Pentium had made surgical abortions generally unnecessary.  Nothing in the court’s decision limited access to either birth control or very early abortions.  The subject was no longer of practical importance, but still attracted its share of ideologues.
 
LEGISLATIVE RELATED
 
The FS administration thought that most legislation should be getting rid of existing laws and regulations.  On such matters as flag burning, a bridge for Pittsburgh, or special Federal penalties for shooting a bus driver, his generic private response was “Get that crap out of here”.  His public response was “These matters are not of sufficient gravity to warrant Federal legislation.”  He was somewhat more sympathetic to legislation with a sunset provision.
 
In 2007 Elders unveiled her plan to make Social Security and Medicare into public corporations like the Post Office.  The idea with each was that with broad overview from Congress, each would run itself with the view that they would stay in business long term.  The President, House and Senate would each appoint a commissioner, and the three would in turn hire staff.  They would be allowed to apply means testing for both Social Security and Medicare; and practice health care rationing (as in Oregon), with variable co-pays and deductibles for Medicare.  This legislation had good bipartisan support because most politicians only saw the downside to giving the public all the benefits the public wanted without breaking the bank.  There were still enough legislators who wanted to get support from elderly by promising increases in entitlements that the vote on the separation of Social Security and Medicare from direct Federal control was close, but FS and Elders won.  FS claimed that the main U. S. entitlements were now made free of politics (which of course was not exactly true) and that with professional management in place the funds would not be bankrupt.
 
During Gore’s administration a drug benefit had been added to Medicare and Medicaid.  Costs skyrocketed and were inadequately funded.  Under the Medicare Corporation, drug benefits were cut back and some prices lowered because of threats by FS to enact price controls if prices were
 
not rolled back.  Prices were lowered in some cases and his bluff was not called.  FS really hated price controls based on both his studies and his knowledge of Nixon’s price controls.
 
One of the Libertarians’ principles is limited national government.  In FS’s mind, that made it more important than it had been in years to have good local laws.  With his endorsement, local  teams campaigned on a state by state basis for:
 
            Equal opportunity in court, school, lodging and work.
 
            End of the death penalty.
 
            Lowered or no penalties for drug offenses.
 
            Generally available birth control.
 
            No recriminalization of abortion.
 
The times were on his side.  The pendulum had already started swinging on the death penalty and drug penalties.  When he came into office 28 states had the death penalty.  By the end of his term the count was down to 24 and many of the remaining death penalty states had not executed anyone for years.  Decreased crime and drug use made it easier to lighten penalties in some states, until trends reversed.  It was particularly easy to cut jail terms when the bill for running all of the prisons was examined.  Most states did not rush to prohibit abortion even after Wade vs. Roe was overturned.  In the few states, mostly in the Midwest and South, where penalties were reinstated, surgical abortions had long been difficult to get and those needing them had turned to RSU 486 and other methods anyhow.  The other goals were very difficult.  He had not made much progress on them by the end of his term, but his support never wavered.
 
ELECTION OF 2008
 
The democrats went with Gray Davis.  The parallels to Mondale in 1984 were, unfortunately for the Democrats, widely reported.  His nomination was more or less of a reward for being loyal and being popular in the biggest state California.  He was challenged from both the left and the right, but not seriously.  Few thought he could beat FS.  FS was a sure thing like Clinton in 1996.
 
The Reform party settled on Jesse Ventura on the grounds that he was less crazy (even with a pink boa) than Buchanan and the other strange people in the party.  By this point no one really knew what the Reform party stood for other than it wasn’t for globalism.
 
The Green party had gotten tired of  Nader, the patron saint of trial lawyers, and went with a soft socialist of color, Riana Wine from Brooklyn.  Hers views weren’t popular, but she looked so good that she got a lot of television time.
 
FS was a shoo in as the Libertarian / Republican candidate.  You can’t deny a popular incumbent.  Most unions members didn’t like him.  The federal bureaucrats didn’t like him.  State governments that lost federal money didn’t like him.  Most other constituencies liked him.  No person or company would have to calculate income taxes after 2008 and the total federal taxes not counting Social Security had decreased by 25% in real terms.  Not only was the U. S. not at war, it had good relations with most areas of the world by the simple expedient of not taking sides.  There was hope of sustainability.
 
In October, the polls had Spenser at 61%, Gray at 30%, Wine at 6% and Ventura at 3%.  Later that month a high ranking aide received a phone call with this message  “Idaho 1987”.  The aide asked FS what it was about.  “I’ll bet it was those twins I rented.  This may ruin me.”
 
Author’s note -
 
This is my attempt to write about a possible utopia.  Sure that’s an oxymoron, but I gave it a try.  This is not worse than “Ecotopia” and other tracts which posit a perfect system by somehow revising humans to make them fit the mold.  My idea was to make a protagonist lucky, smart and intelligent to overcome the objections of the entrenched goobers who usually run things.
 
Obviously I don’t understand petrochemicals, the military or politics.  If any of those sections sounded real, I’m lucky too.
 
This was originally written in the 1990s when it seemed obvious that Al Gore would be elected president.  Many believe that he was elected.  It is very difficult to believe that he would have been worse than Bush.
 
The major changes that I added to the original were Katrina and 9-1-1.  They seemed like the hardest to ignore.
 
Appeared in the defunct AWS