God Save the Republic - A Mike Pence Fan Fiction - Chapter 1
- Charlie Biscotto
- Feb 16, 2017
- 3 min read
46?
Surely, it was only a matter of time now.
He stared out the window of 1 Observatory Circle, a cup of warm chamomile tea in his hands. He hates the stuff. Thinks herbal tea is a lot of hokum. But allergies and stress were slowly breaking down his immune system, and Karen tells him he needs this stuff.
In truth, what he needs is a whole bottle of whiskey, but Karen won't tell him he needs that, so the chamomile tea will suffice.
Being back in D.C. has certainly done a number on him. He'd forgotten how much his body aches here. Was it the pollen? It's only February, so that seemed unlikely. Something in the air left his body feeling unclean. Four years in Indianapolis had spoiled his nasal passages.
He didn't know if the president had done the worst of what his opponents accused. "Treason." It couldn't be that simple. But the president had lied to the American people, and the president had lied to him, and in Washington, the cover-up is always worse than the crime.
At first, he appreciated being out of the loop. It gave him some level of deniability. When all of this went up in flames and the Democrats took back the White House in a landslide in 2020, he could write his book on the whole thing, go back to Indiana, maybe even get back into radio. Or run for governor! He'd have a better chance than before, he thought, once the book cleared his reputation and set him against the worst of Donald's excesses. That was his thinking when four years was the baseline. But now, we were four weeks in, and the White House was already on the verge of imploding. If one credible Republican turned whole-heartedly against the administration, it was all over. The cover was there for more to follow suit.
But who would do it? The president's base showed that they were now 30-40% of the Republican primary electorate. Who would dare risk a career by alienating them? Who could recover from that? Someone without another race to run, he supposed. John McCain? But John's numerous scraps with the president had left barely a scratch. Paul Ryan? Paul would be censured by his own caucus and removed as Speaker, which wouldn't bode well for a man who always had his eyes forward. Lindsey Graham? He nearly spit out his tea.
Someone would do it, he decided, and once they did, it would only be a matter of time before impeachment or resignation. Emoluments. Treason. There had to be something in the president's taxes that could look like bribery. And once it happened, he would become Michael Richard Pence, 46th President of the United States of America, and this bewilderingly short national nightmare would be over.
They'd need to act quickly. The president was always one tragic event away from declaring a State of Emergency and forcing a Constitutional crisis. Vladimir Putin very likely had orchestrated terror attacks in Russia to consolidate power in the early days of rule. What would stop Putin from doing the same in a foreign nation to keep an ally at the helm? Based on events in Ukraine, very little.
Someone needed to turn before the opportunity arose, and it needed to be someone credible, someone the Right could not dismiss as bitter, someone who was losing more by standing up to the president than they would gain by his fall.
That's when it hit him. There was only one man who matched that description. And that man was standing there, staring out the window of 1 Observatory Circle, a warm cup of chamomile tea in his hands.
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