Four years ago I wrote this story for a contest that challenged writers to come up with a tale about the newly elected president. The winning story was terrific, an interior monologue the President had while smoking a cigarette bummed from a Secret Service Agent. I dug up this story after watching a night full of great speeches given by women at the DNC. Such amazing diversity--and I don't mean ethnicity and race and creed. Sister Simone Campbell and Cecile Richards. (I remember Governor Ann Richards and think she would be very proud of her daughter.) And I thought of the women who broke the ground for the women who were at the podium tonight. The narrator in this story is one of those women who came before--a woman who once gave a keynote speech at the DNC herself.
This is the only piece of political fiction I've ever written.
Little Brother
President Barack Obama came to Austin today.
Austin
loves him. When he and Joe Biden came
through on the Obama-Rama campaign stop last year, the whole town went
crazy. This year the welcome is a bit
more subdued, but still enthusiastic.
He is here to make a speech and as he passed through the
main terminal of the Austin-Bergstrom
International Airport,
there were some who expected he would stop for a photo opportunity and maybe
mention me. Instead he joked with
reporters about football and kept moving.
Well he was preaching to the choir there. The reporters were all local boys and Texas is football
country after all. We’re known for
it. That and birthing beauty
queens.
I don’t begrudge the slight. He’s a man in a hurry, that
Obama and if talking foolishness with a couple of good ol’ boys is what it
takes to play the game, then so be it. The
game was different in my time but I still played to win, even when I knew the
odds were stacked against me. When I was
mentioned as a possible running mate for Jimmy Carter in 1976, I knew that was
never going to happen and just accepted it.
Although it would have been nice to be asked.
I didn’t go to Harvard Law school like the President,
although Harvard started accepting my kind back in 1950. Instead I got my degree from Boston University
Law School
and then went home to Texas
before getting involved in politics. John
Connally was governor then. He was a man
I could work with. Not like Dolph
Briscoe who was a Democrat too but acted more like a Republican sometimes.
We butted heads over the Voting Rights Act of 1965. You remember, that was the one that extended
the rights of language minorities. Dolph
didn’t really see the point. Well, he
wouldn’t, would he? I didn’t find much
to admire about the second president from Texas but I’ll say this. He spoke Spanish like a native and could
communicate with all his constituents
back when he was governor.
