Introductory shot: George H.W. Bush with his dorky, "aw, heck grin" and underheader that reads "They can't lick our Bush!"

Narration overlay: "Very few of us thought he should be President-- much less that he even could be. Of course, we were all taught that anything was possible in America (-- God bless her). But probably by the end of high school we had our illusions stripped away from us with the remorseless downward drag of the crowd. A President-- the President-- was someone altogether larger, and more extraordinary, than we ordinary peons doodling around our lives miserably. Though we might like or revile him, though we could judge him (-- and yeah, even send him packing in times of famine). . . . . . though a million words a day were written on his policies and politics, though millions of people might listen to his speeches, or watch a network television tour of his home. . . . . though his face and his voice, his wife, kids, and dog would be known to every sentient adult, though his name or initials would leave us smacking over a time of our lives-- for the rest of our lives. . . . . . still, we came of age knowing, somehow, that the life of this inhuman beast must be unknowable.

You can read a mountain of newspapers, stare at the t.v. like some kind of O.D'd political junkie/zombie. You can learn about polls and ad campaigns, people-meters, direct-mail fund-raising, computer-targeted media-buys, and all kind of wizardry that licks its finger and holds it up in the air to sense which the wind is blowing. . . . . . but there are a few questions left about Presidential campaigns--

Who are these guys?

What are they like?

Who knows what kind of life would lead a man to think not only that he ought to be President, but one can only guess at the habit of triumph to make him conclude that he could be President.

As they say, 'hell takes the hindmost' and the winner will see you on the other side!"

The George Bush presidential portrait is still hanging there. . . . . sound effect comes on, a Steve Urkel whinny and snort. Clearly "a wimp" is in office, catchword of the George Bush presidency!

Cut to shot of man dressed up in jumpsuit decorated like the American flag diving out of an airplane, falling straight down toward the heartland in practically a suicidal gesture. He falls a long way. . . . . and the parachute never quite opens!

********************

The Price of Being Poppy

(THIS WILL WORK LIKE A MONTAGE-- a half-completed montage-- that, as time goes on, will be able to get some of the blank spots filled in come "film-time")

(Cut to shot of baseball stadium, the Houston Astrodome rising up like a piece of grand architecture in the night)

(Cut to broad shot of folks in the stands)

Narration: "This is about as good as it gets, as close as national politics offers to a mortal lock on the mind of the average American. On this night, October 8th, 1986, the Vice President is coming to the Astrodome, to Game One of the National League Championship Series, and the nation will be watching from its La-Z Boys as George Bush stands front and center, glistening with America's holy water: play-off juice"

(Cut to shot of balding slob without shoes sitting in La-Z Boy recliner with bag of cheetoes in dim lamplight, gripping his beer in excitement)

(Cut to shot of folks buying hot dogs out in the dome hallway, a quintesentially all-American activity)

"Oh, and here's the beauty part: he doesn't have to say a thing! He's just got to throw out the first ball. He'll be hosted by the Astro's owner, Dr. John McMullen"

(Cut to shot of elderly man in sports coat standing way down in the field with microphone, welcoming everybody)

"He'll be honored by the National League and the Great Old Game; he'll be cheered by 44,131 fans-- and it's not even a risky crowd, the kind that might get testy. . . . . ."

(Roll soundless clip of Rod Stewart video, "People Get Ready" when camera pans over depressed all-American youth in his '20s lying against the grille of a beat-up old car in a garage, followed by a fat, bitter 'ol cowboy with gray whiskers sitting out on a porch with his arms crossed and tracking the camera with resentful eyes)

"because oil isn't worth a damn, Houston's economy is down the crapper, and everyone could move if they'd sell their houses. No, those guys can't get tickets tonight"

(Cut to shot of homeless black man outside the stadium smoking crack)

(Then, as following narration overlays, show shot of Mitt Romney-look-a-likes and their families. Men are wearing sports coats and golf shirts with emblems. Camera zooms up to the sky boxes where the big shots sit with cowboy hats, smoking cigars like "big shots")

"This is a play-off crowd, a corporate-perks crowd, the kind of fellows who were transferred in a few years ago from the big companies and were frankly delighted by the price of depressed housing, and nonetheless a solid GOP crowd, tax-conscious, white and polite-- they're wearing sports coats, and golf shirts with emblems-- vice presidents all, but anyway, they're just backdrop"

(Cut to shot of vintage ABC footage leading up to the sports moment about to be described, their narration played quietly under our narration)

(Cut to still picture of George Bush walking through the rose garden)

"Tonight, George Bush will shine for the nation as a whole-- ABC, coast-to-coast, and it's perfect: the Astros against the Mets, Scott vs. Gooden, the K kings, the best against the best, the showdown America's been waiting for, and to cut the ribbon, to "Let the Games Begin". . . . . GEORGE BUSH. Spectacular! Reagan's guys couldn't have done better"

(At the sound of "Reagan's guys", cut to shot of White House, then of Ronald Reagan walking through the Rose Garden with his aides in tow)

(Cut to shot of downtown Houston business district)

"It's Houston. Bush's hometown. They love him. Guaranteed standing 'O'. Meanwhile, ABC will have to mention he was captain of the Yale team, the College World Series-- maybe show the picture of him meeting Babe Ruth"

(Cut to classic shot of George Bush standing there with Babe Ruth)

"You couldn't buy better airtime. Just wave to the crowd, throw the ball. A no-brainer"

(As the next bit of narration overlays, show shot of idealized George Bush walking across the field in a blue suit)

"There he'll be, his trim form bisecting every TV screen in the blessed Western Hemisphere for a few telegenic moments, the brightest star in this grand tableau: the red carpet on the Astroturf; the electronic light-board shooting patterns of stars and smoke from a bull's nose, like it does when the Astros hits a home run"

(Cut to shot of scoreboard doing just that)

"the Diamond Vision in riveting close-up, his image to the tenth power for the fans in the cheap seats and then the langorous walk to the mound, the wave to the grandstand,"

(Cut to shot of Bush's image blown up on the screen as he waves to the crowd, and stands on the mound and gets ready to throw the ball)

"the cheers of the throng, the windup. . . . . that gorgeous one-minute nexus with the national anthem, the national pastime, the national past, and better still. . . . . with the honest manly combat of the diamond, a thousand freeze-frames, a million words worth of George Bush at play in the world of spikes and dirt, all scalded into the beery brainpans of fifty million prime-time fans. . . . . mostly men. God knows, he needs help with men"

(Cut to shot of Marlboro Man scowling with a cigarette in between his lips)

"So George Bush is coming to the Astrodome. . . . ."

"Disaster in the making!"

********************

A New Montage: George Bush's Secret Service Preparations

Cut to shot of dialing phones, and official-looking men in White House capacity talking about this trip to the Houston Astrodome. Coordination for Air Force 2, and the backup for Air Force 2 with the rolling of a plane out of hangar. A White House man asks about the armored stretch limo, and the military voice says that one is waiting parked and secured twenty-four hours a day in the basement of the Houston Civic Center. They wouldn't have to fly in a backup limo, they'd use the "old one".

Cut to shot of Secret Service looking over the Astrodome, going through the hallways and holding rooms and various pathways for the Vice President. A swarm stand on the field with a pair of binoculars, looking around in all directions and pointing. They wander around the dome like gladiators stalking around the seats of a coliseum, narrowing their hands and gauging distances.

Cut to shot of Secret Service, Houston Police, and two directors from The White House Communications Agency sitting down with the elderly owner, Dr. John McMullen in a luxury conference room. They ask the owner of the Astros baseball team "what kind of event did they want the Vice President for?" Sure, it's the first-ball thing, but where would he make the throw? The elderly gentleman says, "Well, there's the pitcher's mound. . . . ." but the service seems uncertain about this notion, they don't want the VP exposed on the field like a baited goose. Did McMullen want his 44,000 fans held at the gates and frisked for metal?

Absolutely not.

Well, Lead Advance figures that the political people might WANT him on the mound. You know, taller. Heh, Heh. (Uneasy joke)

The Secret Service figures that they're going to have to put George Bush in a vest, a flak vest. Heh, heh.

The Lead Advance says "This is a matter for Washington"

(Cut to shot of White House with sound of ringing phone)

"Now what about the cocktail party? It'll change things if he talks in front of the press in a flak jacket!"

"Naw, you mean that it will make the schedule unpredictable when he had to change in one of the holding rooms"

"Oh yeah"

"Do you want him to talk?

"Should he talk?"

He talks, there's press. . . . ."

"No press."

"Well, he doesn't have to talk. . . . ."

"Okay, Mix and Mingle. . . . . Who's got the motorcade?"

Cut to shot of men sitting in office, going over the schedule minute by minute, living out the countdown like technicians at NASA. Finally they print a booklet known as "The Bible" on official stationary which has "the official plan" all nailed down right there in black & white.

An official reads out of "The Bible":

----------------------------------

6:10 PM   THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush arrive Astrodome and proceed to Astrohall to attend Reception

                Met by: Dr. and Mrs. John McMullen (Jacqueline)

EVENT:    HOUSTON SPORTS ASSOCIATION OWNERS RECEPTION

CLOSED PRESS
NO REMARKS
MIX AND MINGLE

6:15 P.M.    THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush arrive Reception

6:50 P.M. THE VICE PRESIDENT and Mrs. Bush conclude Reception and depart Astrohall en route Astrodome

---------------------------------------------------

The Secret Service, forever like a pack of monotone-talking wolves, want to know if he is going to throw from the seats or the mound. They have to know because it's a different route. If it's from the mound, they have a bathroom with which to put on a vest. The Secret Service keeps going over the ramifications, and The Lead Advance cut them off with a glare:

"No word yet from Washington. . . . . . Now, how's he getting to the Dome?"

"We can walk him."

"From the hall? How long?"

"Five Minutes."

"Give him ten. There'll be people."

"We can close the sidewalk."

"What if it rains?"

"Umbrellas?"

"Umbrellas!"

The advance man writes down something on his legal pad.

Cut to shot of government men fanning out inspecting cables, platforms, camera angles, and backdrops as the Secret Service loads up rifles with a dramatic clicking sound in black suits and sunglasses

Cut to over-the-shoulder camera shot of men coming out with bomb-sniffing dogs throughout the empty dome

Cut to shot of Secret Service screwing off the tops of air-conditioners, searching for bombs

Cut to shot of Air Force 2 landing with a roar. George Bush stands at the door, waving into the night like Mickey Mouse. He loads into the motorcade, led by cops on motorcycles.

(Dramatic shots of this sleek motorcade taking off, there's even an ambulance with a top-light flashing)

(Cops speeding ahead and closing off ramps, so there can be absolutely, ABSOLUTELY no unforseen complications)

(The motorcade sailing right through red lights on this empty road, on the way to the Astrodome)

(Some White House officials, who have tagged along for the ride, look out the window at the passing red lights they don't have to obey and chuckle that "this car will never need a brake job!")

(Another asks, "How's this for security and comfort?" to a secret service man sitting in the seat with a machine gun like a Terminator robot)

Cut to shot of same Presidential portrait as narration overlays:

Narrator: "'Security' & 'Comfort', the end-all, be-all of the Vice Presidency. Those were the givens of this ruthless yet candy-ass existence, along with the thousands of hours of intense unseen labor by others to make sure that George Bush didn't spill one drop of anxious perspiration on his way to the ball park, paeon of glory. Some four hundred people, a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and a couple of hundred million dollars in government equipment got him there in perfect security and comfort. They also made it possible for him to make this odyssey halfway across the country, for the better part of a day, without ever having to glance at a single person who was not a friend or whose sole purpose it was to serve or protect him.

Call it 'the bubble'"

(Cut to shot of collector's cabinet full of George Bush memorabilia)

(A brown-noser to all things George Bush gives a tour of his collectables, holding up a jacket with "Vice President" stitched on the back of it like a boxing jacket. There are cufflinks, memo paper, matchbooks, lighters, ashtrays, swizzle sticks, coasters, glasses, mugs, china teacups, all with the Vice President's name and seal on it)

(As the brown-noser introduces these items, the camera cuts to a shot of the item actually being used. For example, when he gets to the swizzle stick, we would show it being stirred in a glass of whiskey and ice cubes at an official white house function, gripped in someone's hands with the sound of it being stirred. It's funny how some people fetishize power and officialdom)

Cut to shot of George Bush portrait as narration overlays

Narrator: "It takes a special man to enjoy the Vice Presidency, but George Bush was the man for the job. What good is the Vice Presidency? "A bucket of warm spit", said "Cactus Jack" Garner, FDR's Vice President in the '30s. The job never called for deep thinking; if you thought too much, got too mentally active, you'd get out in front of the President, or worse still, off to the side like an insurrectionist. There's only one question that the #2 banana needs to ask around here: 'What's the President saying on this?' Anything else is begging for trouble, and George Bush had brains enough to figure that out. Problem was, no Vice President was really Number Two, or even Three or Four: a Chief of Staff, Secretary of State-- any Cabinet officer-- a Senator, even a Congressman. . . . . hundreds of people had more legal and practical power over how things went in the country, even how things went in the White House. Why, the only thing a Vice President did was theoretically break a tie in a dead-locked, 50/50 Senate. Mostly what a Vice President did was "ACCOMMODATION", and "Beta Bush" was the master at that.

"He decided that Reagan was going to be his friend--"

Cut to shot of panting lap-dog begging to be let in through sliding glass doors

Narrator: "Nevermind that they disagreed about almost everything, mostly because George Bush knew about five times more about government and the world than Ronald Reagan ever would, and that the presence of George Bush was bait to hook in "the moderates", but the Veep decided that he was going to like Ronald Reagan no matter what. Even though Reagan's boys ignored him because he wasn't a true trogyldyte conservative, stopped talking when he came into the room, and cracked jokes about him behind his back.

Cut to shot of hand throwing lap-dog a squeaky bone, and the dog running after it with an "arf"

But Ronald Reagan told great jokes, funny stories. That was his bond with the people. Why, instead of sending in a boring weekly memo about the state of the nation George Bush would scrape up a joke and send it in to "his pal".

Cut to shot of Reagan laughing with his head thrown back at dining table (-- add in sound of smarmy laughter)

Narrator: "(In it's own way, that was doing all that was in his capacity to help the President, who was a little 'out to lunch' anyhow)"

Cut to shot of Bush portrait

Narrator: "Six years of patient work, after a lifetime of being a dogged team player and making friends, and here Bush was at the Houston Astrodome for that little tip of the job that somehow made it all worth it-- actually communing with Americanus Neanderthalus, or hopefully the sanitized version. . . . ."

Cut to shot of balding slob without shoes sitting in La-Z Boy recliner with bag of cheetoes in dim lamplight, stuffing cheetoes in his mouth and making crunching sounds

Cut to shot of George Bush standing in "The Catfish Hole", an area hidden at eye-level to the right of first-base, with his team of Secret Service personel. He is wearing an awkward bulletproof vest under his blue blazer

Houston Astros Announcer: "Ladies & Gentleman, we've known him for years here in Houston"

Cut to shot of Lead Advance man brushing by George Bush and giving the high sign to the dugout, to the Astros' Catcher

Houston Astros Announcer: "And he's flown in tonight to be with us"

Cut to shot of announcer's booth

Houston Astros Announcer: "And now, to throw out the first pitch, to get the 1986 National League Championship Series underway, the Vice President of the United States. . . . ."

Cut to shot of George Bush rising out of "The Catfish Hole" and coming out onto the field, hunched over as the crowd cheers. There will be a shot of him from all angles from all over the ballpark of the Veep looking tiny down there below, a bunch of Secret Service coming out there with him a-ways, standing on the second and third base lines along with the photographers. There is the blown-up version of George Bush on the giant screen hunched over, making his dogged way over like a man marching to his doom

Cut to shot of how Bush appears on the giant screen on the television screen in bars all across America, guys looking up at the television over their beers and whiskeys with world-weary cynicism

Cut to shot of Bush from behind standing at the pitcher's mound; he can't rest easily with his hands at his sides because of the vest. . . . . he looks like a kid in a snowsuit! He pads around gently on top of the mound with baby-steps, uncertain and off-balance. The catcher squats in the background. Bush lifts up his right hand in front of his face, palm up, and flaps his wrist as if asking the catcher to come closer. It's a joke, but the catcher doesn't know that, so then Bush has to raise both hands, quick, palms out, with the ball flashing white in his left hand, to keep the catcher where he is, at the plate. Truly an awkward moment. Bush attempts to make the windup, but really can't manage because of the vest, makes an awkward throw that doesn't go anywhere, and then does something that no politician anywhere would ever dream of, like a kid who just dropped the cookie jar. . . . .

. . . . . he buries his head in his hands in front of the roaring multitude!

Narrator: "Yes, George Bush had a problem with men. . . . ."

(A Great Way to Close The Demo)

*******************