Five hundred and thirty-five for the challenger, three for President Morgan. Three to be exact, all from Alaska, the only state Morgan had not visited, at Critz’s advice. It had been a historic election never before had an incumbent president received so few electoral votes.
With the polls showing President Morgan trailing badly in at least forty states, Critz seized control of the campaign and managed to alienate the rest of the country, except, arguably, Alaska. Critz’s last appointment had taken place the previous October, in the final frantic weeks of the reelection onslaught. In the past four years, Critz had served as press secretary, chief of staff, national security advisor, and even secretary of state, though that appointment lasted for only three months and was hastily rescinded when Critz’s unique style of diplomacy nearly ignited World War III. The last friend was Critz, an old fraternity pal from their days at Cornell when Morgan ran the student government while Critz stuffed the ballot boxes. Which thieves should be allowed to steal again? That was the momentous question facing the President as the hours crept by.
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How sad that after four tumultuous years of leading the free world it would all fizzle into one miserable pile of requests from a bunch of crooks. All claimed to be friends, or friends of friends, or die-hard supporters, though only a few had ever gotten the chance to proclaim their support before that eleventh hour. They were about pardons - desperate pleas from thieves and embezzlers and liars, some still in jail and some who’d never served time but who nonetheless wanted their good names cleared and their beloved rights restored.
His friend wasn’t so sure either, though, as always, he said little and whatever he did say was what the President wanted to hear. At that moment he felt as though he’d botched every decision in the previous four years, and he was not overly confident that he could, somehow, so late in the game, get things right. In the waning hours of a presidency that was destined to arouse less interest from historians than any since perhaps that of William Henry Harrison (thirty-one days from inauguration to death), Arthur Morgan huddled in the Oval Office with his last remaining friend and pondered his final decisions.
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