January 27, 2007. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon in Washington, D.C. The Leader of the Free World was taking a short break from his Decider responsibilities. He lounged in his media room, watching his 20-foot plasma HDTV screen, a gift from the oil companies in their gratitude for his occasional attempt to help them keep their paltry and always-threatened profit margins barely above zero. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his recliner and wondered how the remote control worked, as he waited for a commercial to end and the golf tournament to return.

Suddenly, his vice president burst through the door. President Bush gasped when he saw him; he had never before seen Dick Cheney in such a state. His hair stood on end, his face was pale, his eyeglasses askew, his tie undone, his white dress shirt halfway out of his trousers and soaked through with sweat, and his customary sardonic smirk replaced by a slack-jawed look of panic.

“Dick, what’s goin’ on?” the president asked.

“It’s over, Mr. President. It’s just – we can’t – it’s just over – it’s all over,” Cheney babbled as he staggered into the room, glancing agitatedly around, as if looking for an escape route.

Bush stood and put his hands on Cheney’s shoulders. “Dick, calm down. Talk to me. What’s over? What’re you talkin’ about? What’s happened?”

“Over at the Capital Mall, Mr. President. The people – the people opposed to the Iraq war. They had a demonstration.”

Bush felt a knot begin to tighten in the pit of his stomach. “A – a demonstration?”

“The police say that there were around ninety thousand people in it, Mr. President.”

Sweat broke out all over Bush’s forehead. “NINETY THOUSAND? There’s that many Americans against the Eye-rack war? Ninety thousand?” He stared into space, trying to comprehend the enormity of the figure. “I had no idea…”

“Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were there – and they spoke to the crowd.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the president said, visibly staggered by the additional news. “But – but we can recover. We’ve got some movie actors. Let’s call Arnold – maybe he can – ”

Cheney shook his head. “AND Sean Penn.”

Bush’s hand went to his mouth. “Oh, no. We don’t have anybody with that kind of foreign policy credibility…” he began to pace worriedly around the room. “Hey, wait – what about Colin? Does he take our phone calls now? Maybe we could beg forgiveness – tell him bygones are bygones – and he could –”

Oblivious to the breach in protocol, Cheney sank down into Bush’s recliner and held his head in his hands. “You haven’t heard the worst of it yet, Mr. President,” he groaned.

Bush drew himself erect and tried to brace himself. “Dick, c’mon. I’ve gotta know.”

Cheney fought to make himself say the name. “It was J-J-J-Jesse –”

Bush’s knees buckled as he emitted an involuntary moan.

“ – Jackson,” Cheney finished in a hoarse whisper.

The blood drained from Bush’s face and he leaned against a table, grasping its edge with both hands to keep from collapsing to the floor. “Oh, my God, oh, my God…”

Cheney leaped from the recliner, raising his face and both arms toward the ceiling. His voice was rising almost to a shriek. “We’re done, we’re just done – there’s nothing we can – we’re done – the Republican party is done…”

Bush fought to grasp some strength from that stay-the-course stubbornness he knew was deeply ingrained in his psyche. “But we can – we can – what about our guys? We can get Rush, and Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly, and they can – ”

Cheney sank back into the recliner. His words were now coming between sobs. “It’s no use, it’s no use. Rush is dead. Suicide. Twelve bottles of Oxycontin. One from each of his doctors. Hannity quit his job and said he was going to go open a gay bookstore in the Tenderloin. O’Reilly walked off the set at Fox News. He said if had only been Jess–” Cheney’s head snapped up as he gasped, realizing that he had said too much.

Bush stared at Cheney’s tear-slathered face, feeling every last vestige of resolve disappear from his being. “Dick, you aren’t telling me everything. You’ve got to tell me everything. I’ve gotta know.”

“I can’t, I can’t, Mr. President, I just can’t,” Cheney shook his head and wailed.

In a frenzy of fear, Bush grabbed Cheney’s shirt front and pulled him up from the recliner. “Damn you, tell me!”

“I can’t, I can’t!”

Whack! Bush slapped Cheney’s left cheek hard, and then whack! backhanded his right cheek just as hard. “Tell me! I’ve gotta know! TELL ME!”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t say her na—”

The realization struck Bush like a speeding freight train. “Oh, my God. It was HER?” He shook Cheney. “Was it HER?”

Cheney quivered all over as he blubbered, “Yes! No! Please, I can’t say it!”

Bush shook him harder. He screamed in Cheney’s face, “Was it her? Was it FONDA? Was it JANE FONDA?”

“Yes! It was! Yes! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Cheney was weeping profusely now, and Bush let go of his shirt and let him collapse on the floor.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Bush murmured as he tried to walk to the door, but his knees gave way and he sank to the floor as well. “We’re done, it’s over, we’re over, it’s done.”

Neither Bush nor Cheney ever noticed that the PGA tournament on the giant TV screen had been interrupted by a news bulletin reporting that an immediate evacuation of all U.S. troops from Iraq had been ordered half an hour ago by Secretary of Defense Gates. Nor were they conscious of the screaming and crying now audible from nearby rooms in the White House, nor that those sad sounds were punctuated by an occasional single pistol shot, as certain members of the administration took advantage of the easy way out that their interpretation of the Second Amendment enabled them to keep handy in their desks.

Bush couldn’t move, except to curl into a fetal position on the carpet. “Why, why…” he whimpered, as his own anguished tears began to flow. “Why couldn’t stopping one war have been enough for that woman?”