The Kid Who Ran For President Read online

  “I don’t believe the Israelis or Palestinians collect baseball cards,” the moderator chuckled.

  “Well, maybe they should,” I said. “It’s better to fight over cards than it is to fight over countries.”

  And that was the end of the debate. The moderator came over and thanked all three of us for participating. I shook hands with the president and even got his autograph.

  When I came off the stage, Lane was sitting on the floor with his knees up and his head buried in his hands. He looked like a kid whose pet had died or something.

  “I’m sorry, Lane,” I said. “I guess I just don’t have the fire in the belly to be president.”

  He didn’t say a word to me on the ride back to Madison. He just stared out the window.

  I had trouble sleeping after the debate and got up very early. I went downstairs to get the morning paper. The reporters camped out across the street weren’t even awake yet.

  The headline on the front page nearly knocked me over:

  MOON WINS DEBATE, SURGES AHEAD!

  By Ralph Hammelbacher

  12-year-old Judson Moon cleverly turned the tables on President White and Senator Dunn last night, shocking the nation in the most freewheeling evening of political debate in memory.

  Instead of engaging in a conventional debate, the youngster used the opportunity to thumb his nose at the political system in front of the entire nation.

  President White and Senator Dunn were reduced to dumb-founded onlookers as Moon deftly and hilariously controlled the proceedings with snappy retorts and off-the-wall opinions that threw his opponents off their stride.

  “Moon knew exactly what he was doing,” said political analyst Morton Fishwick. “He knew he couldn’t beat his opponents by debating the issues, so he made the issues go away. I’ve got to hand it to him. It was brilliant strategy on the kid’s part.”

  In telephone polls taken immediately after the debate, an overwhelming majority of people — young and old — named Moon as the victor.

  With just five days until the election, the Moon & June steam-roller has a three point lead over President White, according to an Associated Press poll. Senator Dunn trails by seven points.

  Mom was so happy, she invited just about everyone we’d ever known over to the house to celebrate. Lane was happy again and even congratulated me for relying on my “political instincts” instead of taking his advice. My folks beamed. Arthur Krantz steamed.

  June Syers just looked at me with that look that said she’d known it all along. Abby called and said she was too busy to make the party, but I think she didn’t come because she knew Chelsea would be there.

  Chelsea had her arm snaked around my elbow like we were stuck together. She had to leave early, though, explaining that she had to begin the long and arduous task of shopping for clothes she would wear as First Lady.

  I pretty much sat there, dazed, during the whole party. I couldn’t figure out how I’d messed up messing up the debate.

  The candidacy was like a runaway train now. Nothing could stop my momentum. I had done every thing short of dropping my pants to wreck my chances of winning the election. It didn’t work. Unless something disastrous happened quickly, I was going to be the next president of the United States.

  And then something disastrous happened.

  In the middle of the celebration at my house, I received a phone call from Pete Guerra, my reporter friend who wrote the first article about the lemonade stand that started the whole ball rolling.

  “Congratulations,” Pete said. “That was quite a show you put on last night.”

  “Thanks, Pete. Listen, I can’t talk now. There are a lot of people over here.”

  “Lemme ask you one quick question, Judson.”

  “Go ahead, Pete.”

  “Did you break into some kid’s locker and steal his term paper when you were in fourth grade?”

  I remembered the incident. It was that jerk Arthur Krantz. He had put a sign that said KICK ME on my backpack, so I stole his term paper and threw it down the sewer. It wasn’t any big deal.

  “Yeah, Pete, I did that. Why?”

  “Just checking,” Guerra said. “Enjoy your party.”

  I forgot all about it until the next morning, when Lane called early and shouted, “Did you see today’s paper?!”

  I ran outside. The reporters swarmed all over me, sticking microphones in my face. “Is it true? Will you drop out of the race?”

  I dashed inside with the paper and read the story that was splashed across the front page.

  MOONGATE! YOUNG CANDIDATE ROCKED BY SCANDAL

  By Pete Guerra

  Judson Moon burglarized another student’s locker and deliberately destroyed important papers, according to an informed source. With just three days remaining until Election Day, the young candidate is faced with a personal scandal that may derail his presidential hopes.

  The incident took place two years ago. After an argument with the other student, Moon used a metal ruler to pry open the locker. Several papers were removed and never recovered. It is unclear at this time what information was on those papers.

  Principal Harold Berlin is cooperating with the FBI on the investigation.

  “If Judson Moon did this,” he says, “I would have to reconsider whether I would want him to be the leader of our country.”

  Other problems are beginning to surface for the young candidate, who up until now has seemed like the perfect all-American boy. It has been learned that aspiring “First Lady” Chelsea Daniels did not even know Moon’s name until he decided to run for president.

  “He thought he’d have a better chance of winning if he was with a cute babe,” one student revealed.

  Also, it has been revealed that Moon changed the name of his parakeet to make it more acceptable to the American public. “Cuddles’s” real name is apparently “Snot.”

  So Booger Boy Krantz went and gabbed to the press. That jerk! He would do anything to bring me down.

  “Is it true?” demanded Lane when I got back on the phone.

  “Sure it’s true,” I replied. “So what?”

  “It’s going to cost us the election, that’s what! I worked so hard to make the public think you’re an innocent kid who doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. And now this. What was on those papers you stole?”

  “It was Arthur Krantz’s stupid term paper. I threw it down the sewer.”

  “What was the term paper about?”

  “The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

  “You threw the Constitution down a sewer?!”

  “It was just a goof!”

  “That’s the problem, Moon. Everything is a goof with you!” Lane slammed down the phone.

  The press jumped all over the “Moongate” scandal. I tuned into a couple of talk radio shows and it seemed like all the people who had been saying how wonderful I was now wanted to ride me out of town on a rail.

  I pretended to be upset about what happened, but on the inside I was secretly happy. Thanks to Booger Boy Krantz, I found a way to lose the election.

  Still, it bothered me that Pete Guerra wrote the story. I didn’t care about being president, but I wasn’t happy that everybody knew about Snot and Chelsea. It made me look like a phony.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Guerra’s number.

  “Pete,” I said. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “Remember what I told you at the beginning, Moon? Nobody is your friend. Everybody wants a piece of you, and that includes me. I’m a reporter. My job is not to help you become president. My job is to find great stories people want to read so they’ll buy my paper.”

  “Breaking into a kid’s locker is a great story?” I asked. “Changing my parakeet’s name is a great story?”

  “If you’re the presidential front-runner those are terrific stories!” Pete exclaimed. “Like I said, Moon. America chews up celebrities and spits ’em out. And America is about to clear its throat with you.�
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  Lane was furious at me, but he wasn’t ready to give up the fight. There were still two days until the election. He decided our only chance to save the campaign was for me to go on national TV and talk directly to the American people.

  I didn’t want to do it. “Look,” I pleaded with Lane, “let’s just forget about it. I never really wanted to be president anyway. It was just a —”

  “A goof. I know, Moon. Everything is a goof with you. But when we got started on this thing, we agreed on one thing — I’m in charge of the campaign. After Election Day, you’re in charge. But up until then, I call the shots. I tell you what to do, what to wear, what to say and when to say it. Remember? I didn’t work my tail off for the last year to see you quit two days before the election. You owe me, Moon.”

  I may have lied and faked my way through the campaign, but I am a boy of my word. I agreed to go on national TV and read a statement.

  “You’ve got to read it word for word,” Lane warned me. “No improvising. No jokes. No goofing around.”

  “Word for word,” I agreed.

  The Moongate scandal definitely had an impact across America. People had thought I was squeaky clean. They didn’t want to hear that I used dirty tricks. Moon & June dropped ten points in the polls instantly. President White was back in the lead, with Senator Dunn and me five points behind.

  Lane drained the last dollars from the money we raised to buy ten minutes of air time during halftime of Monday Night Football. He wanted to make sure all of America was watching. It was the night before Election Day.

  We did the filming in front of my house, with my parents standing behind me. Lane dressed me in a plain gray suit. “I want you to look boring,” he said. Just before the camera started rolling, Lane told my dad to put a hand on my shoulder.

  “My fellow Americans,” I read somberly off the cue cards Lane held up, “in the last few days a story came out that I broke into someone’s locker and stole some papers. I can understand if you have second thoughts about voting for me. I wouldn’t want to have a president who did that sort of thing, and I’m sure you wouldn’t either.

  “I’m here tonight to come clean with America. Yes, I admit it. I broke into Arthur Krantz’s locker and threw his term paper down the sewer. It was a childish prank.

  “I know that what I did was wrong. I was younger then. I’m much more mature now. I learned a valuable lesson from this experience and I will never, ever do anything like that again. You have my word on that.

  “And yes, my parakeet’s name is Snot. I thought the American people would not accept that, so I changed it to Cuddles.

  “One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t they’ll probably be saying this about me, too. I did get something, a gift. A man down in Texas heard that I would like to have a dog. And, believe it or not, one day I got a message that the post office had a package for me. I went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that had been sent all the way from Texas — black and white, spotted. I named it Chester. And you know, I love that dog. And I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, I’m gonna keep it. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of the game.”

  That was it. I took off the microphone and breathed a big sigh of relief. The campaign was finally over. Lane shook my hand and told me I did a great job.

  “Where did you come up with that bit about Chester?” I asked him. “It was really corny.”

  “I didn’t write it.”

  “Who did?”

  “Richard Nixon.”

  “The president?” I asked. “Isn’t he dead?”

  “He wrote it in 1952, when he was running for vice president,” Lane explained. “Nixon had received some shady campaign contributions and Eisenhower was going to drop him and pick another person to be his running mate. Then Nixon went on national TV right after Milton Berle’s show and made this speech. His dog was named Checkers and the speech came to be called the Checkers speech. It saved his career.”

  “You mean I just gave Nixon’s Checkers speech?”

  “Well, I changed a word or two,” Lane said, with a wicked smile on his face.

  Election Day is always the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. When I woke up that morning, I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. If the Checkers speech worked for me like it worked for Richard Nixon, I might actually win the election.

  The overnight polls showed that the speech hit home with at least some Americans. Moon & June jumped up a few points and President White dropped down a few. CNN said the race was too close to call.

  Senator Dunn had dropped down to a distant third. It looked like it was all over for him.

  School was open on Election Day and I decided to go. Staying home all day would only make me more nervous than I already was.

  My school is the place where grown-ups in the neighborhood go to vote. Every Election Day, the gym is emptied out and filled with those big voting machines. I always thought of Election Day as a drag, because we wouldn’t get to have gym that day.

  It was pretty weird seeing all those grown-ups lining up to vote, and thinking that some of them would be voting for me. It was the first time I really understood or appreciated that this is how we make important decisions in this country.

  It was impossible to pay much attention to school. Everybody was looking at me, asking me how I felt, requesting autographs. The teachers didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on their lessons, either.

  Chelsea caught up with me after homeroom. “I’m so excited!” she said. “I’m going to wear my red silk dress with the shoulder ruffles to the party tonight!”

  “I’m sure you’ll look terrific,” I said with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster. Chelsea was really starting to get on my nerves.

  Lane had booked the Presidential Suite and the big ballroom at the fancy Edgewater Hotel for the evening. Just about everybody in town was going to be there to watch the election returns on TV.

  Lane and I didn’t get the chance to talk until lunchtime. I told him what I’d heard about the latest polls. For the first time, he didn’t seem that interested.

  “Polls mean nothing at this point,” Lane said. “It’s the electoral votes that matter now.”

  I never really understood that whole electoral college thing, so Lane explained it to me. It turns out that each of the fifty states is given one electoral vote for every member it has in Congress. That includes the state’s two Senators plus however many members it has in the House of Representatives.

  The states with higher populations have more representatives, and more electoral votes. So states like New York, California, Texas, and Pennsylvania have more electoral votes than less populated states like Nevada, Alaska, and Rhode Island.

  Lane explained that whichever candidate gets the most votes in a state wins all the electoral votes in that state. And whichever candidate gets 270 or more electoral votes wins the election.

  It didn’t seem exactly fair to me. A candidate could become president if he just won a few of the big states, even though he lost all the smaller states.

  Lane said it was even possible to win the election on electoral votes even if more people voted for the other candidate. In fact, that actually happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000.

  “What if nobody gets 270 electoral votes?” I asked.

  “Then the House of Representatives votes to decide who will be president.”

  After school I went home and Mom fussed over me, making food and helping me pick out clothes for the evening. I think it was the longest time I’d ever spent with her when she didn’t mention carpet tiles once.

  After dinner, Mom, Dad, and I checked into the Presidential Suite at the Edgewater Hotel. Lane was already there, running around, completing last-minute details for the party afterward. June Syers was wheeled in by her kids, who were older than my mom and dad. Mrs. Syers looked great, in a new print dress and lace
hat.

  All my aunts, uncles, and cousins milled around, scarfing down chips and those little hot dogs wrapped in rolls.

  Chelsea looked fabulous in her silk dress, of course. I invited her to stay with us in the Presidential Suite, but she said she was too nervous and would watch the results in the ballroom downstairs. I think she just wanted to be where the most people would see her dress.

  Lane’s plan was for me to come down to the ballroom as soon as the TV networks declared a winner. He had written two speeches for me — an acceptance speech in case I won, and a concession speech in case I lost.

  He also arranged for the hotel to put four TV sets in our room so we could watch ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN all at the same time. When the polls started to close on the East Coast at 8:00 P.M., we pulled chairs around the glowing screens.

  For about an hour, none of the results were in and the announcers filled the time by talking — mostly about me. They went on and on about how historic it was for a kid to run for president.

  “I have seen a lot of big stories in my career reporting the news,” one of the anchormen babbled. “The Kennedy assassination. The Vietnam War. Watergate. Man landing on the moon. The tragedy of September eleventh, 2001. But never in all those years did it ever cross my mind that a child would not only run for president, but ever have a chance of winning the presidency. This is a turning point in the history of the Earth.”

  Lane and I made gagging noises and pretended to stick our fingers down our throats.

  “If the Earth knew it was gonna be around this long,” Mrs. Syers said, “it woulda taken better care of itself.”

  A little after 9:00 o’clock Eastern time the results started coming in. We stopped talking among ourselves and pulled our chairs closer to the screens.

  “With thirteen percent of the votes in,” the CNN announcer suddenly said, “we are projecting the state of Delaware and its three electoral votes will go to President White.”