I’d never heard of Toyako, Japan.

Study the photographic evidence. This is a man who takes pride in shoveling. The backdrop was a tree planting, a symbolic admiration of life. It’s always delightful to watch heads of state, dressed in their finely tailored suits, taking a breather from debating the impending collapse of the economy to plant a row of firs.

Current events haven’t left them with much. The G-8 has no Middle East members, so what else can they really do but smile and shovel sod for the cameras? At least the President likes shoveling, so all wasn’t lost. A photo search of “Bush with Shovel” returns ninety-two thousand photos. Many aren’t of Bush shoveling dirt, but shoveling seems to be a cornerstone of Bush’s photographic legacy. Here’s one of the President with a gold shovel. Here’s one of him shoveling with the Presidents of Canada and Mexico. Here’s Bush tearing up the North Lawn to replace a fallen elm. And here’s Bush in Toyako, a picture of Protestant work ethic—back straight, eyes to the ground, shovel held with strong, locked wrists. All the while, the young Russian President taps at the soil, and the French and German Prime Ministers look to be doing light gardening.

Bush doesn’t garden. Bush is a shoveler, a man who shovels when the cameras are off. He’s clearing brush, lost in sweet dreams.  He’s back in Crawford, home at the ranch. It’s late January and the men in suits have disappeared. The world is somebody else’s problem. “Laura, where’s my shovel?” he asks. Finally. Finally.

Washington Jones looks at politics from a different point of view.

When Walter answered his phone,

I tried to pick my subjects wisely—or as shrewdly as a twenty-three year old could. I’d been pushing to write a story about the fifteen-or so folks in the state named after senator Jesse Helms. Helms was a modern political giant, loved by legions, hated by other legions, but nonetheless an historical figure. I sat in Foreign Relations hearings where Helms, the Tar Heel state’s senior senator, unfurled meaty adjectives at times when he could not abide. “Aw, that’s just plum baloney,” he’d say in his smoky mountain drawl. He tooled the marble halls of power in a sturdy, black, motorized Lark, though the Washington press corp kept this hush-hush, like Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Yes, there were better stories to chase, but I was enamored with Senator No. I wanted to ask him probing questions about what he’d learned in his time in Washington, and what he hoped to do in his final years in office.

I filed numerous press requests while my editor laughed at me for trying. But I was determined to have supper with Jesse. It became my aim, my vision quest, my lonely crusade for historical journalism before moving onto baser assignments, of which there were always many. One morning, Ed said I was to interview the state’s congressional delegation about cum found on a blue dress. “See what Jesse has to say about that.”

Okay, so my boss was a prick. Lesson learned. Not that it salvaged my tilted fate. I was poised to spend long hours talking with congressmen about splooge. It was seminal fluid that brought me to Walter. Not mine, or his, but we had to have a serious talk about another man’s juice. I sat at my desk for almost an hour, wondering how I should tackle the subject. Instead of cum, I could call it semen. “Congressman, I’d like to ask you about semen. No sir, somebody else’s semen, but nonetheless very important semen. VIP sperm.”

“Whatever you need,” Walter said, and I knew exactly what Ed wanted: Quotes about man milk and make it snappy. I felt my tender youth swiftly passing, moments stripped out of my destiny: a summer afternoon riding motorcycles up the Khardong La, or making love to a French girl off the Rue de la Huchette. Instead, here I was, a Washington D.C. correspondent, gossiping about the President’s gizz with a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

I was disgusted, but mostly I was embarrassed. I was a reporter in the world’s deliberative capital, beacon of history’s first democracy. I was an American living in my national home. Yet, I often felt a strange sensation, a feeling that I was surveying Rome just before it burned. Washington had become a place where great ones came to be mediocre. It was defective to the point of being dangerous to us all.

But what could we do? What could we do other than pray we wouldn’t be crushed by its Axis of Egos?

Walter was waiting. It turned out no one had briefed him about the interview subject. I started and stopped, then tried again. I couldn’t keep a straight face. I finally said, “So what are your thoughts about the grand jury testimony?”

There was a long pause on Walter’s end, and I learned to always be very specific when talking juries with elected officials.

“Peckergate,” I muttered, hoping he would shoot me then. “The testimony… confirming the affair… the physical evidence… the dress…the um…semen?”

“Ah yes,” Walter said. “Lets see, how should I say this?” I waited while he thought it through. This wasn’t TV. There was no hurry. He then said thoughtfully, like he’d had his staff on the issue all morning, “I wouldn’t want to comment on an active grand jury investigation, but the allegations are serious when it comes to questions of honesty and character… How’s that?”

“Dynomite, Walter,” I said drowsily, adding it into my notes. All of this was plum baloney, as Helms liked to say. I wondered what Caesar had told the philosophers; I guessed he hadn’t told them much. Walter wished me a good evening. No lectures about media responsibility, or lamenting mankind’s perverse diversions, or fears for where this all would lead. Quite the opposite, really. When it came to talking about semen, many of the Republicans were giddy, although they’d tried to conceal their bliss with statements of deep disappointment. The Democrats either answered tersely or cowered to their constituents, repeating their faith in traditional values and strongly repudiating adultery. But none, not one, questioned the exercise. Good governance and journalism, it seemed, meant stories about splooge. This was their legacy as they were living it. I was only writing it down.

Except for Jesse Helms, who died today at 86. Helms had tired of slime, apparently. The Senate’s bad boy had become an elder statesman, working across the aisle, focusing more on policy than probity. To his dying day, he remained enigmatic. He significantly fueled the two party maelstrom which threatens today to consume our country, but he was voted the nicest man in the Senate by his peers. He was a vestige of the old south, a race baiter and an isolationist, who in latter years hung out with Bono and attended U2 concerts. (Hearing aid turned off.) I’m not sure what deeper truths this offers, maybe only that Helms was human; kind in some ways, cruel in others. I never got that interview with him—not about policy or Peckergate.

For the latter at least, I’m grateful.

Washington Jones looks at politics from a different point of view.

“Stop all the presses! Loop the raw feed!
Get on the wire! We’ve got a new lead!”
The reporters and cameras all fight to keep pace
With the fast breaking news of egg splattered on face.

“This just coming in,” the news anchors exhort.
“To the White House we go for this special report.”

“We’re on the South Lawn,” the reporters exclaim,
“On what moments before was a typical day,
The sun shining bright, the scene festive and gay,
The Marine Band on hand getting ready to play.
It was billed by his staff as a keen photo-op.
The commander en route to the first of three stops:
A factory, school, and then he would fly straight
To a party fundraiser. Ten-thousand a plate.

From the West Wing at 8:42 did he come
Through the Rose Garden on his way to Marine One.
He saluted the troops. To our cameras he waved.
We reporters yelled questions, but no answers he gave.
As the chopper blades whirred, his hand rose to his ear,
To suggest he was no longer able to hear.
And just as the coast was about to be clear
Did a low-flying gaggle of geese then appear,
Hovering over the White House air space,
Did one drop a large egg on the President’s face!”

“This is an outrage! What a disgrace!”
The pundits chime in, catching up to the chase.
They spin around words, work to make their best case
Of what listeners should think of egg splattered on face.

The most vocal critics are quick to exalt
This latest bird flap is the President’s fault!
“Never mind all this talk of fine feathered assault,”
they intone from their glass-circled broadcasting vaults.
“Here is a leader so roundly despised
That even the birds have begun to get wise.
My friends, they have seen through his tricks and his lies!
Might this be a sign of his coming demise?”

Back at the White House, doom and gloom loom
Advisors pour into a hushed Cabinet Room.
The thought of it makes them all queasy and sick.
How has this scandal gain traction so quick?
One thing’s for sure, if they don’t find their kick,
If they don’t react fast, then this scandal might stick!

The President sighs, “Can’t we make a firm case
That nothing is wrong with egg dropped on face!”
“But sir,” his most trusted advisors forewarn,
“Doing that could turn into one big, ugly thorn.
Your staff must both kindly and humbly advise
You deny any egg hit your head from the sky.”

Word soon filters out to a hungry press corps
That there’ll soon be a statement about the downpour.
“The President wishes to settle this score
And put everything back as it once was before.”

“What might he say?” the news anchors wonder.
“Can he survive this latest of blunders?”
Long columns of experts condemn and extol
While long rows of reporters do on-the-street polls.

“Back to the White House,” the newscasts proclaim,
“For our next scheduled act of Cracked Egg in Beltway!
Will the President choose to cut straight to the chase?
And explain to the world about egg dropped on face?”

“Thank you, for coming,” a spokesman begins.
“I’ll make a brief statement, then answers questions.
Though rumors are rampant all over the place,
The truth is no egg struck the President’s face.”
He talks over gasps and a chorus of sighs,
Over fast popping flashbulbs and wry looking eyes.
“Our opponents can cry till they’re blue in the face
But the truth is, we speak from a technical base.
Marine One’s airfoil had to be replaced.
Some grease off of that struck the President’s face.”

“Oh c’mon, up there!” a journalist bellows.
“That goo on his mug was a bright colored yellow!”

“We will not respond to such baseless attacks
From hacks who refuse to look square at the facts.
This is not an occurrence of low-flying geese.
The true culprit here is: Grease, grease, grease!”

“Grease, grease, grease!” roar the President’s allies.
On blogs and talk shows come their furious outcries.
“The gall of some people to lie and debase
And mislead good Americans about egg on face!”

“Outrageous!” the President’s critics respond.
“They caught it on tape. Egg on face! We’ve been conned!
We don’t give a rip what his smooth talkers say.
There’s egg on his face and somebody must pay!”

“The White House must pay!” his opponents proclaim.

The newspapers rush to clear acres of space
For their front page reports of glop splattered on face.
“But what of my story on government waste?”
A reporter bemoans when her story’s replaced.
“And what about mine on employment and race?”
Their editors brace, “You both make a fair case.
It was never our goal to usurp or displace.
But this is our business! To stick with the chase!
And the big news today is egg splattered on face.”

Hours stretch into days, it’s all over the news.
The White House is spun on its heels and confused.
“Should someone resign? Take the heat? Just in case?
It really was egg on the President’s face?”
A sea of advisors flock to his abode
As the White House digs into its “hunker down” mode.
The press call for answers, their questions hell-bent,
Though their efforts are met with a flat, “No comment.”

News stalls like a clunker. Days swell into weeks.
Until somebody in the know finally speaks.
“A leak! A leak! An unconfirmed leak!
That maybe some egg grazed the President’s cheek!”

“Can you believe it? These crooks and these sneaks!”
His critics declare, sharpening up their critiques.
“Article Two has been forcibly breached!
Let’s draw up the papers! It’s time to impeach!”

“Graze! Graze! Graze!” his followers say.
“Impeach! Impeach!” his challengers bray.
On twenty-four hour news cycles each day
Until twenty four times, everyone gets their say.

In circles it goes for ages and ever.
Through day and through night
And through all kinds of weather.
Up north and down south
Across east and past west,
It orbits the globe with an infinite zest.
Critics campaigning, the President hiding,
The nation itself furiously dividing.
Until one surprise morning, a new egg goes plop
And as fast as it started, the whole thing gets dropped.

By Dann Halem