“She decided they were going to write their own wedding vows,” Brielle was saying.
“Did she sew her own wedding gown, too?” Mr. Magundi asked.
“But I don’t think our president should worry about what they want,” Mr. Bates was saying. “His job is to serve our country, not theirs. America first, that’s what I say.”
“I agree,” Mr. Magundi said. “In fact, I apply the same patriotic principle to my own everyday life. Whenever there’s a long line over at the IGA store, I always push my way to the front, shouting ‘Magundi first!’ all the way. Other people don’t like it much, but I don’t think I should worry about what they want.”
“So I’ll be glad when the whole thing is over,” Mrs. Bowman told us, “so I can stop answering the phone every five minutes.”
“I get those phone calls, too,” Mr. Magundi said. “It’s always some candidate for state representative telling me how honest and aboveboard he is, how his whole record is an open book. But the Caller ID always says ‘Unknown Number,’ which I think tells us more about his real honesty and aboveboardness than any of his rhetoric does.”
“He says that the Roman system of tax farming was one of the main reasons the empire collapsed,” I explained. “Taxes in the provinces were collected by private contractors, so the whole business of collecting taxes turned into a giant profit-making industry.”
Mr. Magundi looked thoughtful for a second. Then he said, “Did you know that, within an easy walk of this very streetcar stop, there’s an office of Liberty Tax Service, an office of Jackson Hewitt, and two offices of H & R Block? Just a fun fact to remember. Now we can get back to what was wrong with ancient Rome.”
“I know his type,” Mr. Bates was saying. “He’s an expert at playing the Washington-insiders game. What a hypocrite! I say, vote for anyone else, but not him.”
“But that’s the perfect description of what I want in a president,” Mr. Magundi replied. “Honestly, do you want someone in the White House who’ll be handily outwitted by the lobbyist for the Nickel Plating Manufacturers’ Association or the Southeastern Georgia Collards Board? No. You want one who knows how Washington works. If I can’t have an honest president, and experience suggests that I can’t, then I’ll take an expert in playing the Washington-insiders game, thank you very much.”
