A two part skit
By
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City
******* Part 1 of 2: At the charity gala *******
Everybody knows that the third presidential debate between Mr. Donald Trump and Sec. Hillary Clinton was yet another display of personal animosity between them. It was there for everybody to see before they even uttered a word, as both entered the stage, walked up to their respective podium, and stayed put. They did not shake hands then, let alone at the end of the debate.
Thereby they reflected the disunity that has split our country into not just two factions, but rather several bitterly opposed factions incapable of budging toward each other to meet at or near a democratic, pragmatic, and constructive center for the benefit of all of us, We the People.
What few know is how each of the candidates could have thought of transforming the animus of that occasion into the theme of a strategy that would reunite the country behind her or him and lead to a win on Election Day.
The first opportunity to do so came the day following the debate, Thursday, October 20, at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity gala intended to bring in money to help poor children in New York. This is an occasion for self-deprecating humor, not for mean-spirited, acerbic criticism of an opponent.
It was Sec. Clinton who understood it to be such. Chance had determined that she would take the podium first. When she did, she seized the opportunity to do something that nobody had ever done. Normally, at such an occasion, laughs are drawn by one joke after another, as stand-up comedians do. Instead, she embarked on one single “Hillyarious” story in length, content, and tone. It brought the house down. It brought her up on their shoulders. This is what she said when she went to the podium.
“Coming tonight to this uplifting event is in itself very uplifting after the third presidential debate that we had last night. It gives me, and I’m sure Donald too, the opportunity to continue the very congenial atmosphere in which we exchanged so many substantive ideas.
“I was so positively excited at the end of it. He finally convinced me of how much I mean to his campaign and how admiring of me he is by not letting even two minutes go by without talking about me with effusive comments. You have grown on me. I felt the two of us came closer than ever before to being on the friendly terms that we had put so much effort to establish between us.
“Our friendship has a bright future. When you, as it is likely to happen, win and go to the White House, you won’t be alone, feeling lost without me inspiring your every sentence, with nothing left to do but improvise the details of how to govern. I’ll be there…again, for I was there for 8 years, as the first woman in the seat of the presidency. You only have to call on me for guidance and I’ll jump to your side to hold your hand through every step, however difficult the case may be, even the not so simple matters of what to say and where to say it. Don’t worry, I’ll be prudent, letting you appear to be governing, just as I did when Bill was said to be the president.
“This explains why last night, I slept restfully in the warm embrace of that reassuring prospect of our distribution of labor. It goes to your credit, Donald, that you elicited it with your praise-laden characterization of me as “Such a…” Oh, Donald!, I’m so thankful and fond of you.
“So much such that I would like to share with you and all of you gathered here tonight the dream that I had last night. We may be able, I so hope, to continue it tonight.
“Indeed, I had a dream. In my dream, I had moved back to my little hut in the suburbs after I had been trounced at the election and had to decide whether to concede my defeat or to run once more to the courts to mount a ballistic attack. As you know, I am not afraid of filing lawsuits. I have sued people left and right, well mostly left, not as of right.
“But I was rather depressed. I had just learned that while I was campaigning, thieves had broken into my home and stolen everything, including my most precious possessions: my jewels by Microsoft and Apple. I feel so exposed when I am not wearing them.
“In addition, I felt lonely. Bill was again running after some mothers…and fathers too, looking after their needs at our soup kitchen foundation.
“Then the telephone rang. But I was not in the mood to talk. But it kept ringing. But I still was not in the mood to talk. But the telephone kept ring. I thought it was yet another marketer trying to sell me another package of psychiatric counseling for people in suicidal situations.
“Then it hit me that perhaps it was Chelsea asking why the pictures of my grandchildren that she had emailed me had bounced. She has sent me more than 33,000. I adore each one of them, the pictures, that is, not those little wet brats running around, crying, and disrupting my attention to guarding state secrets.
“So I picked up the phone. You can’t believe who it was! Go on, take a guess. Come on, guess. Wait, have you fallen asleep? The one with the dream is me. You’re supposed to be awake and listening!
“O.K., I tell you: It was Donald! He was so consoling and empathetic, as he always is with everybody, especially those weaker than him, so everybody. He was what I needed. He said”
“I don’t claim to know what you’re going through because I have never been crushed in an election as you just were by me.
“Moreover, I have fired more people in my life than I have hired and I could read their pain in their faces. I can only imagine how you feel after President Obama commented on your defeat saying that he knew you would be flattened at the polls because you had turned out to be his worst appointment ever and the most incompetent secretary of state in the history of our nation, a disgrace, a total disgrace. He said for good measure that he was firing you retroactively. That hurts, I guess.”
“Donald then offered to send me the clip of the President’s utter repudiation if I had not seen it. He is such a generous man!, he is. In fact, you won’t believe what he then said to calm me down.
“I know I am about to move into your former home in D.C. and that every time you’ll picture mentally your living room, I’ll be there; and every time you’ll picture your kitchen, I’ll be there; and every time you picture your bedroom, I’ll be there with somebody.
“So I would like to make it up to you: I’m inviting you to my victory party at Trump Tower. You’ll have the opportunity to see the campaign headquarters that I have been running there as a circus and that beat you into the dust. Tonight, we will have special performances by my closest friends.”
“That was a fantastic invitation, Donald, and so timely. I was really chocking in that hut in the suburbs. A high tower is what you need when you are suffocating and contemplating suicide. At least you catch some fresh air on your way down.
“So he sent his private 747 stretched-out jet to pick me up on my doorstep. In no time, we landed on the roof of Trump Tower. It was all worth it. The show was fabulous, as was the company.
“Although Trump has pulled off so many stunts in this campaign, he surpassed himself with a new one: He swung from chandelier to chandelier over his dinner table, dropped at the end of it before Melania’s plate, opened his arms, and sung to her Al Jolson’s “Mammy, forgive me!” as Gov. Pence and Campaign CEO Stephen Bannon played the old tune at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=684n8FO68LU since Donald is such a big fan of historical facts and accuracy.
“Then it was his best friends’ turn:
“Putin danced with one after the other of his Russian dolls in a ballet set ever dangerously closer to the fireworks of a sparking Internet switch.
“Turkish President Erdogan lassoed sheep, rabbits, and chicken dressed as ghosts as they scurried and fluttered over the circus’s rings in his number “I catch you ‘cause I can”.
“President Xi Jinping vaulted the Trump Tower using as a pole a T-beam made of Chinese steel borrowed from Donald’s warehouse.
“For my entertainment, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks worked his magic by bringing from the dead my deleted emails. I’m so grateful to him for all he has done to reunite me with my loved ones!
“It was so much fun! I just couldn’t believe I was dreaming. But Donald assured me that I wasn’t, saying
“This is how things are in reality. Here at headquarters, I run a campaign as highly coordinated and in sync as a three-ring circus. It is how I will run government. And I want to assure you that however busy I will be recouping the money that I invested in the campaign, including a salary for me as a candidate for the people, the doors of the White House will always be open for you whenever you want to crawl in begging for a favor.”
“I was so excited. What a generous man, Donald is. So now that we are here and awake, a least I am, I would like to beg the first favor of you, Donald. After we are done with these boring speeches, can I come tonight to your Circus at the Tower?”
Trump, always the gentleman to all ladies, in general, and babes, in particular, stood up and replied with his customary wide open smile, “Yes, my dear, come to tonight’s performance.”
Hillary was overjoyed. As she always spreads inviting warmth to everybody around her, she blurted, “Can I bring over my friends, please?”
With open arms, Trump said in his raspy voice of a circus master of ceremonies, “I grant your second begging. The friends of Hilly are my friends. Yes, bring all of them over.”
It was the first time that he had called her Hilly. She was ecstatic !
“I am so grateful that you have come to appreciate me enough to call me Hilly. I long to learn more about you as a person, Donald the Man, not just the wise statesman.
“The fact is Donald is a very modest person and talks little about himself and even less about his issues…or ours. He has this amazing capacity to summarize in only 140 characters what others would need a programmatic platform book to say it.
“It is as if every character were a coded message. I must admit, I’m not clever enough at decoding; but I’m sure all those among you out there who have a doctorate in disencryptology and access to a supercomputer get the richness of Donald’s one forty wisdom.
“That’s why I so loved the debates: Even in what little was left in his two-minute answers after praising me, he could concentrate on the issues so much insightful information. You could see it even without an electronic microscope. He is just so skilled at sharing information, actually wisdom. When I grow up…in intelligence…I want to be like him, my intellectual hero.
“As for now, I rejoice at the opportunity to get to know Donald the Man in the protective company of my friends.” So she slowly pivoted on her feet as she kept repeating: “You heard him, my friends, you all can come with me tonight to see Trump in his Circus at the Tower.”
All were as exhilarated by the prospect of the extraordinary things that they would see at his circus as they had been by the phantasmagoric things that had appeared in his campaign.
Hillary, who is so forward looking to anticipate the consequences of her acts, said to her friends: “After I’ll take you there, Donald’s assistants will be exhausted from running after him to clean up after his acts. We should bring them some entertainment of our own.”
She looked around and shouted: “Bill, Bill, where are you? Bill Gate, stand up so we can see you.”
Bill Gate stood up. She asked him, “Can you bring your video games?” Bill nodded.
Then she called out: “Goldman, Goldman Sachs, where are you?”
The people at a table stood up somewhat hesitatingly. She asked them, “Can you bring your monopoly and your new game ‘Pay to Play’?” Though they looked timid, they too nodded.
She went on, “Marco, where are you, Marco? Please step up so somebody can see you.”
Marco Rubio stepped on the table and she asked him, “Can you tell your story of survival tonight? It is going to be so uplifting to Donald’s senior staff in its first part and to him in its second part. I mean your story, “The Dwarf In Influence and his Seven Snow Whites?”
Marco grinned affirmatively.
“You’re great!”, said Hillary. Then she added:
“We can follow your act with two more that are sure to be a hit. Rosie O’Donnell, that old flame of Donald’s, can sing the song that made the couple famous back in the days when Donald was starting off as one of his father’s construction workers, ‘I left my heart in the tower’ ”.
Rosie stood up, raised her right arm and her middle finger as if it were the torch of the Statute of Liberty, and with her left hand she held, instead of a tablet with the Declaration of Independence, her fork, stabbing it up and down.
Hillary turned to the person sitting next to Trump, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
“Father Dolan, you are Donald’s spiritual advisor and have been so successful in instilling in him the Christian values of generosity, compassion, and humility. We would be so strengthened in our faith in humankind and the future of American politics if you came with us and had your choir children perform your latest choreographed mass, “Angels Dancing under a Pinhell”.”
The Cardinal nodded as he flashed his endearing avuncular smile.
Hillary turned to the table where Trump’s children were sitting and signaled to them to stand up. They did slowly, unsure of what was to come. She said,
“I love you so much! More than my grandchildren: No messy pampers and all that. So, we’re going to bring you a gift. I know you have everything. But do you like a big surprise gift?”
Trump’s children nodded somewhat embarrassed. But Hillary said with that confidence-inspiring demeanor that is her trademark, “We’re going to bring you puppets!”
Lastly, Hillary addressed Trump again. “We all are going to have so much fun tonight. Thanks to your penchant for inclusiveness, the whole of us will be with you at your circus.”
Then she turned to the house: “All the babes will be there. Babes, stand up. You’re going to enjoy yourselves safely with all of us who love and respect you. Yes, babes, you know who you are, please, stand up.” As she insisted, a few of the most beautiful young ladies stood up.
“You’re gorgeous! and you too, all the other babes, stand up, you’re always babes to somebody. Boys, boys, let’s give our babes a loving and respectful round of applause!”
As the men began to applaud, more and more women began to stand up bashfully. Yet, their faces were flushed with gratitude and joy.
“And all the Hispanics, stand up. You are coming with us to the circus tonight.”
Now the women began to applaud as men also stood up.
“You, the Muslims, you are joining us, stand up! Let’s go together to the circus.”
More people kept standing up and the house was shaking with a thunderous applause.
“You, the Blacks, stand up, up up up, you want circus with us! Yes, we want circus!”
The house was overtaken by a frenzy of joy as everybody began to chant, “We want circus!, We want circus!”
Hillary had to shout to make herself heard:
“You, the people with disabilities, stand up, roll with us, let us take you to the circus with us!, for we all want circus! We want circus! We want circus!”
Hillary was alone at the podium, but she stretched out her arms as if she were reaching out to hold hands with people next to her and then began to swing her arms to and fro.
Soon everybody began holding hands and swinging their arms. At a round table where the men were wearing small caps as headdress, that is, kippahs or yarmulkes, they and the women began to lean to the right as they held hands and then to the left until they fluidly began taking steps to one side and then the opposite side; soon they were circling their tables, their eyes, their hold bodies twinkling with carefree amusement. Their dancing spread as if embers of a bonfire carried by a twister of irrepressible joy were igniting it at other tables.
Those sitting at the rectangular long tables, the high tables, began to sway sideways with cheerful abandon.
At other tables, people laughed and giggled and rhythmically let out high pitched cries to match the creaks of their knees and hips as they bobbed up and down while swinging their handheld arms in the opposite direction.
The house kept chanting with furor as their paroxysm rose in unison, “We want circus!” We want circus! We want circus!”
As soon as Hillary sensed that exhaustion was taking over, she began to talk loudly and slowly to calm people down. Gradually, ever more puffing and panting people began to stand still. They were sweaty, their throats were sore, their arms were barely attached to their sockets, but all were brimming with the emotions unleashed by a totally unexpected, spontaneous physical manifestation of the joy of sharing an unimaginable and unforgettable experience.
“Since the third debate, I have relished Donald’s novel characterization of me. He said I was “Such a naspy woman”. I don’t quite know what ‘naspy’ means. But I know one thing: If he said that of me, then it must be a heartfelt compliment, for he is the kindest, sweetest man I know.
“I guess with ‘naspy’ he summarized in even less than 140 characters what he said at the second debate, that I was a determined person that never quits and keeps going at it no matter what. I hope that it also means what I have shown tonight: I am the Reunifier of Americans.
“Thank you for calling me naspy. It has inspired me a lot and I hope many other women and men too. Whenever you open your mouth, you become my ace card, my Trumpy! Friends, let’s express our appreciation to Trumpy with the strongest and above all sincere round of applause.”
She began to clap and chant and everybody followed in her train, stamping with every strike of their hands the earnest message of the joy of togetherness that they were sending to their addressee:
“Trumpy! Trumpy! Trumpy!”
Trump stood up and, as he always does, humbly bowed to the house. Soon Boehner tears flowed to his eyes, for deep down, as his best friend and under-the-skin connoisseur, Elizabeth Warren, put it, “Trump is an outwardly secure, yet big-hearted, emotionally grabbable man”.
As soon as he began to compose himself, he walked to the podium. By then, Hillary had been scurried away by Huma Abedin, her Campaign Vice Chairwoman, who had come to share with her the good tidings of yet another miraculous Resurrection of Clinton’s Emails and had taken her to offer thankful prayers and make a plea for the salvation of her soul and her campaign. It was Trump’s turn to roast himself and, respectful of all traditions and customs, he did.
“Dear my friends of mine. I realize that to follow…her…Hillary…Hi…Hilly’s act opens a great opportunity for me. The skit that I prepared is, of course, the most self-deprecating and the most gracious toward an opponent in the history of all charity galas since the Last Supper. However, I clearly anticipate, because I always do it all, that if I were to do my skit, I would so outperform Hi…Hilly that it would be embarrassing…for her, I mean, of course.
“That would not be in keeping with the gentleman that I am and have always been since Adam took the blame for Eve eating the apple, because nobody is more of a gentleman than I am to all women, whether they eat apples or way too much. It follows that I want you all to come to my Three Ring Circus at the Tower tonight.
“There will be ice cream and hot chocolate; peanuts and pumpkins; salty crackers and sweet potatoes; and all sorts of treats and plenty of tricks and even more ghosts and rattling shackles because with me it is every day and night Halloween! and you never know what you’re going to get…I myself don’t know what I’m going to give. But it is going to be spooky, believe me!
“And you don’t have to worry about overindulging in believing or eating because I am going to have my personal doctor over there, the wonderful Dr. Ben Carson. If any of you feels sick to your stomach with what you had to swallow in my circus, I will have him give you what he has been offering to give me since he gave himself one with such enlightening effect that he dropped out of the primaries to support me: a lobotomy, better than Obamacare, no ever higher annual premiums, just one shot at it and you’re forever a healthier person .
“I haven’t taken Ben up on his offer because I have been too busy with my charity works, the main one of which is, of course, my participation in the presidential campaign to relieve the American people of its hunger for a reasonable, knowledgeable, and reassuringly reliable leader.
“In any event, rest assured that during my exhaustive preparation for the debates, I read a yellow sticky on medicine and now I know more about medicine than all doctors, including Dr. Carson. So I myself will give each of you a lobotomy if it turns out on November 9 that you failed to grant my friend Hilly her only and consuming wish: to go back full time to her true calling as an email specialist. She’s such a naspy woman!”
As soon as Hillary’s Campaign Manager, Robby Mook, heard those words, he seized the opportunity to give the signal to his assistants at his table. As one man, they jumped up, climbed on their chairs, and began chanting at the top of their voices:
“We want naspy! We want naspy! We want naspy!”
In every corner of the house, people popped up and joined them in chanting. In no time, the whole house had turned to where Hillary had taken a seat next to her adoptive spiritual father, Cardinal Dolan, who had played such a decisive role in her conversion to the credo of One Message, One Truth. Graciously, Hillary took the Cardinal’s arm and raised it as if it were that of Sen. Kaine. The room went crazy, chanting at the top of their voices:
“She’s a naspy! She’s a naspy! She’s a naspy!”
Still at the podium, Trump took it all in with great satisfaction, spreading his arms wide open, like Nixon bidding farewell at the door of the helicopter after resigning on August 9, 1974. He was basking in the as yet unspoken, self-congratulatory claim that it was thanks to his effort for years that a person had been born right there among the people: Hilly the naspy!
By contrast, Trump’s Campaign Manager, Kellyanne Conway, had instantly grasped the gravity of the situation: With her event-appropriate, self-deprecating, and Trump-complimentary skit, Hillary had stolen the show. She would be portrayed by the media as charitable toward her opponent, gracious in style, and surprisingly “Hillyarious”.
For his part, Trump had managed to place himself at the opposite, negative end of his bipolar assessment of everything, which admits of no degrees between the extremes of a simple dualistic set of best ever and worst ever. Hillary had played him.
That had been Hillary’s sole objective: to turn the charity gala into her show. However, even before she, Kaine, Robby, Huma, and her top aides had left the Waldorf Astoria hotel where the gala was held, they had the effervescent sense that not only had they attained that objective much better than expected, but also an unexpected window of opportunity had opened on the term Hilly the naspy!
They felt that the immensely enjoyable and favorable gala experience was a situation-changing event: It gave them momentum. But they could not yet realize that if they worked with it strategically, they could turn it into the material for an October surprise.
What they did realize by instinct and experience was that while on the premises, never mind within earshot of anybody else, they should not discuss the matter. Since they possessed the required personal and professional discipline to proceed in accordance with their realization, they acted around the other attendees as if only sharing a moment of levity. So they kept their excitement bottled up.
********** Part 2 of 2: Strategizing **********
A. How their vans exploded soon after they were turned on
Once Hillary and her party got on their two vans and began driving to headquarters to pick up their cars, they could not repress their excitement anymore. They exploded. It was the mad chaos of a triumphal mood. Everybody was laughing and shouting and sputtering their comments and observations at once. Nobody could understand a word of what the others were saying. It did not matter. This was not a moment for reflection; it was for unrestrained celebration.
At the end of the gala, attendees were stepping over each other to reach them, shake their hands, embrace them, and kiss them as they thanked them for a marvelously funny and entertaining evening. Now in the vans, each of them had to share with the others the compliments that had been poured on them. The torrents of reporting to the others what they had been told quickly converged into a maelstrom of confusion that whirled all the more powerfully because as soon as they got in each of their vans, they turned on their tablets, smartphones, and laptops to communicate via Skype with those in the other van. Instantly, they became Babels on wheels:
“The first skit of its kind, bound to set a new standard. Fireworks of wit. Punch lines flying like darts to the bull’s eye. Gracious and elegant. The debut of a storyteller. The combination of masterful diplomacy with incisive psychology. The magical transformation of dread of a debate-like confrontation into surreal conviviality. Give it like this to Congress and you’ll have a shot at your legislative agenda. A cathartic experience. An unimaginable night when the spirit soared on the wings of laughter. Humor to change hearts. The bliss of a wonderful counter-expectation. A victory for the joy of togetherness. I laughed so hard, I did it in my pants!” and on and on in sheer amazement at Hillary’s gift for humor never before suspected. Hilly had emerged from nowhere.
B. Thinking strategically to craft the strategy for the final stretch
As they were getting close to headquarters, Sen. Kaine managed to usher in a measure of sanity by asking repeatedly, “We’re arriving, people. What next?”
Robby noted that the events of the night would be highlighted by the media the next day and they had to be ready to add momentum to the favorable press that they would receive. So Hillary asked them to come in to do something whose meaning they understood right away: to think strategically about the new situation.
Indeed, they had discussed on several occasions the concept of strategic thinking that they had found at *>ol:52§C in the study by Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.:
Exposing Judges’ Unaccountability and
Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting* †
* Volume 1: http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >all prefixes:page number up to ol:393
† Volume 2: http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >from ol2:394
Visit the website at, and subscribe to its series of articles and letters thus:
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By thinking strategically to analyze the new situation and devise a plan of action as described in that study, they reached a valuable initial determination. The event at the gala and the imminence of its becoming known nationally presented them with a new option for the final stretch of the campaign: to leave the nastiness of the campaign behind and take a kind, uplifting, and joyful high road to victory led by a funny and gregarious reunifier capable of bringing the best in everybody for the common good: Hilly the naspy!
C. Defining “naspy” as the positive core of their new theme
The “Such a nasty woman” characterization that Trump had thoughtlessly hurled at Hillary as he unraveled the deeper he got into the third debate and the thinner his self-discipline wore, would be transformed into a term of their own. The Hillary campaign would not ask people to swallow their distaste of everything nasty and nevertheless proclaim themselves nasty as a cry of defiance and self-assertion.
Instead, they would coin “naspy”. They would define it as a positive, complimentary term meaning not only determined and ‘non-quitting’, but also exuding civility, graceful, kind, witty, resourceful, and contagiously optimistic so as to be an inspiring, winning leader. It would be a term to be uttered without second thoughts. Rather than “stronger” to fight an opponent, the emphasis would be laid on “together” to join the joy. “Naspy” would be the core of the positive, uplifting theme for their new strategy to guide the campaign in the final days of the race.
Now they had to flesh out the ‘naspy’ term with the details needed for strategy implementation. They did not have much time to do so. They stayed at headquarters and got to work.
D. Crafting TV ads of all kinds of people joyfully walking to a voting center
Hillary, Kaine, Robby, Huma, and other assistants bandied ideas from here to there. Progressively, their ideas began to take shape and win consensus: They wanted an ad portraying people from all walks of life moving briskly from different directions, even dancing as they sang to invite others along the way, including those who looked the opposite of them, to join in a joyful trip that converged on a unifying center, that is, a voting center on Election Day where Hillary was to welcome them.
This led to a discussion of an appropriate place that would suggest the center of something. Robby came up with the idea of the green field of the Upper West Side Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, of which he was an alumnus, because people could converge between the buildings on it and have the Low Memorial Library in the background that could bring to mind both the White House and the Supreme Court building as a…
“The triumphal arch!”, shouted Huma, who had held a volunteer recruiting speech at a student association of archrival New York University.
It was an instant hit: The Washington Square Arch in Lower Manhattan, surrounded by NYU buildings, conjured up the idea of celebration of a triumphal victory, indeed, that of George Washington.
However, getting the necessary permits to film physically at the Square would take too long, as would cordoning it off to prevent it from being flooded by students, tourists, street performers, neighbors, cyclists, vehicles, delivery trucks, etc. So they decided to do it the high tech way: They would go digital.
The movement of people would be filmed at the Madison Square Garden, where a true circus, that of the Ringling Brothers, usually performed. Thereafter scenes from the Columbia University campus and the Washington Square Arch would be added digitally. What is more, the ads that would run in battleground states would use the same movements of people and song, but an algorithm would easily perform the digital addition of equivalent well-known local buildings and monuments.
The discussion of a multitude of people swirling on the Square led to another idea. The people on the ad that would walk between a set of buildings would be dressed in the same solid color and kind of dress. As they approached the Square, they would mingle with other people dressed in other colors and kinds of dress so that as they neared the voting place under the arch they made for a kaleidoscopic crowd in joyful colors and variety of dresses. This would illustrate the message in the lyrics that they would sing: Hilly the naspy was the reunifier of America after a divisive and bruising campaign.
E. Assembling an artistic team to translate their ideas into reality
After they were reasonably satisfied with the results and could no longer keep their eyes open, they slept wherever they could for the little time that was left. As early as they could that morning, they began calling people.
They contacted the manager of their account at the TV advertising agency that was making their ads and prevailed upon him to dispatch to Hillary’s headquarters their best TV ad makers. They wanted to ensure that these ad people would not be distracted from producing their ads in a record short time.
They also got in touch with a composer who should come up with a catchy, vibrant, energizing song, something reminiscent of ABBA’s Thank you for the music. They also got hold of a male and a female celebrity who would narrate the positive message of being joyfully reunified for the common good under the inclusive leadership of a gregarious Hilly the naspy.
The ad people contacted a digital studio reputed for doing the most spectacular special effects for big budget Hollywood pictures. They expected it to be willing in exchange for a hefty fee, which the campaign could easily afford, to drop everything it was doing in order to concentrate on producing in rapid sequence a series of localized TV ads for the new strategy.
F. Variations on Hilly the naspy for T-shirts, signs, and posters
As more volunteers arrived at headquarters, they were told about the new strategy. They too contributed their ideas for variations on its Hilly the naspy theme. Those variations would be seen at every rally in hand-held signs, posters on walls, and the T-shirts worn by volunteers working at rallies and bought by supporters, whether at rallies or on the Hillary website.
Accordingly, an instruction was issued to all the state headquarters and local offices to print and distribute materials with the new logos and similar positive and uplifting ones likely to find resonance with the local voters.
Among the logos that Hillary, Kaine, Robby, Huma, and the headquarters volunteers came up with were these:
- She’s naspy!…and I too;
- We want Hilly!
- Such a naspy Hilly
- Naspy is the winner
- Naspy is kinder
- I love naspy
- Hilly, America’s reunifier
- Be naspy, vote Hilly
- Stronger reunified
- Go Hilly, join us
- Be naspy, reunify!
- Hilly for 1 America
- We reunify, we’re naspy
- I’m naspy for Hilly
- Vote, be naspy
They also came up with ideas for designs with those logos to be printed on T-shirts in bright colors made by local shops on rush orders. Among the designs were these:
- a color gradient that converged on a luminous center where the logo was written;
- the logo was written in the inverted U shape of an arch;
- the logo appeared on a billboard atop an arch;
- the logo formed the road that ascended and led under the arch;
- the logo appeared on the frontispiece of the arch;
- the logo was written on the roof of a 3-D arch that tilted outwardly;
- the logo was on the inside of the vault of a 3-D arch tilted toward the torso;
- the logo was the foundation of the arch, whose legs rested on the blank space between two words;
- the logo appeared in the shape and colors of a rainbow;
- the logo appeared as lightning striking the arch and electrifying it;
- the logo appeared as the rim of a sun that cast sunrays on the arch and brightened it;
- the logo appeared as an incandescent arch overarching the arch and illuminating it.
Within 48 hours from the end of the charity gala, there rolled out onto the national scene the new strategy of leaving behind everything nasty about the campaign and moving forward with the naspy theme of kindness and the joy of being reunified as We the People. A lot rode on it for Hillary, Kaine, Robby, Huma, and everybody else involved in the campaign both at headquarters and in their offices throughout the country. Hilly the naspy was supposed to take them to victory at the polls under a triumphal arch.
In that vein, Robby, ever the electoral strategist, came up with an idea:
“At every rally from now on, we will replay the video of the charity gala before you enter the stage. It will put the audience in a joyful mood and make it see you as a well-rounded person with an insanely hilarious streak. You will tell the audience that the video is posted to your website.”
Robby’s idea turned out to be right on: The video went viral instantly. The goodwill that it generated explained why the request that followed it was granted by a high percentage of people who viewed it: to make a donation to Hillary’s campaign. Hilly the naspy became an emotionally and materially paying strategy.
G. Sec. Clinton consults with Dr. Cordero, the author of the strategic thinking concept
Soon after the new strategy was put in place, Robby and Huma suggested that Sec. Clinton bring in Dr. Cordero to consult with him on the further application of his strategic thinking concept to the campaign. They also wanted to ask for his advice on how, in case she won the election, she should proceed as president elect with the nomination of a successor to the Late Justice Scalia and to the sooner rather than later Retiring Justice Ginsburg. She also wanted to express her appreciation for his analysis of her performance at the charity gala.
The meeting was attended by the three of them as well as Sen. Kaine. It was very cordial and constructive. Emphasizing its forward-looking nature, Sec. Clinton asked Dr. Cordero how he could contribute to her administration if she became president. Dr. Cordero answered without hesitation and with conviction, as if he were making a statement before a Senate confirmation committee.
“I would like to be your Attorney General. I want to carry out the investigation of the Federal Judiciary and its judges for their unaccountability and consequent riskless wrongdoing so manifest in their disregard of the requirements of due process and equal protection of the law. They have provoked the dissatisfaction with our judicial and legal systems of so many people among the more than 100 million parties to the more than 50 million cases that are filed annually in the federal and state courts(*>ol:311§1).
“The dissatisfied form a huge untapped voting bloc. They are ignored and left to fend for themselves by the politicians who recommend, nominate, and confirm judges and then hold “their men and women on the bench” unaccountable. They need an advocate.
“In turn, they can open the way for you to bring about the change that can help you win over the Dissatisfied With The Establishment, the very ones who have given their unwavering support to Establishment Outsider Trump and Establishment Critic Sen. Sanders. They can give you their support and help you become a successful president or they can mount an even stronger challenge in the mid-term election, thus reducing your support in Congress, and your reelection chances in 2020.
“As your Attorney General, I would work to make them and the rest of the country have reasons to acknowledge you as their Champion of Justice.”
After Dr. Cordero ended his answer, Sec. Clinton looked at him incredulous. She did not know whether he was joking, charity gala style, or he meant it as dead seriously as he appeared to be. Sen. Kaine, Robby, and Huma looked at each other speechless and at Dr. Cordero respectfully. Then they turned to Sec. Clinton, waiting for her to react.
Finally, she said with the benevolent smile on her face and the playful tone in her voice of a consummate diplomat.
“I don’t doubt that you could be a competent attorney general. But after reading your charity gala piece, I’d rather say that your vocation is that of a writer of dreams”…and she smiled facetiously. ”
The others chuckled. By contrast, Dr. Cordero replied matter-of-factly:
“But dreams don’t pay my rent and food”.
“Perhaps Saturday Night Live can give you a gig there…and next time I appear on the show you write something as funny as your charity gala skit. I can talk to some people to get you onboard.”
“I’d rather you gave me a job as an investigator of wrongdoing judges.”
“Dream on!”
“Okay, let’s begin with this: I can write skits for the many celebratory meetings that you will and should attend as part of a strategy for whipping up good will among the public and getting everybody, whether they voted for or against you, excited about attending and following on their media devices your next important public appointment: your inaugural speech in January. You wouldn’t like to have fewer people in attendance than President Obama did twice.”
That statement caught Sec. Clinton’s imagination. She appeared interested in what Dr. Cordero had to say.
“And how would you go about doing that?”
“Don’t remind people of the campaign anymore. We had enough of it. Instead, joke about your transition to life without the campaign.
“Tell them about your plan to relax after the election only to be overwhelmed by people asking you for a job…‘but I ain’t being no employment agency! I’m not working at all! I won the presidency and got free tickets on Air Force One to visit my friends in the 11,200 countries that I went to as a lowly secretary. Now I’m it! and I’m on holiday! until next year, or the year after that if you people keep interrupting my rest and bugging me’.”
They all laughed heartily. Dr. Cordero went on.
“Tell your audience that you were taking a long bubble bath when Putin called to complain about the lights going off in Moscow and to warn you that if he found out that the blackout was your retaliation for his release of embarrassing emails of yours, he would turn the lights off in the whole of the U.S. So you told him in no uncertain terms, “Listen, you little third-rate malicious hacking despot, if I have to take a bath in cold water because of you, I’ll nuke you!”
“Then you got so nervous about having sent the NSA the order for the blackout from your personal smartphone that you dropped it in the bathtub and it almost got you electrocuted.
“Do you have any idea, you ask your audience, how difficult it is to get your hair down when it is porcupine up with static electricity? Now you know why I almost didn’t make it here.”
Sec. Clinton burst into hysteric laughter and so did Sen. Kaine, Robby, and Huma. They just could not believe that Dr. Cordero had switched so swiftly and convincingly from an apparently earnest applicant for the cabinet position of attorney general to the delivery of a string of jokes performed with the flair of a stand-up comedian. That was what Dr. Cordero had been aiming for because laughter makes people thankful and receptive to the one causing it.
“The only thing that matters to me is exposing judges’ unaccountability and consequent riskless wrongdoing. On September 30, 2015, there were 2,293 federal judicial officers in office. They can remain there for life. They have power over people’s property, liberty, and all the rights and duties that shape their lives. And they do whatever they want, relying on their impunity because they know that in the 227 years since the creation of the Federal Judiciary in 1789, only 8 federal judges have been impeached and removed.(*>jur:21§§1-3)
“By contrast, you have a mandate limited to 4 years, subject to the checks and balances of Congress, the media, mid-term voters, the international community, and the public. Who has more means to harm people: you or judges?
“That is why I want to expose their wrongdoing. If you are not interested in doing so, the battle over the Supreme Court vacancies may offer Mr. Trump the opportunity to do it. He may adopt my proposal that he use the time needed to create his own TV station to attract professional and citizen journalists to the background investigation of any person nominated by you to the Court; and to launch the Watergate-like generalized media investigation(*>ol:194§E) of two unique national stories: the President Obama-Justice Sotomayor and the Federal Judiciary-NSA stories(†>ol2: 440), which will expose wrongdoing as the judges’ institutionalized modus operandi(jur:65§B).
“He can publish their findings in his website’s daily newscast, his version of MSNBC and the precursor of his TV newscast. I want to lead that investigation, whether for you or for him, and in both cases on behalf of We the People and our birthright to government by the rule of law.”
Sec. Clinton looked inquiringly at Sen. Kaine, Robby, and Huma, who were looking in amazement at Dr. Cordero back in his serious skin. Sec. Clinton fixed Dr. Cordero with her eyes and became pensive. Nobody disturbed her thinking.
After a while, she said…
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