November 9th, 1944
The President poured himself a belt of brown inside his White House den. As he lifted the beveled rocks glass to his lips he observed the cubes of ice clinking around the liquid, like little boats in a sea of blood soaked water. He took his first sip, and realised he was probably going to be making a night of this.
It would not be a surprise to many that the man who had repealed Prohibition enjoyed a drink now and then. His family had always teased him for his bizarre concoctions that he would use to make the Ladies frivolous and the men merry but his usual style, a couple of cocktails before dinner and perhaps a smidgen afterwards had now gone out of the window. If his dear friend had still been in office, the White House staff may have called the feat of drinking his keeping of 'Winston Hours' as they joked in the past. Anthony Eden had been gracious to try one of his Haitian Libations but from the bizarre face he'd made in drinking it, he doubted he would be having any late night sessions with the new Prime Minister before his successor moved in.
His successor, the fellow New Yorker who had been happy to resort to the worst kind of dirt and treachery to scrape a Republican return to the war. It was clear that in all his gang busting he had picked up a criminal mindset himself, and now this upstart, inexperienced district attorney would be leading the United Nations struggle against Global Tyranny. He shuddered.
It was not his fault that Overlord had been such a catastrophe. He had been assured that the weather was clear, perfect for the liberation of Western Europe. Instead the nation had witnessed with horror the worst storm of the year so far. He cursed Eisenhower, those poor boys drowning, stumbling into German guns disorientated and sick without air support or assistance behind enemy lines. At least he had do e the honourable thing and resigned, though he would make sure that he would never occupy a command position again.
At such a time of tragedy, it was important for the nation to pull together as one to ever increase the ferocity of the American war effort to show the boys in the Philippines and Italy and the South of France that they were united in making sure that they had the courage to pull through and arm them with ever better weaponry until both Hitler and Hirohito had been sent to hell. His successor had had no such patriotism, smugly talking of 'Disaster Day' and how the war effort was being ruined by their Commander in Chief. He had tried to make the little upstart pay for that, although in retrospect the outright comparisons to Hitler had only played into his successors hands, as had the calamity of picking Wallace.
Henry was a good man, the President didn't care whether or not he had some strange religious views, spirituality was supposed to be private, between the individual and God, that was the American way. The Republicans had seen those damned letters of course, and decided they were fair game and convinced the American public that his Vice President was under the control of some sort of modern day Rasputin. And so it had been that despite his majority in the popular vote, his successor that scraped an electoral college victory. And appeared for the press grinning with that I'll dated headline which had predicted his downfall.
As he wondered whether those same dirty tricks would against the Germans and the Japanese the President poured himself another glass.
He had a terrible headache.