Destiny of the Republic (a Pres Garfield TLIAP)

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It was the first Republican National Convention of the new century. James Garfield still remembered the event twenty years earlier, when he was unexpectedly thrust into the presidency; it had been a whirlwind of an experience at first, with his speech in support of John Sherman bringing some temporary calm and renewed idealism to the tempestous body, only for him to be surprised when the inspired delegates unexpectedly decided to put his name into consideration, and then, before he could stop them, dumbstruck when the notion carried the day, and he found himself nominated for president.

Being president, he did not attend the event four years later, which nominated him for a second term, nor the one after that, though he did work to ensure that his ally, Secretary James Blaine, would be nominated to succeed him. The former president recalled that the last time he was even in the same city as the party convention was eight years ago, when he showed up to visibly throw his support behind Blaine's renomination and reelection; for all the hassle of repeatedly and unambigously denying his own candidacy to “the multitude of reporters and busybodies” who “seemed set on inquiring on that one subject alone”, he succeeded in the former, but not the latter. So irked was he by the experience that, a few years later, James made it a point to travel abroad with his family, in part for their own respite, but not least to ensure that he would not be considered for a third term in the White House.

But now, looking out on the streets of Manhattan from his hotel window, Garfield felt that this time he was going to enjoy his party's convention. To start, Mayor Roosevelt was proving to be as welcoming and capable a host as one could properly expect. But for another, unlike 80 or 92, the Republicans felt superbly confident in their chances of winning the general election; ever since the passing of President Bland, and President McLean's unexpected succession, fissures within the Democratic Party were opening once again, which were only exacberbated following defeats in elections just two years ago.

As an example, there was growing concern about aggressive naval actions by the Japanese and the French in China and the Pacific. For the Democrats, this seemed to boil down to a mad impulse to relitigate the Bland Administration -- there were some who had been adamantly opposed to the Annexation of Hawaii a decade prior, who still held out hope for withdrawing the American Navy into her sphere in the world and letting the Eastern half of the world fall where it may; conversely, there were still other who thought the intervention in Cuba years later hadn't gone far enough in confronting the Spanish Empire, and thought the United States should intervene on behalf of the ongoing rebellion in the Phillipines.

But where the Democratic factions warred with each other, seemingly over long settled issues, the Republicans, Garfield knew, could boast of real solutions for the future; to take the previous example, his party could easily rally around the knowledge that the Navy must remain robust and compettive as a world power, so as to be able to check aggression by Russia and Japan, just as they had with Chile and France under his administration, and protect American capital interests in China and elsewhere around the world. Similar consensus could be found on a number of domestic issues, such as higher tariffs, enforcement of civil rights for the freedmen, and foremost (at least to Garfield's thinking) restoration of federal funding for education to pre-1892 levels. All in all, where the Democrats were hopelessly divided, the former president had every confidence that his party would come together behind a platform which could unite the country once again.

The old wound in his chest was acting up again, as it seemed to more and more as he got on in years. He still remembered being set upon and shot by that madman at the railway station. He also recalled learning later how much of a chaotic affair his operation had been -- how a certain Dr Bliss essentially declared himself presiding physicain, “permitting” attending family friends and physicians Dr Edson and Dr Boynton only to stay on in an observation capacity; how Alexander Graham Bell managed to find the bullet lodged in his chest with a newly created device, and just happened to search for the bullet, by sheer mistake, on the opposite side of his body from where instructed by said Dr Bliss; even how another attendant had been cleaning instruments of the operation using the Lister method, against the express instructions of the very doctor. He also recalled the rowdy days of his recovery, as this hapless supposedly chief surgeon would get into shouting matches just outside his door with Dr Edson and Dr Boynton; eventually, the ailing President forced himself to speak up and dismiss Bliss, “just to get a decent chance of rest”, and allowed the doctors trusted by his wife to oversee his recovery.

For a time, the president worried that his time would be brought to a premature end, but in the end, he did manage a full recovery. But even as he resumed his duties, and in his subsequent retirement, the now former president found himself thinking time to time about whether he had much time left on this earth. Not, at present anyway, that it would particularly bother him if it didn't, since James now felt he had lived as full a life as any man could reasonably hope to expect; nevertheless, for the moment, he still had life in him yet.

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OOC Note: Additions made to third to last paragraph.
 
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