I'm banking on the fables of the far, far better things we do

Today is my mother's birthday. She was born in March 1946, right before the baby boom really took off, when my grandparents were in their last years of graduate school at Berkeley—in wartime, my grandmother had taught a sort of daycare and my grandfather had worked in the mill room of the California Ink Company, where he met my mother's future godfather and learned not to get his fingers caught in the rollers. She was almost named Maud, and when she was born, my grandfather had some idea that a new father should kneel adoringly beside the bed of his exhausted, yet still radiant wife, so that he could admire her and the baby together. So he knelt down, in whatever hospital in Oakland my mother was born in: and he found himself staring at hospital corners and the underside of the bed, and he got up. And admired. You know those Russian dolls, the way they nest them? That's what she looked like. A beautiful Russian doll.

My father and I cooked dinner tonight, which is the usual for festive occasions around here. (Tonight's experiment: beef Wellington improv. It has about ten minutes to go in the oven and our fingers are crossed.) We were on our way back from the supermarket this afternoon, talking politics, when he expressed again his belief that the system of checks and balances had crashed and that it would take a few presidents getting impeached and arrested before anything changed. I replied that I would rather see an example made of this president and the whole problem halted right here.

"You want to see him nailed," my father said, and I realized as I answered, no, I do not want to see George W. Bush nailed. I do not want to see him pilloried in the town square. I do not want him afforded the least illusion of dignity or martyrdom. I want him arraigned before a war crimes tribunal; I want him tried and convicted in criminal court. I do not want him to return to his little ranch in Texas to look back fondly on his days in the White House, or ever allow himself to believe they were his duty, a good run, a success. I want him to wake up every day and know he should never even have put his name down for the primaries. I want him to know he made a mistake. I want his presidency to be the greatest regret of his life.

. . . Can you and your associates arrange this for me, Mr. Morden?