As the husband of the first female president, General Douglas Talbert (Ret.) had kept a low (if chiseled) profile through her first two years in office. When a snoopy Secret Service guard sold his memoirs, that profile became a lot higher.

It was all due to a few paragraphs in Chapter Three, but they were enough to send “On Guard” to the top of the best-seller list. Reading them now, you will easily understand why…

“When the First Couple went into their bedroom, we were officially dismissed from duty. We could not help hearing the sounds that occasionally came through the heavy mahogany door…and under any other circumstances, we would have gone racing into the room to save our president from her attacker.

“The culprit was her husband, though, and she never complained to us about it. Perhaps she was too embarrassed…because the truth is, the distinguished general often orders our commander-in-chief to turn herself over his knee.

“We knew this because there was no sound of a struggle, much less a cry for help, before the first loud crack! We identified it easily as the sound of a man’s strong hand hitting her bare backside, hard. This was repeated about 20 times, before we heard her muffled begging, coming through the palm that she had obviously clasped over her mouth.

“We could barely make the words out, but they usually included cries of, ‘Please stop, I’ve had enough! I can’t take any more! I won’t ever act that way again, I promise’!’ We never heard an answer from the First Punisher…or even any change in the pace of his paddling.

“Her frantic words soon changed to helpless tears, as the smacks grew both louder and deeper in tone. These were repeated 25 times, before his weapon fell silent and her sobbing was all that we heard. We knew at once what that second sound had come from, because we had all seen the thick, wide, wood-backed hairbrush that always stood on the presidential dresser chest…no doubt as a constant warning.

“Mingled with her weeping, we heard him murmuring comforting words. Then we were listening to some completely different noises, starting with kisses and growing into sounds that left us smiling…and no doubt had the same effect on her.

“On those rare occasions when she came out of the room after that, she did indeed seem satisfied…even though she was rubbing her slim backside through her robe, while her famous thin, pale face was swollen and red. This told us that another part of her anatomy was an even brighter crimson.

“The next day, if we watched carefully, we could see that she lowered that skinny bottom slowly onto her Oval Office chair…which was padded more thickly than it had been under any other administration. Sometimes she even stood beside the desk, rather than sitting at all. It all led us to one conclusion…on occasion, our president received a very thorough spanking.”

* * *

“You’ve got to deny it!” her press secretary exclaimed. “It’s terribly embarrassing for you, he had no right to report that, and he could never prove it anyway. It’s your word against his, and you’re the one who will be believed.”

Indeed, he thought, anyone looking at her now would consider the story to be completely incredible. With her blond waves severely pulled back in a pony tale, setting off her high cheekbones and her even higher forehead, she was everyone’s picture of an all-American aristocrat.

She carried out that image with her extensive collection of twin cashmere sweater sets and pearl earrings, which had brought both classics back into the height of fashion. When the presidential primary campaign had taken her, and her wardrobe, into every state in the union, it was often called “dowdy” or “dull.” Now, two years later, it was “classic” and “elegant.” Her light but perfect makeup, focusing on delicately pink lips and cheeks, and the subtle scent of Shalimar, made the image complete.

It was impossible to think of her cold blue eyes shedding frantic tears…or those thin lips begging for mercy. In fact, it was hard to think of her getting upset about anything.

So far, those looks had not been deceiving, as far as the public was concerned. She had won approval ratings in the high 70s, with her moderate policies and her calm, firm way of stating them. They could fall to the 30s overnight, as Jim Bergman knew only too well, in the face of a personal scandal…especially such a sexy one.

Right now, though, the press secretary was the one on the receiving end of that cold, steady gaze.

“And why is it anyone’s business what I do in my personal life?” she demanded, cocking her head thoughtfully to one side, as though she were really waiting for an answer. To her obvious annoyance, he had one ready for her.

“The public will make it their business,” he assured her. “They always do. And if you don’t deny the story, they will believe it.”

As she stood glaring at him over her crossed arms, he suddenly found himself realizing, for the first time, that she often did, indeed, seem to stand at her desk, rather than sitting on the well-padded chair.

General Talbert responded in much the same way, but in even colder tones, when the press secretary ventured into his office. Given the grim look on his hawkish face and the way his silver crew cut seemed to bristle with anger, Bergman was even more inclined to drop the subject.

* * *

Needless to say, the TV comics had no intention of doing any such thing.

“Did you hear about President Talbert’s big mistake?” Jay Nelo asked, clasping his hands together in the way that always signaled the punch line. “Her followers begged her to run because the federal government needed fiscal discipline. And she thought they had said physical discipline!”

“Saturday Night Special,” as always, pushed the joke even further…close to the point of collapse. The opening sketch started getting laughs from the moment the caption went on…”Senate Armed Services Committee, 15 years ago.” This was, as everyone knew, the place that they had met, while he was testifying before her.

“General Talbert, can I ask you why enlistments seem to be down?” Amy Pollard had said, as the then-Senator Sheila Wynant.

“Of course you can,” Steve Meyers had answered. Leaving his place, he had gone to the table, grasped the chairperson by the hand, pulled her to a conveniently vacant chair, turned her over his knee and delivered seven hard, loud spanks. Then she had gone back to her own place as though nothing had happened, although she rubbed her bottom as she went and then placed her hands beneath it, to cushion it from the chair.

The scene was repeated with her next question, “Have you any plans to raise recruitment?” By the fourth repetition, the laughter and applause started dying down as the studio audience realized, once again, that this cast never did seem to know when to stop. At last, however, the scene ended in the inevitable way.

Lying over the witness’ knee, the future president looked straight ahead and said, “I’ve got one thing to say to you, general. Live from New York…it’s the Saturday Night Special!”

Just as predictably, David Lesterman chimed in with his Ten Best Reasons to Re-elect the President. They went from “her husband will whip the government into shape” to “she is always standing up for America” to “she is used to being on the hot seat.”

“That one wasn’t bad,” the real-life president said calmly, when Bergman told her about it. They both knew, however, that she could not go on forever, ignoring the growing scandal that was now known as “paddlegate.”

Others on the White House staff had their hands full, trying to find charities that would take all the hairbrushes, belts and ping-pong paddles that the public was sending in as gag gifts.

The press was clamoring for interviews on the subject, which the president’s staff courteously ignored…or as politely as they could manage anyway, when it became obvious that “paddlegate” was taking the media’s attention from every other issue in the world…including, but by no means limited to, constantly rising drug and oil prices, national defense, illegal immigration, legal job outsourcing, education, violent crime and the survival of Social Security.

One editor had always specialized in this particular field, so her request got a more courteous answer than most. The owner of Bethany’s Woodshed was negotiating hard for the president’s memoirs, even against the New York publishing firms. The White House staff had to admit that she deserved special consideration.

“We are the premiere spanking site, after all,” she said, “so where else could the president find a more sympathetic audience for her own true spanking story?”

It was no idle claim. Other celebrities had already had their true stories told there, most notably the TV leading ladies Jodi Burroughs and Melody Wilbur, in “Spanking the Stars.”

While it was naturally all very embarrassing to the First Couple themselves, they managed at first to avoid the subject by saying, at the start of each press conference, “I will not take any questions about my personal life.”

* * *

But the First Children had no such advantage.

Their schoolmates at the Thomas Cromwell Episcopal School could not be silenced with an angry glare. They could not be silenced at all.

At 12, Hillary was well enough trained not to run into the Oval Office when Mommy’s door was closed. She buttonholed the lady as soon as she came up to the family rooms.

“Do you know what Elisha did today during recess?” she demanded. “She stuck out her bottom and pretended to spank herself while she kept yelling, ‘I’m the president, I’m the president.’

“Honestly, Mommy…” the child continued, as tears filled her blue eyes and threatened to spill over onto her school uniform blazer. “Honestly, don’t you think it’s embarrassing enough being the first daughter, and hearing people always making fun of your policies, without listening to them laugh at you over this weird stuff? Couldn’t you at least have waited until after your second term?”

“Waited for what?” Sheila Talbert asked her daughter, in her most soothing tone. “I have not admitted to anything. You only have the word of an extremely unethical and unprofessional man, who was sworn to protect me and has done a pretty poor job.”

“You mean, he was lying?” the girl asked, her tears stopping almost at once. “That’s wonderful, Mommy!” Despite her advanced age of almost-13, she reached up to hug her. “So you just tell everyone what a liar he was and that will be the end of that. Then I can tease Elisha for listening to such a crazy story. I mean, you never spanked us, so I should have known that you wouldn’t start beating on each other.”

“I simply refuse to discuss the matter,” her mother answered, as she had done so often before.

“You mean, you won’t even dignify that crazy liar with a denial!” Hillary crowed in triumph. “I should have known that his story could not possibly be true.”

“I didn’t say that either,” the president replied, trying to keep her obvious guilt out of her voice. “But what we do in the bedroom is none of your business, either.”

The child’s pale eyes, so like her own, widened in horror.

“You mean, it might be true?” she wailed. “Mommy, how could you!”

“And I did not say that! I will simply tell you what I have told everyone else…that it really is none of your business.”

“But I’m not everyone else,” Hillary said.

“Of course you aren’t,” Sheila Talbert said, sitting on the coverlet and drawing her daughter down beside her. “But I would not talk to you about anything that your father and I do in private. If anyone asks you, you can tell them that you really have no way of knowing, and that will be perfectly true.”

“I bet he’ll tell Wesley,” she sniffed resentfully. “Just because he’s older. And it isn’t fair, because you aren’t his mother anyway.”

“I’ll bet he will not.”

* * *

The president would have won that gamble.

At about the same time that Hillary was confronting her mother in her bedroom, Wesley was bearding his father in the wood-paneled den.

“You’ve got to tell them all that you are innocent,” he demanded, his ginger crew cut bristling almost as angrily as his father’s silvery one. “I know that you have to be, because you never even spanked me and I was your child. Everyone at school keeps asking me what it’s like to have a dad who beats his wife. They pretend they are kidding, but I know they are not.”

“He did not even say that I beat her,” his father retorted. “He said that I spanked her. There’s a difference.”

“Well, most people don’t see it that way,” Wesley Talbert answered. “Especially not the Feminists for Life. And the Feminists for Choice. And every other women’s group on campus. Not to mention the Anti-Violence Volunteers. And that’s just the ones who call you a male chauvinist pig. The Young Conservatives and the Christian Fellowship just say that you’re a pervert who is helping drag the whole country into decadence. You’ve really got to say something, or I will.”

The general’s eyes flared into blue flames as he replied, “You will not.”

“Then what about my mother?” his son asked, shrinking away…as almost anyone would have done, in the face of that frightening glare. “Did you do that kinky stuff with her?”

“I did not.”

“But you don’t deny that you did it to your current wife,” the law student realized. He had long since learned to avoid the loaded term “stepmother” in talking about her. It made her sound like that Joan Crawford cartoon in Snow White, his father had explained to him, and Sheila was anything but that. For one thing, Wesley would have worked for her election, even if they had not been related…even though he now wished that she had never run for any office beyond President of the Junior League.

“She is the President of the United States,” the First Father answered patiently. “I don’t want you having to carry a secret like that about her, with everyone wanting to figure it out.”

“Is that why you broke up with mother?” he demanded, “because Senator Wynant would put up with that kinky stuff and Mom would not?”

“That is none of your business either,” the general responded…trying to hide his grudging admiration, because his son had figured out the truth. “I’ll just say that your mother has been a real lady throughout this whole thing and refused to say anything to anyone.”

She had, in fact, been much too ladylike for any “kinky stuff.” That’s why they had broken up in the first place, months before he had met Senator Wynant at that fateful Senate hearing.

While she had seemed, at first, to be even more reserved and refined than his first wife, appearances had been deceiving this time. She had, in fact, been more than willing to experiment, first with strictly pleasure spanking and then with the harder, longer punishment style.

He saw no reason to share either memory with his son.

“But Mom isn’t the president,” Wesley pointed out. “She isn’t the one everyone is wondering about.” His father could not help nodding, to show that this, too, was true. Everyone was wondering about his personal life with the president, and almost no one approved.

For the liberals, it was a shocking betrayal, to think that the first female president was acting like some kind of Victorian submissive wife, possibly including Victoria herself. For the conservatives, it just went to prove that that sexual revolution had left even the most privileged people bored with normal relations and eager for exotic deviations like BDSM.

Going beyond those basic labels, the pacifists were revolted by any kind of violence, domestic or otherwise…while the war hawks wondered aloud how any other country could possibly respect a commander in chief who got spanked. Only a few history buffs kept remarking that Queen Victoria had done all right, by creating the greatest empire that the world had ever seen.

All sides were especially inclined to believe the worst because, as a dedicated moderate, she had consistently refused to embrace any of their views.

* * *

Devoted professional that he was, Bergman tried to analyze these facts, so he could use them for the president’s advantage.

“I really have to talk to you about paddlegate,” he told her. To his relief, she nodded for him to continue, even though she frowned at the “p word.”

“The staff has done the research about it,” he began. “Believe me, it took a lot of phone calls just to get enough people to answer our questions, rather than slamming the receiver down.”

As he said so, he noted with relief that the president was sitting firmly in her desk chair, as she had been doing for several weeks. It meant that, for the first time, a public figure like the general could give a positive answer to that age-old question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

“Anyway, here is how we break things down,” he said, putting the bound folder on the massive desk for her inspection. To his discomfort, she kept staring straight at him instead.

“As you know, you appeal to the moderates in both the red and blue states,” he rushed on. “That has always been your strength. But when it comes to this issue, we think you can reach out to both…with damage control, at least.” He glanced at her anxiously, but she still nodded at him to go on.

“All right, then,” he said. “The red states…or, rather, most of their rural areas…are much more likely to accept the idea of punishment spanking and domestic discipline. The blue states, and most of the city dwellers, can go along with erotic BDSM.

“Now, of course, we’ve got to use code words with them both. And unfortunately, we can’t make different public speeches in the different areas any more, because the national press would pick up on it.

“We can get the word out through smaller groups, though, and without even mentioning the you-know-what-gate thing. The general can address the VFW in West Virginia, for instance, about how we must uphold the traditions that served us so well in the past…they’ll get the message.

“And then the vice president’s wife, who is much more of a feminist than you are, can talk to the ACLU and people like that in Chicago, say, and talk about how we must accept innovation. They’ll get that, too.”

“I am sure they will,” she answered, speaking finally, in her coldest tone, with her hands folded primly above his printed report. “But I do not want them ‘getting’ anything about my private life. I intend to keep that private, in the red states, the blue states and the green-and-purple states. So can we please talk about my plan to save Social Security now?”

“We might as well,” he muttered. “No one else is doing it.”

* * *

While she was at least still talking about Social Security and such things, her husband was not making many speeches at all. Even though she had never asked him to do it, he had cancelled most of the embassy visits and other ceremonial duties that he had performed so well. It was an obvious effort to avoid the p-word-gate issue, and it left her feeling even guiltier about having made him the President’s Husband.

He had never tried to make her feel that way. On the contrary, he was the one who had urged her to run for president, when being Senate Majority Leader was all she had ever dared to hope for.

Even that would have been a vain ambition, if she had not agreed to follow his improvement plan. It consisted of accepting his punishment every time he thought she needed one…which usually meant, every time a public statement sounded even a bit too sharp and shrill. That tone was all right for a Senate hearing, like the one that had brought them together…but it would never do for the first female president.

Always, he had seemed to enjoy his position as the man behind the throne…the Albert to her Victoria, as it were. He had never shared the credit with her, but now he was sharing the blame.


* * * * *

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