At the White House correspondents’ dinner he remained serene as diners all about him fled (some carrying bottles of expensive wine) upsetting chairs as armed secret service agents leap-frogged over tables and descended on the top table where the Commander in Chief (thrice rejected for military service) gazed on.
My man was middle-aged, putting on a bit of weight and in need of a haircut but a living example of the old war time slogan, ‘‘Keep Calm and Carry On.’’
Today he’s no doubt a senior editor with his own office, a bottle of Jim Beam in the top drawer and the terror of tyro journalists who hand in copy including phrases like ‘‘crops decimated’’ and ‘‘very unique’’.
For him an assassination attempt is just another day at the office.
Just as the United States Marine Band struck up, probably playing Hail the Conquering Hero as a presidential request, a shot rang out.
At first onlookers thought it was fired by a music lover who detests military bands but it was soon evident that something far more serious was afoot.
My man sat quietly sipping his Dom Perignon Brut and nibbling on his burrata, cucumber and spring pea salad and looking forward to his prime chateaubriand and Maine lobster.
The sort of bloke Rudyard Kipling was thinking of when he wrote, ‘‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs — you’ll be a Man, my son!’’
Meanwhile, just a metre or two away President Trump, the great military leader and potential conqueror of Iran, Greenland, Guatemala and Cuba, is on his feet looking on eagerly in the manner of a small child at a Santa parade while his minders grapple with him, pushing him like a sack of coals towards the backstage area but that didn’t distract me from watching my salad-munching hero.
With hundreds of journalists in the room it was obvious he would also be noticed by others keen to get a new angle on the story.
It was soon revealed that the man was Michael Glantz, an agent with New York’s Creative Artist’s Agency no doubt invited to the do by longtime client Donald Trump.
When questioned he explained that he had a bad back, ‘‘I couldn’t get on the floor, and if I did get on the floor, they’d have to bring in people to get me off the floor. And I’m a hygiene freak. There was no freaking way I was getting in my new tux on the dirty Hilton floor. It was not happening.’’
He added, ‘‘I was born and raised in New York and this sort of situation didn’t scare me at all.’’
So much for the great American hero.
And what of the courage shown by the President in standing up to see what was going on?
The latest conspiracy theory may have the answer.
The whole thing was staged, we are told, to give Trump ammunition in his battle to build a $40 million super-secure White House ballroom.
Some suggest Trump could have staged the attacks to distract from his low approval ratings or the war on Iran.
It could well be true. Just consider the facts.
Trump appeared to be unfazed, perhaps secure in the knowledge that his earlobes were safe. The secret service man at the gate rather casually let the would-be assassin pass the checkpoint and then, eventually, fired off a few rounds at random.
No-one was seriously injured and the only person hit by the flying bullets was a law enforcement agent who just happened to be wearing a highly effective bullet-proof jacket.
At a press conference immediately after the drama journalists who had been expecting to be lambasted by Trump in his after-dinner speech instead had to listen to some platitudes delivered with the President’s usual grammatical slips.
‘‘I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts in resolving our difference [sic] peacefully.’’
In the end, there were no heroes in Washington last week.
Perhaps we should seek them, not in the halls of the grand and celebrated nor in the ranks of self-delusional political leaders, but in the humble homes of those who, with courage and kindness, just get on with life.
• Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
