Performance Appraisal

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

The President was alone in his office; a rarity, as a large entourage of minions would normally surround him from dawn to dusk. Through the windows of his spacious private office, he could see the early summer day setting on the trees in the garden, showing glimpses of what the landscape would look like later in the season. This would have normally gladdened the heart of the President but for the foreboding of doom he had been having for a few days now.

Gone was the euphoria when “the election of the century”, as he was fond of calling it, had swung the way he had only dreamt of. It still came as a major surprise, no doubt a pleasant one, that all his years of meticulous planning and vicious attacks on all other presidential aspirants had actually gone as per his calculations. The well-timed leaks and constant discrediting of news reports had all helped his cause. It had worked like a charm. So fantastic. But the situation seemed to be unravelling much more rapidly than he could ever have imagined. The President could feel the bile rising in him. The news media - of course, the news media and those losers in the White House administration who were working overtime leaking to the media - all seemed to be conspiring to undo all that he had worked diligently for years. The big prize, now secure in his grasp, seemed to be slipping away. The President had every right to feel furious.

He cast his mind back to General Flynn, a nice friendly guy and moreover a loyal guy. Flynn knew where his interests lay and could be trusted to obey his master, but these guys had targeted him and forced him out. Lucky it had been possible to stave off the limelight from Jeff Sessions by that diversionary tactic of bombing Assad’s Syria – a masterstroke if there was one in the international theatre in recent years.

But now there was a specter of more of his men being “exposed” - fine men who had served him faithfully and had so much potential. It would be a pity if they had to be sacrificed but when it came to power there were no compromises. That guy Comey was the one, the President thought bitterly, who had been behind all this. Comey, the one who had been amply warned but refused to take his cue. It was best to have got rid of him. Good riddance! But unfortunately the matter seemed to have been badly received by the voters. Now it was threatening to snowball; the Special Counsel, the testimonies of those oldies in CIA and DNI, Congressional and Senate hearings, the subpoenas, the matter seemed to be going out of hand.  

The President sighed. So terrible. He considered himself as a patriot and no one could doubt his patriotism surely. All he had wanted to do was to ensure that his country was at the number one spot where it rightfully belonged, but somehow he felt he had let down his great nation. His office was lined with the portraits of the founding fathers and he wanted to be placed there right among them when the time came. Often, when he was in his office, he had felt the critical gaze of the founding fathers upon him, subjecting his every action to merciless scrutiny and had sometimes felt that they were trying to convey something to him across the chasm of time. He loved to cast a lingering glance on their portraits as he left them at the end of his day but today he dreaded to meet their gaze. Failure was one thing which they would not have approved of. Finally he got out of his chair and on his way out stood under the portrait of the first one and raised his gaze.

Surprisingly there was no stern rebuke in the eyes of the first one he had expected to see, not even a look of disapproval but only benign approbation. The great man’s portrait seemed to convey a message to him and this time somehow he could decipher the message as clearly as a spoken word “We are all proud of you. You have succeeded where none of us could make much of a headway over the years. Congratulations Vladimir Vladimirovich”    

LazyBee

26^th May 2017