Over twenty years earlier, while a Marine officer in the Middle East, Mike ran Force Recon missions out of the US Embassy in Kuwait and was befriended by its Ambassador, who convinced the brilliant 22 year old to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship.
At Oxford Mike fell in love with a fellow student, Alexandra Mednorov. They met Reggie Howard, a Brit bent on a life in politics, and his current girl friend. The four palled around on weekends for nearly two years. When Mike and Alex graduated, she returned to Moscow and he went to New York City to begin his life on Wall Street. He and Reggie remained fast friends.
Alex would fortuitously reenter his life after his election. In the intervening twenty years, he had become a successful currency trader making millions and had married. Tragically, he lost Sandi, his wife of six years, to leukemia. They had been heavily involved in programs for youth and leading fundraisers. After her death, he wrote an oft put off book, The Theoretical Framework for the Collapse of the US Dollar, which brought him notoriety and the speaker circuit.
He dialed back on his Wall Street activities and turned to philanthropy and fundraising. In late 2010, he was drawn to Bryanna Dudley, the Independent Governor of Indiana and to a nonprofit disaster organization for emergency relief that included the enlisting of tens of thousands of volunteers to be at the ready to man supply lines and aid victims. His fundraising campaigns raised over a billion dollars. As he and she grew to know each other, they found many mutual interests. One was their disgust with the depravity of the US Congress, which led them to establish the Centrist Party of America, electing Dudley as its chair.
While Mike wanted her to also head the Centrist presidential ticket in 2012, she and others wanted him. He protested that he was better suited for a supportive role - he had no political background or aspirations, which to everyone involved made him the perfect choice. He finally agreed on the proviso that Dudley would run as his VP. The two were an instant hit.
Their enthusiasm and love of country; their ideas for restructuring and invigorating America’s economy; and their grassroots, commonsense approach to governing exploded across the nation. They overcame the major parties. Many Centrist candidates were elected to the US Senate and House creating a three party system in Congress, rendering the Hill devoid of a majority party.
Now though, at 5:30 a.m. on his first day in office, the country was at DEFCON 1, Code Red, President Mike Macdonald began moving forward on many fronts. Fortunately, he had held over the CIA Director and Secretary of Commerce, but he needed all his Cabinet Secretaries and the Attorney General seated immediately and he directed the three parties’ congressional leadership meet with him that morning.
With a fear of more bombings looming over the White House, VP Dudley was flown out on Air Force Two, from which she would run the recovery. British Prime Minister Reginald Howard leads an international intelligence search; DEFCON 1 dictates full US military and National Guard readiness; and FBI, medical personnel and first responders are mobilizing under Dudley’s experienced hand.
Faced with a terrorism nightmare and a collapsing economy, Rude Awakenings’ imaginative plot unfolds as readers learn of Macdonald’s fascinating past life and the lives of those around him. Everyone’s looking for answers, and then on Day-3, an intriguing scenario was profferred and immediately pursued, even though it had come from a most unusual and unexpected source.
With the day-to-day revelations of re-growing a country physically and economically, Macdonald is revealed as a vivid and colorful hero.
SC – ISBN 978-1-4269-1900-8 Trafford Publishing. $22.50
HC – ISBN 978-1-4269-1899-5 Trafford Publishing. $32.50
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