Rob Burr was sworn in as the 101st Attorney General of the United States of America on January 28th, 2028.
101st, a reader in 2026 might ask? Since when were there a hundred attorneys general?
Don’t ask about how many the last guy went through.
Rob’s confirmation had gone smoothly in the Senate, except that everyone kept introducing him as Robert and he kept having to correct them, and the junior senator from Hawaii asked him if he ever went by anything else, like Bob.
Perhaps surprisingly, Rob’s boss was another Republican, although not quite in the mold of the last guy. He was the old-fashioned sort of Republican, who wore a suit at breakfast and whose idea of an exciting time was to have full-fat milk instead of skim in his coffee.
The Democratic presidential nominee for 2028 had run on making Puerto Rico a state, which she’d said she would do on her first day in office, unilaterally and without checking with Congress. The new Republican president had said he could beat that. He was going to make Australia a state on his first day in office. He might even ask the Australians first, if they were nice to him.
By 2028, the American electorate had wised up to the fact that when politicians said they were going to do something, it was a lie. So nobody believed either of them. But the Democratic presidential nominee had said she was going to liquidate the wealth of the top twenty percent of Americans on her first day in office, and the Republican nominee had said he was going to abolish the income tax. Apparently, the latter sounded better to a majority of Americans, including a majority of the eighty percent whose wealth the Democratic nominee had promised to leave intact. When the final results were tallied, she had only won a majority of the wealthiest twenty percent of Americans, and the Republican nominee had won a majority of the bottom eighty percent.
On Rob’s first day in office, he was told his first task would be to investigate the Smithsonian, particularly the National Museum of American History.
“The American History Museum?” he’d asked the president’s chief of staff. “Whatever for? Surely there are bigger fish to fry for the… attorney general… of the United States… don’t we have interns who can…?”
“It’s about wokeness,” the chief of staff told him. “They’re all woke there.”
“I thought the last guy was supposed to get rid of…”
“Well, he didn’t. Your job is to investigate the National Museum of American History.”
Rob realized he wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do. “Do I order a team of FBI agents to…?”
“No,” the chief of staff told him. “You just go over there yourself and start asking around.”
Rob thought about ordering a motorcade, but decided he didn’t want to have his paycheck docked in case federal employees weren’t supposed to use official resources for personal reasons, so he walked over from the DOJ.
When he arrived, he was cold, but otherwise no worse for the wear. He walked around until he found an office with a middle-aged, overweight security guard.
“What do you need?” she asked him.
“I want to speak to the person in charge,” he said.
“The person in charge of security?” she asked.
“No. The person in charge of the museum. I think I’ve got her name here…Ruby Doran.”
The security guard narrowed her eyes. “Who wants to see her? She doesn’t just see anybody you know. Some random-ass punk can’t come in off the street and just ask to see the director of the museum you know.”
Rob realized that at 5’2”, he didn’t exactly cut an intimidating figure. He had hoped his smart shoes and dark suit would have clued her in to the fact that he was someone important. He realized that he hadn’t been attorney general long enough for people to recognize him.
“I’m the attorney general.”
“The attorney general of what?”
“I’m Rob Burr.”
“You what now?” she stood up, crossed her arms and cocked her head.
“I’m the attorney general of the United States of America,” he said. She didn’t look like she believed this.
“Says who?” she asked.
Rob realized this was going to be harder than he’d thought. He started digging around in his pocket for his government ID.
“Hold it,” the security guard said, putting her hand on her hip. “You better not be takin’ out no gun on me, sir. First, you tell me who it is that says you the attorney general of the U.S. of A.”
“The president,” Rob said. “Dave Clark.”
“That’s a band.”
“It’s also the name of the current president of the United States of America. He was sworn in two weeks ago.” He found his ID and pulled it out. She looked at it.
“Damn,” she said. “You look too short to be the attorney general.” But she went off to find the museum director. Rob wondered whether he could find another cup of coffee somewhere in the museum.
It turned out the chief of staff hadn’t been lying. Ruby Doran insisted on opening their meeting with a land acknowledgement. There was a long list of tribes to acknowledge. Rob was pretty sure the Maori hadn’t ever lived anywhere near the Potomac River, but he hadn’t been a star student in history; for all he knew, they had.
“What do you want?” Doran finally asked him when the land acknowledgement was over.
“Well,” said Rob, “On behalf of the president, I’m here to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay, Herr Goering, shoot.”
“What exactly is it,” Rob began, “that you would say you do here?”
“What? Is that from Office Space?” Doran asked.
“It’s just a question, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m not your mother. Don’t try to play nice. You think just because Republicans want to wear suits and ties now and stop saying ‘fag’ that we suddenly think you’re a bunch of old dads again? Think again, Generalissimo.”
“Hey,” said the attorney general. “Do you want to get fired? Because I can make that happen. You realize you work for the federal government, right? Not some private museum funded by some rich environmentalist? I’m trying to be nice here. Knock off the fascism jokes and we can have a nice, easy conversation about the work the museum is doing. The president takes an interest in American history.”
“Does he? Is that why he sent his attorney general here? Say, when was the last time your guy read a book? The teleprompter doesn’t count.”
“Maybe you can just show me around and we can look at the exhibits and have a cup of coffee and start over,” said Rob. “If you knock off the fascism jokes, I won’t tell the president to fire you. You know he can do that?”
“You know, strictly speaking, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was a falangist, not a fascist.”
Rob didn’t even know what that was, so he didn’t respond.
“Alright,” she added eventually, “I’ll show you around.”
