Free O-Negative: Extinction by Hamish Cantillon

forward to seeing you at the Jacobson function next week’.  That should do the trick he thought.
     
    _______________________
     
     
    A week later he returned to his office from a lengthy and largely ineffective meeting of the National Republican Congressional committee to find a pile of 20 applications on his desk.  He knew the vast majority of prospective intern applications had already been assessed and discarded by Greg.  The remaining candidates were the ones judged to be the most suitable.  There were various post-it notes sticking out from the pile where Greg had summarised his assessments.  Most members of congress received a couple of thousand applications for every position so it was quite a task to sift through them all.  He knew Greg had got the rest of the team to assist him with this.
     
    He took the pile of applications, poured himself a whiskey and sat down on his leather armchair to go through them.  Starting at the top he began reading, adding a few notes to Greg’s comments as he worked his way through the pile.  As expected most of the candidates appeared to be a lot cleverer and more accomplished than he was and in fact probably most Nobel Prize winners.  Though this was par for the course for such a highly sought after position it was also slightly demoralising to know that the lowest paid person in the office was likely to be smarter than him.  The last application in the pile was thicker than the others.  He read the name at the top, ‘Megan Lu, Georgetown University Politics and Economics’.  The additional thickness of the application was caused by the University newspaper attached.  Pulling it out from under the application he unfolded it and was greeted by a copy of his publicity photo prominently displayed on the front page.  The tag line read ‘Exclusive Interview with New Congressman David Mitchell’.  So far so good he thought.  He flipped through to pages 4-6 to read the full article.  Despite a couple of minor aspersions to the Republicans having no ‘influence on procurement processes’ she’d largely replicated their conversation without any overt criticisms. 
     
    He had a quick flick through her application and saw that it was refreshingly free of elements highlighting her personal brilliance and much more focused on her own interests.  She seemed to have quite strong opinions on immigration, foreign policy and freedom of speech.  Somewhat different to his own maybe but that was better than the sycophantic remarks he’d seen in some of the other applications. 
     
    He called for Greg through the open office door.  “Greg have you got a moment”.
     
    Greg came in from the main office.  “David.  How was the NRC meeting? As fulfilling as always?”
     
    “It was so fulfilling I had to come back here and pour myself a stiff drink.  God those idiots couldn’t pick a winning candidate if their lives depended on it.  I kept my mouth shut for most of it.  I didn’t think they’d appreciate any pointers from an upstart first time congressman they hadn’t wanted to support in the first place”.
     
    “Probably best.  Any other news?”
     
    “Nope not really. Devlin Stewart appears to be getting closer to ‘spending more time with his family’.  The Post have got hold of telephone transcripts between him and his wife’s sister”.  He sipped on his drink and waved Greg towards the sideboard to get himself one.  Greg duly did so.  On his return Greg sat down on the sofa.
     
    David waved the pile of papers in his hand “So I see you’ve eventually got round to going through the intern applications”
     
    “Yeah, painful but I got the rest of the team to help – I had to really there were so many”
     
    “I know, we really should have a better system for dealing with these things, maybe some sort of centralised system where the party provides each congressman with a selection of possible interns?  I’m sure most of those applicants