Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  Benton let Levy go through to the end before he responded. “First thing, Sam, whichever way we go, I want the speech to be real. When I finish, I want the people who have heard this speech to know what I’m going to do. I want them to know why it’s going to make their lives better. I want them to know how they can contribute. I want them to understand why they should support me. Those four things. I’m going to be a real president. I’m going to do real things for real people. I want a real speech.”

  Levy nodded and tapped some notes into his handheld. So did Jodie.

  “Think of Joe Kowalski sitting in a bar somewhere watching this speech.”

  Sam nodded again. How many times had he heard that? Every campaign speech had been written for Joe Kowalski, Joe Benton’s imaginary listener.

  “The average length of the past ten inaugurals was 2,188 words,” said Levy. “I say we go shorter.”

  “Agreed,” said Benton. “Was anyone awake by the time Mike Gartner finished speaking? I sure as hell wasn’t.”

  “His was 3,423. Jack Kennedy’s inaugural was 1,355.”

  “Let’s aim for fifteen hundred. At the outside.”

  “I’m going to go to Mary Poulakis and Ed Beale for drafts as well,” said Jodie Ames.

  That was fine with Benton. They talked through the ideas Levy had offered. At an early session like this, for such a critical speech, Joe Benton didn’t mind spending some time freely kicking ideas around without trying to put them into a definitive framework.

  “What about the theme?” asked Levy, after they had been talking for a while. He had offered a number of possibilities, but only for the sake of completeness. “Let’s come back to that. I’m assuming we want to stick with New Foundation.”

  “We have to,” said Ames. “That’s what the campaign was about. It’s natural to cap it off with this.”

  “Maybe we want to draw a line,” said Eales. “This is different. That was the campaign. This is the presidency. Make that clear, use a different theme.”

  “There’s no line,” said Benton. “We stay with New Foundation. But I want to do something new with it. I don’t want anyone to be able to say they heard this or that part of it on the stump before.”

  “We should get Joe Kowalksi to write it,” muttered Sam Levy. “He’s heard every speech you ever made.”

  Benton smiled. Then he was serious again. He tapped the armrest of his chair. “New Foundation isn’t about running away from something. It’s not about making the least worst of a bad situation. It’s about turning that into a good situation, like the Founding Fathers. That’s core.”

  “We’ve used that,” said Levy. “About a million times.”

  “Can’t have too much of the Founding Fathers,” said Hoffman.

  “It’s about opportunity,” continued Benton, searching for the germ that might grow into a novel variant on the New Foundation theme. “It’s about lifting people up, not putting them down. It’s about turning challenges into growth. It’s about remaking the nation.”

  “It’s about time,” said Eales

  “What time?” asked Levy.

  “Time to remake the nation. Our time. This is our time.”

  “That’s really original,” said Jodie Ames.

  “No, I like it,” said Levy. “I can work with that. Young and old. This is our time. It’s your time. We should have used that in the campaign, Senator. How did we not use that?”

  “We managed.” Benton raised a finger. “No verbiage, Sam. No flights of rhetoric.”

  “An inaugural’s got to have some flights, Senator. People expect it.”

  “Well, let’s keep it real. Nothing ridiculous.”

  “Where’s the fun?” muttered Levy.

  “I’ll be getting drafts from Mary and Ed as well,” Ames reminded him.

  “You want more?” asked Hoffman. “I got a pile of drafts from every nut in the country.”

  Levy shrugged. “You know what? Let me look at them.”

  “What? You got no ideas of your own anymore?”

  “The man who listens to no voice but his own is a man who speaks only to himself. You know who said that, Ben?”

  Hoffman laughed. “When you stop making up sayings, Sam, then I’ll start guessing who said them.”

  “Senator?” said Ames. “How do you want to handle foreign issues? We’ve focused on domestic but you’re also sending a message to foreign governments.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “What you said in the campaign. That you’ll work with our partners. That our problems are shared problems, and the solutions have to be shared solutions. In the broader context of the speech, you’re saying you’re focused on America’s domestic issues, but you’re not going to neglect the historic leadership role of the United States internationally. But you’re not going to use that role coercively. You want a better life for everybody.”

  “You could lay out some specifics,” said Angela Chavez. “On Kyoto, for example, that’s the obvious one.”

  “I want to think about that.” Benton glanced at Eales, then looked at Jodie. “We’ll need to get thoughts on this from Alan and Larry. Jodie, you want to have a word with them? In the meantime, Sam, let’s go with something general to start with on the foreign side, and short, and we’ll take it from there.”

  Levy nodded.

  “All right,” said the Senator. “Sam? Are you happy? Have you got enough?”

  “I think so.”

  Benton looked around at the others. “Are we done?”

  There were murmurs of assent.

  “Jodie, Sam, I’ve got some business here with Angela.”

  Ames and Levy left. Chavez stayed behind with Eales and Hoffman. They talked through the issues that had come up during their meetings with the congresspeople that day. The sheer scale of the legislative task ahead of them was becoming apparent, and it was even greater than Joe Benton had imagined it. He wanted to explore the possibility of Angela taking hands-on responsibility for driving the legislation through, running a kind of permanent command center. That would mean working closely with Ben Hoffman. Neither of them seemed too comfortable about it. Not because they didn’t like each other, but because Angela had her own chief of staff and her own organization, and it wasn’t clear how it was going to work.

  “Maybe it won’t,” said Benton. “But we need to be flexible. Let’s at least see if we can make it work. If we can, we’ll have much stronger firepower.”

  Angela and Ben nodded. Not entirely convincingly.

  “All right, I’ll let you two think it through. Ben, where are we on health?”

  “Raj and his guys are going to have the packages detailed right after New Year’s.”

  “Costed?”

  Ben nodded.

  “No later than that?”

  “They’re on it,” said Hoffman.

  “Education?”

  “Same timescale, Senator. Ewen’s on it.”

  “Keep me involved in the policy. They can have as much of my time as they need before the inauguration. This is when they can get it, I’m not going to have the time later. Take as much as you can get, Ben. Be greedy.”

  ~ * ~

  After Chavez and Hoffman had gone, Benton pulled out a bottle of scotch and a couple of glasses. He poured for himself and Eales. Then he sat back in his chair and looked out the window at the winter darkness of a Washington evening.

  “You know, if it goes bad,” said Eales, “you’re hanging Angela out to dry.”

  Benton sipped at his drink. “That’s not why I’m doing it. We need the firepower. She’s effective. She can give it to us.”

  “But you’re going to send her out with this program, and then if we come out and say, you know what, this program isn’t adequate, and here’s what we need, there’s a risk she’ll look like a fool. It’ll look like you set her up just so you could step back from it yourself.”

  “That’s not why I’m doing it,” repeated Benton softly.
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  “Joe, I know that.”

  “We just have to handle it so that doesn’t happen.”

  “And Jackie?” said Eales.

  Jackie Rubin had been working intensively, developing options and programs to make New Foundation a reality. At the end of the Relocation summit, Benton had pledged to present New Foundation to a joint session of Congress within a month of his inauguration. But the New Foundation package as it was currently being planned wouldn’t be enough to deal with the full scale of the relocation that awaited them, nowhere near enough, and Jackie was one of the few who knew it. In a second discussion Benton had had with Rubin, Ball and Eales, Jackie Rubin came right out with the questions. Were they going to keep planning on the basis of the old projections despite the data Dr. Richards had provided? When Benton went to Congress, was he going to conceal the full extent of the relocation that would be required? Because these were ten-year plans they were presenting. Were they going to come back in six months, twelve months, and tell Congress they had to tear everything up and start again? When were they going to tell people?

  Benton hadn’t had an answer for Jackie. All he knew was that he didn’t think he could say it yet. People weren’t ready to hear it. And if he said it when the American people wasn’t ready to hear it, he would lose them on everything.

  He sipped his drink again.

  “I will not lose these bills, John!” he said suddenly. He thumped his fist on the chair. “Once in a generation you get the momentum in this country to really do something. I won’t blow it. Health. Education. Relocation. Jobs. I won’t blow those priorities. I will not.”

  Eales didn’t say anything.

  “If we can get the program going, if we can get New Foundation established, working, proving itself, then maybe we can move people on to the bigger scale. Then we can talk about the relocation we really face over the long run, and what it actually means in terms of our emissions policy and the additional programs we’ll need to fund. But we have to put the elements of fairness in place first. We have to get the principles established, we have to show they work, we have to show it’s possible. Give them legitimacy. If we don’t get them in place first, if we don’t get them working, we never will. I’m convinced of that. Hell’s bells, John! All I’m talking about here is the basics. Health, education, jobs. What else is there? Without those, you don’t have the foundation of a fair society. If we don’t get them in place now, the chance is gone and we’re back where we were. It’ll be another generation before another president has the chance again. And frankly, if that happens, given the magnitude of what we face, if we don’t manage to do it, I don’t know what’ll be left of our country by then.”

  “So how long do you wait?” said Eales.

  “You tell me. I think we need a year. At least to get the legislation in place. That’s the minimum.”

  “So you’re not going to say anything at the inaugural?”

  Benton closed his eyes. He let out a long breath. “How do I lie to the American people?”

  “It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.”

  “Sophistry,” murmured Benton.

  Eales didn’t reply. He finished his scotch.

  Joe Benton could literally feel the pressure bearing down on him. “I can tell you one thing, John. We need to be a hundred and ten percent above board. We’re going to need every scrap of support to get New Foundation through. Every hit we take is going to damage our chances. I don’t want a single skeleton in anyone’s closet. Every appointment we make, every single person we bring in, every one of them needs to be clean as a whistle.”

  ~ * ~

  Saturday, December 25

  Benton Ranch, Wickenberg, Arizona

  The Bentons had been getting together with the Travises for Christmas lunch for close on twenty years. Joe Benton had no intention of changing that now, any more than Heather did. So it was Christmas Day as usual at the Benton ranch outside of Wickenberg—apart from the bevy of Secret Service agents who were taking turns patrolling the grounds and having their own lunch in the kitchen, which Heather insisted on providing for them.

  Ray Travis had been elected to Congress for the Arizona fifth district in the same year that Joe Benton first went to Washington, and it had been that experience, two Arizona Democrat freshers on the Hill, that had sealed their bond. And the fact that their wives got on. And the match with their kids. Ray and Emmy Travis had two girls, Penny and June. June, the younger, was almost exactly the age of Amy Benton. And everyone had always joked that some day Greg would marry Penny.

  Ray Travis had served two terms in the House before he went back home and settled into a law partnership in Phoenix. Joe Benton stayed on in Washington. Inevitably, their worldviews had diverged somewhat over the years. But the friendship remained strong, and it was never long before the talk turned political when they were together.

  “So where do you think your main opposition inside the party’s going to come from?” asked Ray, while they were having eggnog before lunch.

  “Where I least expect it,” said Joe.

  Ray laughed.

  “Ray,” said Emmy, “I’m sure Joe doesn’t want to talk politics today.” She glanced at Joe, and almost blushed. Although she had known Joe for twenty years, the mantle of president-elect made her somewhat in awe of him.

  “Sure he does,” said Ray. “That’s all he ever wants to talk about.”

  “That’s true,” said Heather.

  “The House is solid but the Senate’s flaky,” said Ray.

  Joe nodded. “The Senate’s always flaky, Ray, you know that.”

  “Christopher and Bales will come on board,” said Amy. “Dad’ll get ‘em on board.”

  “You think so?”

  Amy nodded. Joe smiled. More often than not, Amy was right.

  “Greg, what do you think?”

  Greg shrugged. “I don’t know anything about politics, Mr. Travis. God invented politics to keep boring people from boring the rest of us. With politics, they just bore each other.”

  Joe smiled indulgently. He didn’t rise to the bait. He had learned to avoid that with Greg.

  “So you think that’s right?” asked Ray. “Christopher and Bales are going to line up behind you?”

  “Of the fifty-six senators we have, there are seven or eight we’ll have to treat very carefully. Are Christopher and Bales among them? Yes, I think they are. Can we handle them the right way? I hope so.”

  “You’ve just got to increase funding for the Farm Reversion Program, Daddy. Christopher, Bales, right across the Midwest they’ll get behind you.”

  “And what about Montera?” said Ray. “You think you’ll get him through?”

  The allegation of a scandal in Hugo Montera’s past had broken two days before Christmas. Benton had spoken to Montera, who had explained it. Benton couldn’t see that he was guilty of any wrongdoing.

  “We’ll get him through,” he said quietly.

  Ray Travis sat forward in his seat. “Here’s the thing, Joe. The Relocation package, where’s it all going to come from? Just how high are you going to put our taxes?”

  “Ray, I’ve got some of the smartest brains in the country working on that right now.”

  “But you are going to put taxes up?”

  “It’ll be selective. I’ve said there’ll be a cost. How can there not be?”

  “The American people voted for it,” said Amy. “I don’t think Daddy hid anything.”

  “Honey, politicians always hide something.”

  “Amy’s right,” said Joe. “People knew. They recognize there’s a need to do something here. The Gartner Relocation package was a miserly, stingy piece of work that would have condemned millions of people to poverty for generations. And I’m not only talking about the poor souls who have to be moved, I’m also talking about the communities they’re moving into.”

  “Four trillion dollars over ten years, Joe. You could hardly say that’s miserly.”

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p; “It is. It’s not only miserly, it’s shortsighted. This movement of people can be a tremendous moment in our history. We can use it as a platform of growth. Or it can be a sinkhole of misery. Make your choice.”

  “I’m not arguing with that.”

  “You can’t just move them. You can’t just give them a bus ticket and put them in a trailer someplace and give them a couple of hundred thousand compensation and say get on with your lives. That’s what Gartner’s bill did. We can do better. We have to do better. You’ve got to put in the infrastructure. You’ve got to prime the pump. Put those people into communities with health care, education, jobs, and within ten years, five years, they’ll be flourishing, not languishing. That’s why it’s a package, Ray. That’s why I kept saying it and saying it and saying it. And I’ll keep on saying it. Health, education, relocation, jobs. They all come together. And it’s our role as government to make sure they do come together.”