Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  Now she sat down in the Oval Office and told him she couldn’t see how it was possible for her to stay in his cabinet.

  This was the second time, thought Benton, she had sat in the Oval Office and said that. But this time, she didn’t seem mad. She seemed calm, cool, detached. Like someone who had already, mentally, left her job.

  “I guess you’d like my interpretation of what President Wen said in his speech,” he said.

  Powers nodded fatalistically. “Mr. President, I’d just like to know what’s been going on. I just want some honesty. It’s clear there’s been a dialogue between you and President Wen on environmental issues, and I’m assuming some other people have known about it, but you’ve kept me out of that loop. That’s your right, of course, but I don’t think I can serve in those circumstances.”

  “I understand,” said the president.

  There was silence.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” said Powers. “I’ll just quit now, if you’ll accept my resignation.”

  “Andrea, let’s take it a step at a time.”

  Powers waited.

  “There has been something going on. I wouldn’t exactly call it a dialogue between myself and President Wen.”

  “For how long?”

  “Actually, it goes back to the last six months of President Gartner.” Powers stared at him.

  The President shrugged. “It was a very small group of people who knew, on both sides. It’s nothing personal, Andrea, there were good reasons for it. It’s possible that I should have involved you, and I certainly did consider it. It was a tough call. But to be honest, I don’t believe there would have been an additional contribution you could have made that wasn’t already represented in the group, and it would have distracted you from the excellent work you’ve been doing in driving compliance with our existing obligations. That’s been incredibly important.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Well, it has been. And it’s going to be even more important as we go forward. We need to be scrupulous in compliance if we’re going to bring anyone with us on this. As far as keeping you out of the group who were involved, I’ve explained why I did it, but I do apologize, on a personal level, for any hurt that’s caused.” Joe Benton paused for a moment. “You’ve got to understand, the conversation we’re having today could easily have been different. I could have been sitting here telling you that you’re going into the Kyoto process backed by an agreement between us and the Chinese government for extraordinary, radical action, and sanctions to be applied to any other state that didn’t comply. I should have been telling you that. We were that close.”

  Powers was silent.

  “I’m going to tell you exactly what’s been happening.” The president told her going through it in a fair depth of detail. “Now, you can say I was wrong to have done it like that, but it was my judgment, and I guess we’re going to see now whether a more public process will work, although you may well say the chances are low because the Chinese are angry and that’s my fault. And if that’s the case, the buck stops with me and I accept it.”

  Powers frowned, trying to absorb everything she had been told.

  “You’re sure the predictions are right?” she asked.

  “The range is right. Dr. Richards is going to be presenting the latest data, taking account of the summer findings, in about a month. But the range is right.”

  Powers was silent.

  “All right, Andrea, tell me this. You think if I put all this stuff on the table now—in the Kyoto process—you think if I put all this stuff on the table we’ve got a chance of getting the deal we need?”

  “Can I ask you a question first? Why do you think the Chinese government didn’t cut a deal in Oslo?”

  “That’s an excellent question. I really don’t know. I’m waiting for someone to tell me.”

  “You think they might think there’s more credit for them in cutting it as part of the Kyoto process?”

  The president shrugged.

  Powers thought about it. “If they don’t want to do it, they won’t do it under any conditions.”

  “That’s what I think.” Benton looked at her. “You still want to quit?”

  Powers shook her head regretfully. “Mr. President, I don’t see how I can continue after I’ve been undermined like this.”

  “By who? Me? You’ve got my full support, you know you have.”

  “I haven’t got any credibility left.”

  “Nor will anyone else who comes in to replace you. It’s the credibility of your office that’s been undermined. You can rebuild it.”

  Powers gazed at the president skeptically. “With respect, sir, it’s me who’s been undermined, not the office.”

  “All right, it’s both of you. Come on, are you in or not? There’s work to be done here, Andrea. Serious work. That’s what you joined the administration for, isn’t it? You won’t have a chance to do it outside.”

  Powers smiled sadly. “Mr. President, I have a powerful sense of deja vu right now.”

  “Well, I guess there’s only so many arguments a president has at his disposal.”

  Powers threw back her head and closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. “Mr. President, if I’m going to stay, I’m going to have to ask you for a promise. You may think it’s out of line, and if so, I apologize and I’ll leave. On this issue, I have to be in the loop. I need to know everything.”

  “Done,” said the president.

  Powers stared at him doubtfully.

  “Welcome,” said the President, spreading his arms. He smiled. “To the loop, I mean.”

  Powers shook her head.

  The president was serious again. “I’m going to tell you what I think. I’m going to be completely honest with you, Andrea, because I value your opinion on this.” Joe Benton paused. “I don’t think we can do this through Kyoto.”

  “What about what you said in the speech?”

  “That speech was a question for President Wen. If he’d come back and said, ‘We endorse the American position on Kyoto, and we’ll be in the front ranks of trying to find an imaginative solution’—something like that—then, sure, I’d have a lot more confidence. Some confidence, anyway.”

  “But you threatened him.”

  “Maybe that was a mistake, but what I’ve learned is that Wen doesn’t seem to respond to anything else. You know that’s not the way I do things. That’s Larry Olsen’s style. But I’ve learned over these last months that’s the only way with President Wen. Otherwise, he just snows you.”

  “Now he’s given you a threat right back.”

  “Agreed. But at least we have that much. Don’t get me wrong, Andrea. I’m prepared to try a Kyoto round if there’s a realistic chance of success. I just want someone to show me why I should believe there is. It took four months of painful, painful negotiation to get to the point where Wen walked away. And that was just between two parties. Put in another half dozen— and I’m only talking about the major emitters, that’s before the other hundred fifty countries have their say—and how do you get agreement on something so hard? I was hoping to send you into Kyoto with a rock solid deal between us and China, but if there’s conflict between us, everyone else is going to slip into that crack. The EuroCore, India, Brazil, Russia, they’ll all find a place to hide. And it’s going to drag on like it always has, and we’re going to come out with some godawful thing, and in another ten years someone else is going to be sitting in this office facing exactly what I face today, only it’s going to be that much worse, that much harder to deal with. And maybe then the Chinese government will realize they have to do a deal, but that’ll be ten more years lost, and I don’t think we can afford that. Andrea, I know we can’t afford it, so I can’t let that happen. Not on my watch. Not without a fight.”

  “What are you proposing?” asked Powers quietly.

  “I want to hear what you think. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Kyoto’s the way to do it. I sure wish i
t could be. So tell me, if we sit down at this Kyoto round in March—now that you know all the facts—do we or do we not get the deal we need?”

  Powers was silent for a good minute, appearing to study the rug. “I’d like to say so,” she said eventually.

  “What does that mean?”

  She looked back at the president. “We could use the same moral argument. We’re taking a lead. Here’s the deal, the same deal you agreed in Oslo, the same cuts. This is it, follow us.”

  “Without China?”

  Powers shrugged.

  “Andrea, I can’t sell that to the American people. Not if we actually have to start implementing those cuts and there’s no watertight, copper-bottomed, sanctions-backed guarantee that anyone else will fulfill their side of the bargain. Do you think we can sell that to the American people?”

  Powers didn’t reply.

  Benton nodded. That was as good as an answer.

  “So are we pulling out of the Kyoto process?” asked Powers.

  “That’s a possibility I’m considering. Or maybe we should threaten to. See who really wants to make it work and what they’ll do about it.”

  There was silence.

  “Andrea, you can quit if you want to. You were strongly committed to Kyoto, and I led you to believe that I was—which I was, back then, before I knew what we were actually dealing with. So you can, if you really feel you want to, you can quit.”

  “I’m not quitting. Not unless you want me to.”

  “Hell’s bells, you know I don’t want you to.”

  “Then I’m not.”

  Benton could see Powers sit up straighter, regrouping. It was about the only cheering thing he had seen in the past forty-eight hours.

  “What’s the next step?” she said.

  “There’s a bunch of options being developed. Jackie Rubin’s bringing them together. Talk to Jackie and she’ll let you see where we’re at. I’ll let her know you can see whatever she’s got. If you have any thoughts, feed them in to her.”

  “When are you planning to finalize this?”

  “Soon as I can. None of the options is what I want to do, but I’m going to have to do something. The better we think it out, the more chance it’ll have of working.”

  Powers nodded.

  “I’m going to call the cabinet together Monday and then I’ll give an address to the nation. I’d do it tomorrow if I could.”

  “Tomorrow’s not the day for it.”

  “Good God, no. Not tomorrow.”

  ~ * ~

  Sunday, September 11

  Family Residence, The White House

  It was like a moment of calm between two storms. The one day in the year when partisan politics in the United States were truly put aside. Even this year, in the midst of everything that was happening, that was true. For Joe Benton, it was an all too brief moment of quiet after the raging seas of the days before, an interlude of tranquillity before the new waves that would surely crash against him after he did what he had decided to do the following day.

  When he stood up to give his 9/11 address at Memorial Park in New York City, flanked by Heather, Amy and Greg, he said this wasn’t a day for politics, this wasn’t a day to point a finger of blame or ask questions of division, it was a day to bow the head, to remember those who had been taken, in the first 9/11 of 2001, in the second 9/11 of 2015, and in every other violent outrage that had been perpetrated by one human being against another. It was a day, beyond remembrance, to pledge oneself to build a better future for every fellow human being, without thought of party, creed, color, or nationality. The words, as he spoke them, had a truth that moved him. They seemed especially appropriate now.

  By late afternoon he was back at the White House. He walked into a meeting with his key people. Jackie Rubin, Bob Colvin, Angela Chavez, Jay MacMahon, Larry Olsen, Alan Ball, Andrea Powers, Erin O’Donnell, John Eales, Ben Hoffman and Jodie Ames were there. He made decisions on the last, critical questions. The outlines of the plan that he would launch—how far it would go, how aggressively, how quickly—were now set. The details needed to be completed. Over the next twenty-four hours, before he announced it, very few of the people in that room would get more than a couple of hours sleep.

  In the evening he, Heather and Amy hosted a 9/11 dinner for fifty survivors of terrorist atrocities who had become leaders in their communities. Greg had stayed in New York. The president had individual conversations with a good number of the survivors. Most pledged their support in what they knew were difficult days for him. A number of them said they knew he’d do the right thing for the country. Joe Benton was heartened by that. The natural faith and optimism of people gave him strength. It was the thing that had brought him into politics and it was the thing that had kept him going through many a dark day in the past.

  After the dinner, he spent an hour in his study with Sam Levy and John Eales, working on the address he would give to the nation the following evening. Sam went off to work on the speech. Benton took Eales down to the kitchen for a late coffee. Heather joined them.

  “I guess you’ll have Sam working all night,” said Heather.

  Joe smiled. “First draft on my desk six a.m. tomorrow.”

  “Poor boy.”

  “He loves it. Does his best work at night.”

  “Thanks to you he does his only work at night,” said Heather.

  John Eales, who was pouring the coffee, grinned.

  “And you,” said Heather, “you’re no better. You should go home to Annie.”

  “She’ll be asleep by now,” said Eales, handing a coffee to the president.

  “Does she ever get to see you?”

  “I believe she has a photo on the wall somewhere.”

  Heather shook her head.

  “Heather? Coffee?”

  “John, you know I won’t sleep.”

  “You want decaf?”

  “No.”

  “Hot chocolate? There must be a beverage I can get you.”

  Heather laughed.

  John came over, bringing his own coffee. He sat down at the table with them.

  Joe Benton sipped his coffee reflectively.

  “You know what those people said to me tonight? They said they knew I’d do what was right.” He put his cup down and smiled ruefully. “I wish I had that faith myself.”

  “Of course you’ll do what’s right.” Heather put a hand on his arm. “We all know that. The whole country knows that.”

  Joe frowned. “The thing is, I know it’s slipping away and I can’t do anything about it. Jodie said it straight. Her first reaction was, this is going to kill everything else. Everything we’re trying to do. Health, education . . . Everything I came into office to do, it’s all going to stop. This is going to be so divisive, it’s going to kill it all.”

  “Well, that’s Jodie for you,” said John.

  “She’s right.”

  “It’s not going to make it easier, I’ll agree with her on that. But we’re not done. What was that thing you said that time, about burying the dead dog? It’s not dead yet, Joe. Just a little sick.”

  Joe smiled.

  “Just yelping a little.”

  Joe shook his head. The smile on his face faded.

  “Joe,” said Heather quietly, “you didn’t ask for this to happen. But it has happened. Nothing else will last if you don’t fix it. You know that.”

  Amy came into the kitchen, wrapped in a dressing gown. Joe smiled at her.

  “Can’t sleep, honey?”

  Amy shrugged. She went to get herself a mug.

  “Joe, you can’t choose the events that happen to you,” said Heather.

  “You can only ride ‘em,” said John. “And I think we’ve been riding ‘em as good as we can.”