Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  “Maybe that’s not good enough.”

  “Well, I don’t know where we could have done better.”

  “Where could you have done better, Daddy?” Amy looked around from the bench where she was making herself a hot chocolate.

  Joe was silent for a moment, then the frustration exploded out of him. “Hell’s bells! We had a chance! I had a mandate. In this country you get a mandate like this once in thirty years. Go back over the last hundred years. How many times did it happen? Moments of true generational transition, when the country’s got the will to embrace seismic change? I’ll tell you. Three.” He counted them off on his fingers. “Roosevelt, Johnson—not Kennedy, but Johnson, it took Kennedy’s assassination to get Johnson the mandate—and Clinton. I don’t count the election after the second Bush as one of them. For all that Barack set out to achieve, it was primarily the people’s desire to change the administration, not the country, that put him in power. Three times. And of those three, how many succeeded? One. Roosevelt. Only Roosevelt. Vietnam took it away from Johnson. Clinton, who was so smart at constructing the mandate—it turned out he didn’t know how to use it. Lost it in his first year, and what he didn’t lose in the first year he gave away to Monica Lewinsky.”

  “Maybe, at some stage, events are always going to eat into a mandate like that,” said Eales.

  “No, look at Roosevelt.”

  “Daddy, it was World War Two that turned Roosevelt into a success.” Amy sat down with her mug of chocolate. “Most historians agree that by the late thirties the New Deal wasn’t delivering.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t,” conceded Joe. If anything, that made things seem worse. “I’m the fourth president in a hundred years with the mandate. This is one of those rare historical moments when this country wants real, fundamental change and is prepared to do something about it. And this damn thing is taking it away from me.”

  “Maybe it’s this damn thing that’s going to give it back to you,” said Heather.

  Joe shook his head.

  There was silence.

  “You know, if you want to look at it historically,” said John, “it’s not Clinton or Johnson or Roosevelt who are the analogies now. They were, I agree, before this happened. You had the generational mandate for change. That’s what we campaigned for and that’s what we won. Now it’s turned into something different. Joe, with this, I think you’ve got to look all the way back to Lincoln. What we’re facing here is the biggest threat our nation’s faced since secession. I honestly don’t believe that’s an exaggeration. We’re going to have to move thirty million people and cut back our economy and that’s if we get a deal with China and the rest of the world that we can live with. Now, if you can lead us through that, if you can keep this country together without some kind of social anarchy breaking out, without the better-off parts of the country tearing themselves away from the parts that are hit hard—not physically, through secession, but in terms of what they’re prepared to contribute—if you can do that, then I say, that’s a truly great presidency.” John paused. “And change will come with that, you bet it will. The mandate’s still there, Joe. It’s the goal that’s changed.”

  “Do this right, Joe,” said Heather, “and we’ll still have time. If not in this term, in the next.

  Joe glanced at Amy. She nodded. He smiled back at her. But doubtfully. For the first time since he took the oath, Joe Benton seriously didn’t know if he was the man for the job. Especially when Eales put the scale of the challenge in those terms.

  “What about Olsen and Ball? They’re fighting like dogs.”

  “Let ‘em fight,” said John.

  “That can’t be good. I’ve got to do something about that.”

  “Joe, there’s only one question you need to answer right now.” John paused. “Who else would you rather have giving that address from the Oval Office tomorrow evening?”

  Joe almost laughed. Plenty of people!

  “Who? Mike Gartner?”

  “How about Abe Lincoln?”

  John smiled. “Maybe Abe Lincoln, I’ll give you that. But we’re about eight score and ten years too late. Joe, this is about leadership. Don’t worry about what the polls say, don’t worry about the press. Just do what’s right, do what we talked about this afternoon. Do it your way. Lead the American people through this and they’ll follow you anywhere. Amy’s right. Look at Roosevelt. They would have voted Roosevelt a fifth term if Harry Truman had put wheels on his corpse and run him. Do this, and we’ll be able to do in the second term what we don’t get done in the first.”

  Joe leaned back and closed his eyes. It was what those people had been saying to him at the 9/11 dinner tonight. They had elected him to lead. They just wanted him to lead.

  Yet it was all turning out so different than the way he had imagined it. And what he was going to do tomorrow, what he had decided he had to do, was the exact opposite of anything that, only a year or even six months earlier, he could have foreseen himself doing. Go back a year and he would have said he couldn’t even imagine the circumstances that would bring him to do it.

  And what reaction it would bring against him! He could hear the axes being ground in readiness.

  He glanced at Amy and smiled wearily.

  “You’ll do the right thing tomorrow, Daddy. I know you will.”

  “Honey, you don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

  Amy shrugged. “Mr. Eales is right. Who else would you rather have in the Oval Office?”

  Joe gazed at his daughter for a moment. Then he reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  “It’s fine, Daddy. You’re not Mike Gartner. You’ll know what to do.”

  Joe nodded.

  Amy got up with her mug. “Good night.”

  They watched her go. Joe looked back at Heather and John. “I’m going to turn in.”

  Heather got up with him.

  “See you tomorrow, Chief,” said John.

  Benton nodded, cocked his finger at Eales, and left.

  ~ * ~

  Monday, September 12

  Oval Office, The White House

  Jodie Ames, Ben Hoffman, John Eales, Sam Levy, Adam Gehrig and a dozen other aides stood behind the camera, almost spilling out the door. Heather and Amy were watching as well.

  The president was calm, composed, but grave.

  “My fellow Americans, I wish to speak to you tonight about the future of our nation and of our planet. For me as your president, and for all of us, whatever our private joys and woes, there is nothing more important. I am going to tell you some difficult things. I am going to tell you what we can do about them. In telling you these things, I am going to tell you the absolute and entire truth as I understand it. I hope you will hear me out.

  “Over the past months since I became your president, I have received information that shows the changes we have created in our global climate are more severe, more accelerated, and more far-reaching than we have understood before. Although we have accepted for the past thirty years that our world is changing because of our own activities, we have underestimated the pace of change. This is because of a set of environmental processes known as feedback. Scientists have known of these processes for many years, but only now has it become clear how quickly they are operating. The evidence for this is beyond doubt. Tomorrow, I will publicly release the data that show this is the case. It is not a question of whether these processes have progressed further and faster than we thought. They have. The question is what it means for us and what we can do about it.

  “We have all come to understand that there will be relocations from threatened areas of our coastal states. Ten years ago, when Relocation was first discussed, those who suggested it were met with disbelief and hostility. Today we accept it. Now we must accept that the relocations we face will be more extensive and more rapid than we had imagined. Tomorrow, I will release detailed estimates of the impact that we face. Let me stress that this is not a burden the United States alon
e faces. In Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in Australasia, among our neighbors north and south in the Americas, similar effects will be felt. The estimates that I release will cover these areas as well.

  “Now, these things will happen. Nothing we can do will stop them. Why? They are effects of things that were done—and not done—ten, twenty, thirty years ago. We signed treaties but did not keep them. We made laws but didn’t enforce them. We agreed to long term targets but didn’t sign up to the short term goals that would enable us to achieve them. We didn’t plan for the worst—instead we hoped for the best. Yet we failed to take steps to make the best happen. I said when I started speaking that I would tell you no lies. The hardest truth, the saddest truth that I must tell you is that for the last ten, twenty, thirty years, you were told lies. You were told we could find a way to cut emissions and still grow our economies at the same rate. You were told new technologies would come onstream and until that happened, we could go on using the old. You were told that voluntary action would be sufficient when regulation was required. You were told, in short, that we had to sacrifice nothing, and yet somehow everything would change. My fellow citizens, I will not tell you lies. I will not tell you that we can continue to grow our economies and yet pay no price. I will tell you the truth. What we must do is going to hurt.

  “I have already said that we cannot stop many of the changes to our world that are already happening. Relocations will be bigger than we planned, the impact on our communities will be greater. But that doesn’t mean we are powerless. There are things we can do, actions we can take. The fruits of these actions will not be clear for another ten or twenty years. Some of you watching me tonight will not be here to see them. I may not be here to see them. That doesn’t mean we should not do them.

  “These things will not be painless. For a period of time, we will be sacrificing growth. We will be sacrificing a measure of our prosperity. The sacrifices that we make will be greater than those a previous generation would have had to make. But if we do not make these sacrifices, people of the next generation will have to make them, and the magnitude will be yet greater again. These will not be people you do not know, people whose lives and fate you do not care about. They are your children, your nieces, your nephews. Look around you. Look into their eyes. I will not put that burden on my children. I ask you not to put it on yours.

  “Tomorrow, together with the outline of the impact we face, I will release a summary of the measures we must take. I have called these measures the Carbon Plan.

  “It is not the United States alone that must take its share of responsibility under the Carbon Plan. The impact is global, the response must be global, and so the plan is global. No one country gains by seeing another country suffer. But we, as Americans, must admit one thing. Of all the lies that were told over the last thirty years, none were greater than those told by the leaders of this country. Of all the leaders who should have taken the initiative, none failed more than our own. And of all the countries that emitted more than their fair share, none did so more than ourselves. Therefore, in acting to bring the ever-escalating cycle of destruction to an end, none must act more vigorously than we. We must stand at the front and expect no one to do what we ourselves will not. We must do it harder, better, and more willingly than anybody else. Our republic has a long and proud tradition of standing for causes that will lead to a better life for all the citizens of the world. We have sacrificed many of our brave young soldiers in many countries for such causes. This is not a war, but it is such a cause, and we are all called upon to make a sacrifice.

  “Now, I have to tell you another thing. For the past six months, members of my administration have been in negotiation with representatives of the government of the People’s Republic of China in order to reach an agreement about a shared approach to this problem. Although a deal was very close, it was not achieved. I will not go into why this happened nor attempt to apportion blame. However, the terms of the actions that I will release tomorrow in the Carbon Plan are the terms that were negotiated with the government of China. China, like every other country, is threatened by the environmental changes we have collectively unleashed, and as the largest emitter in the world today, it must take a leading role alongside the United States. I call on the government of China to join us in this great endeavor and to fulfill its Carbon Plan responsibilities.

  “In order to encourage the government of China to do this, I will tomorrow release a list of trade sanctions that the United States will apply to the People’s Republic. They will be applied immediately or, in some cases, as soon as the necessary legislation is passed. These sanctions will be lifted on the day that China signs up to the Carbon Plan. I look forward to that day. I hope, in fact, that day will be tomorrow.

  “For other nations, we will provide a period of sixty days for a response to our plan. Countries that do not accept their responsibility by this time will be subject to similar sanctions. I hope none will need to be imposed.

  “I want to emphasize something. The trade sanctions we will be applying to China are not aimed at the Chinese people. They are an encouragement to the Chinese government to join us in this necessary endeavor. I know that many Chinese people are as concerned about environmental degradation as we are. The people of China have the same love, hopes and aspirations for their children and children’s children as we do for ours. I call on the Chinese government to allow my words tonight to reach the Chinese people complete and unedited, just as I speak them. I call on the Chinese people, as I call on all peoples of the world, to join us at this time.

  “My fellow Americans, when you gave me your trust last November I told you that I would dedicate myself to creating a new foundation for our country, a foundation based on health, education, relocation, and jobs. These goals haven’t changed. But a new challenge has arisen, a new understanding of the scale of the Relocation that we face, of which I was unaware when I asked for your trust. That doesn’t mean I back away from what I promised, it means I seek it all the more purposefully. But before we can lay the new foundation for our country, we must deal once and for all with the monster of emissions that terrorizes our world. We must control it, cage it, master it, and no longer pretend that it doesn’t run rampant around us. We must do this once and for all, and we must do it together. This is what the Carbon Plan will do. This now is my overriding goal, and I dedicate myself to achieving it.

  “I have had the duty tonight to tell you difficult things. We are at the start of a journey. There will be sacrifices. We will face them together. I see the end of this journey. I see our economy growing again. I see prosperity across the land. I see communities that have been brought together by the great work that we must do, communities that have found in themselves once more the enduring spirit in which our republic was founded. I see the light that will shine upon us as we go forward. At the end of the journey, I do see the new foundation that we seek.

  “God bless you all. God bless America. God bless our planet earth and all who inhabit her.”

  The president was silent. The light on the camera went off.

  Still silence.

  At that instant, it felt to Joe Benton as if there was a hush not only in this room, this Oval Office, but in the city, in the country, in the entire world outside. His words still hanging, as if corporeal, in the air.

  Words, just words, but the words he had spoken, he knew, had changed the world.

  He caught a glimpse of Amy, staring at him, eyes wide. But then someone moved in front of her, and a second later, as people came forward from behind the cameras, as the silence was broken, it was as if he could hear the entire world shouting, screaming, howling at what he had done.

  ~ * ~

  Tuesday, September 13

  President’s Study, The White House

  The National Security Council had convened at eleven. Admiral Paul Enderlich, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a military assessment. At the moment the president’s speech began the previous
evening, the country’s security status had been upgraded from Orange B to Orange A, two steps below full combat readiness. So far there was no evidence of stepped-up activity on the part of the Chinese military. Lou Berkowitz, director of National Intelligence, gave an intelligence assessment. The Chinese government had not responded, either officially or unofficially. Stuart Cohen, CIA director, detailed the information situation in China. Chinese media hadn’t yet carried the speech or news of it. Official websites weren’t mentioning it, and commercial websites, required to comply with government censorship ever since Google and Microsoft capitulated to the Chinese government’s demands in the first decade of the century, weren’t taking a chance. The CIA had tracked a number of blogs discussing it, but they were being shut down by the regime’s web surveillance operation almost as soon as they appeared. The Agency was pumping the speech into China on its own websites, activating a number of sleeper sites it kept in readiness, but they weren’t lasting much longer. News must have been filtering through in one form or another, but the Chinese government was using all the power at its disposal to buy time before it reacted. When it did react, the Chinese people would be presented with Benton’s actions not in the way he intended them, but in whatever light the Chinese government chose to cast them.