Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  “That’s a grim thought,” said Benton.

  “Yes, sir. It is.”

  “And if we keep it quiet,” said Eales, “and the day after the inauguration some journalist finds out about this—if Gartner decides to leak because he wants to dis us before we can dis him—we look like we’ve started off by deceiving the American people. Do we ever recover from that?”

  “I know,” said Rubin. “I know. Senator, can I ask, what’s your inclination?”

  “My inclination is to do the thing that will best serve the interests of the American people.”

  “Which is?”

  Benton smiled. “I’m not sure yet.”

  ~ * ~

  Heather was still awake when Benton went upstairs.

  “Problems?” she asked.

  Joe shook his head.

  Heather watched him for a moment. “Okay.”

  Joe sat on the edge of the bed. But he didn’t do anything. He stared at the rug.

  “Looks like Hugo Montera might turn me down for Labor,” he said eventually.

  “And you want a Latino in the job?”

  “He’s a good guy.”

  “Why’s he turning it down?”

  “He wasn’t very clear. Disillusioned, something like that. Disillusioned with government after his last stint.”

  Heather Benton reached for her husband’s hand. “Then you just have to reillusion him, Joe. You can do that.”

  Joe looked at her and smiled. He could see the way she was watching him. She knew whatever was troubling him, it wasn’t Hugo Montera turning down the Department of Labor.

  “You know,” she said, “I’ve had a thought. Maybe I won’t give up my job when I become first lady.”

  Joe stared at her. Then he started laughing.

  “What? Is it crazy?”

  Heather Benton was CEO of YouthMatters, a Washington-based organization that relied on private donations to run programs in inner city neighborhoods.

  “I think it’s great. It’ll give them…” Joe hooted with amusement. “I don’t know what they’ll make of it.”

  “Do you think it’ll make things too difficult for you?”

  “Hell, no! You do it!”

  “It’s just, I can’t see why I should leave. I care about this job. I care about these issues. I know there are things I can do as first lady, and I’ll cut back my time so I can carry out my functions. I’ll ask Walt if we can employ a deputy, and I’ll forgo salary so there’s no financial issue . . .” She stopped. “What do you think? Really?”

  “I think it’s groundbreaking. You want to do it, honey, you do it.”

  “I still need to think about it. I haven’t said anything to Walt because I wanted to see what you’d say.”

  Joe nodded. He laughed again. “Let’s give ‘em hell!”

  “Well, I’m still going to think about it.”

  The smile lingered on Joe’s face. He looked down at the rug again. The smile faded.

  “Do you remember the night Al Gore lost to George W. Bush?” he said. “First the concession, then the withdrawal.”

  Heather looked at him. “Sure.”

  “I was in my senior year of law school at U of A. That was the first election when I was really active in a campaign.” Joe smiled and shook his head, remembering. “That was one hot summer. I saw every dusty square inch of Arizona.” He turned to Heather. “Where were you that night? Do you remember?”

  “I,” said Heather, “was a sophomore at Brown. Dating an incredibly objectionable guy called Will Danforth. I can’t believe I did, now that I think about it.”

  “And on that night...”

  “Well, that’s the point. He was so damn happy that night, I think that’s what turned me into a Democrat. And that, my darling, is possibly the reason I was at a certain rally in Boston four years later. Which is where, if I’m not mistaken, I met a certain young staffer on the Kerry campaign called...now, who was it? Oh yes. Joseph Benton.”

  “Hell’s bells! You’re saying I have George W. Bush beating Al Gore to thank for thirty years of married bliss?”

  “And Will Danforth,” said Heather, with an exaggerated shudder.

  Benton smiled. Then his expression became serious again. “You know, that night, the night Gore lost, I felt the world had just kind of fallen in. Everything was going to get messed up by that goddamn fool George W. Bush and nothing would ever be all right again.”

  “That wasn’t far off the truth.”

  “The thing is . . . You think, if Gore had got in, we wouldn’t be in this mess now?”

  Heather ran her fingers over Joe’s hand. “Is the mess really so bad, Joe?”

  Joe looked at his wife. He hadn’t told her what he had learned from Dr. Richards three days earlier. But Heather could sense that something had changed, something disturbing.

  “You think Gore would have got us going? You think we would have started doing the things we haven’t even started doing now?”

  Heather didn’t say anything. She watched him.

  “Our whole trajectory might have been different. Maybe we wouldn’t need Relocation. We’d be in a whole different place. The whole world would. That would be something, wouldn’t it?”

  Heather nodded. “It would be something,” she murmured.

  Joe thought about it. Then he shook his head. “You know, I think I was wrong that night. I don’t think things would’ve been too different if Gore had got in. He would have had to work with a Republican Congress. Would he have had the strength and the smarts to push them around?” He shook his head again. “By the time that election came around, I don’t think Al Gore knew who he was anymore. Took that defeat for him to find out.”

  “And win a Nobel Prize.”

  “For raising awareness. I don’t think that says he would have been an effective president. To be effective as a president... I realize it’s a little early for me to speak, but to be a good president, you need to know who you are. I think you really need to know who you are.”

  “And do you know who you are, Joe?”

  “I hope I do.” Joe frowned. “I guess I’m going to find out.” He gazed at Heather. Then he smiled. “Where’s Amy?” he said. “Wasn’t she supposed to be home from Stanford last weekend?”

  “That’s next weekend, honey.”

  ~ * ~

  Friday, November 19

  Benton Transition Headquarters,

  Lafayette Towers, Washington, D.C.

  It was the Pakistani president who had requested the call. The stability of Nabeel Badur’s regime depended on the American forces in the country, and his purpose in calling had ostensibly been to outline his plans for reimposing government control over the area along the Afghan border. In reality, Benton knew, Badur was trying to assure himself that a new Democratic president wasn’t going to haul the troops out of Pakistan. Benton’s line during the campaign had been that once he was elected he would initiate a thorough review of the aims of the U.S. presence. In the call, Badur had given Benton plenty of opportunities to commit himself to ongoing military support. Benton adroitly avoided them. There was no way he was going to commit his administration to anything, even in a private conversation with Badur, before he had a secretary of state and a secretary of defense.

  Eales had been listening in and doing the note-taking. When the call finished, they discussed it briefly. Then Eales brought the conversation back to the meeting of the previous night.

  “That Roosevelt thing was interesting,” he said. “I just wanted to see where the idea might take us. Jackie was right. It ties us to the problem, not the solution. What’s interesting is that Jackie and Alan both found reasons to oppose making it public right away. Even though they both think you should take this into the Kyoto process, neither of them thought you should come out with it on day one. Even when I pushed, I couldn’t get them to say you should.”

  Benton had noticed that.

  “It’s kind of interesting,” said Eales. “Anyw
ay, what about Nleki?”

  Earlier that morning, at a press conference in Warsaw with the Polish president, the UN secretary-general, Joseph Nleki, had said that he was expecting an early affirmation by Senator Benton of his campaign promise to commit the United States fully to the Kyoto 4 process.

  “Nleki’s just pushing,” said Benton. “He knows my position.”

  “You don’t want to respond, right? Jodie wants us to. I’ll talk to her. Your position’s well known and it hasn’t changed.”

  Benton nodded. The strength and consistency of his support for Kyoto 4 during the campaign meant he could avoid making a new statement. And he didn’t want to make a new statement, not right now.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Gartner and Riedl said the other day. About the logic behind their strategy.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it as well,” said Eales. “There’s a logic there, Joe. I hate to admit it, but there is. As to how they tried to execute what they were doing . . . They’re such damn liars, that’s the problem. Who knows what to believe?”

  That was exactly what Benton thought. There was a logic to what they had said, he couldn’t get away from that. He wished he could convince himself there wasn’t, but each time he thought about it, the more convincing it seemed.

  “Al Graham wants us to respond to Nleki as well,” said Eales. “Have you spoken with him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’s going to call. He thinks he’s got State. He’s just waiting for you to tell him.” Eales paused. “I had a thought last night, on the way home. Joe, I think you should see Larry Olsen.”

  Benton looked at him in surprise.

  “Even if only to get a point of view. I’m not saying you necessarily want him at State. But we’re in a whole new scenario. Everyone around you is going to say the same thing—put it out there into Kyoto and go lead the process. You heard Alan. You ask Al Graham, and he’ll tell you that more than anyone. Joe, you’ve got to talk to someone who doesn’t say that. You’ve got to at least hear that point of view.”

  There was a knock on the door. Ben Hoffman came in to see if the senator was ready for his next meeting.

  They headed out of Eales’s office.

  “How do you know Olsen won’t say I should do the same as all the others?” asked Benton.

  “Larry Olsen?” Eales laughed. “If he says you should, then you really know there’s no alternative.”

  ~ * ~

  The meeting was about progress on preparations for the Relocation summit, which was now set for the sixth and seventh of December in Cincinnati. Benton was about to take a three-day tour of cities in the west whose mayors had pledged their towns as lead reception communities, and before he went he wanted to make sure the summit was on track, not only to deliver the right message about his determination to radically upgrade the Relocation program, but to generate substantive discussion among the participants from which real initiatives could develop. A number of Benton’s policy aides summarized the papers they were preparing. Afterward, a call came through from Al Graham. Benton took it in the car on the way to a meeting on job creation policy with the leadership of the AFL-CIO.

  Graham was as bullish on Nleki’s statement as Eales had said he was. He didn’t want to stop at issuing a statement. His advice was to set up a meeting with the secretary-general. Benton told him he didn’t think that was a good idea.

  “Joe, it’ll show how strong you are in your commitment to Kyoto.”

  “People know I’m strong in my commitments,” replied Benton. “That’s why they elected me.”

  “I’m not questioning that.”

  “They don’t want to hear me keep saying stuff, they want to see me start doing stuff.”

  “That’s why you should meet him,” said Graham. “That’s doing something.”

  “Al, meeting Nleki’s not doing something. It’s just saying the same thing with a different guy in the room.”

  “With respect, Joe, Nleki’s not just any other guy.”

  “Al,” said Benton, “all I’ll be doing is saying the same stuff I’ve already been saying. Let’s leave this, all right?”

  It took a little longer for Graham to get the message. Benton glanced at Eales and shook his head impatiently.

  Then Graham asked about progress on appointments.

  “The economic and domestic teams are my priority at the moment,” said the senator.

  “Sure. I’ve got some thoughts for the UN ambassador. Sandy Murdoch could do it. Benny Chopra would be good. Should we meet to talk about it?”

  “Send the names to Naylor.”

  “I think we should meet.”

  “Al, you know I’m heading out west. I can’t do it until I get back. Talk to Ben. And send the names to Naylor.”

  “Okay. I will. Anything else happening?”

  “No.”

  There was silence on the phone. Benton knew that Al was waiting to hear more, hear him say he was going to nominate him secretary of state.

  “Joe, I’ve been doing some thinking on Colombia, what we can do to get out of there. I think that should be a key goal and if we’re smart about it we can be looking to be out in twelve months. I’d like to be able to put that out there as a target early in the first hundred days. What do you think?”

  “I think it would be great if we could do that,” said Benton.

  “I’ll put a paper together.”

  “Okay.”

  There was silence again.

  “Okay,” said Al eventually. “Well, I’ll try to see if we can meet when you’re back from the west.”

  “Talk to Ben,” said Benton.

  “I will.”

  Benton reached forward and ended the call. He glanced at Eales.

  “I’ll tell Ben to keep him out of your hair.”

  Benton nodded. His core agenda was domestic. Abroad, he wanted to get American troops out of Colombia, if possible, and to minimize the presence in Pakistan. Getting out of Pakistan entirely was probably going to be impossible until late in his first term, if then. Beyond those objectives, he wanted to repair the damage that twelve years of Bill Shawcross and Mike Gartner had done to foreign relations and to use that credibility to strengthen multilateral institutions, to legitimize American leadership within those institutions, and use that leadership to promote peace and stability. “A secure and prosperous America in a secure and prosperous world.” That had been his catchphrase when he was asked about foreign policy during the campaign. His real interests—the specific things he said he would do and which the American people had elected him to do— were domestic.

  Eales began tapping on his handheld.

  Benton looked at him questioningly.

  “I’m going to get Naylor to send you a briefing on Larry Olsen.”

  ~ * ~

  Monday, November 29

  DeGrave Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C.

  He was waiting in an armchair when Benton walked into the suite on the fourteenth floor. The senator had just hosted a gathering of nationally prominent minority leaders in the hotel’s conference center on the ground floor. Ben Hoffman had had the bright idea to get a suite upstairs, allowing Larry Olsen to slip in while the press was distracted by the photo session at the end of the meeting.

  “Thanks for coming, Dr. Olsen,” said Benton.

  Olsen stood up. He had an unruly shock of graying hair and a generally rumpled look to him. “They say you don’t turn down an invitation to meet with the president-elect.”

  “Sit down, please.” Benton smiled. “I sense from your tone you don’t necessarily think too much of my foreign policy.”

  “I think it’s too early to judge, Senator. But to be honest, I’m not sure you have a foreign policy. I think you have foreign policy values.”

  “So do you like them?”

  “Wait until they’re tested. Reality has a habit of doing unpredictable things to values.”

  “Agreed.” Benton looked around. “You
want a drink? I’m having a scotch.”

  “A scotch would be good.”