The Rationing

by Charles Wheelan

  Despite the protestations of the Strategist, we had abandoned “the number” and were now working with a “likely range” of deaths. Experts typically use confidence intervals when projecting outcomes. “The number” had been a bizarre and artificially precise construct. Still, I would emphasize how important it was in those early days to quantify the risk we were facing. We should be grateful to the Strategist, his personal foibles aside,‡ for his unwillingness to bury his head in the sand. The dominant sentiment in those early meetings was denial, which was the worst possible response.

  Our range had settled at seventy-five thousand to a hundred and fifty thousand likely deaths. “Most of these people are going to die anyway,” the Strategist said.

  “So are we,” the Acting HHS Secretary said.

  “You know what I mean,” the Strategist said. “Most of these people are very sick to begin with. You read the CDC memo.”

  “Not the very young,” the Acting HHS Secretary replied.

  “Right,” the Strategist conceded. “But we can give them the Dormigen we have.”

  The Chief of Staff interrupted the exchange. “Hold those thoughts,” she said. “We need to talk about China first.”

  “That Dormigen offer is still on the table?” the Senate Majority Leader asked.

  “Of course it is,” the President answered. “This is the best thing to happen to them since the British left Hong Kong.”

  The Chief of Staff turned to the National Security Adviser. “Can you update us on where we are on the South China Sea Summit?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she replied crisply. “We can buy ourselves another two days. I’ve spoken to most of my counterparts in the other signatory nations. Rather than landing on the carrier at the beginning of the summit, they feel it would have the same effect if the President were to leave from a carrier after the agreement is signed.”

  “We just do it at the end instead of the beginning,” the President said.

  “Exactly. Two things need to happen,” the National Security Adviser answered confidently. “The President needs to be there to sign the agreement. And we need to have some show of military presence in the disputed area to signal our collective resolve. Our allies feel—and I agree—that there is no substitute for an American carrier group clearly staking out international waters.”

  “So we sail an aircraft carrier along the China coast?” the Speaker of the House asked indignantly.

  “No, ma’am,” the National Security Adviser answered, not betraying any change in emotion. “We sail the carrier group through international waters that the Chinese government has heretofore illegally claimed to be their exclusive—”

  “Okay, okay,” the Speaker said. “But we’re still talking about a big military pissing match over a bunch of islands in the South China Sea.”

  “No, that is entirely wrong,” the President interjected. “This is an agreement we have been negotiating for twenty years. It covers everything from fishing rights to human trafficking. It is the cornerstone of our entire defense strategy in the region.”

  The Secretary of Defense added, “I want to underscore what the President said on this. Our allies are counting on us to be the anchor of this agreement. China has not proved to be the responsible actor on the international stage that we had hoped. We need a multilateral effort to contain a variety of illegal and aggressive actions on their part.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” the Speaker said. “We’re talking about a bunch of uninhabited islands ten thousand miles from here.”

  “We are talking about much more than that, ma’am,” the National Security Adviser said.

  “Enough to let Americans die?” the Speaker asked. “We are unwilling to ask for the medicine that will save all those lives? That just feels like testosterone run amok.”

  The President said, “If we back down on this, it will be Yalta all over again. We will pay a huge price in that part of the world—all over the world, actually—if we capitulate to Chinese aggression.”

  The Speaker replied, “Yalta? You know what it feels like to me? Vietnam. Your team has some deluded notion that terrible things are going to happen if we don’t project strength thousands of miles from our borders. Are we willing to let tens of thousands of Americans die for that?”

  The Senate Majority Leader, who normally sat impassively for these conversations, added, “Mr. President, I have to agree with the Speaker on this one. It would be awfully difficult to explain to my constituents back in Illinois that their loved ones are dying from a preventable disease because we’re trying to protect Vietnamese fishing rights. I can’t sell that to a Rotary Club.”

  “You know this is about much more than Vietnamese fishing rights,” the President said sharply.

  “I do,” the Majority Leader answered. “But that doesn’t mean I could sell it to a Rotary Club back home.”

  “Here’s what you say,” the Strategist offered. “You tell them that you don’t think we should subvert America’s interests to an authoritarian regime for the next hundred years in order to save people who are likely to die soon anyway. You sprinkle in some historical references to the times when the democracies were too timid to stand up to authoritarian bullies. Then you finish with an overview of how the United States led a coalition of democracies that successfully contained the Soviet Union.”

  “Maybe I’ll just have you give the talk,” the Majority Leader said, chuckling.

  “This is a decision Congress should make,” the House Speaker said tartly.

  The President waved the comment away with a dismissive sweep of his hand. “Congress will do whatever helps most in the midterm elections,” he said. “There is no long-term vision there. That’s why we don’t make military decisions in the legislature.”

  “With respect, Mr. President, Congress will do what the American people want them to do,” the Speaker shot back.

  The Strategist offered, “Roosevelt had to drag the country into World War II. We would have watched the Holocaust from afar if it weren’t for Pearl Harbor.”

  “Let’s not pretend we’re dealing with the Holocaust here,” the Speaker said.

  “I think the point is that popular opinion is not always a great gauge in these kinds of situations,” the Secretary of Defense interjected. “The South China Sea Agreement is very compelling. We’ve done it right. It has the backing of all our key allies. We have bipartisan support in the Senate—”

  “Not if they know the price we have to pay,” the Majority Leader said.

  “Obviously,” the Defense Secretary continued. “I’m just saying that if we are going to sit here tossing historical examples back and forth, this is not some unilateral muscle-flexing.”

  “Like Iraq,” the President said.

  “Correct. This is not Iraq. To the contrary, the world is looking to us on this one. They want us to lead in the region,” the Defense Secretary said.

  “Can we just go back to India for a minute?” the President asked. “Because then we wouldn’t have the South China Sea problem.”

  “We’ve hit a dead end there, sir,” the National Security Adviser said.

  “I don’t understand that. The world’s biggest democracy—how are we not getting more help from them?” the President asked, almost pleading.

  “The Prime Minister is in political trouble,” the National Security Adviser explained (though we had been over this ground before). “His coalition is breaking up. He thinks this would be political suicide for him. He cannot be seen as shipping medicine out of the country.”

  “Saving hundreds of thousands of lives is bad politics?” the President replied in frustration.

  “When we canceled the trade deal with India, it provoked enormous hostility there,” the Secretary of Defense answered. “We were their biggest export market. The perception is that the U.S. is indifferent to the country’s welfare.”

  “What about the military angle?” the President asked. “We can revisit the
Boeing deal.”

  “Sir, we rejected that deal for sound reasons,” the Secretary of Defense answered, looking somewhat alarmed by the subject. “The Prime Minister has been very bellicose toward the Pakistanis. The Islamabad government is hanging by a string. Sending advanced fighters to India right now would destabilize the region. Pakistan is a nuclear power. The last thing we need—”

  “Yeah, okay, I got it,” the President said. “You’re telling me we can’t do some kind of secret deal with Delhi? Send him money to a Swiss bank account if we have to.”

  “That government is worse at keeping secrets than we are,” the Secretary of Defense said.

  “Are we really talking about a Swiss bank account?” the Speaker asked. “Really?”

  “It’s just an example, for fuck sake,” the President snarled. “But yes, now that I think about it, I would ship briefcases full of cash anywhere in the goddamn world if I could get the Dormigen without selling out our country to the Chinese.”

  There was a brief lull in the conversation. The participants around the table instinctively looked to the President. “Give me something better,” he said.

  * Metropolitan Statistical Area, such as the Chicago metropolitan area.

  † Unfortunately, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve was also forced to deny that he had stolen two tons of gold, a rumor that dogs him to this day. As anyone who has served in Washington knows, these kinds of rumors can never be fully scrubbed away, no matter how outlandish they may be. I remember a college-educated friend telling me at a bar mitzvah years later, “Of course he denied stealing the gold. What else was he going to say? They never searched his house. Why not? Because all these guys are crooks. They’re in cahoots.” I considered telling him that it’s hard to get a search warrant based on an Internet rumor, but instead I just excused myself and went to the bar.

  ‡ The Strategist was arrested in D.C. for solicitation eight months ago, and then again for the same offense three weeks later in Buffalo, New York. This made him a target for late-night comics, not merely for the prostitution arrest, but because it happened in Buffalo. He later made a compelling argument that prostitution should be legalized. (You can watch the YouTube video.) Like so many other things he argued, it was eminently sensible once you stripped the emotion away from the issue.

  PART 3

  WHAT IF?

  33.

  DURING OUR SHORT BREAK, THE HOUSE SPEAKER approached the President and told him she was prepared to force his hand on the China situation, either by congressional action or in the courts. Their conversation was calm enough that none of the rest of us even knew it was happening. The President calmly rebuffed her. Congress has no authority to conduct diplomacy, he said. The White House Legal Counsel joined their sidebar conversation. “You have no grounds for action in the courts, either,” he pointed out. “You can sue the President to stop him from doing something—if he were giving away American Dormigen, for example. But you can’t sue to make him do something, at least not in this case.”

  The Speaker’s top legal adviser, who had been following her around silently like a lapdog ever since she attended her first meeting, nodded in agreement. The Speaker stared malevolently at the President. “You are making a huge mistake,” she said. “Thousands of people are going to die, and it will all be on you.”

  “I haven’t decided anything yet,” the President said. “But as always, I appreciate your input.” The Speaker turned abruptly and walked away. We do not know exactly where she went, or who she called. We do know that shortly thereafter, Claire Yegian, the most notoriously dogged member of the White House press corps, texted the Communications Director for a comment on “the Hawaii tragedy” with a link to a local news story: three children, all under seven, had died from “flu-like symptoms.” Their father, a widower who had moved the family from Cleveland to Honolulu for a new start after his wife was killed in a car accident, was demanding an investigation. The tragedy of three dead children, combined with the father’s allegations that some dangerous disease was afoot, was getting traction.

  The Communications Director texted back, “President sends deepest condolences, but this is clearly not WH [White House] business.”

  Yegian’s chilling response came right back: “I have it on highest authority that it is.”

  The Communications Director called her. “Who’s your source?” he asked, without exchanging pleasantries.

  “Give me a break,” Yegian said, miffed that he would even ask.

  “Then let me ask you this: Might it be someone who wants to run for president herself?”

  “Something’s going on,” Yegian insisted. “That I know. Now I’ve got three dead kids under strange circumstances and a high-level source saying the White House knows something—”

  “You can’t corroborate that,” the Communications Director said tersely.

  “Not yet.”

  “The President sends his deepest condolences for this family tragedy,” the Communications Director said, and then hung up. He walked quickly to the corner of the room where the President was speaking with the First Lady. I had not noticed her come in; this was the first time I had seen her in person. She was taller than I thought, maybe because of the heels, and elegantly made up, with dark black hair pulled back in a tight bun. She was wearing large diamond stud earrings. Later, when she appeared in public, they would be gone. I was watching the couple from across the room, unaware of what they were talking about, when the President wheeled in my direction and pointed at me. There was fierceness in his eyes, more than just anger, that I had not seen before. “I thought you said this was like the flu,” he said loud enough to stop other conversations. I found myself walking, almost involuntarily, to where the Communications Director was huddled with the President and the First Lady. “Three kids—three little children—all dead. That’s not the flu,” the President repeated as I joined them.

  “Focus,” the First Lady snapped at him. And then, more calm and measured: “These things happen. Tragedies happen.” In that moment I appreciated what it means to be the partner of someone who carries the weight of the White House.

  “The Speaker is leaking like a sieve,” the President said angrily. “Now goddamn Claire Yegian—”

  “You just need time, honey,” the First Lady said. “I can buy you time.”

  “Three children?” the President repeated. “The guy loses his wife and then all of his children? That’s not the flu . . . His whole family.”

  “Did they seek treatment?” I asked. The President ignored my response. The Communications Director shook his head no, leaving me confused as to whether he was answering my question or trying to tell me to stop talking.

  “Do you have any idea how bad this could get?” the President asked. We all recognized it as a rhetorical question.

  “You need to keep doing what you’re doing,” the First Lady said, almost sternly. I realized that the architect of the “Mac ’n Cheese Massacre” was no stranger to hard decisions, if in less deadly situations. “Okay?” she added.

  “I think this is a bad idea,” the Communications Director said.

  “Nobody asked you,” the First Lady answered. Under different circumstances this might have been funny, as the Communications Director’s entire job consisted of offering advice on these matters.

  “Are you sure?” the President asked.

  “Twenty minutes,” she replied.

  Having walked into the conversation, I had no idea what was afoot. But roughly twenty minutes later I understood. The First Lady held an impromptu news conference on the White House lawn. “I have just two short statements,” she began. “First, the President and I would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to Cliff Barnhill for his tragic loss in Honolulu. The President and I read this story and were so deeply saddened. Please, please let this be a reminder to all Americans to seek treatment immediately if you feel ill—always better to err on the safe side. The flu season is not over, and we
are working with Hawaii public health officials to learn why the illness was so virulent in the Barnhill case.

  “Second, the President and I will be spending some time apart.” There was an audible gasp from the assembled press corps. The photographers and camera operators pressed closer. “I will be leaving immediately to spend time with my parents in New Hampshire. I would ask that you respect our privacy with regard to this situation.” She paused and grasped the podium, as if for emotional support. One of the photographers, paid to notice the small things, realized that she was not wearing her wedding ring. He moved toward the podium and shot a close-up of the ringless finger. It was unseemly, so close that a pale band was visible where the ring had shielded her finger from the sun, but this was the money shot. Home Depot Media began blasting out the image three minutes later.