“Do you have any idea why?”
“Nobody likes to be exterminated,” he said, gleeful at having finally been able to share his finding. “I need resources. You’ve got to help me. The data are speaking to us. We need to listen.”
The producer was waving three fingers from the window. His assistant had pasted DENVER on the window. I gave Tie Guy the Chief of Staff’s private number. “Tell her who you are and what you need.”
53.
BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS WERE SCHEDULED TO COME BACK into session at four p.m. Senators and representatives were racing to the Capitol from across the country. The Speaker of the House had wasted no time in releasing a statement calling for a congressional investigation of all government actions related to the Outbreak. But what she had expected to be her shining moment in the spotlight—the launch of her presidential campaign, if the Strategist is to be believed—turned into a train wreck almost immediately. Back in Houston, Tony Perez, fake news author extraordinaire, was seeing a record number of views on his posts. Eyeballs are money, and he was doing his best to ride the story. Even as the President and staff were squashing the terrorism rumors at every turn, Perez was finding that the Latino separatist angle had legs. Ethnic tensions had been simmering in the country long enough that any story positing an Anglo-Hispanic rift, with a political conspiracy throw in, was bound to get clicks. In his fourth post of the day, Perez “fed” the story, a term he described as adding just enough new detail to get the original readers to come back, while attracting new ones. He did so with a “bombshell revelation”: The likely first president of the Estado Latino Nuevo would be America’s most prominent and powerful Latina politician—the Speaker of the House (“according to sources close to the Speaker”).
The Speaker summoned reporters to the Capitol expecting them to bask in the glow of her leadership. She had prepared short remarks blasting the President for “turning over America’s health to greedy corporations” and for his administration’s “complete lack of transparency.” She had rehearsed fulsome pledges to “explore every option for managing this crisis.” But she would never get that far. Not long after the Speaker said, “Good afternoon,” reporters began yelling questions about Latino separatism. CNN’s top political reporter shouted over the din, “Have you accepted the offer to become the President of Estado Latino Nuevo?” The question was ridiculous—but devilishly so, as the layers of falsehood embedded within it were guaranteed to throw the Speaker on the defensive. No one in the mainstream media gave any credence whatsoever to the separatist story, let alone the notion that the Speaker would lead the breakaway Latino republic. But the Capitol Hill reporters were clever enough to recognize the Speaker’s political ambitions. The press conference was a solid signal that she was trying to build a reputation beyond the Beltway. (The Strategist was not the only one who saw this as the beginning of her presidential campaign.) The assembled members of the press did not really want to know if the Speaker of the House was cavorting with Hispanic separatists. What they wanted to find out was how she would react when the accusation was leveled against her.
“That report is absolutely false,” the Speaker said emphatically.
“Did you turn the offer down?” the CNN reporter followed up.
“There was no offer,” the Speaker said.
A grizzled male reporter yelled from the back, “Would you consider such an offer?”
CNN and most other stations were covering the Speaker’s press availability live, anticipating the drama. The President, the Strategist, and several other senior staff watched in the conference room on Air Force One. The Strategist chuckled maliciously. “She is so fucked. Maybe this is when she’ll finally tell America that she’s not even Hispanic.”
A female reporter for Telemundo asked, “Would you support a separate state for America’s Latino population, if the region were to vote to secede?”
The Speaker ignored the question. She said, “The reports of any terrorist attack—domestic or otherwise—are entirely false. The whole notion of some breakaway Latino nation is completely ludicrous.”
A BBC reporter asked loudly, “Would you still consider yourself the most important voice for America’s huge bloc of Hispanic voters?” The question was reasonable, but it tossed the Speaker into more difficult terrain, as she now had to walk a fine line between dismissing the Latino republic story and protecting a political career built on identity politics.
“My job is to represent all Americans,” the Speaker said.
“That’s not technically true,” the BBC reporter challenged. “You were elected in a congressional district that’s predominantly Hispanic, and the Democrats, who installed you as Speaker, have made repeated attempts to single out Hispanic voters—”
“I speak for all Americans.”
The BBC reporter was dogged. “You have repeatedly emphasized that American Hispanics are different, apart. How does that not create fault lines in the nation?”
The Speaker said dismissively, “I think that characterization is entirely wrong.”
“You gave the first ten minutes of your speech at the Democratic National Convention in Spanish,” the BBC reporter said, prompting loud laughter from his media colleagues.
On Air Force One, the Strategist looked at his watch. “Five minutes in, and she’s still digging out of the hole.”
The President added, “She’s finally learning she’s not as clever as she thinks she is.”
The Speaker changed the subject. “Here’s what’s important: Americans need to understand that there is no terrorist attack—none. Not domestic, not international. This is a common virus that has turned potentially deadly and we are seeking to understand that. In the meantime, I am working aggressively with the administration to solicit Dormigen commitments from around the world. I’m confident we can manage this crisis without loss of life.”
On Air Force One, the President said, “Isn’t that nice: someone gave her our talking points.”
The House Speaker took one more question. Her presidential hopes may have survived but for that last question. An NPR reporter asked, “The Chinese Ambassador will be speaking shortly about the Outbreak. The expectation is that Beijing will offer the U.S. enough Dormigen to cover our shortfall in exchange for diplomatic concessions, perhaps scrapping the South China Sea Agreement. Could you please comment on that?”
The Speaker took a deep breath, nodding to acknowledge the importance of the question. “Our number one priority right now is saving American lives,” she began. “If the Chinese government is offering assistance, we ought to take that offer very seriously.” The comment seemed relatively anodyne in the moment. It felt entirely different when played over and over again juxtaposed against the later remarks of the Chinese Ambassador. Note to self: Never say that an offer ought to be taken seriously before you have seen the offer. But that was still several hours away. The House Speaker had more immediate headaches. As members of Congress arrived in Washington, they were in no mood to have her “steer” their deliberations, whether she was leader of the chamber or not. Over on the Senate side, the Majority Leader had been correct when he predicted that legislators would have to “blow off some steam” before any real business could get done.
Even after America’s political realignment—with the splitting of the Republicans into the New Republicans and the Tea Party, and the President’s election as an independent—the political parties were still basically tribal. The first imperative was to support one’s tribe and bash the other. This had two immediate implications. First, the President, having been elected as an independent, had no tribe. Members of Congress—left, right, and center—heaped abuse on every aspect of the President’s existence, from his CEO wife (which had somehow led to the Centera fraud) to Air Force One flying in circles over the Pacific. He had no legislative defenders. The Senate Majority Leader, the President’s closest ally on Capitol Hill, did not pile on to the abuse, but he did not stop it, either. At one poin
t he stepped out of the Senate chamber to call the Chief of Staff to reassure her that “tempers would soon cool.” The paradox is that for all the venom heaped on the President from every political direction, he remained significantly more popular than Congress, both during and after the Outbreak. His address that morning had gone a long way toward insulating him from congressional criticism, which was perceived (rightly) as petty and self-serving.
Second, the criticism itself was neatly organized along tribal lines, as if each political party were responding to a different crisis. Members of Congress seized on the Outbreak to reinforce their preexisting political beliefs. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party hammered away at the Centera fraud, accusing the President of “privatizing American government.” The Outbreak offered one more bullet to fire at corporate greed. The warehouse fire that made the Centera Dormigen necessary got nary a mention, nor did the inconvenient fact that Dormigen had been invented—$1.5 billion in private research and development spending—by the greedy private sector they were now blaming for a shortage of Dormigen.
The Tea Party, ostensibly reacting to the same crisis, blasted “yet another example of extreme government incompetence.” The government had fumbled its responsibility to keep the American people safe. By this logic, responsibility for the Outbreak lay with government bureaucrats who had failed to offer adequate oversight. It was time, Tea Party leaders opined, for government to “get out of the drug business entirely.” No one took the remarks seriously enough to ask if “getting out of the drug business entirely” included eliminating the government patent protection at the heart of all private investment in the pharmaceutical industry. The Tea Party proposed additional tax cuts, which would somehow induce the private sector to fix this problem that government had created.
Ironically, the far right and the far left found common ground in calling for swift and severe punishment of the Centera executives. For the progressives, this was a no-brainer. The time had come to get serious about punishing corporate malfeasance. Meanwhile, the Tea Party made a more tortured argument about how prompt prosecution would enable the private sector to reach its full potential. Really the rhetoric had the feel of frontier justice. Almost immediately after the Outbreak became public, the Texas attorney general, a Tea Party standard-bearer, issued a warrant for the arrest of the Centera CEO and CFO on capital murder charges, alleging that Goyal and Swensen had “knowingly brought about the deaths of Texas citizens.” The Centera CEO and CFO were already in federal custody on numerous federal fraud charges. The Texas attorney general, a former software executive who had spent $25 million of his own money to win a special election only six months earlier, argued that the federal charges were insufficient because they did not carry the death penalty. The progressive caucus, typically staunch opponents of capital punishment, found an exception in this case and encouraged the Texas murder indictment.
It is worth pointing out—just to recognize the absurdity of what was happening—that no one had yet died from a lack of Dormigen. The supply was projected to run out, but there were still stocks readily available. People had died from Capellaviridae because they had failed to seek treatment. People had died because upon hearing news of the Outbreak they got in their cars and drove at high speeds to inhospitable places. And people had died because they bought dangerous counterfeit Dormigen. I do not want to minimize these casualties, but I do want to emphasize that no person—in Texas or anywhere else—had walked into a health facility suffering from an illness that could be treated effectively with Dormigen and had died because he or she was refused that Dormigen. Not one. As a result, the grand jury that was convened in Texas to issue the capital murder indictments immediately dismissed the charges. To prosecute an individual for murder, you need to show that someone was killed, even in Texas. Still, the Texas attorney general got the headlines he was looking for. Eighteen months later he was elected governor. As I write, he is being discussed as a possible presidential candidate.
The New Republicans and the centrist Democrats offered more nuanced remarks, criticizing the administration but also calling for revisions to America’s system for procuring essential drugs. The senior Senator from New Jersey, a New Republican known as one of the wonkier members of the Senate,** had introduced a bill several months earlier to update the patent system and provide safeguards when government drug production was outsourced to private firms. The bill attracted only one cosponsor and never got a committee hearing. The Outbreak obviously breathed life into his proposed reforms—but just a little. Only four reporters showed up for a briefing he offered to explain the picayune details of his proposed overhaul. (The summary of his bill ran to eight pages, single-spaced, with five additional appendices.) Three of the reporters literally ran out of the conference room when word spread that the House Speaker was imploding elsewhere in the Capitol.
The frenetic partisanship came to a temporary halt shortly before two p.m. Eastern Time, as the Chinese Ambassador prepared to give his statement. The major American media outlets (and others around the world) covered the news conference live, giving the Beijing leadership exactly what it had hoped for: an opportunity to speak directly to the American public, without interference from America’s politicians or diplomats. They would quickly learn that live news conferences in democratic countries carry risks, as well as benefits.
The President was working the phones on board Air Force One when the Chief of Staff walked into his office. “There’s one more thing,” she said after he hung up with the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
“You know how much I hate that phrase,” he said. “What?”
“Cecelia Dodds,” the Chief of Staff answered.
“Oh, for God’s sakes, what does she want? I already gave her the Medal of Freedom.”
“It’s more what she doesn’t want,” the Chief of Staff said.
“Look, I don’t have time for puzzles—” He stopped as it dawned on him what Cecelia Dodds did not want. “She’s sick,” he said, “and she’s refusing Dormigen.”
The Chief of Staff nodded yes. “She’s in a Seattle hospital.”
“Capellaviridae?” the President asked.
“I don’t think so,” the Chief of Staff said. “It’s a respiratory infection of some sort. Doesn’t matter: she’s refusing Dormigen that could be used to save another life.”
“But we haven’t run out,” the President insisted.
“We might,” the Chief of Staff replied. “And if we do, she wants there to be one more dose for someone else.”
“For real?”
“Have you forgotten the hunger strike?” the Chief of Staff asked. Cecelia Dodds had refused food to force the Senate to ratify an international agreement on climate change. The group of senators holding up the treaty vowed they would not buckle in the face of “the bullying tactics of a washed-up hippie.” After seventeen days, during which global opprobrium rained down on them while Cecelia Dodds consumed only water with drops of lemon juice, that is exactly what they did.
“How old is she?” the President asked.
“Seventy-one.”
He sighed. “I ran for office to make things better. I really did. And now I’m going to be the one who kills Cecelia Dodds.” After a moment: “We can’t convince her . . .” His voice trailed off because he knew the answer.
Cecelia Dodds did not compromise her principles. She had emerged in the post-Trump era as the nation’s most effective voice for social change, someone with a unique ability to bring people together while simultaneously pushing them forward. She was a tiny, innocuous-looking woman with short gray hair. If you were to see her in a bus station—which you might, because she did not own a car—you would instinctively assume she was visiting grandchildren and needed help finding the right departure gate. Oh, so many people had underestimated her. Like the CEO of Ringlen Electronics, who made the mistake of appearing with her on a PBS news program after she announced an environmental boycott of their air-conditioning units
. “I just don’t understand, why can’t you invest a few extra dollars per unit to minimize their climate impact?” she asked. That was part of her effectiveness—a rhetorical style that bordered on naïve. She did not yell; she did not level accusations. She buried people with her humility.
“A few dollars per unit adds up very quickly,” the CEO explained.
“I have never thought of it that way,” she said.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” the CEO said patronizingly.
“I suppose by the same logic,” Cecelia Dodds said, “for just a few extra dollars per unit, consumers can buy a competitor’s product that is much better for the environment.”
“That’s not how I look at it,” the CEO replied quickly.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” she offered.
The exchange was legendary, and also representative of her insistence on the difference between making noise and making a difference. Ringlen stock was down 11 percent before the CEO left the studio. He was fired the following Monday. By Wednesday the company had announced plans for a new line of environmentally friendly air conditioners. And the next week—this was typical, too—she invited the fired CEO to lunch to have a discussion of why she felt so passionate about environmental issues. It wasn’t personal. The two of them later developed a close personal friendship; the CEO (his views on climate change having evolved) served on one of her nonprofit boards. College campuses were awash with merchandise bearing Cecelia Dodds’s hortatory motto: love, share, include, & improve.
When Dodds traveled to Washington, D.C., for the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, she took an Amtrak train from Seattle and then rode to the White House on one of D.C.’s shared bicycles. The President described her that evening as someone who “leads by example like Mahatma Gandhi; forces change like Nelson Mandela; and holds us to account against our own values like Martin Luther King.” Now she was in a Seattle hospital in serious condition suffering from an infection that could be treated successfully with a single dose of Dormigen—a dose that she would not accept.
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