The Weed Agency

by Jim Geraghty

  He was an unexpected choice for Pelosi to nominate to the National Cheatgrass Disaster Commission; the closest Puga ever came to agricultural work was a lawsuit contending a local restaurant chain’s salad bars were insufficiently accessible to the handicapped. (They settled out of court.) But he instantly recognized that the commission was going to be looking at the disastrous performance of a federal agency on Bush’s watch, and Javier Puga knew exactly where the buck should stop.

  When Bader heard Puga had been selected to the commission, he kicked a wastepaper basket across his office.

  He had already talked with the White House staff about their search for a chair; they had worried that the Cheatgrass Commission (CheatComm in White House memos) would turn into a witch hunt, and one more source of headlines designed to embarrass the administration. With Carrington on board, they felt they had at least one voice that would be focusing attention on the career employees of the agency itself, and not any of Bush’s appointees at the Department of Agriculture.

  For a few weeks, Bader contemplated resigning his seat and leading the commission, leading his crusade right to Humphrey’s doorstep. But he knew that Reid and Pelosi would probably object, even if his resignation would open up a very competitive special election in a swing district.

  The addition of Puga altered the equation and made Bader’s chairmanship an impossibility. Now the commission was indisputably politicized, and even floating Bader’s name would inevitably bring charges that the administration was appointing its allies to ensure a cover-up.

  The administration needed someone who would ensure Puga’s runaway personality and showboating didn’t dominate the proceedings. They needed someone respected, someone who could command a room, someone who had the authority to shut up Puga with a glare but who wasn’t seen as a Bush administration ally.

  Bader had just the person.

  Bader found his man reading on his front porch.

  Caleb Gunning Lyon was not a friend of Bader’s, but a constituent. Bader had known him for years, and been starry-eyed through their first meetings, but over time found Lyon’s personality inexplicably cold and prickly.

  Despite his occasionally standoffish personality, Lyon remained one of Pennsylvania’s most popular residents.

  As a young man, Lyon had served in the Marines, was deployed to Lebanon, and helped assist the victims of the barracks bombing. His picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine, helping carry a wounded man. After serving, he earned his PhD in American history with extensive background in classical history, after which he became a high school teacher. His memoir/history book, Hard Times, Hard Decisions, became a surprise bestseller, and he bought a small orchard in Washington Crossing. He had no interest in politics, but accepted an appointment to a gubernatorial commission reviewing the state’s education system. He was supposed to be a token teacher/celebrity, but wrote a scathing dissent to the main report, which he dismissed as “complacent bromides.” Lyon called for rigorous standards and an emphasis on values of the Founding Fathers, which proved wildly popular and had him on Night-line for several nights. The governor who appointed him was facing a tough reelection fight, and he begged Lyon to accept the nomination for lieutenant governor. (The previous lieutenant governor had announced a surprise resignation to deal with “personal matters.” Despite salacious rumors, the personal matter was that he had concluded he wasn’t making enough money.)

  Lyon was credited with being a key factor in a narrow win, even if his speeches were derided as hokey and corny, punctuating his remarks with the recurring question, “What would the Founding Fathers do?” He quietly served as lieutenant governor for two and a half years until the governor suddenly was invited by the president to Washington to accept a nomination to one of the nicer cabinet posts. Lyon became the state’s most unlikely chief executive, and was the subject of some jokes as “the accidental governor.” But after two months on the job, a Pittsburgh steel mill’s ceiling collapsed, trapping a dozen workers. Lyon raced to the scene and actually helped direct the rescue efforts—“this is how we did it in Beirut, boys”—and when all of the workers were rescued, Lyon’s approval rating hit 90 percent and stayed there for weeks.

  Jay Leno called. The president called. 60 Minutes called. Everyone adored him … and then Lyon announced he had no plans to run for reelection. Declaring that he believed in the American tradition of citizen-statesmen, he said his modest future plan was to return to his orchard in Washington Crossing and teach in the local high school again.

  Cynics mocked the decision as a pose. The national party chairman had visited him and begged him to consider running for president.

  But it wasn’t a pose; Lyon shared the public’s innate suspicion and distrust of the political process.

  Time went by. Caleb Gunning Lyon became just a fond memory for most. President Bush called regularly, and Lyon turned down just about every invitation to every cabinet post, ambassadorship, or other bauble offered by ambitious politicians hoping some of Lyon’s popularity would rub off on them.

  Bader’s Lincoln Town Car drove up the driveway of Lyon Orchard. He emerged, but Lyon remained sitting on the porch, barely glancing at his visitor.

  “Do you prefer to be addressed as Governor Lyon or Captain Lyon?” Bader asked, smiling.

  “Depends upon the culture,” Lyon said, not looking up from his book. “Colin Powell preferred to be introduced as ‘Retired General Powell’ on diplomatic missions to the Middle East, because that title carried more weight in Arab cultures. Secretaries of state, like governors, know how to talk. Retired generals, like captains, know how to fight.” He finally looked his visitor in the eyes. “What do you want, Nick?”

  Bader stepped up onto the porch.

  “I hear Karl Rove asked you to chair this new Cheatgrass Disaster Commission,” Bader said.

  “Yup.” Bader waited for more, but Lyon just continued reading and ignoring him.

  After an awkward silence, Bader cleared his throat. “You probably feel like you don’t need that kind of grief and aggravation. And you don’t. But I’d like you to think about something before you decide.”

  Lyon finally looked up with something resembling actual attention.

  “You sense that cynicism out there. Everybody’s wailing about Iraq and Abramoff and Katrina, but it’s been out there for a long while—the Chinese money in Clinton’s coffers, Sandy Berger stuffing classified documents in his socks, Enron, Torricelli, the pardon sales. Iran-Contra. The Keating Five. Abscam. The bounced checks. Everybody thinks the federal government is packed to the gills with crooks and morons.”

  “Everybody might be correct, Congressman,” Lyon said tersely.

  “Well, I know it’ll never get any better if we never demand any better,” Bader shot back. “You know, everybody thinks you’re so frigging terrific, sitting here on your porch and quoting George Washington. I think you love this precious little reputation, a hero beloved by all during a divided time, and you’re scared to get your hands dirty.”

  Lyon reacted like he had been slapped. He slammed down his book and his eyes glared with indignation. “Are you questioning my courage, son?”

  “Yes, Governor, I am,” Bader said. “Last year we watched a federal agency completely fail in its core mission. There’s an opportunity, right here and now, to get answers, to hold people accountable, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, to fix something so that government works the way it’s supposed to!” He pounded a porch strut. “Everybody thinks I’m some sort of antigovernment ideological nut-job. I just want government to do its job! Sometimes I’m not even sure if I count as right-wing anymore; I still have this naïve idea that the federal government ought to do what it’s supposed to do, considering what we pay for it.”

  Bader looked away, unsure if his brief flaring of temper was persuading Lyon or just alienating him.

  “I hear from so many constituents how they wish you would run for something—governor again, or senator,
or president,” Bader continued. “I tell them I agree. But if you won’t do this—one chairmanship, of one commission, to conduct one investigation, to try to solve one problem … well, I’ll start telling people what I really think. That you can’t be bothered with this country anymore.”

  That was enough to get Lyon out of his chair.

  “Hold it right there, you son of a bitch!” he growled, jabbing a finger right at Bader’s face in a dramatic manner that would impress veteran emphatic pointers like Harrison Ford. For a moment, Bader wondered if he was about to be decked by a retired Marine captain. Lyon stepped uncomfortably close, glared, and looked up and down at Bader.

  “You have a hell of a lot of nerve coming here and talking to me like that,” Lyon fumed.

  “It is … probably not one of my better days for constituent outreach,” Bader quipped.

  Lyon’s stern face cracked, and he unleashed a roaring laugh so deep it made James Earl Jones sound like Woody Woodpecker.

  “Bader, I pretty much want to deal with politicians and Washington like I want a case of the crabs,” he hoisted up his belt. “But I’ll do this. One year. I’m not relocating to Washington; I’ll commute on the train. And then I’m done with you people for good.”

  Bader smiled and extended his hand. “Let me be the first to thank you for this service, Captain.”

  Wilkins stared at the computer screen headline on The Drudge Report, and physically backed away. He zombie-walked over to Humphrey’s office, knocked, and opened to see Lisa and the administrative director attempting to organize a small mountain of paperwork they would soon be releasing, 8½-by-11 photocopied chaff to distract and disorient the heat-seeking missiles of the press and commission investigators.

  “Caleb Lyon’s chairing the commission,” he said, half dazed, half disbelieving.

  This time it was Humphrey who stopped, put down the piece of paper, looked at Wilkins, inhaled to say something, and then didn’t.

  “Who’s he?” Lisa asked. “I figured Bush would try to sneak Henry Kissinger or … who are the guys he appoints to everything? Um … oh, you know, Chertoff or Khalilzad.”

  “Caleb Lyon,” sighed Wilkins, “is like Colin Powell, Norman Schwarzkopf, David McCullough, and Jaime Escalante rolled into one. The investigation of the biggest screw-up of our lives is going to be conducted by Captain America. We might as well type up our resignation letters now.”

  Humphrey let out a long, long sigh, and his head drooped. Wilkins had never seen his friend and mentor this close to emotional and physical capitulation.

  “Lisa,” Humphrey said quietly. “We’re going to have to organize a very effective, very fast-moving, and very relentless campaign of strategic leaks.”

  The commission held its first meeting in office space on K Street rented by the General Services Administration.

  Lyon had insisted that the main conference room be cleared of staff; he wanted the commissioners to meet without entourages or an audience. Two commissioners arrived early, and Lyon was not surprised which ones. They stared at each other with no feigned collegiality or warmth; they sized each other up like street fighters.

  “Congressman Puga.”

  “Congressman Carrington.”

  Lyon awaited further conversation, but none came. He was comfortable with silence, and so the three sat for five minutes without saying anything.

  Finally, the other appointees to the Cheatgrass Disaster Commission—nicknamed the Four Fogeys by the disreputable whippersnappers of the blogosphere—arrived via wheelchair and walker and cane and settled into the large conference table.

  Lyon had gone through some cursory introductions when the youngest member offered the first bone of contention.

  “I presume the commission will be providing each of us with an office, secretary, and driver,” Puga interrupted.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “I didn’t think two little letters could be so confusing,” Lyon responded with a raised eyebrow. “We have this rented office space and a small group of nonpartisan staffers. We have communal office workspace and equipment available. You’ll be in charge of getting yourself here.”

  Puga’s face was a fireworks display of disbelief, indignation, disappointment, anger, and pouting.

  “I want to be clear from the beginning,” Lyon began the only part of the meeting he had really looked forward to, discussing and/or lecturing the commission members about duty and patriotism. “We are charged with the responsibility of investigating a tragic and all-too-easily overlooked disaster for this country’s farmers and consumers. There are two things that could ruin our efforts instantly. First, any leaks of information before we have completed our investigation. If we’re seen as leaking, that will give everyone an excuse to not cooperate. Second, while partisanship in this town is off the charts, and I have no doubt we will have disagreements among us, we need to work as a unified force, a small strike team for truth, getting to the bottom of why that agency failed to—”

  “Objection, Mr. Chairman!” Puga blurted out.

  “This is not a court of law, Javier,” Lyon growled. “What is it?

  “You described our mission as getting to the bottom of why the agency failed, and it is a prejudicial definition, because it presumes that fault properly lies at the feet of that entity.”

  “Alright, Javier, how would you prefer we described our mission?”

  “Well, I would begin by saying simply we must get to the bottom of who failed, not merely why, since my initial examination suggests the preponderance of the evidence indicates that the fault lies not with the agency, but with Bush and Rove and the other nutzos in the White House—.”35

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Carrington shouted. “He just talked about avoiding partisanship, you left-wing union stooge!”

  “Here it comes,” Puga sneered. “The Republican congressman steps up to protect the president.”

  Lyon figured it was best to let the pair fight it out for a bit, and so he sat back and let the shout-fest continue. Former lieutenant governor Beane, seated next to the chairman, raised an eyebrow at Lyon with an expectant look, but the chairman just shrugged.

  He leaned over to Beane and whispered, “Running these meetings would be easier if I were armed,” triggering giggles in the octogenarian.

  JUNE 2007

  U.S. National Debt: $8.86 trillion

  Months later, the commission’s hearings began, with the requisite television coverage. CNN put away the “Drums of War” introduction music, and instead the accelerating, synthesizer-heavy “Emergency Beat” was the musical theme of choice.

  “Into the Lyon’s den,” boomed Wolf Blitzer in a pun used much too frequently this week.

  “It is being called the worst mistake in the history of American agricultural policy! Millions of dollars in economic damage as thousands of western farmers battled a herbivorous predator: cheatgrass. With the country’s agriculture sector just beginning to recover from the invasion, now is the time for hard questions and harder answers,” Blitzer said, making a mental note to vigorously shake whoever had loaded up the in-camera teleprompter that day. “Today on Capitol Hill, the National Cheatgrass Disaster Commission aims its crosshairs at Adam Humphrey—the longtime administrative director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agency of Invasive Species.”

  For Adam Humphrey, a man who had carefully avoided the public spotlight, the hearing presented a momentous challenge. Sure, his occasional address to agricultural groups had been used as late-night filler for C-SPAN, and he had testified on Capitol Hill at least once a year, but he had never been expected to work his persuasive charms upon a national television audience.

  But he had practiced for weeks … and he knew he had at least one ally on the panel.

  Congressman Bader’s staff had told their boss, repeatedly, that attending the commission hearing would be a bad idea. They had noticed that Bader, usually cool, calm, and cerebral a
s one of the House’s preeminent number-crunching budget hawks, could quickly flip out when discussing the Agency of Invasive Species and particularly Adam Humphrey. The staff figured that Humphrey would spin the facts with the intensity of a wind tunnel, and that the odds of Bader stifling the urge to loudly call out the untruths were nil. Bader’s colleague, Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina, warned him that if he lost control during an opponent’s comments, it would backfire greatly.

  So it was arranged that Bader would watch the hearings’ live television feed from a small overflow room adjacent to the hearing room, and he had his instant message system connected to the laptop in front of Carrington.

  Bader would never think of influencing the proceedings of the bipartisan commission; he merely wanted to make sure he could provide any necessary information to the commission in a timely—instant, really—manner.

  At noon, the hearings began. Humphrey adjusted the microphone before him.

  “To the members of this commission, members of Congress, and to the American public, I apologize,” Humphrey began. “The performance of this agency was not what the American people have come to expect from us.”

  He held his fist to his mouth, mugging regret, and he heard the relentless click-click-click of the assembled photographers, who had been conditioned to greet any hand gesture by taking a number of photographs appropriate for a UFO landing.

  “As we move forward together with the distinguished members of this commission, in unraveling the mysteries of the cheatgrass infestation and the difficulty in harnessing sufficient resources to deal with the menace to our agricultural community, I would urge the distinguished public servants before me to recognize that any thorough review of our actions will reveal that the problem was not a lack of judgment or any individual decision. Instead, I see a serious structural, systemic problem that blocked any of us from taking the necessary action.”