Out of Crisis

by Richard Caldwell

  As they were speaking, Tammy’s voice rose in the background: “Senator, forgive me for interrupting, but I thought you would want me to, especially since you’re talking to Secretary Stakley. We just received a security alert. The Secret Service announced that President Sheppard passed away. Apparently, his assistant found him less than an hour ago. They haven’t officially announced it to the public yet, but that will happen any minute now.”

  “Oh my God, David, did you hear that?” Mia asked.

  Although he had been mentally preparing himself for the inevitable, Tammy’s announcement stunned David. Like a boxer expecting a short left jab but then getting nailed by an uppercut from the right.

  “David?”

  “Yes, I heard.” David paused to let his emotions settle. “After our meeting last week, I guess deep down inside, I knew it was imminent. That doesn’t numb the shock the least bit. We have a lot more to discuss, but I think it best we press the pause button for now. I suspect the hoard of press locusts will be descending soon, and I need to cobble up a statement.

  “I suggest you hold off on your announcement until after the dust settles from this latest event, not to trivialize anything by using such a casual term. But President Sheppard knew it was coming, and he was at peace with the eventuality. We don’t want your decision to be lost in a news aftershock. I’ll circle back to you before the end of the week, and we can pick up where we left off.

  “I don’t want to sound like some heartless opportunist, but we need to capitalize on the president’s and my relationship and his pledge of support. And we need to do so before Phillips starts dumping his poison in the well. The fuse is burning, Mia. I’ll call you in a day or two. You and I need to meet with the Envision-2100 team and start hammering out the platform I mentioned. I’ll ask Milt to round up the team, and we can meet at their Maryland Shangri-La. If you aren’t busy the night before, you can have dinner with Kelly and me and stay the night at our house. We can get to know one another on a more personal basis. I’ll arrange our transportation the next morning. Trust me, you’ll be surprised and impressed.”

  “That sounds like a plan, David,” Mia said. “I’ll take your advice and hold off on my own announcement until we have our first strategy session with Milt and Company. Just say when on dinner and the sleepover. There is nothing on my calendar that can’t be delayed until after the governor appoints my replacement.”

  “OK, Vice President Lopez, I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

  David eased the phone into its cradle, then leaned back in his chair, momentarily gazing but not seeing. His thoughts roared across his consciousness until, a heartbeat later, he got them and his physical self under control.

  That evening, as David and Kelly sat in their living room watching CNN, President Sheppard’s wife called.

  The caller ID flashed ******0000, which David knew was an unspoofable mask to disguise the POTUS’s personal number.

  Jim Phillips’s code would have been 0001, indicating his relative position in the line of succession to the office of president. Up until last week, David’s mask had been 0004. In a rare display of compassion, Phillips had not directed that his mask be changed the minute he found out the POTUS had died.

  Seeing David’s expression change from curiosity to concern, Kelly grabbed the remote and muted the TV.

  “David Stakley. Nancy, is that you?”

  “Yes, David, it’s me.”

  David detected a slight quiver in her voice.

  “As you can imagine, we are all in a state of shock. Thank heavens my secretary is here with us. Condolences have been pouring in, but I’m in no mood, nor state of mind, to deal with an endless barrage of phone calls. Not right now. I did take a call from Matt’s chief of staff earlier today. She offered to help with funeral arrangements and burial at Arlington. I’m sure Jim Phillips directed her to do so. I mean, David, Matt’s body is still at Walter Reed, and the man is pressuring me to start making funeral arrangements.

  “You know, they wanted to do an autopsy to rule out foul play. I said absolutely not. The man had terminal cancer. I refused to let some slice-happy pathologist make a name for himself by dissecting my husband. Matt had directed that his vital organs be donated, but by the time Lizbeth found him and medics responded, it was too late for that. You know organs have to be harvested quickly once the heart stops beating or they become unusable for transplant.”

  The First Lady was starting to ramble, most likely the result of a combination of shock and sedatives. David let her do so. During times of intense grief, it was good therapy. He remembered an old saying, “Grief shared is grief diminished.”

  “Nancy, I know it sounds a little trite, but I am so very, very sorry. Kelly and I are still in shock. You know that if there is anything either of us can do to help you get through this, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Well, David, there is something. When our son Matthew was killed in Iran, Matt decided that he wanted to be cremated and for his and Matthew’s ashes to be scattered over Bodega Bay. This is way out of the norm for a president, or for a vice president, for that matter. In fact, Nelson Rockefeller is the only one who has ever been cremated. And Matt demanded that he not have a funeral.

  “I think something snapped inside him when Matthew was killed. But that doesn’t matter. I intend to carry out his wishes, and that is precisely what I told the chief of staff to pass along to Jim Phillips. We are having a private celebration of Matt’s life. Just me, my two sons, and Judson Ballard. Matt also wanted you and Kelly to be there, if that’s not too much to ask. Matt spelled his request out very explicitly in his will. My husband treasured the friendships he had with you and Judson.”

  “I know, Nancy. I’ve lost a friend. And a mentor. But even more than that, our country has lost a truly remarkable leader. Matt was a good man.”

  “Thank you, David. That means a lot to me. Not just because your words are so poetic. It’s because they’re sincere. I know you are unbelievably busy getting your own campaign kicked off and that Matt’s death and his last request is probably catching you unprepared, but if you could somehow find a way to help me get through the next few days, I would be eternally grateful.”

  “Say no more, Nancy. It will be an honor and a privilege for Kelly and me to be with you and your sons. And you shouldn’t feel the least bit guilty about asking. Actually, President Sheppard shared his wishes with me a long time ago in one of our late-night powwows. There was no small amount of Scotch involved, but I committed myself then, and I stand behind that commitment now.”

  “I appreciate that so much, David. I will have my secretary make the necessary arrangements and accommodations. Judson has pledged to fly us out on his private jet, so we don’t have to grovel to Jim Phillips for the use of Air Force One. We’ll stay for two nights and then fly back. By then, our personal belongings will have been packed up, we can move back to the ranch, and I can start the next chapter of my life. We all know that’s how it’s going to be at some point‍—either me without him or him without me.

  “Forgive me. I’m getting all melancholic, and that’s the last thing I want or need to be doing. Thank you again, David. This means so much to me. I’ll let you get back to what’s left of your evening.”

  35

  The Farm

  The beginning of the Stakley campaign, eighteen months before the day of

  David poured another cup of coffee at the buffet table and surveyed the conference room on the ground floor of the main building at the Farm. Once, many decades ago, the space had been used for weekly dances, plays, and semiannual balls hosted by the Catoctin Inn’s owners. Now, the center of the room held an enormous, round wooden table. The table had a history too, according to Nelson Teal.

  Nelson had donated the table. Initially dubbed “King Arthur” by Envision-2100 members and later referred to as merely “Arthur,” the table was
constructed from two gigantic walnut trees. Nelson had salvaged them from the aftermath of an F5 tornado, which had laid waste to a small city in Benton County, Arkansas. Siloam Springs, his hometown. The trees had been milled for the sole purpose of building the table, which Nelson had designed himself. The wood was shipped to the farm, cut on-site, and then assembled section by section inside the former ballroom. Not a single nail or screw was used in its construction, just wooden dowels and tongue-and-groove joints.

  Arthur was built like a ship in a bottle and could never be removed without completely destroying it. The table dripped with symbolism.

  David took his mug over to Arthur and slipped into a chair beside Mia. Also sitting around the table were three Envision-2100 board members, Judson, Melissa, and Milt; three members at large; and a small team from the nationally recognized public relations and political consulting firm Watkins & Evans.

  A voice-activated microphone was strategically placed in front of each attendee. In addition to slightly amplifying their conversation, the microphones were wirelessly connected to the Farm’s computer network and to Microsoft Word and its voice recognition application. As participants spoke, their names and presentations were converted to text and displayed on four seventy-inch monitors, one mounted on each wall of the conference room.

  In this manner, the entire verbiage of every meeting was recorded for online access by any Envision-2100 member. This process was at the insistence of David and Milt and part of their open-meeting, full-disclosure campaign strategy.

  Milt leaned toward his mic. “I’ve been nominated to serve as the chairperson for David and Mia’s campaign, and in that capacity, I want to officially open up our first strategy session. All proceedings will be recorded, transcribed, and made part of the permanent record.

  “We, the Board of Trustees and various nominees from our general membership, have conducted a great deal of preliminary work on our strategy and presidential campaign platform. Each of you received a copy of this effort in advance. I trust you have read it.

  “The points covered in that document, and everything we do between now and the time our platform is ratified, will be referred to as a ‘clayman.’ To grossly paraphrase Yogi Bera, nothing is final until it’s final. Over the next couple of days, we’ll start reshaping the clayman. Our objective is to have a presentable draft by the end of this weeklong conference. Once we have completed that onerous task, we will begin developing an eight-year strategic plan with associated goals, milestones, and checkpoints. All of this will be presented to the citizens of the United States.

  “In the two hundred plus years that our country has been a country, that kind of detailed planning has never been done, much less made publically available. So we will make that one of our plan’s initial objectives. Now, before we start getting our hands dirty, I would like to ask David, the next president of the United States‍—‍”

  Applause thundered around the table. Milt raised his hands and joined the revelry. “David, it looks like the place is on fire.”

  David grinned and waved. “Thank you, everyone. Thank you.”

  “I’m going to ask David to kick things off and say a few words about how he wants us to run this campaign. Anything he wants us to do and, equally important, not to do. President Stakley.”

  Milt swept his hand toward David.

  David leaned toward his mic. “Thank you, Milt. I’ll share what I suspect I’ll frequently be saying over the next several months. As my wife, Kelly, reminds me daily, I’m being given an honor that most people only dream about. I can’t put into words what that means to me, so I won’t waste our valuable time together by doing so. I will say that I’m both humbled and thrilled by the opportunity. And I will never, ever do anything, at least not intentionally, to bring disgrace upon that honor.”

  David paused for a couple of heartbeats, then looked directly at Melissa. “Now. Melissa has already made it clear that it is Envision-2100’s policy to be open and aboveboard in everything we do. I want to take that a quantum leap further. This will be the most upbeat and positive campaign ever waged in the twenty-first century. It is my plan, my desire, to set the example for how elected, or even nominated, representatives should conduct themselves from this point forward.

  “In every ad, every debate, every interview, we will avoid making any, and I mean any, negative comments about our rivals, their party, or anything they did or failed to do in the past. Of course, we’ll be forced to highlight the changes we want to bring to our constitution and what has spawned the need to do so. But we will do that from an opportunity, ‘set the stage for our future’ perspective.

  “We will not take the bait if our opponents attack or slander us during debates, in the press, or on social media. And we damn sure won’t say anything negative about them. Mia and I have discussed this in detail. Both of us have been sickened by this kind of conduct in the past. The name-calling and mudslinging may have been acceptable, even expected behaviors in the past, but they have no place in my campaign, period.

  “And here are a couple of other things that I believe are long overdue. I ask that you keep them in the back of your mind as we begin working on our campaign and expanding upon the work already done by Envision-2100 on the Centrist platform.

  “I firmly believe that we need to rein in some of the elitist privileges currently enjoyed by members of Congress. Literally every American I have discussed this with feels the same. For example, members of Congress should receive healthcare under our current Medicare program. Let them enjoy the same coverage as forty-five percent of the population. I’ll go into much greater detail on my vision for healthcare coverage later. But I would like to see that as an early-on objective on our strategic plan timeline. Hell, that alone might win us the popular vote.

  “I also want us to address term limits. That is touched on in the Envision-2100 clayman, but I want it to be top-of-mind starting today. I’m thinking two six-year terms for the Senate and three two-year terms for the House with a requirement for each to sit out a minimum of one term before being considered for reelection. We can flesh the numbers out once we start getting into the weeds on this. But we need limits.

  “Yes, I know: in theory, term limits should come from the ballot box, but we know how effective that has been. Historically, ninety-three percent of incumbents are voted right back into office each election cycle. I would like to think that’s because they are doing their job of representation and deserving of such support. But again, history seems to prove otherwise.

  “I hope what I just said are the only examples of dictatorial rhetoric I will ever subject you to. However, it had to be said, and sometimes, as Judson has told me on previous occasions, you can’t ‘church it up.’ Now, before I toss the floor back to Milt, I want to allow Mia to add her dos pesos to this preamble.”

  Raucous applause and cheers filled the room.

  Mia smiled. “Thank you, David. I’ll begin by making a small linguistic correction. That should be dos centavos rather than dos pesos. Although if we include the effects of Mexican and US inflation, your example may be more accurate. I won’t add a great deal to what David has said as it relates to establishing the foundation of our political agenda. There may be a few things that we see differently, but after hours of spirited discussion, I’ll be darned if I know what they are. I’ll make a note of two things I would ask that you keep in mind beginning with today’s discussions and planning‍—and forevermore, as far as that goes.

  “First, I made it crystal clear when I agreed to be David’s running mate that I expect the position of vice president to be more than a political potted plant. In the past, the VP has served as little more than window dressing for the president, occasionally casting a tiebreaker vote in the Senate. That has not been my way of doing business, nor will it be when we are elected. I plan to be heavily involved in policymaking.

  “Years ago, President
George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to become his running mate. Cheney made the same demand. He performed more like a chief operating officer than a second-in-command figurehead. That was my request, and David has agreed.

  “By the way, since 1789, there have been two hundred sixty-eight of them‍—tie-breaking votes, that is.”

  Appreciative laughter rippled across the room.

  David smiled and nodded. “Mia said that I agreed. She should have said that I wholeheartedly agreed.”

  Mia beamed at David, then turned her attention back to the group. “In agreeing to run for vice president, I became only the third female from a major political party to seek this position. That’s following Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat, in 1984; and Sarah Palin, a Republican, in 2008. If I have to tell you that they both lost, you may be in the wrong meeting.”

  Mia’s barb drew even more laughter from the group.

  David leaned back and grinned. He’d made the right choice. Clearly, the lady had a sense of humor. It would serve her and their party well in the months to come.

  Mia continued: “Despite being the gender majority, fifty point eight percent female versus forty-nine point two percent male, we have a pretty weak track record when it comes to leadership in business, politics, and professional football. Even in this enlightened group, there’s only me, Melissa, and the lady who runs the kitchen. I’m a long way from one of those screaming feminists you see on the news, but I do feel like I’m becoming the political poster child for half the population of the United States. That’s an opportunity, and one we need to capitalize on.

  “The other asset that I bring to our campaign is my Hispanic heritage. Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in this country, representing seventeen point eight percent of the population. Statistically speaking, just those two facts‍—my being Hispanic and a female‍—should tilt the needle in our direction.