Dawn of the Unthinkable (30 page)

Kennedy had a half smile on his face. After
years of making, listening to, and writing speeches, he knew good
ones when he heard them, and this one wasn’t bad. Of course, the
fact that this virtual stranger was asking him to stretch his neck
out across a freeway with heavy trucks rolling down it was not lost
on him. He would have to give this some serious thought, and now
was not the time. He had to get back to Boston for the opening of a
library and he would just make it if he left soon. He stood up to
signal the end of the meeting.

“Gentlemen, this is the most interesting
idea I’ve heard since Senator Kincaid suggested that all women
entering the Capitol be strip-searched. As we say here in
Washington, I’ll take it under advisement, and let you know what I
think. Right off the top of my head, I can see a million problems
with it, probably some you’ve never considered from a practical and
political point of view. But on its face, it has some merit, and
I’m sure that in some point in the future, all money systems will
be adapted to be more portable and electronic based. What you are
proposing goes beyond that, and I’m not sure as a society we are
ready. But I’m not saying yes or no just yet, I have some pretty
qualified people who will have to look this over from every angle
before I give you an answer. But right now, I have to get back to
Boston, so I can’t stay. Thank you for bringing this to my
attention, and I’m flattered to be chosen as the man to help do
away with capitalism as we know it. I’m sure that if my father were
here, he’d be trying to choke you with his bare hands. Good day,
gentlemen.” With that, Kennedy shook their hands, was out the door,
and quickly left his office.

The group relaxed a bit now, having cleared
another significant hurdle. They were smiling at each other and
trying to scan for Karen Strock as much as possible before they got
ushered out. They found her talking to the two other aides and
stopped briefly to listen.

”… we’ll see about The Brookings
Institution.”

“Really?” one of the aides countered. “They
are one of the most respected think tanks in the county, and if
they review this proposal the whole country will hear about it. I
didn’t think we’d want that.”

“They also do confidential reviews for
influential people, like Ted. Though I highly doubt they’ll be in
favor of something like this, their comments will tremendously
influence the senator.” The hopeful group of men glanced at each
other excitedly. “Either way,” Karen continued, “they will raise
the million objections that he was talking about. You know how much
he loves a good challenge, so he’ll try to find ways to overcome
their objections. This is shaping up to be a real donnybrook, and
these challenges and conversations are how good laws get passed.”
She was secretly grateful to the men for giving her boss a
potential energizer, as sometimes even being a senator could get
stale. For right now though, she was going to play it as if she
disapproved.
How fun it will be to reward that guy
, she
thought of Ryan. She liked playing power games with men.

She herself was intrigued by the idea. While
she was a very practical person—what chief-of-staff wasn’t?—one
didn’t work for Senator Kennedy without having some serious liberal
leanings. She had always been interested in equality issues and had
tried through various campus activities to affect some changes. But
too often, her looks worked against her where the men she was
trying to communicate with were too busy lusting after her to hear
her message, and the women she dealt with thought she was sleeping
around, so they weren’t too friendly. With Kennedy, she found a
home, because he was now a happily married family man, and his name
carried so much clout that the people she spoke to couldn’t afford
to not listen closely. She had not married despite some rather
ardent suitors, as she preferred being able to pick up and go at a
moment’s notice and not answer to anybody. Her dislike of being
craved for her appearance rather than her mind had caused her
sexuality to take a dark turn, a fact that she kept hidden very
well. She liked to tease men, drive them crazy with desire, leave
them hanging, then get them to do...things. So, she was an ideal
chief-of-staff and had been with him for many years.

Now she had to get on with her day, so the
men had to be sent packing. She offered to have one of her aides
drive them to Union Station, both out of kindness and to get a
report on what they would say once out of earshot. The aide had
been trained to prompt unguarded conversation, and while a casual
looking youth, was actually quite skilled in remembering entire
conversations. She found this got around the nasty illegality of
taping and felt that all was fair in love and war. In politics, she
found that you could go from one to another shockingly quick, so
she always prepared for war even when things were going well. She
never knew when her boss was going to land in the paper for some
reprehensible act, real or imagined, and she liked to be a holder
of damaging information that could be used against accusers. In the
case of these three, she didn’t sense any duplicity such as trying
to make the senator look foolish, but one never took chances. The
story about two and a half million votes waiting to back this was
the most compelling tidbit of information that came out of this.
That would need to be checked out quickly. If it was true, then the
steering of that group had to be gently wrestled away from the
inexperienced, though admittedly attractive, union leader. That
much cohesion should be used for something good if this idea fell
through, which she entirely expected.

The men were teasing each other about how
they had done. They seemed to be a genuinely likable group of guys,
but the senator was right. It was hard to believe they were
cooperating so closely together considering their disparate
backgrounds. She wondered if they had had a major blow-up yet; most
groups had to survive at least one fight in order to be taken
seriously. So far, this group was in a honeymoon period. Everything
they had done so far had worked. But with coming to the senator,
word would start to leak out, even more so than with the large
group of people that now knew about it. She marvelled at the
invisibility of certain segments of society with that many people
aware of this and supporting it, and yet this was the first she had
heard of it. And the people coming to Kennedy didn’t just want him
to fund some study. They wanted him to propose an Amendment! To the
Constitution of the United States! Even he had never done that
before, but she knew he would relish the opportunity to do so if
the legislation was right. This had all the earmarks of something
he could support because, as they correctly pointed out, it
encompassed many of the things he stood for politically. She
started to get excited in spite of herself. To think of everybody
having someplace to live, enough to eat, unlimited health care, and
cooperation instead of competition, well, she would like to have a
piece of that. It would show all those men who spent time ogling
her tits instead of respecting her mind. She turned to find the men
behind her on their way out of the building.

“Well, Mr. Ryan, Dr. Cunningham, and Mr.
Estrada-Palma, I’d like to thank you for an interesting
presentation. I think the senator was impressed and will give the
matter some consideration. I’m curious to see what the Institution
thinks; this is a lot more off the beaten track than most of the
policy issues we send them. Fortunately, the senator’s stature
allows him to explore all types of ideas, whereas a freshman
senator could not afford to touch this politically. So you came to
the right place. Give us about a month to give you an answer. You
should be prepared for a negative response, as we may determine
that this is not feasible as legislation at this time. But I will
make sure that if that happens, you will be given alternatives to
keep the idea alive and not have to disappoint all of those
Wobblies. I’m going to have to read up on them. I thought they were
kind of defunct.” She said this last sentence to Palma with an
apologetic shrug of her shoulders. This made her breasts move up
and down quite nicely, an effect that she had perfected. The men
were transfixed.

“Okay, then, we’ll be in touch. John will
drive you to the station. Bye,” she said, and she left. The men
stared after her.

Ryan said what was on all their minds, “That
is some woman.” They all nodded and said manly things like, “You
got that right” and, “Amen, brother.”

“Well, you get used to her looks after a
while, especially when she’s yelling at you after an eighteen-hour
day. C’mon, the car’s this way,” the aide said while they gathered
their belongings and left. On the way to the station, they
discussed their impressions of the meeting, the senator, and
Strock. They laid out their fears, aspirations, and plans, all the
while being prompted by the friendly young aide, who treated them
like gods. By the time they got to the station, they had given up a
lot of inside info, and Karen Strock would be much better armed in
case they didn’t do what she wanted.

The train ride home was a jubilant affair,
with Metroliner beers being sloshed across the rocking seats. They
relived all the important moments and reminisced about the minor
ones. Estrada Palma took some good-natured ribbing about the
possibilities of his moving on Strock and whether it might help or
hurt their cause. He assured them that he had no such intentions,
but privately, he had to admit the thought crossed his mind. He
wondered if his strong play to her had been received as it had been
intended, as a tribute to her power as the boss of the troops. He
hoped she hadn’t interpreted it as a move on her; surely she didn’t
think he was crass enough to do that in front of a senator. Of
course, she had probably been hit on from the time since she was a
kid. Women that looked like her usually developed early and had to
deal with bad intentions from an early age. He made a mental note
to himself to treat her with the utmost courtesy if he met her
again.

“Hey, Prof, how did you think it went,
really?” Palma asked Cunningham. Up until now, all they had been
discussing was the dynamics of the meeting, not the real substance.
Now they turned to the man they depended on for analysis. He waited
until a conductor passed by and he had their attention. He pursed
his lips, squinted his eyes, and began.

“First of all, let me say that I was proud
of both of you for how you did. Nick, you struck almost all of our
strong points and had a nice finishing request. Lou, your depiction
of the Wobblies’ philosophy was poignant, and the support you’ve
generated probably took them by surprise, as I’m sure they received
old membership data when they checked us out. Me, I think I might
have showed that a non-Beltway type can analyze a political
situation with information that is readily available and make
predictions as to how certain scenarios are going to play out. Now,
having accomplished the initial presentation as best we could,
let’s look at us from their perspective. First and foremost,
we
have no money.
Money is what counts in this town, and here we
are, having to scrape together train fare to get here. Now we have
a nice pocket full of votes to offer, but that only counts if this
resolution ever hits the floor, and even then it would have to get
out to the states in the form of a referendum for those votes to
matter. Even then, we can’t guarantee Kennedy or anyone that the
people who said they would support it will actually do so, since
once people get in a voting booth, there more likely to vote for
something familiar than something risky. So, what the Brookings
camp will probably tell Kennedy is that this idea is heresy! It
should be put to death immediately and never spoken of again! And
if he ever does propose it, it will never get out of whatever
committee it starts in.”

He said this soberly, eyes downcast. The
other two looked at him, too stunned to speak.

Finally Palma’s somewhat quick temper got
the better of him and he said quietly, “You knew that before we
came here, didn’t you?”

Ryan was dejected and now somewhat angry,
too, as his budget didn’t allow for running off on fool’s errands.
If the professor knew that they were doomed to begin with, he
should have told them so that they could have made the choice as to
whether they wanted to meet the famous senator or not. He knew his
wife would have opted for not, telling him to have the others pick
up an autographed picture or something (She had no interest in
politics, and wasn’t even registered to vote.). So, now he felt
somewhat betrayed and was surprised when he saw a large grin
spreading across the professor’s face.

Palma lost it at that sight and hissed,
“What’s so funny?”

The professor said, “Gentlemen, do you think
for a moment I would run you down here if I thought we were wasting
our time? I know you two are not exactly rolling in dollars, and
I’d be the last one to have you spending your money foolishly. No,
it’s just that as a man of history, I may have a better perspective
on how this might play out, and a preliminary defeat might be the
best thing that could happen to us. Can either of you think of
parallel situation in the past where a new philosophy was proposed,
its leader sacrificed, and then it miraculously rose to become one
of the world’s most prolific organizations? You’re both Catholic,
right?”

Palma and Ryan looked at each other, coming
slowly to the realization of what he was saying. Palma looked at
Cunningham quizzically, and said, “Are you saying…”

Cunningham laughed and said, “Now, don’t
think I’m comparing either of you to Jesus, because I can tell
you’re not gods. Not bad guys, but not saints, either. But think of
what happened there. A poor, simple carpenter looked around and was
dissatisfied with the existing socio-political situation. He
proposed a new system wherein people should love and cooperate with
each other and love one true God, too. Now for the moment, let’s
remove the religious aspect of what happened, and look at the rest
of the story. He started to travel around and gain followers. At
first, most people wrote him off as a kook, but as he gained more
followers and caused more controversy, he became rather hard to
ignore. At the end of his life he had created such a storm that the
officials, who were greatly interested in the status quo, were
maneuvered into brutally executing him, thereby dashing the hopes
of his followers. Now, this man confounds the authorities by later
rising from death, thereby cheating them of their victory in
crushing his movement. Instead, people who never saw him start to
believe in his philosophy, literally being willing to die for it,
and it spreads to the four corners of the world. So in the end, you
have a poor man with the power of an idea managing to spread it
around, so that two thousand years later, close to a billion people
who never met him now believe fervently in his message. Not bad,
huh?”