Ultimatum (21 page)

This was the first time Benton had been asked to approve a specific action which might result in a loss of life. He felt the responsibility of executive power more strongly at that moment than at any other time since his inauguration. He weighed the options. Rightly or wrongly, he wasn’t prepared to give the go-ahead, not on the basis of what Katzenberger had told him. He asked the FBI director to come back to him within twenty-four hours with a detailed plan for an attack. In the interim, his agents were to act only in self-defense.

He was still thinking about the decision when he walked into the Cabinet Room for his meeting with the legislators. He opened the door and was immediately among a bunch of familiar faces. Kay Wilson, the Senate majority leader, was standing beside the House Speaker, Don Bales. The majority whips of both houses were there, Senator Val Birley and Congressman Paul Rudd. A dozen of the other most influential Democrats on the Hill had also been invited, including Celia Amadi, the veteran senior senator from New York, and Rose Miller, a Florida congresswoman. From the White House, Angela Chavez, John Eales, Steve Kivopoulos, one of Eales’s aides, Jodie Ames, Adam Gehrig, Josh Singer, the counsel to the president, and Barb Mukerjee, the president’s chief legislative aide, were present. Ben Hoffman was delayed by something and would be along as soon as he could get away.

Benton greeted the legislators and they settled down. As Barb began to distribute sets of stapled pages, he consciously forced the situation that was developing at Whitefish to the back of his mind.

“This is how we’re seeing the program,” he said as the papers passed along the table. “I’ll give you time to look over it.”

One or two of the legislators nodded absently. They were studying the paper. None of it was news to them. They had been closely consulted all along as to the scope of the bills and were helping arrange sponsors for each piece of legislation. But this was their first chance to see the entire program laid out in front of them.

Joe Benton glanced at Angela. She smiled back at him. She didn’t know that the task of relocation outlined in the introduction to the paper, daunting as it was, was only the beginning, and that the challenge that would face the nation over the next ten years would be threefold or fourfold greater— if he managed to do a deal with the Chinese government. That was a big if. Since taking office, Joe Benton had had zero time to focus on that. The pace over the last two weeks had been unremitting, and keeping the momentum on his domestic program was something he couldn’t let up on. He knew that Olsen had been meeting Chen. Ben Hoffman had been keeping him informed. Some time in the next couple of days, he knew, Ben had arranged for the group to convene in order to review progress.

Eventually he had waited long enough for the legislators to look over the paper. He glanced at Jodie.

She outlined the approach they were going to use to announce the program. The president was scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on Monday. Prior to that, he would trail the program in a Friday press conference and in his weekly podcast to the nation that went out on Sunday. He was going to present it as a package. Every bill had to pass, every element was necessary, or New Foundation would fail.

“This is all in a year,” said Don Bales, flipping through the pages and shaking his head. “I thought you were aiming to get it done in two.”

“We’ve reconsidered that,” said Eales. “If we pitch two, we won’t get it done in four.”

“I agree,” said Kay Wilson.

Benton thought highly of Wilson. She was a self-made businesswoman from Kentucky who had been Senate minority leader for four years. He had worked closely with her through six Congresses. He didn’t rate Don Bales. Pat Greenberg, the previous minority leader in the House of Representatives, had retired at the last election and Bales, a four-time Democratic representative from California and dark horse for the Speaker’s role, had put together a coalition that gave him the vote of the House Democrats. But the way he had been talking since the election, it had been Don Bales, and Don Bales alone, who had delivered the majority in the House at the general election. Benton suspected that the only thing Don Bales really cared about was retaining the majority at the midterm elections to become the first House Democrat to lead a majority in successive congresses since 2014.

Celia Amadi laid the paper aside. “I’m with Kay. It’s a demanding list, Mr. President. Enough for the entire Congress. But if we can do it in a year, I say, let’s do it.”

Benton smiled. He had fought plenty of battles alongside Cee Amadi over the years and had always been thankful they were on the same side. If there was a tougher streetfighter in Congress, he’d like to know who it was. “I would have thought that was right up your alley, Senator,” he said.

Cee laughed.

The president looked at Rose Miller. “Rose?”

“You’re going to get everything or nothing, Mr. President.”

“Every president says he’s presenting a package,” said Val Birley, “but this really is. If we fight it piecemeal, we’ll get picked off. Everyone will object to something.”

“Mr. President,” said Don Bales, “with respect, I think we’re biting off way too much. Even just your health care bill would be a landmark achievement.”

“Don, kiss my
tuches,”
said Cee Amadi. “Let’s be bold. It’s all or nothing. Joe won the election saying it was time to do stuff. He has a mandate for change.”

“Not this much change.”

“You can’t have too much change. Not once you start. Bold’s best.”

The door opened. Ben Hoffman came in. He exchanged a quick glance with the president.

“Sorry,” he said. “Did I miss anything?”

“Only Cee inviting Don to kiss her tuches,” said Angela Chavez.

Bales ignored that. “Mr. President,” he announced, “I don’t know if you have the support any longer to get this program through.”

The president looked at him incredulously.

“There’s a WhichGov poll out today, and it’s going to show you at forty-eight.”

“No way!” said Ames.

“Jodie, it’s showing him at forty-eight. With this Iraq-Syria thing, people are damn scared this president is going to put us right back in Iraq, which it took us ten years to get out of.”

“Don,” said the president, “it’s two weeks since my inauguration. I don’t care what a WhichGov poll says. The next election’s in four years.”

“Less than two, Mr. President, if you’ll excuse me. And some of the congresspeople whose support you need do care about this poll.”

“This is ridiculous!” John Eales thought Bales was a lightweight and was more than happy to let him know it. “People aren’t that stupid. We’re not going to war over the Euphrates. Those numbers will be back up next week.”

“Mr. President,” said Bales. “With respect, I think you just shot a whole chunk of your credit with that announcement.”

“Just remember whose credit it was, Don.” Benton gazed at him and let it sink in. “I’m not going to get anywhere if I react to every damn poll. I’ve done politics a long time and I’ve never done it like that. Now, what I want to know is whether you can deliver the House for this program.”

“And if you can’t,” said Angela Chavez, “what do we have to do to make sure you can.”

Bales glanced at Paul Rudd, the House majority whip. “I’d say two hundred to two ten in the House are rock solid,” said Rudd. “You’ve got another ten to twenty who’ll come with you in general. And then you’ve got. . . it’s ten or fifteen . . . they call themselves Democrats, but they’re the ones. They’re always the ones.”

“We’ll sit down,” said Angela, glancing at Barb.

“Sure,” said Rudd. “I’m not saying we can’t do it. It’s going to take some solid work.”

“That’s what you’ll get,” said Benton. He looked around the table. “Whatever you need, you’ll get it. From me, from Angela, from whoever can make it happen.”

They talked through the tactics. The American people had put Joe Benton into the White House on a platform for change, and not a single member of Congress was going to be allowed to forget it. And if they did, the voters in their district were going to know about it.

“Mr. President?” said Cee Amadi.

“Cee.”

“I think you’ve got us all on your side.” She paused and looked around at her fellow legislators, as if to give them opportunity to dissent. “But— and I’m going to be frank—there is something.”

Benton smiled. “Cee, I’d never expect you to be anything less than frank.”

“I’m talking about Hugo Montera.”

Benton nodded. That’s what he thought she was talking about.

“Mr. President, we’ve got people saying they don’t like what he did, or what it looks like he did, even if he didn’t do it. They’re not going to go to bat for him.”

Benton looked at Kay Wilson. “He’s not going to get through?”

Wilson shook her head.

There was silence.

“The longer you leave it,” said Cee, “the worse it is. The Republicans are squeezing this thing for every drop they can. Our people see Montera hurting them. They want you to take that hurt away.” She raised the paper with the legislative program. “We want to do this. We really want to do this. But for some of them, this is going to hurt as well. Bad. They can only take so much.”

“It’s twenty or thirty,” said Paul Rudd.

“Andy Burstin holds the South Carolina fourth by twenty-eight votes,” said Rose Miller. “He’ll back your program, but every time he takes that walk to vote for one of these bills, the Republicans are going to be counting him down like a pack of wolves. ‘Twenty-eight, Andy, twenty-seven, twenty-six . . .’”

“You’re asking that from him,” said Bales, “it’s not right to have people calling him up from South Carolina asking why the president insists on appointing an unfair employer as his secretary of labor.”

There was silence around the table.

“Joe, you should get it done.” The tone in Cee Amadi’s voice was one Joe Benton knew from a thousand conversations over the past twelve years. Firm, pragmatic. Brutal, when she had to be. And almost invariably right. “Today. That way, Friday, when you get up in front of the press, you may have a chance of getting them focused on what you really want to talk about.”

Benton frowned. “Okay, say I do it,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t it look weak? Doesn’t it look like I’m backing down? Who’s going to come out and support me over this package if I’m not strong enough to support my own nominees?”

Cee shook her head. “Once you do it, you get us back. No one wants to see you lose one of your nominees. No one believes Montera really did something wrong. And even if he did, you couldn’t have known. We all feel this has been blown way out of proportion and you’ve been unfairly attacked by the Republicans and the press in what’s supposed to be your honeymoon. Once he’s gone, that feeling can come out. Our instinct is to rally around you. That’ll happen. Mr. President, it’s going to make you stronger.”

Joe Benton knew it might work like that. He had seen it, been a part of it himself. On the other hand, it could work the other way as well, his perceived weakness making even more of his support ebb away. There was no rule about it. It depended on the feeling on the Hill at the time.

“Everyone agrees?” he said. He looked around the table.

There were nods from the legislators.

Joe Benton had seen enough of other presidents to know that exercising executive power was about keeping your hands as free as you could to do the things that really mattered. That meant making sure they weren’t shackled by the myriad things that didn’t matter, or didn’t matter as much. Joe Benton counted Hugo Montera as a friend, but his nomination was turning into one of those things. Whatever was happening in Whitefish, Benton knew, could easily turn into another. If he had just made the wrong decision about handling the siege, even though it involved only a hundred people somewhere in the hills of Montana, it could shackle his hands by robbing him of the credibility needed to implement bold decisions affecting millions of people all across the country. And he would need that credibility. He would need more of it than he could ever have, without giving any of it away.