The Weed Agency (31 page)

JANUARY 2008

U.S. National Debt: $9.23 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $279.5 million

Lyon stared back.

“You didn’t seem like a man eager to resign at last summer’s hearing, Humphrey,” he said, gesturing to his guest to take a seat.

“I am not, Mr. Chairman,” Humphrey said, sitting. “But a time like this makes one focus one’s priorities. I hear the rumors, Mr. Chairman. The word is that you’ll be seeking wholesale changes in management, a decision that I fear would be horrific to the operations and effectiveness of the agency I’ve spent my entire career working in. Thus, if there must be a scapegoat to be sacrificed, let it be me, instead of any of the dedicated career civil servants beneath me.”

“Right,”
said Lyon, incapable of packing more skepticism into a single word.

“Mr. Chairman, I have come to accept that my departure is a foregone conclusion. But I want to do everything to ensure a smooth transition, and I was hoping the commission could assist with that.”

“How so?”

“Allow me to begin by asking whether the commission’s final report, as currently drafted, calls for my dismissal or resignation.”

“Our recommendations are secret until the report is finalized.”

Humphrey gave him a skeptical look.

“Don’t buy any green bananas,” said Lyon.

“I disagree with that, but I understand the conclusion,” Humphrey sighed. “If it is all the same to you, with my departure approaching either way, I would urge the commission to … omit that.”

“Replacing the manager who permitted the agency’s performance to reach this piss-poor level is pretty much the heart of our recommendations,” Lyon growled.

“A recommendation that is moot if I have one foot out the door,” countered Humphrey. “In fact, if I announced my resignation tomorrow, you would be calling for something already done. Suddenly the centerpiece of your recommendations would be moot, making your final report … safe. Irrelevant. Some might even dismiss it as predictable and inconsequential, an offering of window dressing from a commission that had so boldly promised true accountability. Now, if I were in your position—”

“You’re not.”

“I would focus my report on some other recommendation beyond rubber-stamping the replacement of the soon-to-depart administrative director.”

Lyon sized up Humphrey, and began to see that the bureaucrat had a point.

“We’re also recommending the creation of that DWI position,” Lyon said. “Stupid acronym.”

“Ah, the director of weed intelligence, now
that
is a groundbreaking reform proposal!” Humphrey replied, offering an approving nod.

“I’m so glad you approve, considering that it was your proposal.”

“Indeed, and it represents a fundamental, structural transformation of the management of the agency,” Humphrey said, realizing he had accidentally slipped into his Gingrichian buzzwords from the 1990s. “If nothing else, under a new system with one person with a clearly defined responsibility to prevent problems like this one, you know precisely who to turn to if, heaven forbid, this ever happens again.”

“Well, when you describe the DWI as a professional on-staff scapegoat, I can’t wait.” Lyon’s sarcasm probably qualified as a weapon of mass destruction. “Explain to me again why we shouldn’t call for your ass to be canned immediately.”

“Because, if you do, there will be great pressure to get me out as quickly as possible,” Humphrey explained matter-of-factly. “When a crisis occurs, there’s always a call to have heads roll. Many wanted George Tenet fired on September 12. Could you imagine the mood within the CIA if, at the precise moment they’re called to scour the earth for the world’s most wanted men, the boss was summarily fired and everyone else within the organization feared for their jobs? What did we want them focused upon, the task at hand or covering their rears?”

“The cheatgrass crisis has long since passed,” Lyon said.

“But you and I know that in Washington, another crisis is never far away,” Humphrey said. “I am an old man, with retirement in sight even before this mess began. Yes, new leadership is necessary—but don’t exacerbate the problems at my agency by throwing in some new administrative director who has to learn on the job.”

Lyon gradually nodded.

Humphrey broke the news to Wilkins in his office.

“You told them you’re leaving?” gasped Wilkins. “I mean, I knew this would come someday, but—”

“I said I would leave, but I made no promises on when. The transition is in progress. In some ways, the transition began the day you walked through the door to work with me.”

“That was 1979, Adam.”

“Some transitions are longer than others,” he shrugged. “I’ll leave … in the next year or so.”

Wilkins smirked. “Or so.”

“I’ve done almost everything I wanted to do here,” Humphrey said with a satisfied sigh. “With one exception. When I hand the baton to you, I want to do it in the new building.”

The two men met later that night at the bar at the Willard InterContinental hotel.

“To an illustrious career,” Wilkins raised his glass of scotch.

“I’m not gone yet,” Humphrey said with a smirk, drinking.

“I’m not even sure that you needed to announce your resignation-date-to-be-named-later maneuver,” Wilkins said. “I checked the legislation establishing the commission and found Congress gave it no statutory authority.”

“Of course not, that would mean Congress would be giving up some of its power,” Humphrey scoffed. “The 9/11 Commission, the Katrina Commission, the Iraq Study Group, the various Social Security and entitlement reform panels, every endlessly touted ‘blue ribbon commission’—they’re there to tell Congress what it ought to do, but not to enact the recommendations themselves.”

“Still, you don’t really have to go,” Wilkins said, feeling like
he could enjoy his imminent accession to Humphrey’s job once he had given his boss every opportunity to resist the exit. “Lyon can call for you to be fired until he’s blue in the face, but—”

“Reassuring to know my protégé does his legal homework,” Humphrey smiled. “I briefly contemplated that path, but why create the headlines of an unnecessary fight to stay on for another year or two? Within forty-eight hours, my name will be out of the headlines, and our illustrious agency will revert to its traditional level of attention, which is to say, none.”

“A shame you had to be the scapegoat, Adam,” Wilkins said.

“It does seem rather un-American,” Humphrey sighed. “When it was discovered that corporations were being given millions of dollars in subsidies to ‘promote exports’—run advertising overseas—was anyone put in the public stocks? Pelted with rotten fruit? Was anyone punished when the 1981 federal budget was so hastily and chaotically assembled that the phone number of a staffer that was scribbled on a margin ended up being printed in the final legislation?”

“I never heard that story,” Wilkins giggled.

“255-4833,” Humphrey replied. “I just wished it had been a few pages later, we could have used another two and a half million in our funding.”

“I’ll bet with inflation, today it would be $8,675,309!” laughed Wilkins, but Humphrey didn’t get the joke. “You see, it’s a phone number. In a song. It goes
8-6-7-5
—oh, you know, forget it.”

“When all of those dedicated citizen-legislators from the 1994 landslide changed their minds on term limits, did anyone complain? Did their constituents rise up in outrage?”

“My new house isn’t worth what I paid for it a few years ago!” Wilkins exclaimed. “Anybody losing their jobs over that?”

“No WMDs in Iraq! We’re still in Afghanistan! New Orleans is a mess!” Humphrey continued. “Disasters all around! Why
does our disaster require heads to roll when so many others continue unabated?”

“Every Middle East envoy is told to go to make peace out there, and they come back empty-handed! CEOs get golden parachutes, actors and directors turn out dreck, the press gets things wrong all the time, nothing works the way it’s supposed to, and that’s the way it’s always been!” shouted an inebriated Wilkins.

“Unaccountability!” the now-tipsy Humphrey roared. “It’s the American way!”

OCTOBER 2008

U.S. National Debt: $10.5 trillion

“You’re going to lose,” Nick Bader’s campaign manager said quietly.

“This is the kind of can-do spirit I’ve come to expect from the most expensive consultants money can buy,” Bader responded dryly.

The two sat alone in the district campaign headquarters. It was late, and most of the staffers had gone home.

“We’ve run the numbers every which way,” the manager said with a heavy sigh. “Obama is going to steamroll McCain in your district. The brand is absolutely toxic. People aren’t sure exactly why Wall Street is crashing and why all of the financial news keeps depicting a future that looks like
Mad Max
, but they’re fairly certain all of this is your fault.”

“I can’t believe it,” Bader said, looking at a television that featured one attack ad after another during the commercial breaks. One from Obama ended, followed by one from Bader’s Democratic rival, depicting Bader morphing into Ebenezer Scrooge.

“How can our messaging be this weak?” exclaimed Bader. “What about the ads that are supposed to hammer him on raising income taxes, raising the inheritance tax, or—?”

“A big chunk of the voters in this district don’t pay any income tax,” the campaign manager shrugged. “They don’t have much to inherit, or much to leave their kids after the market tanked. All of your talk on taxes seems very alien to them, very far from what’s worrying them right now.”

Bader watched the caricature of himself as a Dickensian miser get picked up by a small crowd of people and get tossed off a cliff. Bader’s smooth-talking rival appeared, in a crisp blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Bader was fairly certain he had made a similar ad back when he first ran in 1994.

“For too long, men like Nick Bader have kept our public finances in a straitjacket, leaving core needs dangerously unfunded,” the rival said. “For decades, a dangerous, right-wing, antigovernment ideology has run roughshod over Washington, cutting spending to the bone and leaving millions of Americans hurting. For far too long, we’ve let them argue that government can and should do less. But we know, in our hearts, and in our souls, government can and must do more.”