GENTLE [substantially muffled by both Fukoama microfiltration mask and oxygenated Lucite portabubble]: Boys.
ALL SECS EXCEPT SEC. MEX. & SEC. CAN. [the Cabinet’s Motown-girl puppets, decked out for climactic camp, are all in wicked three-piecers with slicked-back-straight hair and enormous robber-baron steer-horn mustaches, which mustaches could be straighter but are on the whole pretty impressive mustaches, for female puppets]: Chief.
SEC. DEF.: So then how was the big game, Mr. President?
GENTLE: Ouster, boys: seminal, visionary. An outstanding experience. I now say things like outstanding instead of boss. But also seminal. Ollie, men, I saw something outstandingly visional and seminary yesterday. I do not refer to the football game. I normally don’t much get into football. All that grunting. Mud everywhere. Not my scene ordinarily. The most diverting single thing of the game was one of the two teams’ punters. This one slim cat with an outsized leg and slightly less outsized arm. Never saw punts I could hear before. Whoom. Blam. I ate an entire wiener stem to stern while one punt was in the air. People stood around conferring and making a racket and going to the restroom and coming back and eating concessions, all while this one cat’s punts were still in the air. What was that cat’s name again, R.T.?
SEC. INT.: May I respectfully ask whether this is to be a lunch meeting, Mr. President? Is that why these Chinese-calendar-zodiac-Year-of-the-Tiger-and-like-Rat Szechuan-restaurant paper placemats are at all our places next to our water-pitchers? Are we going to get to tuck into some Chinese takeout, Chief?
[Mario’s aural background becomes something with a brisk cornet, and there’s some glove-muffled finger-snapping from J.G.F.C., who’s lapsed into a visionary reverie.]
SEC. TRANSP.: Always been partial to the General Tsu’s Chicken, if we’re —
RODNEY TINE, CHIEF, UNITED STATES OFFICE OF UNSPECIFIED SERVICES: President Gentle’s asked us all here this morning to put our collective expertise together on an issue about which we in Unspecified Services believe he’s been hit with a truly seminal set of creative insights.
GENTLE: Gentlemen, we’re both pleased and concerned to report that our seminal experiment in the Territorial Reconfiguration of O.N.A.N.[177] has been a thoroughgoing logistical coup. More or less. Delaware’s looking a bit crowded, and one or two curvy-horned animals apparently got by the tactical squads, and there’s rather less overall good sportsmanship in downstate New New York than we’d like to see, but overall I think ‘thoroughgoing coup’ would not be out of line as a term to describe this sort of success.
TINE: Now it’s time to think about how to pay for it.
ALL SECS.: [Stiff turns to look at each other, tie- and mustache-straightenings, gulping sounds.]
GENTLE: Rod informs me Marty’s got the preliminary figures on gross costs, while Chef’s boys have provided us with some projections on gross revenue-losses from the Reconfiguration of taxable territories and households and businesses and that there.
SEC. TRANSP. & SEC. TREAS.: [Pass around thick bound folders, each emblazoned with the yawning red skull that emblazons all bad-news memos in the Gentle administration. Folders opened and scanned by ALL SECS. Sounds of jaws hitting the tabletop. A couple mustaches fall off altogether. One SEC. heard to ask whether there’s even a name for a figure with this many zeroes. GENTLE’S portabubble on-screen is hit right over his plastic-wrapped corsage by a half-chewed Raisinette, to half-hearted audience cheers. Another cross-dressed Motown puppet is throwing a tiny string noose over a beam at the back of the velvet-lined Cabinet Room.]
GENTLE: Boys. Men. Before anybody needs oxygen here [holding a placa-tive hand up against the bubble’s glass], let Rod here explain that despite a quantitative downer-type quality to these figures, all we merely have here is just what Rod might call an exaggerated example of a quadrennial problem any administration with vision is going to have to face eventually anyway. By the way, the unfamiliar but welcome face on my left here is Mr. P. Tom Veals, of Veals Associates Advertising, Boston, USA, N.A.
ALL SECS.: [Not terribly placated-sounding mutterings of salutation to Veals.]
MR. P. TOM VEALS [A tiny little caucasoid Tootsie-Pop-stick-puppet body and enormous face that’s mostly front teeth and spectacles]: Yo.
TINE: And to Tom’s own left may I also present the charming and delightful Ms. Luría P-----[indicating with pointer a puppet simply beyond pulchritudinous belief; the Cabinet Room’s conference table seems to ascend ever so slightly as Luria P-----cocks a well-pencilled eyebrow].
STILL TINE: Gentlemen, what the president is articulating is that what we face here is a microsmic exemplar of the infamous Democratic Triple Bind faced by visionarians from FDR and JFK on down. The American electorate, as is its every right, on one hand demands the sort of millennial statesmanship and vision — decisive action, tough choices, lots of programs and services — see for instance the Territorial Reconfiguration for example — that will lead a renewed community into a whole new era of interdependent choice and freedom.
GENTLE: The rhetorical chapeau’s off to you, babe.
TINE [Rising, eyes now two glittery red points in his round face’s felt, the eyes two tiny smoke-detector bulbs run off a single AAA cell taped to the back of the puppet’s surgical gown]: Now, speaking in the very most general terms, if the president’s vision dictates the tough choice of cutting certain programs and services, our statistical people predict with reasonable inductive certainty that the American electorate will whinge.
VEALS: Whinge?
LURIA P-----[TO TINE]: This is a Canadian idiom, cheri.
VEALS: And who is this chick?
TINE [Looking momentarily blank]: Sorry Tom. Canadian idiom. Whinge. Complain. Petition for redress. Assemble. March in those five-abreast demonstrating lines. Shake upraised fists in unison. Whinge [indicating photos on easels behind him of various historical pressure- and advocacy groups whingeing].
SEC. TREAS.: And we already have an all-too-good idea of what will happen if we attempt any sort of conventional revenue enhancements.
SEC. STATE: Tax revolt.
SEC. H.E.W.: A whingeathon, Chief.
SEC. DEF.: Tea-party.
GENTLE: Bullseye. Whingeville. Political whingeocide. A serious drag-caliber lapse in mandate. We’ve already promised no new enhancements. I told them on Inauguration Day. I said look into my eyes: no new enhancements. I pointed at my eyes up there and said that was one tough choice that was not going to rain on anybody’s program. Rod and Tom and I had that three-planked platform-exhibit. One: waste. Two: no new enhancements. Three: find somebody outside the borders of our community selves to blame.
TINE: So then a double bind, so far, with potential whingeing on both flanks.
SEC. TREAS.: And yet the financial communities demand a balanced federal budget. The Reserve Board all but insists on a balanced budget. Our balance of trade with the handful of nations we’re still trading with requires a stable buck and so a balanced budget.
TINE: The third flank, Chet, of the Triple Bind. Outflows required, inflows restricted, balance demanded.
GENTLE: The classic executive-branch Cerberus-horned dilemma. The thorn in the Achilles’ tendon of democratic process. Does anybody here by the way hear a sort of high pitch?
ALL SECS.: [Blank glances at one another.]
VEALS: [Blows nose at high volume.]
GENTLE [Knocking experimentally on interior surfaces of portabubble]: Sometimes I hear a pitch at a high range beyond most people’s hearing, admittedly, but this seems like a different type of high pitch.