I smiled. Like any artist, I viewed past hits with some amount of embarrassment.
“Keep an open mind about this one,” I said, and I liked the expression he gave me: reassurance, confidence, with a skewed smile that seemed to acknowledge what a grand, fine joke this all was. As if he knew the only people who actually believed in the power of public relations and advertising were the troubled boardrooms that thought it could save their skin. One had to play into the myth of the fixer. The puppeteer. Merlin.
Yeats began the meeting by introducing our team, his fingers twiddling; Beth McClann then took center stage, sucking the presentation into the vortex of her rigid bearing. She sat in every chair with her legs crossed, hands clasped, hair wound into a bun so tight it straightened her posture.
“Though what we will outline for you is an all-of-the-above strategy,” said Beth, “we want to highlight the ‘persuadable special public’ or the ‘persuadable middle.’ Now that the House has passed legislation, the persuadable middle has crossed the Rubicon, and you and your clients cannot waste another day. This is happening. And while your lobbyists will attempt to introduce every rider and poison pill on the menu, what you need more than anything is an open revolt of public opinion. Without further ado…”
Gruber activated the 3D projector, and it cast the image of a hipster hoverboarding into a glass door, coffee splattering across his shirt as he sprawled onto his butt. Genuine laughter. This corporate meme of starting high-pressure meetings with a gag projection had gotten a little rote for my taste, but the room liked it.
I smiled at the clients, looking each of them in the eye. Through the windows, the evening light was burning away. New York’s cityscape lay beyond, winking to life.
“There’s bad news,” I said. “There’s more bad news. And finally, there’s desperate news—where should I begin?”
Mild laughter. The Asian woman, Emii, didn’t so much as smirk, and I suspected she might be a secret fulcrum of power within the client.
“Your organization sees what’s coming. Perhaps at some point you harbored fantasies that a Randall administration wouldn’t pursue legislation to restrict greenhouse emissions. When A Fierce Blue Fire and the Clean Energy Labor Coalition remained neutral during the early stages of the election that should have raised a red flag. When FBF endorsed Randall at the last second, well, they bet on her, and they bet on transformative policy. Let’s just say there are now quite a few members of Congress who are risking their careers if they vote against this legislation. Furthering the bad news, what you’ll be facing will not be a reasonable cap-and-trade scheme, but a law that could be further-reaching and more invasive than anything American business has seen since the New Deal. In other words, you’re right to be worried.”
Wimpel rested his chin in the ninety-degree angle of his thumb and index finger. The glowing projector cycled through images of pipeline protestors and oil-soaked birds. A man with dreadlocks and a septum piercing marched across the table pumping his fist.
“Your coal, oil, and gas members have long been suffering from deep reputational crises. They’re the supervillains of public opinion, and others, such as the utilities and agricultural producers, are feeling the heat as well. Make no mistake, we cannot misdiagnose this as a ‘communications problem.’ This threat is structural, and we cannot do much to change that structure. Oil companies profit from selling oil. And now their conventionally weaker adversaries suddenly have enhanced influence. Ben.”
Gruber tapped for the next hologram. The room faced the miniaturized image of an earthy woman standing on the boardroom table, arms crossed, blue flames burning behind her.
“Morris and FBF are the culmination of a long trend in which credible, law-abiding institutions have become vulnerable to an agenda-driven, organic disruption. Morris has become such a force so quickly, she almost counts as a conventional power herself now. Her ruthless attacks on your members, her tactical acumen politically, her attractiveness as a spokesperson and cultural figure—all this has shifted the political economy. Coupled with the surprisingly effective advocacy of the CELC”—the image switched to Tracy Aamanzaihou in all her frumpy, jowly glory, forming a picket line with other workers—“not to mention a series of weather-related disasters that can be easily scapegoated…” Images of people scrambling out of the ruins of Hurricane Alberto, of homes burned to the ground in California, of a flood ripping buildings from their foundations and carrying them downriver. The 3D projector fritzed on the image of a weeping Black woman standing waist-deep in water, trying to lift her child to a man in a helicopter. Finally, scenes from the massive Thanksgiving dust storm of 2028 rolling east, blanketing cities, in this case Pittsburgh and fans looking up in Acrisure Stadium as the football team exited the stadium under a red-brown blizzard. “Suddenly what seemed impossible just a few years ago now seems likely.”
Duncan-Michaels, the oil tycoon with a stye on the ridge of his eyelid, took a sip of bottled water, and some of it dribbled onto his chin and then his tie. Gruber’s eyes were sleepy slits that never blinked. He looked bored and Gen Z, which was what I’d wanted.
“The response from industry has been familiar, straight from the playbook: Use backdoor groups to continue casting doubt on the science, question the cost of taking action, debate the motives of those demanding action while facing outward with a pro-environmental agenda. The disutility of denialism was revealed by Russ Mackowski’s presidential bid. The conversation has changed, and you must change with it.”
Yeats coughed.
“Never once has climate been a first-tier campaign issue. Yet in the past election it sometimes felt as if it was the only thing anyone was talking about. Impassioning hard-core resistance will be a given, but it’s that persuadable middle this campaign must rally. We’ve spent two months analyzing strategies in four test markets: Chattanooga, Champaign-Urbana, Flagstaff, and Columbus. I’ll tell you what we found: People like Kate Morris. They like her message, her optimism, her spirit, her bluntness. Most of all, they like that this attractive young wildwoman worked to help elect a moderate Republican administration that seems to want to do something about this issue. Where does that leave us? I’m sure some of our competitors have told you that you need to reposition this choice as being about freedom. Keep the heavy hand of government away from my SUV, et cetera. Well, my father had this expression: ‘Kid, that dog won’t hunt.’ ”