“Easy,” the President warned.
The Strategist said, “If I may state the obvious, passing out Dormigen using any kind of educational credentialing as a criterion is going to have a huge adverse impact on every minority population in this country. The same is true if we exclude felons. Your ‘bunker’ is going to be full of old white guys.”
“They can’t be over sixty-five,” the Acting Secretary interjected with flawless timing. There were uncomfortable smiles around the table.
“We are not excluding anyone from receiving Dormigen based on race, sex, or ethnicity,” the Defense Secretary said firmly. “I’m proposing a criterion based strictly on educational attainment. That’s entirely defensible. The racial implications are what they are.”
“You don’t think it would be a problem if our stocks of Dormigen went disproportionately to white middle-class Americans? Or is that the point?” the Speaker asked.
“That’s out of line,” the Defense Secretary said.
“I agree,” said the President.
The Strategist interjected, “There are a fair number of people, especially minorities, who don’t attend college, or don’t graduate, because they can’t afford it. Obviously we would be compounding that disadvantage.”
“I agree,” the President said.
“On the other hand,” the Strategist continued, “the Swedes and the Canadians, and I think some of the other Nordic countries, have built their entire immigration strategy around this idea of giving preference to the most desirable. You get points for having an advanced degree, points for having a job, points for speaking the language. You literally add up the points to see if you qualify for a visa.” This was one thing the Strategist was famous for: holding elaborate arguments with himself.
“That’s different,” the Chief of Staff said, almost reflexively.
“Is it?” the Strategist asked. “I’ll be honest, I’m still agnostic on all this. But those are some pretty enlightened societies. They have a finite allotment of visas, and they have no problem giving preferential treatment to those most likely to succeed.”
“If you define success strictly in economic terms,” the Chief of Staff said.
The Strategist replied, “It’s not like high school dropouts are knocking it out of the park in other respects.”
“And you die if you don’t have enough points?” the House Speaker asked.
The Strategist shrugged. “I’m just saying: It’s not crazy to give advantage to the most productive citizens. We’re trying to put people in lifeboats here and we don’t have enough seats.”
“Perhaps we should set the education question aside for a minute,” the Acting Secretary said. The eyes around the table turned back to his whiteboard, which still had only two criteria on it, age and felony status.
“Dropping out of high school is different,” the Senate Majority Leader said. “That’s a personal decision, and it tends to have a high cost for all of us.”
The Chief of Staff stared thoughtfully at the whiteboard. “I just need to say that I’m uncomfortable with this ‘bunker’ idea that we’ve implicitly adopted. I’m not sure it’s our job to pass out a lifesaving medicine based on merit.”
“You can choose whatever metaphor you like,” the Defense Secretary said. “We’ve just got to pass out a finite amount of Dormigen.”
The Chief of Staff said, “We don’t administer any other kind of health care that way. That’s not how an emergency room works. If there has been a shoot-out, and a police officer and a gangbanger get brought into the ER at the same time, nobody asks who is who.”
The Strategist said, “It’s usually pretty easy to tell.”
“Come on, you get my point,” the Chief of Staff insisted. “With triage, we always ask who needs care most urgently, not who deserves it most. The drunk driver gets care, right next to the family he crashed into.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” the Senate Majority Leader said. “Most of my constituents would say that we ought to leave the drunk driver lying on the table until everybody with even the smallest scratch has been treated.”
“Hold on,” the House Speaker said. “When did high school dropouts become drunk drivers?”
The Senate Majority Leader replied, “I’m just saying that I don’t necessarily have a problem using merit as a criterion here.”
The President leaned forward in his seat and tapped his pen several times on the table. He did it unconsciously—the pen-tapping—but the rest of us had learned, perhaps unconsciously as well, that he did it right before he was about to speak. “This situation is different than an emergency room,” the President said. “The thing about an ER is that you don’t have time, and some people are always in worse shape than others. So it makes sense to use scarce resources wherever they are likely to do the most good. We have some time—not enough, but we can make a plan here that prioritizes who gets care, if we so choose.”
The Acting Secretary pointed at the whiteboard with the marker. “What about disabilities?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” the House Speaker asked.
“Should that disqualify someone from getting the Dormigen, or make them lower priority?” the Acting Secretary asked, his voice perfectly steady, so as not to offer any opinion one way or the other.
“What kind of disabilities are we talking about?” the Senate Majority Leader asked.
“We’re not talking about anything yet,” the Acting Secretary said, “but I guess I would start with profound physical or mental illness.”
The House Speaker exclaimed, “That’s repugnant. It’s like Nazi Germany.” Someone entering the room might mistake the Acting Secretary for a staffer, the designated scribe for the group. Yet he had deftly steered the discussion in the direction he had hoped it would go. The group was marching steadily along the branch to where the stick bug had disguised itself, waiting silently.
The Strategist said, “Well, letting a healthy sixty-seven-year-old die is no picnic. The bottom line here is that we don’t have enough Dormigen—”
“We might not have enough Dormigen,” the President interjected. “This is all hypothetical.”
“It’s making me sick,” the House Speaker said. “We should agree to the China deal right now. This is horrible, horrible—and unnecessary.”
The Chief of Staff said calmly, “We need to have this discussion in order to frame our options.”
“Let me just add one thing.” At first I could not tell where the voice was coming from—not from the table. The White House Legal Counsel had been sitting against the wall, behind the President. This was the first time he had spoken, other than private conversations with the President and the Chief of Staff. He was slim, with a neatly trimmed gray beard, almost overly neat, like an affectation. He had been an appellate lawyer with a long and distinguished record of arguing cases in front of the Supreme Court before the President asked him to join his staff. I had a vague recollection that they knew each other from law school, or perhaps college. Those of us around the table turned toward the voice; the President had to turn his chair around. The White House Counsel continued, “I do not believe any plan that excludes felons would pass constitutional muster.”
“Oh, Christ,” the Senate Majority Leader exclaimed.
The President nodded, acknowledging the possibility. “Okay, walk us through that,” he said.
All eyes went back to the White House Counsel, who paused for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. “Denying felons Dormigen, or ex-felons, would be perceived—correctly, to my mind—as part of their sentence,” he explained. “You have been sentenced to two years for assault, for example, and now, in addition to that prison time, we are making you ineligible to receive a lifesaving drug. In the eyes of any federal judge, liberal or conservative, that amounts to changing the sentence for a crime after the fact. That would be constitutionally prohibited, for violating due process and probably for creating a law ex post facto.”