“Are you fucking kidding me?” the Communications Director exclaimed. “That looks like the President of the United States is on a Hawaiian vacation.” The producer clicked on his console, bringing up a new digital background: dark wood bookshelves, lined with serious-looking books, like a cozy academic office.
“Maybe that?” the producer offered.
“What are the books?” the Communications Director asked.
“Pardon?”
“The books. What are the titles of the books?”
“They’re not real. They’re just digital images.”
The Communications Director spluttered, “I understand that. I am not an idiot. But they still have titles, fake or not. Make it bigger, so I can read them.” The producer enlarged the image, so that the fake titles on fake bookshelves became readable. After a few seconds, the Communications Director muttered, “No… no… no. Clausewitz? Counterinsurgency. They’re all military books.”
“That is what we do here,” the producer said, finally pushing back. “It’s a military base.”
“This looks like the President is getting ready to invade some small country.”
“I can blur the titles so they’re not readable. It might look a little strange—”
“It will take five minutes before some douchebag living in his mother’s basement unblurs them, and that will become the story. What else do you have?” The two of them finally agreed on a simple background with the presidential seal and an American flag, after which the Communications Director asked who would load the remarks into the teleprompter.
“We don’t have a teleprompter,” the producer said.
“Jesus. Does the President know that?”
“I don’t speak to the President.”
Of course, there were no remarks to be loaded into a teleprompter at that point anyway. The President, true to his word, had begun drafting a short speech, longhand on a legal pad. When the Communications Director called the President from the studio control room to tell him there would be no teleprompter, the President read him his draft remarks over the phone. It was a short, simple speech that again emphasized the three key points we were trying to make: no terrorism attack; the virus does not spread; the Dormigen shortage is manageable.
“It’s good, but don’t say ‘terrorism,’” the Communications Director said.
“How the hell am I supposed to deny that there has been a terrorist attack without using the word?”
“You can’t say terrorism. It gives credibility to the rumor,” the Communications Director explained. The two men knew each other well enough that the President waited for the Communications Director to propose alternative language, which he did. “Just say that this is a common virus that has always been endemic to the United States. No hostile parties, foreign or domestic, have played a role in this public health challenge.”
“Isn’t that denying that it’s terrorism?” the President asked.
“Yeah, but you can’t use the word. You can’t say ‘terrorism.’”
At about that moment, the Chief of Staff, who had been talking on her own phone, handed the President a note. “Holy shit,” he said to the Chief of Staff, but loud enough that the Communications Director could hear.
“What?” the Communications Director asked.
“I’ll call you back,” the President said, hanging up.
The Chief of Staff’s note was short but powerfuclass="underline" “Our model now shows lower bound on deaths at 10,000.” The NIH Director had called with the first really good news of the crisis: Nations around the world, recognizing the severity of what was happening in the U.S., were willing to dig deeper into their own Dormigen supplies. She had spoken personally to senior government leaders in Australia and other signatory nations of the South China Sea Agreement to inform them of the China dilemma. If these governments wanted to protect the agreement, she told them, they needed to help render the China Dormigen offer unnecessary. Hence the note that the Chief of Staff slid to the President: With the new Dormigen pledges, the NIH model was showing a range of “excess Dormigen-preventable deaths” from ten thousand to sixty-five thousand, depending on six or seven key variables in the model (e.g., the severity of any other disease outbreaks in the coming days).
The President and his advisers were obviously focused on the lower end of that range. It was tantalizingly close to zero, as the President grasped immediately. If somehow that lower bound were to go to zero—with more Dormigen pledges or more optimistic forecasts for other variables in the model (e.g., less flu)—the President could credibly tell the nation that the situation was under control. “We have to get that to zero,” the President said.
“We’re working the phones,” the Chief of Staff said.
“I mean now. Before I give my address.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” the Chief of Staff assured him.
“It’s got to go to zero,” the President repeated. “Get the NIH on the phone and tell them the lower bound needs to get to zero.”
The Chief of Staff said, “They can’t just change the model.”
“Look, I spent five years as a consultant building these kinds of models. If you change a few assumptions, you can get the earth to spin backwards.”
The Strategist added, “It’s true. They don’t have to do anything dishonest. Just tell them to ‘reexamine the assumptions’ to see if anything may have changed. Just a fresh look.”
“We only have twenty minutes before you go on air,” the Chief of Staff replied.
“Push it back, if we have to,” the President said firmly. “I want to be able to tell the American people that we can manage this situation without any incremental deaths.”
“It’s still just the lower bound,” the Strategist pointed out.
“I understand that,” the President said. “Just make zero a possibility.”
“I will ask them to do what they can,” the Chief of Staff said, stepping out of the conference room to make the call.
They all recognized, of course, that the President would be addressing not just the American people, but also the international community, and the Chinese leadership in particular. The less desperate he appeared to Beijing, the better. While the Chief of Staff spoke with the NIH about “taking a fresh look” at their model, the President asked to be connected with both the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House. Congress was in recess, but both chambers had called emergency sessions; representatives and senators were rushing back to the Capitol to deal with the Outbreak, or at least give that impression. In a matter of minutes the President was on speakerphone with the two legislative leaders.
“You had to know this moment was coming,” the Speaker said after some terse pleasantries. “You couldn’t keep something like this from the public forever.”
“Now we need to manage the situation,” the President replied. He described his proposed remarks. “I need you both to assure me that Congress is going to be a constructive partner as we work through this.”
The Senate Majority Leader said, “The Senate is going to be like a teakettle—lots of steam getting blown off. I will do everything in my power to steer that emotion in a constructive direction. You have my complete support.” As an amateur historian and a powerful senator who knew he would never reach the White House, the Senate Majority Leader was anticipating his shining moment. If he could help steer the Senate, and therefore the nation, through this crisis, history would be kind to him. He was a man vain enough to aspire to have parks, streets, and schools named after him, but honorable enough to feel he ought to deserve it. He continued, “Send me your draft remarks and I will issue a supportive statement. The Senate is going to be mayhem for a few hours. We’re going to have to let that run its course, but we’ll eventually get down to business.”