Dorfman continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I’ve suggested to the President that he ask for your resignation. In my opinion you are not loyal to this administration. You don’t seem to appreciate the political realities that the President has to face every day, for every decision. With you every decision is black or white.”
“Frankly, Dorfman, I really don’t give a damn about your opinion. Are you informing me officially that the President wants my resignation?”
The chief of staff took his time answering. He played with a pen on the table, scrutinized a coffee cup, examined the framed photograph of his family that sat on his desk. “No,” he said when he had squeezed all the juice from the moment that it could conceivably yield, “I’m not. I’m just letting you know where you stand.”
“Thanks.” The disgust Cohen felt showed on his face. Dorfman’s petty grandstanding was so typical of the man.
Dorfman and Cohen went into the Oval Office as a Boy Scout troop came out. The official photographer was still there, snapping pictures of the President behind his desk. This morning, Cohen thought, George Bush looked more harried than usual. He obviously was not paying much attention to the photographer’s directions.
“Come on over here, Gid. Let’s get some of the two of us.”
When the photo session was over, the photographer closed the door behind him on the way out. Dorfman flopped the morning paper on Bush’s desk.
“Where did Mergenthaler get this information?” the President asked curtly.
“I don’t know.”
“This administration has more leaks than an antique rowboat. Anybody who’s caught chopping any more holes in the bottom without the permission of a cabinet officer is to be fired on the spot.”
“If we catch anyone.”
Bush nodded, his mind already on something else. In the age of telephones leaks were an inevitable fact of government life, although that didn’t make them any easier to swallow. Still, the Bush White House had been remarkably tight under Dorfman’s iron hand.
“When’s the Mexican ambassador coming over?” the President asked his chief of staff.
“Two-thirty.”
“What should I tell him about this indictment?” he asked Cohen. “And this bounty business?”
“That we have good solid evidence against these nineteen individuals. Tell him we want Mexico to sign an extradition treaty.”
Dorfman exploded. “They will never—”
Bush chopped him off. “Mergenthaler says the DEA wants to kidnap a couple of these men and bring them here for trial.”
“That’s accurate. The whole column is accurate. The way the DEA presented it to me, they want to escort one or two of these men into United States territory and arrest them here.”
President Bush picked up the paper and let it fall to the desk. He pushed his chair back and sat staring at Gideon Cohen. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, and that’s final. The Mexicans owe us 50 billion dollars.” He repeated the figure sourly. “Nine years into the longest economic expansion in American history and we’re in debt to our eyes. Trillions of dollars in federal debt, savings-and-loan fraud, farm credit disasters, credit card debt at an all-time high, the junk bond market ready to implode, and the Third World tottering on the brink of bankruptcy — no, no, they’re beyond that — they went beyond the brink years ago and are dancing as fast as they can on thin air. They’re paying the interest on old loans with the proceeds from new loans, in exactly the same way that the federal government finances the federal deficit. The same kind of funny-money shenanigans that sank the American S-and-L industry. It’s fraud. Outright, government-approved fraud. And now, on top of everything, the Soviet Union wants foreign aid. I feel like a poor man with twelve sick kids and one aspirin.”
“How do we know Mexico would default?”
“That is precisely what they would do. Try to imagine the howl that would go up if agents for the Mexican government kidnapped a few prominent citizens here in the United States and dragged them off to Mexico City for trial. Half of Texas would grab the ol’ thirty-thirties and head for Nuevo Laredo to teach the chili peppers some manners.”
Dorfman added, “I can name a dozen senators who would demand a declaration of war.”
“We’ll never get the money back regardless,” the attorney general pointed out with impeccable logic.
“I’m not going to argue, Gid.” This said, the President continued anyway: “Right now foreign investors are financing about thirty percent of the federal deficit by buying Treasury bonds. If Mexico defaults on its foreign debt, the rest of Latin America probably will too. The American banking system will then collapse unless the federal government bails it out, which it will be forced to do since all deposits are insured by the government up to a hundred thousand dollars. The only way to bail out the banks will be with more bonds, and to sell more bonds interest rates must rise. This will only work for a short period, then the government must raise taxes, which will suck even more money from consumers’ pockets. The net effect of all this will be to send the economy of the United States — and the rest of the world — into a deep recession, further decreasing the nation’s ability to service existing debt. Get the picture?”
“And if the Fed lowers interest rates drastically to save the economy, the Japanese and Europeans will stop buying bonds.”
“You got it.”
Cohen ran his fingers through what was left of his hair. He was reminded of a remark by a Soviet politician: “The Soviet Union is on the edge of the abyss.” Here in the Oval Office he was hearing a different version of the same thing. Only this time it was the United States. Gideon Cohen shivered involuntarily.
“We’d have to devalue the dollar,” Cohen said slowly.
George Bush flipped his hand in acknowledgment.
“So why not devalue right now and go after these dope smugglers who are murdering us with slow poison?”
A sneer crossed Dorfman’s face as the President rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Get serious,” Dorfman muttered.
The President said, “Congress would never approve it. If I even publicly suggested devaluing the currency, you wouldn’t see another Republican in this office in your lifetime. For God’s sake, Gid, I didn’t run for this job just so I could become the most hated man in America. I’m supposed to be doing what the people want. That’s what I’m trying to do. Surely you see that?”
“Mr. President, your good faith has never been in question. Not with me, at least. My point is that the American people want an effective solution to this dope business. A lot of past and present Mexican government officials — including cops, especially cops — are in it up to their eyes. We’re not talking about just looking the other way while a load of marijuana goes by — we’re talking about the torture and murder of U.S. law-enforcement officers by Mexican police officials. The voters in this country want it stopped!”
“The voters have got long shopping lists, and they elect congressmen to get the goods for them. They elected me to mind the store. The American people aren’t stupid: they know that government can’t be all things to all people. I’m supposed to do what’s in the best interests of the United States as a nation, as an ongoing concern. And I will!”
“Mr. President, I’m saying that drugs are our number-one domestic problem. Mexico is a large part of that problem. We can’t ignore that simple, fundamental fact.”
“Mexico, land of la mordida, the bite,” Bush said, the fatigue evident in his voice. “Everybody who’s ever been there has had to bribe some petty functionary or other. Five bucks here, a ten-spot there. And no doubt big bribes are taken for big favors. I recall one time when Barbara and I—”