Charles Wheelan - The Rationing

The New Republicans and the centrist Democrats offered more nuanced remarks, criticizing the administration but also calling for revisions to America’s system for procuring essential drugs. The senior Senator from New Jersey, a New Republican known as one of the wonkier members of the Senate, [21] He had been a tenured member of the Princeton Economics Department before winning his Senate seat. At the time, he was one of only two members of Congress with a Ph.D. had introduced a bill several months earlier to update the patent system and provide safeguards when government drug production was outsourced to private firms. The bill attracted only one cosponsor and never got a committee hearing. The Outbreak obviously breathed life into his proposed reforms—but just a little. Only four reporters showed up for a briefing he offered to explain the picayune details of his proposed overhaul. (The summary of his bill ran to eight pages, single-spaced, with five additional appendices.) Three of the reporters literally ran out of the conference room when word spread that the House Speaker was imploding elsewhere in the Capitol.

The frenetic partisanship came to a temporary halt shortly before two p.m. Eastern Time, as the Chinese Ambassador prepared to give his statement. The major American media outlets (and others around the world) covered the news conference live, giving the Beijing leadership exactly what it had hoped for: an opportunity to speak directly to the American public, without interference from America’s politicians or diplomats. They would quickly learn that live news conferences in democratic countries carry risks, as well as benefits.

The President was working the phones on board Air Force One when the Chief of Staff walked into his office. “There’s one more thing,” she said after he hung up with the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

“You know how much I hate that phrase,” he said. “What?”

“Cecelia Dodds,” the Chief of Staff answered.

“Oh, for God’s sakes, what does she want? I already gave her the Medal of Freedom.”

“It’s more what she doesn’t want,” the Chief of Staff said.

“Look, I don’t have time for puzzles—” He stopped as it dawned on him what Cecelia Dodds did not want. “She’s sick,” he said, “and she’s refusing Dormigen.”

The Chief of Staff nodded yes. “She’s in a Seattle hospital.”

“ Capellaviridae ?” the President asked.

“I don’t think so,” the Chief of Staff said. “It’s a respiratory infection of some sort. Doesn’t matter: she’s refusing Dormigen that could be used to save another life.”

“ But we haven’t run out ,” the President insisted.

“We might,” the Chief of Staff replied. “And if we do, she wants there to be one more dose for someone else.”

“For real?”

“Have you forgotten the hunger strike?” the Chief of Staff asked. Cecelia Dodds had refused food to force the Senate to ratify an international agreement on climate change. The group of senators holding up the treaty vowed they would not buckle in the face of “the bullying tactics of a washed-up hippie.” After seventeen days, during which global opprobrium rained down on them while Cecelia Dodds consumed only water with drops of lemon juice, that is exactly what they did.

“How old is she?” the President asked.

“Seventy-one.”

He sighed. “I ran for office to make things better. I really did. And now I’m going to be the one who kills Cecelia Dodds.” After a moment: “We can’t convince her…” His voice trailed off because he knew the answer.

Cecelia Dodds did not compromise her principles. She had emerged in the post-Trump era as the nation’s most effective voice for social change, someone with a unique ability to bring people together while simultaneously pushing them forward. She was a tiny, innocuous-looking woman with short gray hair. If you were to see her in a bus station—which you might, because she did not own a car—you would instinctively assume she was visiting grandchildren and needed help finding the right departure gate. Oh, so many people had underestimated her. Like the CEO of Ringlen Electronics, who made the mistake of appearing with her on a PBS news program after she announced an environmental boycott of their air-conditioning units. “I just don’t understand, why can’t you invest a few extra dollars per unit to minimize their climate impact?” she asked. That was part of her effectiveness—a rhetorical style that bordered on naïve. She did not yell; she did not level accusations. She buried people with her humility.

“A few dollars per unit adds up very quickly,” the CEO explained.

“I have never thought of it that way,” she said.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” the CEO said patronizingly.

“I suppose by the same logic,” Cecelia Dodds said, “for just a few extra dollars per unit, consumers can buy a competitor’s product that is much better for the environment.”

“That’s not how I look at it,” the CEO replied quickly.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” she offered.

The exchange was legendary, and also representative of her insistence on the difference between making noise and making a difference. Ringlen stock was down 11 percent before the CEO left the studio. He was fired the following Monday. By Wednesday the company had announced plans for a new line of environmentally friendly air conditioners. And the next week—this was typical, too—she invited the fired CEO to lunch to have a discussion of why she felt so passionate about environmental issues. It wasn’t personal . The two of them later developed a close personal friendship; the CEO (his views on climate change having evolved) served on one of her nonprofit boards. College campuses were awash with merchandise bearing Cecelia Dodds’s hortatory motto: love, share, include, & improve.

When Dodds traveled to Washington, D.C., for the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, she took an Amtrak train from Seattle and then rode to the White House on one of D.C.’s shared bicycles. The President described her that evening as someone who “leads by example like Mahatma Gandhi; forces change like Nelson Mandela; and holds us to account against our own values like Martin Luther King.” Now she was in a Seattle hospital in serious condition suffering from an infection that could be treated successfully with a single dose of Dormigen—a dose that she would not accept.

THE STRATEGIST HAD ARRANGED FOR SEVERAL FOCUS GROUPS to watch the Chinese Ambassador’s statement. [22] There had not been sufficient time to do this before the President’s earlier address to the nation. He was able to convene reasonably diverse groups in five cities across the country. He predicted, correctly it would turn out, that public reaction to the Ambassador’s talk would be extremely important in shaping the President’s response. Each of the focus group participants would have a dial during the talk that he or she could turn to register approval or disapproval throughout the speech. Zero represented the strongest possible negative reaction; one hundred was the most positive response. The data were collected and averaged in real time, so the Strategist would have instantaneous feedback to everything the Ambassador said, from beginning to end.

The Chinese Ambassador spoke from behind a large wooden desk at the Chinese Embassy in Washington. He was a middle-aged man in a nondescript gray suit and blue tie. He looked like an avuncular, undistinguished Chinese guy who could be a high school chemistry teacher or the father of your college roommate. He stared intently into the camera and began, “Good afternoon, people of the United States of America.”