Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

As it happened, President Peacham-who from the first moment he went into politics began to be haunted by the homophonic possibilities of his surname-was himself having a similar reverie.

“That’s all, Buck,” he said, leaving Bucky Trumble in the position of being unable to tell the grand jury that the president of the United States had specifically instructed him to commit a crime.

“Sir, I’ll do what needs to be done. But I really don’t think he’ll go for it,” Bucky tried again.

The president leaned back in his chair. “If we win reelection, how many Supreme Court vacancies do we anticipate?”

“Two, minimum. Possibly three.”

“It’s a bit early to have the conversation with him. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the matter at hand. But you know, Fred Killebrew has been a helluva good AG. He’d make a helluva good Supreme Court justice. Don’t you think?”

Mr. Trumble, in that same meeting with the president, did the president instruct you to offer the attorney general an appointment to the Supreme Court in return for-

“Uh…”

“ I do,” the president said brightly. “ I do.”

“I could…relay that to him. Along with-”

“I’m sure you’ll handle it, Bucky. With your usual flair . ”

“Yes, sir.”

“After they throw her cute little ass back in jail, make sure you put it out that the White House is pleased. That we always thought it was a bit hasty to let her walk.”

“Fred’s really not going to like that.”

“Fuck him. He’ll be too busy measuring himself for judicial robes to care.”

It came to her late that night, sometime between two and three in the morning, while she was blogging away on CASSANDRA.

She decided not to post it right away-cognizant that epiphanies time-stamped “2:56 a.m.” tended, in the harsher light of midday, to arouse suspicion.

First thing in the morning, she called a meeting with Randy and Terry for that afternoon. They all met in Randy’s office on the Hill. She’d prepared a quick-and-dirty PowerPoint presentation. She took them through it. They listened in silence.

“So?” she said when she was finished. “What do you think?”

Randy and Terry stared.

“You want me to introduce this?” Randy said. “In the U.S. Senate?” He began to laugh. “Cass, Cass, Cass. I have to hand it to you. You are a piece of work. You really had me, there.”

“I’m totally serious,” Cass said. “I don’t think it’s got a prayer. But as a meta-issue, it would force the debate like nothing else.”

“Meta-issue?” Terry said. “What the fuck is a meta-issue? Is this one of your Ayn Rand deals?”

“It’s got nothing to do with that. Meta means…you know…transcendent. Bigger. Higher. Beyond. Above. Metaphysics. You were the one who told me the media was bored. Well, let’s wake ’em up.”

Terry and Randy exchanged glances. My God, she’s serious.

“Look at these figures.” Cass called up one of her PowerPoint slides. “That’s a one-month-old Gallup poll. Attitudes are shifting. Fewer and fewer people equate longevity with happiness. They’re ready for something like this. And while I realize that it would never in a thousand years fly, there’s evidence to suggest that it’s a debate people are eager to have. Let the government dig in its heels. Fine. Then we say to them, ‘All right, so what’s your solution?’ Two workers to support every retiree? They don’t have a solution. Things are already starting to fall apart and they still don’t have a solution.”

“It’s nuts, Cass.”

“No, it’s bold.”

“Boldly nuts.”

“Since day two at TSC you were always telling me, ‘Throw long.’ So. This is long.”

Randy looked at his watch. “I hate to be the party pooper, but I’ve got a committee meeting. Grand seeing you both. Let’s keep up the dialogue. Ta-ta.”

“What’d you expect?” Terry said in the car on the way back to the office. “That he was going to agree to introduce a bill in the U.S. Senate encouraging Boomers to commit mass suicide-in order to save Social Security?”

“Not suicide. Voluntary Transitioning,” Cass said.

“Whatever. What time of night did you dream this one up?” Terry was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’ll give you this: It’s definitely out-of-the-box thinking. Now if you could just apply this kind of brain sweat to Larry’s insecticide-”

“Did you ever read Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’?”

Terry sighed. “You mean at Harvard? Or was it Princeton? Remind me, which Ivy League university did I attend?”

“The Gulliver’s Travels guy,” Cass said. “You heard of him, surely.”

“Yeah. So?”

“In 1729, Swift published an article proposing that the way to solve poverty in Ireland was for the poor Irish to sell their children for food.”

“Today he’d make millions on the diet book. What does this have to do with your scheme? Other than also being completely insane?”

“It’s the whole point. It got people’s attention. It got them debating the Irish hunger problem. He was a minister. He was on the side of the poor.”

“So what happened to him?”

“Well, he ended up in a sanatorium.”

Terry snorted.

“He got senile. Big deal. So will you and I be, if we live long enough. Come on,” she said. “You’re being obtuse.”

“You’re advocating that the government incentivize suicide, and I’m being obtuse?”

“Voluntary Transitioning.”

“You offer people tax breaks. To kill themselves. At age seventy.”

“More if they Transition at sixty-five. Yes, a package of incentives. Free medical. Drugs-all the drugs you want. Boomers love that kind of pork. The big one is no estate tax. Why leave it to Uncle Sam when you can leave it to the kids? That’ll get the kids on board. Terry, listen to me. I ran the numbers. By my calculations, if only twenty percent of seventy-seven million Baby Boomers go for it, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid will be solvent. End of crisis. Tell me that’s not worth debating.”

Terry looked at her with the mixed pride and alarm of a mentor whose protйgйe has gone up to the edge of the abyss-and swan-dived into it.

“What if they sign up for it,” he said, “and then when they turn seventy decide, You know, on second thought I think I won’t kill myself. Maybe when I’m a hundred.”

Cass said matter-of-factly, “There’d have to be, you know, substantial penalties for non-early withdrawal.”

“The 401(k) from hell? Oh, sign me up.”

“Terry, you’re missing the point. It’s never going to get to that. Because as you and Randy so astutely point out, the Congress is never in a thousand years going to pass it. Even if they did pass it, the president would never sign it into law. And if he did sign it, the Supreme Court would rule it unconstitutional.”

“So what is the point?”

“To force a debate! So that at the end of the day, the government will have to do something . Remember what Churchill said? ‘Americans always do the right thing-after they’ve tried everything else.’”

Terry considered, then said, “Uh-uh. Pasadena. I can see explaining to our corporate clients, ‘We don’t actually expect the Congress to pass a mass suicide bill. Don’t you see? It’s a meta -issue. What are you, obtuse?’”

“Suit yourself,” Cass said. “I’m taking this to the next level.”

“The basement?”

That night, after putting in a few hours trying to make Larry’s insecticide sound like something you’d spray on your newborn infant to make it sleep through the night, Cass went to work on her “Modest Proposal.”