WASHINGTON, D.C.
Wednesday 20 January
It always seemed cold on inauguration day, as though God was disappointed, Wendy Upton thought. She imagined God sitting in a corner of her kingdom, arms crossed, expression grim, as she listened to promises of unity her children wouldn’t keep.
That image had come into Upton’s mind when she attended her first inaugural thirty years ago, back when she was an army attorney deployed to Washington. What else could explain such bone-piercing cold?
It was cold today, too. A numbing, bayonet chill. Her sister, Emily, sat beside her. David Traynor had his back to them, hand on a Bible held by his wife, Mariette, the chief justice finishing the last words of the oath. Little clouds of warm breath burst and vanished as they spoke. Applause, whoops, spreading down the mall from tens of thousands, the cheers warming their bodies and their hearts. Then David moved to the podium microphone and turned to the crowd.
He began with a greeting similar to what Thomas Jefferson had used in his first inaugural in 1801. “My friends and fellow citizens. I come to you today fully knowing the task before me is above my talents.” Then a Traynorian twist. “But it is not above our collective will. If we act together.”
Traynor had brought her in for the speech—not for its conception as much as for its review, to find holes and anticipate how the Republicans would respond. He accepted a number of her suggestions. The process had been the first in which she began to feel like a partner.
More Jefferson followed. “Democracy depends on the sacred principle of majority rule, also on the majority being reasonable. The minority possesses equal rights, which equal law must protect. To violate that would be oppression. Those are words from our third president. Thomas Jefferson used them two centuries ago in his first inaugural, after our first partisan, highly polarized election. They are worth noting today. They were prelude to Jefferson’s first term, one of the most successful of any American president.”
She had heard a rumor in the crowd that the speech handed to media before the inaugural was actually Jefferson’s 1801 speech, not this one—an apparent mistake but really a prank. Traynor’s obsession with surprise, she thought. He gave the media the wrong speech to read ahead of time, so they would listen and be surprised by the real one. Had his people really done that without telling her?
Traynor was coming now to the moment he hoped would define the speech. Upton liked this moment the best, too, for it was full of candor about the problems the country needed to address. David called them “the seven crises.” His speechwriter, Will Gersch, had coined the term months ago, but David and Sterling Moss dearly hoped that phrase would define how this speech was remembered. The talking points for discussing the speech afterward instructed that Traynor’s surrogates describe it as such: “the seven crises speech.”
“We live in a time where the ideas that divide us have led us to neglect our problems. We have seven major areas of need in America we have neglected, that the government has neglected, that we the people have allowed them to neglect. We have let these problems fester until they have become imminent threats to the prosperity, safety, and health of us all—to our future as a nation. Yet these seven crises can unite us. We still have the power to transform these crises into achievements, to turn what was neglect into opportunity, and opportunity into the triumph of ingenuity. We can do this, we can write this new chapter, if we come together. And the world will know. We will know. We have the power of renewal, the power to heal, the power to advance, in our own hands.”
Simple, plain, David Traynor storytelling. Define a problem. The problem defines the solution. She was learning his method.
“We all know what these crises are. We have stopped building the things we consume here on our own soil. We have let our roads, bridges, waterlines, and power systems lapse into decay. We have allowed our health care system to become uneven and too expensive, leaving too many behind. With all the best of intentions, we have created regulations that were designed to protect us, but that have become incoherent and make conducting business insensibly hard. Our programs to provide savings for our retirement are about to run out of money. We have let our tax system become too complicated and allowed a few to avoid paying their fair share. And we have allowed corporations to pay almost nothing. We have too long ignored systemic inequities in our policing and our courts and our voting practices. We have neglected the damage we humans are doing to our own planet. The time for neglect has run out. The good news is there is still time to change—if we act as one nation, loyal to our traditions, committed to our common purpose.”
The tone of the speech would now shift. What came next was the most difficult section, the transition to his agenda and his accusations. David had struggled with it. The seven crises were a downer, a long straightaway of problems without a lot of cheers. The next section would be divisive, cheers mixed with stony silence. The speech, unlike most inaugurals, was not built for applause lines.
“But diagnosis is easy. Prescription is where we find our differences. How to solve these crises? What are we willing to give up? How are we willing to become uncomfortable ourselves in order to help others, and in so doing build a better life for us all? My answer is we will govern differently than the country has ever been governed before.”
Applause here, though people do not know yet what they are applauding.
“I will ask Congress to move on all of these crises at once—starting today. I am sending bills up to the Hill in the next hour that begin to address each of these problems. But they will be unlike any laws Congress has ever seen.”
Then he walked through the Scandinavian method of lawmaking—defining a problem and charging the legislature with fixing it by a certain time, without dictating all the specifics or taking on everything at once. Working the problem one step at a time, more money to flow if progress was made, the money stopping if it wasn’t.
“This is how we solve problems in our own lives. One step at a time. Not imagining you know all the answers when you start. What begins today is not old-fashioned and often insensible big government. It is a new kind of smart government. This is government that starts small and smart, learns, improves, and changes course as the facts on the ground dictate. Imagine, a government that learns and adapts. Imagine, a new kind of government.
“I am so confident that we can do this, and so committed, that I will make a promise today no president has ever made.
“If we can make meaningful progress on these seven crises—real and dramatic progress in eighteen months—I will agree to serve only a single term in office. I give you my word.”
There were gasps in the crowd.
“For that to happen, however, the two parties in Congress—my own party and the other party—must agree to modify certain arcane rules they have followed, rules that for the last twenty-five years have made it too easy for one side to obstruct progress. So, as part of my promise to serve for one term, I am going to ask for a promise from Congress in return.
“I am going to ask that they put an end to these internal rules that block progress. I am going to ask that they, instead, take up new rules for a new adaptive government, rules that will help government do its job of helping the people, while also keeping it from becoming too big, too inflexible, and too rule bound.
“One of these rules, called the majority of the majority rule, holds that a party will not agree to let something come to a vote unless the majority of one party supports it. This sounds like a good thing. It sounds like majority rule. But in fact it is the opposite. In the last eight years, members of Congress have used this rule to stop four hundred and twenty-eight bills or amendments that would have addressed one of these seven crises. All four hundred and twenty-eight of these were supported by the majority of members of the House or Senate across both parties and thus would have passed those lawmaking bodies. But they were not passed. Had they been, we would have reduced the federal deficit by more than nine hundred billion dollars. We would have funded Social Security for another fifty years. We would have rebuilt seven hundred more bridges. We would have reduced taxes for two hundred million Americans.”
He offered still more examples of how things could have been better, using math from some consulting experts Traynor, Phelps, and their budget guru had hired.
The speech was designed for Traynor to sound like a translator of government chaos, a change agent who could make this complicated mess simple to understand. And he made the majority of the majority rules, which his enemies loved, sound like tyranny.
The applause was building.
“And so I repeat my pledge to you: if both parties in Congress agree to changes in their rules and get the government moving again, and we can begin to address the seven crises, I promise in return to serve a single term. We will get these things done, and I will leave.
“But if Congress does not make these changes, does not agree to end these hidden rules that make the government dysfunctional, and does not begin to do its job and address the crises that threaten our future, I will go to court and challenge them. For I believe, and I am sure the courts will concur, that these internal rules have broken our government and are unconstitutional.
“This is a big change. The other side will throw a fit. They will call me all kinds of names. They will claim I’m a dictator. They will say I’m violating our system of checks and balances. But don’t be fooled. We must get the country moving again. And some simple changes like this, which are voluntary rules of Congress, not anything in our Constitution, will go a long way.”
Traynor paused. Another key transition in the speech.
“And I must ask something of you out there listening today, too. You are not just passive citizens. For the government to begin working again, you must do something. You must take this pledge with me. You must demand Congress finally begin to solve these problems. You must demand it of your representatives. The power to make this change, to make our government work again, is in your hands. I can ask for it. But you can make it happen. If together we make a new pledge, a new commitment, a new vow, for a house united, we can do it.”
There was a poetic finish, and the phrase “a new commitment” again, but Upton barely heard it. She was feeling that electric charge of exhilaration again. She was letting herself believe.
How was it, after all these years, that speeches could make her skin tingle and her heart soar? This parade of fools that nearly always disappointed, that was so cynical you could choke on it—how was it that same parade could lift your soul? She would never know.
She was weeping.