The General's President (36 page)

The president nodded and turned again to Katsaros. "And you still believe we should try to cool this situation, and hope something happens to prevent a future war there?"

Katsaros nodded without hesitation. "Yes sir, I do. And we should try to make things happen to prevent that possible future war."

Haugen nodded. "All right then, go for it," he said. "You have my approval and support. But off the record, I'm not optimistic. Not very hopeful and definitely not optimistic."

He fixed Katsaros with his eyes. "I'll want to see some sort of follow-up plan aimed at preventing a holocaust later. And if we're going to have a plan, we need some sort of long-range goal to start with. Work on it.

"Now. Are we done with this topic?" His gaze swept the table. "Apparently we are. Our next topic is the Soviet situation in Iraq-Iran." He turned his attention to the CIA specialist on that subject. "Mr. Batzer, how reliable is that estimate of Soviet casualties? Twenty-three thousand looks like a lot, considering their weapons superiority."

"It is a lot, Mr. President, but actually it's conservative. It's really 23,000 killed, missing, and
disabled
. It doesn't include wounded treated in the field or at field hospitals and returned to duty; just those evacuated from the war zone."

"Where did you get the data?"

"Mostly from our wide-gullet broadcast recorders. We get all kinds of radio traffic on them, even the breakdown reports from trucks on the road. With regard to casualties, we have order-of-magnitude checks based on an abundance of SR-71 and satellite photography."

"And what's the basis for the prediction that the Soviets won't be in Baghdad for at least a week?"

"That's a judgment call based on a complex of factors: Soviet logistics problems, like heavy early snows in the Zagros, and continued interruption of roads by raids and bridge destruction. And the number of Iraqi units—quite a few of them, actually—that have joined with Iranian units to fight the Soviets. Sort of a 'let's get together and bust the Russian infidels' attitude. The return of the refugee Iraqi fighter squadrons from Saudi Arabia, where they'd fled earlier when the Iranians broke through. And thirty or thirty-five thousand Kurdish irregulars, a lot of them down out of Turkey, taking advantage of an opportunity to fight Russians.

"When it comes to technology, organization, and discipline, the Soviets have every advantage, and they'll win just about every face-off. But the Iranians and their allies have the edge when it comes to morale, or maybe fervor's the word...."

By 1040 hours they'd completed the agenda. The president looked the group over. "Before we break up," he said, "let me state that I have a lot of respect for the people sitting here now. Dr. Valenzuela, I hope you decide to accept my offer of the secretariat. I'm sure that Mr. Katsaros would prove a very competent and ethical Secretary of State, but it seems to me that you are the man for the hour. And if you decline to serve as secretary, I hope you'll agree to be my special envoy to El Presidente Lopez on this South African matter."

***

After the NSC meeting, Flynn and the president swam slow laps for twenty minutes, showered, and had lunch in the Oval Office to the twelve o'clock news. The pundits of television were being critical today, not in any big resounding way but about some of the inevitable flubs and fumbles in the public works program.

The current biggie had the president shaking his head in awe: For some unstated and impenetrable reason, some nitwit district supervisor in the PWA had had a bridge built that went over nothing. The video camera showed it, a modest three-lane structure of steel and concrete that would have been about right for a fifty-foot-wide river. But there was no river. Not even a creek. Not even a dry wash. Just Texas panhandle ranchland confidently waiting for spring.

"The human mind," the president said in mock awe, "is a wondrous and mysterious thing." He made a mental note to have someone's ass run up the flagpole for that, unless they had a compelling explanation.

When they'd finished eating, Flynn looked at the president.

"Arne," he said, "I've got a question about this morning."

The president switched off the set. "Okay. Let's hear it."

"You approved the proposal to get the South Africans out of Namibia and postpone a nasty war there. But you seemed to think that postponement wouldn't have any lasting effect. And that the war, when it did come, might be worse for the postponement. What decided you to approve?"

"Politics, Steve. International image. Aided and abetted by the slight hope that postponement might turn into cancellation, but that wasn't the decisive factor. The bigger factors were, one, that getting the Afrikaners out of Namibia will make us look good. And two, it could inspire a little more hope for future peace. Also it's a precedent for squelching a military takeover of a neighbor; we're short on precedents like that these last few decades.

"And it'll make the Cubans feel important, which they are, and put them in a peace-keeping role."

The president looked for another factor but didn't find one. "That's about it."

Father Flynn nodded, then sipped his coffee thoughtfully.

"What're you thinking?" asked Haugen.

"When I asked the question, I really hadn't looked past the matter of a South African war; I was looking at it in isolation. But you're right."

He paused then. "And one other thing."

Haugen's brows raised.

"Just postponement is worthwhile, all by itself. I'm sure that God judges it so."

Haugen nodded.

Flynn wondered what the nod meant—whether the president agreed, or was acting agreeable, or simply acknowledging the statement. But he didn't ask. There were times when it was best to let things be.

***

Fairly often, Lois Haugen prepared supper herself, in the little kitchen Jacqueline Kennedy had had built off the family dining room. Often it was a very simple meal; this time it was a mixture of American and Scandinavian elements—Swedish sausages, plump and savory, buttered corn bread, and green salad, with the inevitable coffee, decaffeinated. When the sausages were gone—there'd been only two each—and they were sipping coffee, she asked about his day.

"Not bad," he said, "not bad at all. We think we may be able to avert a nasty war in Namibia, and Valenzuela agreed to take over as Secretary of State. I'll be surprised if he doesn't do a damn fine job, and it'll be good PR, too. The media will stop yapping about my firing Coulter and talk about Valenzuela, whom they're almost sure to approve of.

"And Milstead tells me the number of threats on my life has about doubled lately, so I must be doing something right." As he mentioned the threats, he watched his wife's eyes.

She never flinched; in fact, she smiled. "You must indeed," she said. Then: "I'm glad you're swimming instead of jogging these days."

He nodded. He'd thought about dropping exercise; physically he didn't have the recuperative power he'd had even a few months ago. "And one other thing," he said. "Jumper Cromwell got something very interesting in the mail yesterday, and gave it to me after the NSC meeting." He got to his feet. "I brought a photocopy for you to look at."

It was on the dining room mantel, above the flickering fireplace fire. Getting it, he gave it to Lois, who opened it—a sheaf of xeroxed sheets bound in a ring binder by Cromwell's Pentagon secretary. The title page read:
Redeclaration of Purpose, the Archons, 1928
, by John Simmons Massey. She looked questioningly up at her husband.

"It explains itself," he told her, and smiled slightly. "When you've read it, Jumper's report on the Holist Council will take on a whole new dimension."

She set it aside. "Dessert first, if you're willing to help me eat it. I broke down and asked Mr. Birmingham to send up a quart of French vanilla; it's in the bottom of the refrigerator, softening. We can't overeat
too
badly with just a quart."

He grinned at her. "Ice cream, the principal vice of senior citizens. Sounds good." He gestured as she moved to get up. "I'll fetch it. I'm a president, not a king."

In three minutes he was back with two soup bowls of ice cream and a squeeze bottle of fudge topping. "If we're going to load up on calories," he said, "we might as well do it right."

It didn't take them long to finish it, and when it was gone, he left for his office. Lois took the tray back into the kitchen. Then, with the ring binder, she went into the sitting room and began to read.

THIRTY-THREE

The President's January 12 address on legal reform, before the American Bar Association special conference.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, members of the bar, for having me here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you. I want to point out though that what I say here is said not only to you but to the rest of the nation. Many other Americans will be as interested as you are, because my subject is legal reform, and it affects them as much as it does you, if less directly. Others won't be much interested in what I say, but almost all of them will be very interested in the results.

I'm going to open with a story; I believe that's how guest speakers usually start. I have a friend, an attorney, who used to belong to the same wrestling club as I did, when we were still willing to subject our bodies to that kind of stress. One day while we were warming up, someone said to him, "Jack, does it bother you to hear what some people say about the legal profession?"

And Jack said, "Like what?"

"Well, like what a bunch of crooks lawyers are supposed to be."

"No," said Jack, "it doesn't bother me that they say things like that. What bothers me is, there's so much truth in it."

Incidentally, I called Jack Mestrovic and got his approval to tell you that story.

Now, I didn't come here to insult lawyers. I opened with that story simply to illustrate a common view: that the profession of law, including the judiciary, is riddled with dishonest—sometimes criminally dishonest—people. And that there is some substance to that public attitude.

An attitude which is only a part of the widespread public distrust of our justice system.

So tonight I'm going to talk about legal reform, a new package of law which will go into effect very soon.

Before I talk about this legal reform package, I'll describe very briefly how it was developed. As you know, I'm an engineer, not a lawyer. But with my customary immodesty, I approached legal reform by roughing out a program myself, based on how things looked to me. I did this my very first two weeks in office, because without reform of the legal system, I could see little hope for the future of democracy in this country.

From my opening anecdote, one might get the notion that I ascribe the problems of the legal system to dishonest lawyers. Dishonest lawyers
are
an element in the situation, and so are the opportunities to exercise greed within that system. But the major faults lie in basic assumptions and procedures so taken for granted that many Americans assume they are unchangeable, perhaps chiseled into stone on Mt. Sinai, or programmed into the universe, or at least written into our Constitution.

Which of course they are not.

Perhaps the most basic of these working assumptions seems to have grown out of royal word-splitting. The king, let's say, wanted to get rid of Someone. Legally. So he said the law really meant such-and-such, and that Mister Someone was in violation of that law. Off with his head! So it seemed very desirable, in the interests of justice, to be extremely explicit in legal language. To leave a minimum of opportunity for interpretation. And what interpretation was necessary would be done by someone who was not the king and who was not controlled by the king. Or the president, if that's what you have as head of government.

It would be done by independent judges. Which
seems
to make sense.

Most of this is not written into the Constitution, however, let alone having been given by God to Moses. The Constitution stays pretty much out of the subject, except to assure certain rights, such as jury trials, and to establish the Supreme Court. It leaves judges free of presidential control.

How well has this worked, here in these United States? The answer is the state of justice and the state of the public defense in this country: It's kind of worked, but it labors harder and harder, costs more and more, and runs slower and slower. And all too often it doesn't get where it's supposed to go. If a truck ran like that, we'd overhaul it or trade it in.

And frankly, ladies and gentlemen, in today's crowded technological world, if we can't get the legal system to work better than it has been, then everything else we might do toward restoring the social, political, and economic health of our country will be wasted. The land of the free and the home of the brave will continue to become, more and more, the land of the frustrated and the home of the rebellious.

Did you get that? You need to. We all need to.

You might ask what made me think I was qualified to draft a program of legal reform. First of all, I'm an engineer, a designer of systems, and a solver of problems. And like most citizens in this country, I have opinions on law. A citizen doesn't need to be a lawyer to look around and see how well or how poorly our legal system is working.

What is our legal system supposed to do? Make us a buck? Give us a game? Basically the legal system—the laws themselves, the enforcement agencies, and the system of courts and judges—has the purposes of defense and justice. Of defending the individual and society from harmful acts, and providing justice to individuals and groups.

Obviously our system could have been far worse. It's been good enough that people have been willing to ride with it. But more and more it's been struggling. Good people within the legal system keep bailing, but it keeps settling in the water despite their earnest efforts. My job is to keep it from foundering, and democracy with it. And that's what I've undertaken to do.

So I looked at what seemed to be right and wrong with it, and what common sense suggested could be done about it, and then I wrote it up. Next I worked it over a couple of times and then showed it separately to three attorneys. After swearing each of them to secrecy. Each of them is prominent and experienced, and none of them knew I'd shown it to the other two. I pointed out to each of them that what I'd given him was a trial draft, a playing with ideas. And that what I wanted particularly was their opinion on whether it could be made constitutional. And workable. And what parts served justice and what parts didn't. I asked him to read it while I sat there with him—or her in one case. To read the whole thing before commenting.