2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [127]
His speech received polite applause with lines like “We must preserve the dignity of our senior citizens” and “No matter how old you are, you are still an American.” But when he tried to hint about generational fairness, saying, “All Americans should feel they have the same rights whether they are one or one hundred,” the audience just sat there.
Bernstein had almost lost the election because of his “generational fairness” platform. Fortunately for him, he was able to get an unusually strong turnout of younger voters, but those voters were fickle. After an election they disappeared. The older Americans had the lobbyists and the town halls and the time and energy to devote to politics; the younger people were too busy looking for work. And although the seniors were the parents or grandparents of the young, the older they got, the more selfish they became. They did not want to give up rights that were promised to them for any reason, even for their own children. Not one said, “My medical care costs too much, don’t treat me, just give that money to my kids.” It just didn’t happen. So the question for any candidate dealing with equality was, Could you win without the seniors? And as time went on and the numbers of older people only increased, the answer was simple. No.
When he finished his speech, the President took ten minutes of questions. The first question out of the box was “Are you finding the people who have been creating the violence against us and putting them in prison?”
“We are making great progress in identifying the groups that are causing these problems,” the President said. “The Justice Department is working vigilantly in this area.”
The second question was about his mother. The President had delivered a heartfelt eulogy at her funeral and had hoped that she, along with the questions, would be laid to rest. But here it was again. She was dead and it was still coming up. “Mr. President, you campaigned against using excessive measures to keep people alive. But when your own mother was in that situation you seemed to have changed your mind. Don’t you think that is hypocritical?”
“I have never said that if there is any chance of survival people should not be treated.” Before he could answer further, someone blurted out the next question.
“Is China going to take over the country?”
“I hope so,” the President joked. But realizing that these people did not have a sense of humor, he decided to wrap it up. “What is happening in Los Angeles is exciting. We are very hopeful as to the outcome. Thank you all very much for coming out today and have a great afternoon.” And even though there were five minutes left for questions, he exited the stage. The applause barely lasted until he reached the curtain. They really did not like this man.
* * *
When the speech was over, Paul Prescott went back to his new apartment near Dupont Circle. He had moved out of his place with Owen Stein and was living alone for the first time in years. He had been dating Jack Willman, insisting that they still could see others, but slowly they were becoming an exclusive couple. And they were a good team.
Jack continued to feed Paul extraordinarily helpful information regarding the names of potential troublemakers, people who wanted to do harm to the seniors. Even though these were Americans who hadn’t done anything wrong yet, and therefore were difficult to legally spy on, Paul took whatever names he could get and used his connections in Congress to alert representatives from those areas of the country about the potential troublemakers. A congressman, in turn, could talk to a local police chief and ask him, as a favor, to keep an eye on someone. It was never done officially, but it was at least something AARP could do preemptively, instead of just waiting for the next act of violence. One morning Jack reminded Paul about Max Leonard.