2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [57]
The President came a week after she was installed, as he liked to put it, and sat in the room and allowed a few private pictures—nothing for the press, just photos taken by the White House photographer for the family. There were shots of him kissing his mother’s forehead, holding her hand, sitting on the end of her bed, and standing at the window, looking reflective.
When he left the room he told Betsy that he never wanted to go back. That it made him sad and angry and his emotions were so complicated, he just didn’t want to deal with it. He also knew that the image of a ninety-four-year-old rich person being kept alive with taxpayers’ money would not play well. If someone was a great person, like a pope or a Mother Teresa, someone who did a lot of good for the world, maybe then a nation would want to keep them going, but family members of important people still came across to the masses as the spoiled rich who had too much in life and now, too much in trying to sustain it. And the President felt the same way. But what could he do? He couldn’t pull all the plugs. And he couldn’t let it seem as though he didn’t want his mother to survive. If only she had a DNR. Maybe she did; maybe they just hadn’t found it yet.
* * *
John Van Dyke came into the Oval Office with a huge smile on his face. “Read this,” he said. The President saw one name on the screen: Susanna P. Colbert.
“Why does that sound familiar?” Bernstein asked.
“She’s one of the most successful businesswomen in the country, former CEO of HomeInc, one of the founders of The Card, retired, but raring to go. She would make the perfect first woman secretary of the Treasury.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No, I was waiting to make sure it sounded as good to you as it did to me.”
“How does she vote?”
“Republican, most of her life. Voted Democratic in 2008 and 2012, but that was it. It makes it even better. It will look like you’re irresistible to work for.”
The President laughed. “It will, huh? How old is she?”
“Seventy.”
“No shit?” The President looked at her picture. It must have been taken a long time ago because this woman did not look seventy years old.
“Do you want me to see if there is an interest?”
“No. I want you to see if there is anything, anything at all in her history that could bite us in the ass, and when you give me the all clear, I’ll cold-call her.”
“Then call her now.”
“She’s clear?”
“Clear as a baby’s butt.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Clear.”
“That’s a terrible analogy. You can’t see through a butt no matter how young the person is. A baby’s butt is not clear.”
“Okay. Okay.” Van Dyke made his way to the door. “Don’t go nuts on me. I meant clear as the skin on a baby’s butt.”
“Have you ever seen diaper rash?”
“I hate you,” Van Dyke said. “Cold-call her, it will blow her mind.”
The President asked Annie, his primary assistant, to get Susanna Colbert on the line. He wanted voice only, no picture this time.
Annie always got various reactions when she called people on behalf of the President of the United States. Invariably, if the President made the call himself without his assistant, people thought it was an impersonation. But even when Annie called and said, “I have the President of the United States for you,” it played with people’s minds. Just as they were thinking it was a prank, there he was and their hearts were racing. That is what happened to Susanna. Before she could say, “Is this a joke?” she heard Bernstein’s voice.
“Susanna … may I call you Susanna?”
“Of course, who is this?”
“This is Matt Bernstein, and right now I happen to be the president. How long it will last, no one knows.” Normally that would get a laugh, but Susanna was still feeling her way through the call. Then the President said, “Here’s a number, call me back right away. I have some important matters to discuss with you, okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
And the President disconnected. This was something he loved to do, asking someone to call back through the White House system and be put through directly to the Oval Office.