Executive orders - Tom Clancy [270]
Then run with it, TRADER. But then Winston had his misgivings. It was instructive to the President that even so powerful a figure as the Secretary of the Treasury lowered his eyes for a second, and then said something quieter and less positive than his confident assertion of five seconds earlier.
You know, politically this is going to-
What you're going to say to the Senate, George, is it good for the country as a whole?
Yes, sir! An emphatic nod of the head.
Then don't wimp out on me.
SecTreas wiped his mouth with the monogrammed napkin, and looked down again. You know, after this is all over and we go back to normal life, we really have to find a way to work together. There aren't many people like us, Ryan.
Actually there are, the President said, after a moment's reflection. The problem is that they never come here to work. You know who I learned that from? Cathy, Jack told him. She fucks up, somebody goes blind, but she can't run away from making the call, can she? Imagine, you fuck up, and somebody loses his sight forever-or dies. The guys who work the emergency room are really on the ragged edge, like when Cathy and Sally went into Shock-Trauma. You blow the call, and somebody is gone forever. Big deal, George, bigger than trading equities like we used to do. Same thing with cops. Same thing with soldiers. You have to make the call, right now, or something really bad happens. But those kinds of people don't come here to Washington, do they? And mainly that sort of guy goes to the place he-or she-has to be, where the real action is, Ryan said, almost wistfully. The really good ones go where they're needed, and they always seem to know where that is.
But the really good ones don't like the bullshit. So they don't come here? Winston asked, getting his own course in Government 101, and finding Ryan a teacher of note.
Some do. Adler at State. Another guy over there I've discovered, name of Vasco. But those are the ones who buck the system. The system works against them. Those are the ones we have to identify and protect. Mostly little ones, but what they do isn't little. They keep the system running, and mainly they go unnoticed because they don't care much about being noticed. They care about getting it done, serving the people out there. You know what I'd really like to do? Ryan asked, for the first time revealing something from the depths of his soul. He hadn't even had the guts to say this to Arnie.
Yeah, set up a system that really works, a system that recognizes the good ones and gives them what they deserve. You know how hard that is in any organization? Hell, it was a struggle at my shop, and Treasury has more janitors than I had trading executives. I'm not even sure where to start a job like that, Winston said. He would be one to grasp the scope of the dream, his President thought.
Harder than you think, even. The guys who really do the work don't want to be bosses. They want to work. Cathy could be an administrator. They offered her the chair at the University of Virginia Medical School-and that would have been a big deal. But it would have cut her patient time in half, and she likes doing what she does. Someday Bernie Katz at Hopkins is going to retire, and they'll offer his chair to her, and she'll turn that down. Probably, Jack thought. Unless I can talk her out of it.