Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [47]
So Frank gave up his office at NSF, which had served as the living room and office in his parcellated house. As he moved out he felt a bit stunned, even dismayed. He had to admit that the set of habits that had been that modular house was now completely demolished. He followed Diane to their new building, wondering if he had made the right decision to go with her. Of course his real home now was the Khembali embassy’s garden shed. He was not really homeless. Maybe it was a bad thing not to have rented a place somewhere. If he had kept looking he could have found something.
Then Diane convened a week’s worth of meetings with all the agencies and departments she wanted to deal with frequently, and during that week he saw that being inside the White House compound was a good thing, and that he needed to be there for Diane. She needed the help; there were literally scores of agencies that had to be gathered into the effort they had in mind, and many of them had upper managements appointed during the years of executive opposition to climate mitigation. Even after the long winter, not all of them were convinced they needed to change. “They’re being actively passive-aggressive,” Diane said with a wry grin. “War of the agencies, big-time.”
“Such trivial crap they’re freaking about,” Frank complained. He was amazed it didn’t bother her more. “EPA trying to keep USGS from interpreting pesticide levels they’re finding, because interpretation is EPA’s job? Energy and Navy fighting over who gets to do new nuclear? It’s always turf battles.”
She waved them all away with a hand, seemingly unannoyed. “Turf battles matter in Washington, I’m sorry to say. We’re going to have to get things done using these people. Chase has to make a lot of appointments fast for us to have any chance of doing that. And we’ll have to be scrupulous in keeping to the boundaries. It’s no time to be changing the bureaucracy too much; we’ve got bigger fish to fry. I plan to try to keep all these folks happy about their power base holding fast, but just get them on board to help the cause.”
It made sense when she put it that way, and after that he understood better her manner with the old-guard technocracy they were so often dealing with. She was always conciliatory and unassuming, asking questions, then laying out her ideas as more questions rather than commands, and always confining herself to whatever that particular agency was specifically involved in.
“Not that that’s what I always do,” Diane said, when Frank once made this observation to her. She looked ashamed.
“What do you mean?” Frank asked quickly.
“Well, I had a bad meeting with the deputy secretary of Energy, Holderlin. He’s a holdover, and he was trying to disparage the alternatives program. So I got him fired.”
“You did?”
“I guess so. I sent a note over to the president describing the problem I was having, and the next thing I knew he was out.”
“Do people know that’s how it happened?”
“I think so.”
“Well—good!”
She laughed ruefully. “I’ve had that thought myself. But it’s a strange feeling.”
“Get used to it. We probably need a whole bunch of people fired. You’re the one who always calls it the war of the agencies.”
“Yes, but I never had the power to get people in other agencies fired before.”
To change the subject to something that would make her more comfortable, Frank said, “I’m having some luck getting the military interested. They’re the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in this zoo. If they were to come down definitively on the side of our efforts, as being a critical aspect of national defense, then these other agencies would either get on board or become irrelevant.”
“Yes, maybe,” Diane said. “But what they are you talking about? The Joint Chiefs?”
“Well, to an extent. Although I’ve been starting with people I know, like General Wracke. Also meeting some of the chief