The Weed Agency (27 page)

Within the offices of the Agency of Invasive Species, everything just stopped for a moment.

Everyone looked at each other, trying to process that their failure to respond to the cheatgrass crisis would now be the subject of a special bipartisan commission, with all that process had come to include: televised hearings, showboating commissioners, competitive leaking, and the intense, unrelenting hunt for scapegoats. Resignations demanded. Instant celebrity status.

“We’re screwed,” Wilkins whispered.

JANUARY 2007

U.S. National Debt: $8.7 trillion

Budget, USDA Agency of Invasive Species: $263.5 million

Agency of Invasive Species Administrative Director Adam Humphrey deployed the time-honored “It will distract us from our duties!” excuse to every Democrat on Capitol Hill, to no avail. With surprising speed, the House and Senate passed legislation establishing the National Cheatgrass Disaster Commission, and awaited the leaders of each party and the White House to nominate members.

After watching the final vote on C-SPAN in Humphrey’s office—Lisa was starting to refer to it as “The Bunker”—Wilkins plopped down in his seat and rubbed his temples.

“They are going to crucify us,” Wilkins whimpered.

“They will do no such thing,” Humphrey insisted.

“Do you read the news, Adam? We waterboard people now! Crucifixion is, like, a half step away!”

The first four appointees to the commission surprised most of Washington, as the political world thought all of them had
passed away ages earlier. The quartet, all long retired, had been selected for their stature, respect on both sides of the aisle, long-standing ties to the agricultural community, and everyone’s well-placed faith that there was absolutely no way any of them would make waves. They made David Gergen look edgy.

Senate Republicans had appointed former Kansas senator Dorothy Abernathy and former Alabama lieutenant governor Roy Beane. Senate Democrats had appointed former California agriculture commissioner Calvin Robinson and retired Oklahoma State professor Dee Dixon. The youngest among them was Dixon at seventy-one; Beane clocked in at a spry eighty-four years of age; Abernathy and Robinson were currently residing in assisted-living communities.

“Lieutenant Governor and retired general Beane,” Wilkins read off the wire service story just posted online. “Was he in the army?” he asked.

“Yes, the Confederate one,” replied Humphrey.

The editorial page of the
Washington Post
delicately praised the quartet as “relics of a bygone era of bipartisan cooperation”;
The Economist
indelicately used the term “unearthed mummies” in their summary. With four of the seven slots taken up by near-late figures in the agricultural policy community, the commission’s tone and direction would rest heavily on the names of the three remaining commissioners. One commissioner had yet to be selected by House Republican leadership, one by House Democrats, and the commission’s chairman was to be appointed by the president, with Reid and Pelosi required to sign off.

Since his defeat in the midterms, Ted Carrington had been a changed man. He was shocked that his constituents had tossed
him out in the 2006 landslide, insisting on election night that there had to be some sort of mistake. He was nothing like the Republican colleagues he had often publicly dismissed as Neanderthals, the George Allens, the Rick Santorums, the Lincoln Chafees.

His postelection interviews revealed a long-repressed rage and bitterness; one was headlined
THE CONGRESSMAN FROM MERLOT TURNS VINEGARY
.

Carrington once tolerated Nick Bader’s strange obsession with a little-known federal agency fighting weed infestations. Now, with the passion of the converted, he began to preach the gospel of the incompetent, arrogant, out-of-touch bureaucrats of Washington, none worse than the shiftless layabouts at the Agency of Invasive Species. He greeted the formation of the National Cheatgrass Disaster Commission as near-miraculous; he proclaimed it would finally correct the record. The ruined crops, the lost wages, the economic aftershocks, the Four Buck Chuck—none of it was his fault. He had been nobly performing his public service, all along, when the useless idiots at AIS messed it all up.

Of course, Carrington had the slight fear that allies of the agency might try to pin the blame elsewhere. And so he suddenly campaigned for the job of commission member with far greater urgency, diligence, and determination than he ever put into any of his congressional races.

Bader found himself on the phone with John Boehner, the new House minority leader, desperately trying to put the most furious, newly minted critic of the Agency of Invasive Species on the special panel that would give it the public policy equivalent of a colonoscopy.

Carrington began hanging around Bader’s congressional office for no particular reason, and Bader was wondering if there was a delicate way to get the U.S. Capitol Police to remove a
former member. Carrington kept trying to peek in Bader’s office door every time someone entered or departed.

“Boehner, you gotta put Carrington on the cheatgrass commission. He knows the stuff, he’s connected with all the communities impacted by it, he’s looking for a way to contribute, and by the time he’s done, nobody will be blaming the president for this.”

Boehner’s response was not audible to those not on the line, but the tone sounded hesitant.

“John … I mean it, if you don’t give him something to do and get him out of my hair, I may just have to shoot him. You know I’m rated an A+ by the NRA.”

Wilkins did not knock before entering Humphrey’s office.

“Boehner’s putting Ted Carrington on the commission!” He was interrupting Humphrey and Lisa, who had been spending inordinate amounts of time together lately, desperately trying to construct a communications strategy to weather the category five media storm headed their way.

The pair’s conversation instantly stopped. They had heard Carrington’s name mentioned, but dismissed it as a long shot. From all appearances, John Boehner had a lot more problems to deal with than the cheatgrass commission. Wilkins tossed his BlackBerry to Humphrey.

Lisa looked pale. “Have you seen the way he’s been tearing into us since he lost his seat? He’ll turn that commission into the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Carrington … I didn’t expect that,” mumbled Humphrey, reading the BlackBerry.

Wilkins couldn’t help himself. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

“I thought Carrington had campaigned for the job too transparently to ever be picked,” Lisa said. “Bader must have gotten to Boehner.”

Humphrey waived his hand. “How it happened is moot. Right now, we need to reach Hargis and any of our remaining friends in the House. We need to get a message to Pelosi. She needs to appoint a … 
balancing
voice on the committee.

“Who did you have in mind?” Wilkins asked.

“Ha!”

Javier Puga had been waiting for a call like this for more than two years.

Puga had been a successful trial lawyer in Orlando, Florida, and was elected to Congress in 1998 on a platform of staunch opposition to congressional investigation of presidential sex acts. The Florida Democratic Party and DCCC were unnerved when he unexpectedly won the district’s primary; as a candidate, he had only one tone, self-righteous indignation, and tended to blurt out anything that came into his mind. But he had money, was reasonably smart, and had a greasy charisma that worked on television. He easily won the swing district, carried along by the Democratic wave that year.

Puga approached Congress the way he had pursued his work in his personal injury practice, putting in the bare minimum of effort on the necessary paperwork and throwing himself into performing to any audience that would listen. Before long, he was spending more time on cable news networks than some actual show hosts, once getting into a loud argument with Sen. Chuck Schumer while the two were both trying to do live remote interviews in close proximity outside the Capitol Building.