Episode 4
It is January 2017, the 45th President has taken office…continued from Episode 3…
Standing where he had been told the first bus for his Circle would stop, Basit finally had a few minutes to himself.
He’d supported the new President from the beginning. Or at least in the beginning. And then for some time. Being a techie and an executive, he appreciated, related, even, to the critique of politicians and politics from a businessman who had gotten things done. The inefficiency and the messiness of how government was run was just the beginning. That was just the nature of it. Politics in the US had become a real mess. Nothing got done. A lot of talk and no results. Business and innovation could never be done that way. Politicians were just greedy, lazy, and stupid.
And there walked in a businessman that had real, solid achievements to his name. Who could build things. Who had built things. Who had build organizations. Built teams. Met payroll. Made things happen. And who could connect with people. And boy did he connect with people! He told it like it is. He challenged The Establishment — and not just his political opponents. He called out the party whose banner he was running under.
He laid out how easy it was to buy politicians. Of course, everyone knew that already. But he could really put it in perspective. He had done the buying. His eventual opponent had been one of the people happy to be at his trough when he was on the other side of the equation.
Of course there had been excesses in his rhetoric. In fact there, too, his clarity was refreshing. If you were going to appeal to people who thought a certain way ,it made so much sense to clearly say what you meant. With this man, there was none of the weasel words that politicians of all stripes had been using for so long. He reached out. He said what his audiences thought. They agreed. He had The Big Mo. Momentum. A businessman, a doer, an achiever doing what it took to chive the results he set out to achieve.
Basit and others like him — thought they rarely expressed themselves out loud — knew the man would move on from that early phase when he needed to go to the next level.
But he didn’t. At least not as much as Basit would have wanted him to. The candidate had not changed how he spoke. He had made a connection with his electorate, and one could only assume that since he had found what was working, he kept on doing it, and, yes, it had worked all the way.
Basit and his crowd had gone back to to what they did. Politics was not something they really stayed engaged with most of the time. They made their contributions, got their access and their pictures for the mantlepiece, and kept on keeping on as the song from their youth had put it.
Well things had moved along in the last seven months or so. Basit had been busy with some really good progress in his work, and got the chance to work at the biggest of big companies.
Then he had started to hear about The Plans. And things had moved rather fast.
***
It was halfway between the early November election — which had been pretty straightforward — and the January 20th Inaugration that a senior executive had strolled into Basit’s office and suggested they go to lunch.
Luckily, Basit hadn’t had lunch yet. But he wouldn’t have said no anyway. Early December was not the time for major new initiatives, so it was surprising for an executive he didn’t remember meeting outside of meetings would want to meet. But the opportunity to network was intriguing.
They drove over to Pedro’s, at Ryan Jones’s suggestion.
It was a bit later than the peak rush for lunch, and Pedro’s wasn’t too busy. They seated as soon as they got there and were able to order almost immediately. A couple of minutes of small talk were followed by a lull in the conversation that Basit soon realized was really an awkward silence. Unsual for a couple of middle-aged men whose job was, after all, to convince, sell, hustle and talk to earn their keep.
“Um, I was out in DC earlier this week and ran into a Harvard mate of mine,” began Jones, tentatively. “He’s gotten a position with the transition team, and is hoping to be a part of the new administration. He mentioned something that I thought you should be aware of…I don’t know how it would help to know in advance, but I am assuming you want to inform your community and maybe get your family out of the country…”
Jones was talking after now. Almost rambling at a fast clip.
“What are you saying, Ryan?” Basit was trying to follow and it took a moment or two for it to sink in that Jones was talking about the presidential transition team.
“Well,” Jones paused. And then it came tumbling out.
“Remember when the president-elect was talking about restrictions on people wanting to come to this country?”
That’s when Basit remembered where he’d last talked to Jones at any length. It had been an early campaign meeting — an exploratory meeting, really — at one of the senior executives’ home. With his early interest in this candidate and, yes, the opportunity to network, Basit had been eager to attend. And as he’d stood with his drink after the talking and the dinner, Basit now realized it had been Jones that had sought him out and struck up a conversation. He’d gently, diplomatically, asked Basit the same thing many in “his own community” had asked him: What did he think about the candidate’s more incendiary utterances. And Basis had told him the same thing he told others; that it wasn’t unusual for a politician to say things that got him the support of those he was really out to court.
“Well, my mate let it drop, casually, really, that the transition team is seriously exploring and, he stressed, expanding what policies would need to be put into place to implement that plank in the president-elect’s plans come January.
“It’s not going to be just about not letting foreigners in, Basit. They are talking about what to do with the Muslims already in country. He didn’t say what the specifics would look like, I guess, because they’re still working on the modalities.
“But Basit, he said FDR’s name kept coming up…”
…continued in Episode 5…
