Payoff

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Larry Kraus took a deep lungful of the warm, dry air that would make the walk to his favorite Vietnamese restaurant so pleasant today. It was rare for Washington to be so comfortable this time of year; rare enough that he’d be a fool not to enjoy it. Which Larry Kraus was not.

Still, his mind went back to work as he walked. He ground his teeth at how little had been accomplished in the four months since he’d taken over the Department of Energy. Four months of—of being lobbied by businesses looking for a bigger teat at the federal sow; of negotiating with Congressmen over their pet projects; of wrangling over staff decisions, office policies, and which way the toilet paper should hang in the rest rooms. And worst of all, having to listen to every crank, quack, and lunatic with inside connections… Damn! If he could just replace the bureaucrats and political hacks with doers; but that just wasn’t the way it worked. No, Washington was very good at stopping people from doing things, but getting it to do: There it functioned more like the body’s immune system, tearing apart the old and keeping the new from getting in. While the body just withered away. Sometimes he lay awake at nights, wondering what kind of bombshell it would take to finally get things moving. A big one, that was for sure.

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