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Chapter 53 Value Exchange
Leo's decision made everyone in the conference room tense.
"Leo, are you sure you want to do this?" Karen was the first to object. "Going to see Morganfield now is too dangerous. It will expose our hand too early and make him think we want something from him."
"That's right." Ethan agreed. "What we should do now is to accumulate strength according to the established plan, rather than actively provoking that behemoth."
Frank even stood up abruptly.
"I disagree!" he said firmly. "We shouldn't have any contact with that vampire! He's the eternal enemy of the working class!"
Leo looked at them and said calmly, "Gentlemen, I understand your concerns."
"But you must understand that Douglas Morganfield is the biggest uncertainty in this battle, and his attitude will directly determine how difficult this battle will be for us."
"We can't bury our heads in the sand like ostriches and pretend he doesn't exist."
"I must personally verify his true intentions so that we can develop the most effective response strategy."
The familiar cigar room at the Allegheny Hilltop Club was filled with smoke.
Leo and Douglas Morganfield sat facing each other once again.
This time, both sides tacitly avoided mentioning their previous verbal agreement regarding "benevolent neutrality."
Leo got straight to the point and began to probe.
"Mr. Morganfield, thank you for taking the time. I think we are all very clear that the future of Pittsburgh will be completely decided in the next five months."
"I'm here today to hear your thoughts on the future."
Morganfield took a sip of his whiskey and scrutinized the young man before him, who appeared more composed than when they last met.
"To be honest, Leo," he put down his glass and leaned forward slightly, "the last time I helped you, I just wanted to give Cartwright a warning."
"He served as mayor for eight years and became increasingly arrogant and foolish. He began to forget whose support he had to be in this position today."
"I need someone to cause him some trouble, to bring him to his senses, to remind him of his place. You and your community center happen to be that perfect trouble."
"I thought you would be content to be a community hero, a pawn I could use to keep Cartwright in check at any time. Even if you had ambitions, that would be ten years from now."
"But I didn't expect that you would want to be the one playing the chess game so quickly."
"That complicates things, Leo."
"Cartwright may be stupid, but he's a stupid guy I know, a controllable stupid guy. And you..." He re-examined Leo, "you and the people behind you, the power you represent, are a huge unknown."
After saying this, Morganfield fell silent.
He gently placed the wine glass on the table and leaned back into the huge leather sofa.
The air in the cigar room seemed to freeze.
He simply looked at Leo calmly with those eyes.
The silence itself is a question.
Leo knew that the other party had already laid their attitude on the table.
Now it's his turn to make a bid.
But what can he offer?
Has Morganfield promised to cut taxes for businesses?
Will he promise to relax regulations on industrial pollution after his election?
All of this runs counter to the core platform of his entire campaign.
If he were to make any such promise here today, it would be tantamount to political suicide.
He fell silent.
"Child, do you think dealing with these wealthy patrons is simply a matter of 'I give you money, you do my job'—a mere exchange of favors?"
Roosevelt's voice echoed in his mind.
"Wrong. That's just the lowest level of transaction. The highest level of financial politics is an investment based on trust, a symbiotic system."
"Think about it, why would those oligarchs so confidently pour millions, even tens of millions of dollars in political donations into the candidates they support? What makes them so sure that these candidates will deliver on the promises they made in private after taking office?"
"Because they never invest in any specific person; they invest in a closed system comprised of shared interests, a shared social circle, and a shared ideology."
"They support Cartwright because he is a member of the same golf club as them, they appear at the same charity galas, and their children attend the same private schools."
"They are people of the same class."
"Therefore, they didn't need Cartwright to make any specific promises. They believed that every decision Cartwright made would instinctively align with the common interests of their class."
"This doesn't need a contract; it's a class instinct."
"And you, Leo Wallace, are an outsider to this system. You are not one of them."
"So Morganfield doesn't trust you. Even if you promise him here today that you will cut his taxes by 50 percent if you are elected, he won't fully believe you."
"Because of your instincts, your background, and your stance, you are positioned on the opposite side of him."
"So your only task sitting here today is to give him a good reason, a reason that will convince him that investing in you, this dangerous outlier, will bring him a higher return than continuing to invest in Cartwright, that controllable insider."
Leo looked up from his reverie.
He got it.
He cannot pander to the other party; he must create new value to offer Morganfield.
But how can he do that?
Just when he was at his wit's end, Roosevelt's voice rang out again.
"My child, sometimes, in order to achieve a great goal, you must learn to make some necessary compromises with harsh reality."
Even I am no exception.
In Leo's mind, the scene of the White House Oval Office in 1935 came to mind.
Roosevelt was sitting at his desk, with two people standing in front of him.
One was the head of the NAACP, and the other was a powerful Democratic senator from Georgia in the South.
They were fiercely debating a federal bill that would ban lynching.
"Mr. President!" the Black leader exclaimed, "Just last week, another innocent young Black man was lynched by a mob in Mississippi! We can no longer tolerate this barbarity! You must immediately push Congress to pass this anti-lynching bill!"
The Southern senator then spoke in a threatening, icy tone.
"Mr. President, I must remind you that lynching is an internal affair of the Southern states, and the federal government has no right to interfere."
"If you insist on pushing this bill through, then I will unite all the Democratic members of our Southern Congress to vote against your upcoming Social Security Act in the Senate."
Roosevelt was caught in a dilemma.
On the one hand, there are social principles concerning racial equality and judicial justice.
On the other hand, the most core and important cornerstone of his entire new policy system is the Social Security Act, which provides basic living security for millions of unemployed, disabled and retired people across the country.
"Child, tell me, if you were me, what would you choose?" Roosevelt's voice echoed in Leo's mind.
Leo fell silent.
Although he knew the final outcome, he didn't know how to answer at that moment.
"I ultimately chose to compromise," Roosevelt replied. "I temporarily shelved the anti-lynching bill in exchange for the support of those Southern congressmen for the Social Security Act."
"But if I hadn't done that, millions of elderly, disabled, and unemployed Americans would have died alone in hunger and poverty during the winter of the Great Depression."
"Leo, politics, in many cases, is not about choosing between good and bad in a game of chess."
"It's like being in a game of chess that's as bad as it gets, forcing you to choose the only path that allows you to keep playing between the options of 'bad' and 'worse'."
The scene in Leo's consciousness shifted again.
This time, he saw a well-dressed man with shrewd eyes sitting opposite Roosevelt.
That man was Joseph Kennedy, the father of President Kennedy.
He was one of the most notorious speculators on Wall Street at the time, a financial tycoon who made a fortune during the Great Depression by using various insider trading and market manipulation tactics.
"I appointed him, this fraudster whom everyone hates to the core, as the first chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission," Roosevelt said.
"At the time, everyone in my cabinet thought I was crazy. They said I was letting a wolf into the house, putting the biggest thief in charge of the country's treasury."
"But what was the result? It turns out that only the con artists who understand all the rules of deception know best how to catch other con artists."
"I took advantage of Joseph Kennedy's greed, his vanity, and his desire to whitewash his family's reputation, which led him to build for me an unprecedented and, at the time, the most stringent financial regulatory system in the world."
"I turned the fiercest wolf into a sheepdog that guards the flock."
Roosevelt's voice became serious.
"So, Leo, don't be afraid to make a deal with the devil."
"The key is that the content of your deal with the devil must be beneficial to the people; and the initiative in the deal must be firmly in your own hands."
"What you need to do now is find a project like this for Morganfield, and for yourself."
"A project that would allow him to see huge commercial benefits while also genuinely boosting Pittsburgh's economy and creating numerous jobs for our working class."
"A benign devil's bargain."
A thought flashed through Leo's mind.
He recalled an idea that Ethan Hawke had put forward in that thick policy white paper, an idea that they had all temporarily shelved.
Pittsburgh Inland Port Expansion Plan.
Leo raised his head and looked at the city tycoon who was waiting for his reply, his eyes filled with unprecedented confidence.
He began by saying, "Mr. Morganfield, I've been wondering what Mayor Cartwright can offer you."
"Some tax breaks? Some green lights in municipal approvals? These are policy benefits during his term, but policies change, and mayors change. Once he steps down, you'll have to renegotiate with the next mayor."
Morganfield tapped the table with his finger, interrupting him.
"Young man, you've got the order backwards. It's never me who needs them, but them who need me. The mayor will come to me himself, with his gifts, hoping I'll answer his call again next time."
Leo shrugged, neither confirming nor denying.
"So, the gifts he can give you are nothing more than the same old ones," Leo continued. "But I can give you something he can never give you."
"A logistics lifeline that can permanently reduce the transportation costs of all products of your Morganfield Industrial Group by 20 percent."