by Allen Drury
“You can buy off Seab, I tell you,” the President said comfortably.
“In the first place,” Senator Munson said, “I’ve tried and I can’t, and in the second, it goes a lot deeper than Seab. A lot of people are genuinely worried about Bob Leffingwell as Secretary of State at a juncture like this.”
“Do they assume I’m not worried about things at this juncture?” the President asked with a considerable degree of annoyance.
“I don’t mean it that way,” Senator Munson said, “but a lot of people aren’t prepared to accept your judgment without arriving at their own. It’s that kind of thing.”
“Well, give them a week, then,” the President suggested. “That ought to be long enough. Maybe you can tell Tom I said so.”
“Oh, we’ll try it your way first,” Bob Munson said, “but just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work.” Then on a sudden nervy impulse he tried a long shot. “I can no more see that nomination clearing the committee in one day,” he said, “than I can see Harley Hudson as President of the United States.”
He knew the shot had gone home, for there was a sudden silence on the line. When the President spoke, it was coldly.
“That’s an odd analogy,” he observed. “What made you think of it?”
“I don’t know,” Senator Munson said blandly. “It just seemed to pop out.”
“Well,” the President said angrily, “you can pop it right back in again.”
“Very well,” the Senator said, “if you honestly think I should.”
“I think so, Bob,” the President said in a much more reasonable way; and then, in the first really impulsive move Senator Munson had ever known him to make he said tentatively, “Bob?”
“Yes, Mr. President?” Bob Munson said gravely.
“Sometime when you’re free, come down and we’ll talk.”
“I would like to, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said quietly, “if it would be any help.”
“I think it would,” the President said. “You bear everything alone, in this office, but once in a while you have to at least try to share it with somebody else.”
“Alice won’t do?” Senator Munson suggested.
“She isn’t well herself,” the President said, realized his slip, hesitated, but then went on, “and I wouldn’t want to worry her needlessly.”
“I’m sure it is needlessly, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said, “but I will be down as soon as I can.”
“You’re a real friend, Bob,” the President said with a revealing gratitude, “to a man who isn’t permitted very many.” Then his voice lightened. “It’s in the Constitution somewhere. Having real friends is one of those reserved powers that aren’t granted to the President.”
“Well, glad to be of assistance,” Bob Munson said in a businesslike tone. “We’ll try to get the nomination through for you tomorrow and Monday, but be prepared to put a good face on it at your next press conference, because I really don’t think we can act that fast.”
“I appreciate whatever you can do, you know that, Bob,” the President said. “I know it’s in good hands. Try to keep Tom August in that rosy glow I put him into down here.”
Bob Munson chuckled.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
Which, he thought as he said good-by, was a perfect example of what might be termed the Chairman’s Law. There were ways and ways in which an Administration could take the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into camp, but perhaps the most effective was the accorde intime with the chairman. A gentleman whose normally healthy ego was almost invariably considerably inflated by his position as head of what was, in general, the most important committee of the Congress, he was usually easy prey for the whispered aside, the just-between-us confidences of the State Department and the White House. Take him up on the mountain and show him the vistas of the world, tell him about his own monumentally important contribution to it, consult him with well-publicized secrecy on projected moves in foreign policy, always include him when you entertained visiting foreign dignitaries, let him think you were deferring to his opinion while you did as you pleased, cozen him regularly with the most blatant flattery, of which he was eager to believe every word, and nine times out of ten he was yours. With him, usually, went an indirect but effective control of the committee, for its customary disposition was to follow the chairman’s lead and take his word for it in matters which could be clothed with a sufficient aura of portentous mystery.
With this time-honored formula, tried and tested and found infallible in half a dozen recent Administrations, Tom August had been persuaded on numerous occasions to follow the President’s wishes. If the formula was about to fail in this case, Senator Munson knew, it was because this case was of a nature the formula was not quite broad enough to cover.
Just before he left to go down to the floor for his regular pre-session talk with the press, at about the moment when he was really beginning to worry about the implications of their elliptical conversation on the President’s health, two more calls came in for him. One was from Tom August’s and Harley Hudson’s recent host in South Carolina, dutifully fulfilling his historic role of adviser-to-everybody-about-everything, and the other was from the best-publicized cardinal in the hierarchy, dutifully fulfilling his role as the most egregious busybody in American politics. The Senator listened patiently to the adviser’s sagely innocuous comments, unh-hunhed his way through several vapid moments with the Church’s most ubiquitous prince, agreed heartily with them both that the Leffingwell nomination was certainly important, all right, and hung up with the fervent hope that he had satisfied them once and for all. He had troubles enough without being pestered by those two.
“In just a moment,” the guide was telling his gallant band, by now a little wan and footsore, “you will enter the Senate of the United States and watch a session begin. You will see the Majority Leader, Senator Robert D. Munson of Michigan, holding his regular press conference at his desk, where he talks to reporters every day before the session, briefing them on what is going to happen during the afternoon. The Vice President of the United States, the Honorable Harley M. Hudson, will be in the chair as the session begins. The invocation will be delivered by the Reverend Carney Birch, Chaplain of the United States Senate. If you don’t see very many Senators on the floor at first, this is because many of them are still attending committee meeting elsewhere in the Capitol or in the office buildings. Much of the most important work in the Senate is done in committees, which accounts for the fact that attendance may seem light at times. Also, Senators may be in their offices answering mail or performing other duties for their constituents. A quorum call may be demanded by any individual member, and when it is, you will hear a bell ring twice. This bell rings throughout the Senate side of the Capitol and in the office buildings and is used to call Senators to the floor to debate or vote on important matters. So don’t be disappointed if you don’t see very many Senators on the floor right away, because they are either in committee or attending to other matters for their constituents. Also, some of them may be eating lunch, which I’ll bet you and I would like to do right now. Now if you will just file in quietly and take your seats where the gallery attendant tells you—”
***
Chapter 5
Now in the moments before the Senate was about to begin the chamber resembled a sort of tan, marble-paneled fishbowl in which pageboys in their white shirts and black pants darted about like minnows distributing bills and copies of the legislative calendar to all the desks, whisking off stray specks of dust, shoving the spittoons carefully out of sight, checking the snuff boxes to make sure they were full, joking and calling to one another across the big brown room. A few clerks and secretaries drifted in, the parliamentarian and his assistant stood at one of the doors talking, the clerk of the Senate and the sergeant-at-arms stood talking at another, the first reporters waiting to see Bob Munson wandered into the well of the Senate and stood about exchanging chaff. At his
desk on the majority side, Dave Grant, secretary to the Majority, busied himself with papers and made last-minute calls to senatorial offices advising the expected schedule of business for the day, and at his desk on the minority side Bert Hallam, secretary to the Minority, did the same. Above in the public galleries the tourists settled themselves in an excited, peering bustle, a few senatorial wives and special guests entered the family gallery to the Chair’s left, a few dark-skinned individuals of indeterminate nationality took their places in the diplomatic gallery directly across from him, a few reporters came into the press gallery directly above and behind him. From his personal office across the Senators’ lobby, behind the chamber, Harley Hudson peeped out quickly and then went in again, but not before several tourists had spotted him and exclaimed delightedly to one another. The press corps grew in front of Bob Munson’s desk and in front of that of Warren Strickland of Idaho, the Minority Leader, directly across the center aisle. Paul Hendershot of Indiana, the first Senator to appear, came on the floor like some bright old peering bird and took his seat toward the back of the room; he was followed quickly by Cecil Hathaway of Delaware, John Baker of Kentucky, Bob Randall of New Jersey, and Powell Hanson of North Dakota. For a moment the four of them stopped to talk, a little knot of laughing, congenial men, then broke up and went to their respective desks. Murfee Andrews of Kentucky, loaded down with books and documents, came in prepared to do battle on the pending Federal Reserve bill; he was followed by his two principal antagonists, Taylor Ryan of New York and Julius Welch of Washington, looking fully as determined as he. It was ten minutes to noon on the day of the Leffingwell nomination and the Senate, with the exception of minor changes here and there, looked exactly as it had at ten minutes to noon in 1820, 1890, 1910, 1935, 1943, or any other time. As if by concerted agreement the Majority Leader entered down the center aisle, the Minority Leader entered from the side, and the press moved in on them both as they shook hands and gave one another friendly greeting while the tourists stared and twittered up above.
“How’s the weather?” Warren Strickland murmured; Bob Munson grinned, pulled him close, and whispered in his ear, “Still cloudy and uncertain.” The Minority Leader laughed and started to move across the aisle to his desk.
“Don’t go away, Warren,” AP said. “We’ve got things to ask you both.”
“I don’t know anything,” Senator Strickland said with his quick ironic smile, coming back to lean against Bob Munson’s desk. “You ask Bobby. He knows everything, that’s his job.”
“Bobby,” Senator Munson announced firmly, “doesn’t know anything either.”
“Oh, come now, Senator,” the Baltimore Sun said. “Surely you can do better than that. How soon are you going to get action on the nomination?”
“I believe Senator August will probably make an announcement as soon as his plans are firmed up,” Bob Munson said.
“He didn’t make any announcement at the White House,” the New York Herald Tribune observed.
“Oh, was he at the White House?” Senator Munson asked.
“As if you didn’t know,” the Evening Star said amiably. Bob Munson smiled.
“Tom ought to be the one to say,” he said. “It’s his committee, after all.”
“Is it, Senator?” the Post asked skeptically. “I thought you and the President ran it.”
“Not quite,” Senator Munson said. “Not quite. What else can we do for you boys?”
“You haven’t done anything for us yet,” AP advised him. “How many votes have you got, Bob? How many have you got, Warren? Let’s be specific here.”
“I think I have quite a few,” Senator Munson said. “Warren thinks he has quite a few, and of course Seab Cooley thinks he has quite a few.”
“Will yours stay hitched, though?” the Times asked. Warren Strickland gave the Majority Leader a poke in the arm.
“Not the way mine will,” he said with a satisfied laugh.
Bob Munson laughed too, as noncommittally as possible.
“Leffingwell’s in trouble then?” UPI said.
“My boy,” said Bob Munson, “have you ever known Bob Leffingwell when he wasn’t in trouble?” Everybody laughed and he added quickly: “Don’t quote me on that.”
“Seriously, Senator,” said the Baltimore Sun, seriously, “how does it look to you right now?”
“It looks,” said Bob Munson slowly, “like a terrific fight.”
“Can we quote you?” the Star asked quickly.
“Yes,” Senator Munson said thoughtfully. “Isn’t that right, Warren?”
Senator Strickland nodded and cleared his throat.
“From nearly all precedents of past presidential nominations for the Cabinet,” he said carefully while the reporters scribbled hastily away, “Mr. Leffingwell will ultimately be confirmed. However, the issues involved here are so complex and the times in which we live are so serious, that there will undoubtedly be a most thorough Senate debate which could conceivably result in the defeat of this nomination.”
“In other words,” Bob Munson said with a twinkle, poking the Minority Leader in the arm in his turn, “like I said, a terrific fight.”
“Right,” Warren Strickland conceded with a smile, “but I knew they needed something more than one sentence from you to make a story.”
“Not these boys,” Bob Munson said jovially. “All they need is one word and they’re off to the races with a two-column story.”
“That’s what’s known as experience, Senator,” the Star said, and at that moment the warning bell began to ring. Harley Hudson entered the chamber and took the Chair, Senator Strickland crossed to his desk and remained standing, Senator Munson and his other colleagues rose, the press sprinted off the floor, the room quieted down, and the session began as the Vice President banged his gavel. Carney Birch stepped forward and began the prayer, and Bob Munson realized with a start that as usual, everybody was trying to get into the act and not the least of these was Carney. This time it was even more flagrant than usual.
“Our Father,” the Senate chaplain was droning in his snuffling way, “in these days of stress and strain when men are called upon to bear great burdens, give this Senate the strength and charity to ascertain of each who would serve his nation his true nature and purpose, lest through inadvertence and oversight there slip into seats of power those who would misguide and mislead this great people to whom You have given so much—”
The Reverend Carney Birch, Bob Munson reflected, was one of those ministers who go around slapping God on the back. A small, bulgy man with bad breath and an unctuous manner, he patronized both the Deity and his fellow men with serene assurance. “The Lord will do it for you!” Carney often promised, in a tone which indicated that he was both in a position to know and in a position to chastise the Lord if He didn’t follow through. He was made further insufferable by the fact that he took with great seriousness the title, “the Hundred-and-First Senator,” which had been conferred upon him many years ago in an unwise moment by a whimsical feature-writer for the Associated Press. This sobriquet Carney treasured, and he never missed an opportunity to live up to it, hanging around the floor for hours after the prayer was over, hobnobbing with great familiarity with people like Orrin Knox, who was too polite to object, and Blair Sykes, who didn’t give a damn, breaking in on confidential conversations, running up from time to time to whisper in the Vice President’s ear, and generally making himself beloved of all. But there was no getting rid of him: he was pastor of the church downtown to which Reverdy Johnson belonged, Reverdy had gotten him the chaplaincy twenty years ago, and every time anyone tried to oust him the Star and the Post would come forth with stern editorials beginning, “It is with great regret that we note that political partisanship is threatening the proper place of religion in the United States Senate.” That always stopped that. So Carney stayed on, getting older and bulgier and more odorous and more obnoxious, one of those situations the Senate suffers with placid patience because it j
ust isn’t worth anybody’s time to go through the fight necessary to get it straightened out.
Well-launched, he was repeating, reasserting and reinforcing his admonition to the Senate to watch its p’s and q’s about Bob Leffingwell, and to the Lord to help it out. “O Lord!” he cried, and, “O Lord!” Bob Munson thought with impatient annoyance, “why doesn’t he shut up and let us get on with it?” Just then his eye caught that of Harley Hudson and before he stopped to think he had winked and Harley had winked back. The exchange brought his fellow Michigander squarely into his thoughts, and with him the President’s health, and for a second the Senator looked full at the Vice President with a quizzical expression that brought an immediate reaction from Harley. A worried little grimace crossed his face, he struggled with it, but it was too much for him; his lips formed the silent question, “What’s the matter?” above Carney’s bobbing head. Bob Munson shook his head hurriedly in a small, hasty gesture and deliberately looked away, concentrating on the flag behind Harley’s chair. Carney droned finally to a fervent conclusion and Senator Munson went smoothly into the routine of the day, asking unanimous consent that the reading of the journal of yesterday’s proceedings be dispensed with and then suggesting the absence of a quorum.
“The absence of a quorum is suggested,” Harley said in a tone that indicated he was still worried, “and the Clerk will call the roll.”
Bob Munson sat down and began looking busily through his papers, but just as he had anticipated, he was aware that Harley was gesturing to Powell Hanson to take the Chair and was getting ready to come down from the dais to see him. A second later the Vice President slid into the seat beside him.
“What is it, Bob?” he whispered at once, and Senator Munson thought with a sigh that while the Vice President was wonderfully goodhearted and an awfully nice guy in many ways, he certainly had not been equipped by temperament or nature for either the role he had to play, or the role he might be called upon to play. Politics, he reflected as he had so many times, did some of the damnedest things sometimes; a rather guilty reflection, since he himself had had so much to do with it, in this particular instance.
