Advise and Consent

by Allen Drury

  Then while Orrin Knox flushed angrily and Johnny DeWilton seemed on the verge of blurting out some angry rejoinder, but Brigham Anderson, Arly Richardson, John Winthrop, and Seab Cooley all watched him with a certain coldly analytical attention and no other expression, his tone changed abruptly and he went on to his conclusion with his earlier quiet gravity.

  “However, Mr. Chairman,” he said, “there have been some courtesies here and I appreciate them. I also, of course, absolve members of the subcommittee of engaging in any premeditated conspiracy with the Senator from South Carolina. I am not even sure that I should blame him too severely, for as he said yesterday, he did not seek this man out, and apparently had no means of knowing that he was to be so miserably duped. And, of course, Mr. Chairman, win, lose, or draw my position with regard to my country remains what it was on Monday when this hearing began: I love her, I believe in her, I shall serve her to the very best of my ability in every way I can until the breath is no longer in me, and I swear you that as God is my witness.”

  And he sat back with an air as Brigham Anderson gave the gavel an admonitory rap and spoke in an impersonal tone.

  “Are you through, Mr. Leffingwell?” he asked.

  “I am,” Bob Leffingwell said.

  “Very well,” Senator Anderson said impassively, “these hearings on the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State are now concluded.”

  At once he was aware that Fred Van Ackerman was on his feet behind him vigorously leading the applause that broke and rolled and rolled again across the room while Bob Leffingwell bowed and smiled and waved a deprecatory hand, while the press crowded up and the television cameras swung back and forth across the mining audience. Under the protective roar of sound the junior Senator from Wyoming leaned forward and addressed his colleagues. “I’ll see you bastards on the floor,” he said with a tense and strangled violence in his voice. “We’ll see about this. We’ll just see!” And before they could answer he had forced his way around the committee table, elbowed Herbert Gelman harshly aside, and was out front being photographed with the nominee while the crowd continued to applaud and its excited babble filled the room.

  “He’s a really nice guy, that boy,” John Winthrop commented, and Orrin Knox snorted, “He’s a peach.” “I have a good notion,” Lafe Smith said thoughtfully, “to give him a punch in the nose.” Tom August looked genuinely alarmed and Brigham Anderson grinned. “Go right ahead, buddy,” he said. “Nothing would please the press more.”

  “Brig!” AP called, and Lafe smiled as a dozen reporters started toward the chairman.

  “Here they come, pal,” he said. “Your little problems. Tom, let’s go have lunch.”

  “All right,” Senator August said. “I do hope we can get through the afternoon without a bitter debate on this.”

  “We can’t,” Lafe said cheerfully, “so we’d better eat hearty. Come on, Seab. I’m not mad at you yet, today.”

  “I’ll be over, I’ll say to the Senator from Ioway,” Seab said genially. “First, though, I want to hear what the chairman has to say to the press.”

  “So do I,” the Majority Leader said. “Lafe, ask Stanley to sit in for me at the opening, will you? I’ll be over just as soon as I get a bite, tell him.”

  “Right,” Lafe said. “Tom and I will take the girls to lunch for you.”

  “Please do,” Dolly said, and they walked out chatting animatedly together.

  “Well, Brig,” AP said, “what’s the next step? When will the subcommittee vote?”

  “I’ll have to check with the members and see what their pleasure is,” the chairman said, “but I would imagine tomorrow or Friday, probably.”

  “Why didn’t you vote today, Brig?” the Times asked, and the chairman frowned thoughtfully.

  “You heard Seab request some time to study the transcript,” he said, “and several members of the subcommittee felt the same way about it. I know I did. It won’t hurt if we go over for a day or two.”

  “What’s left to be considered?” the Detroit News inquired. “It looks to me as though this whole Gelman business is pretty well exploded, isn’t it? Obviously he’s a mental case.”

  “Yes,” Senator Anderson said thoughtfully. “Except that like a lot of mental cases, there are one or two points on which he seems awfully determined and positive. They may all be part of his general psychological pattern, or they may not. That’s why I think we’d like to take a little time.”

  “You’re going to have trouble with Fred Van Ackerman on that, you know,” the Herald Trib observed. “He went out of here raving something about demanding immediate action when he gets over to the floor.”

  “The things Fred demands and the things Fred accomplishes are two different things,” Orrin Knox broke in tartly. “I agree entirely with the chairman that there’s no rush on this. We can decide tomorrow and nothing will be lost. I think we all want to go over that transcript.”

  “What do you think it all adds up to, Senator?” AP asked, and Orrin Knox looked skeptical.

  “Nothing much, I expect,” he said. “I wasn’t convinced by Gelman, if that’s what you mean, and Leffingwell didn’t perform any differently than I thought he would. He’s still too tricky for me, but he always has been and he’s still done a pretty good job of it, and I expect he will here, too.”

  “How about you, Brig?” the Washington Star asked. “Are you satisfied too?”

  The chairman gave him a direct look and his expression became more earnest and a little puzzled.

  “Not entirely,” he said. “But maybe after I read the transcript I will be. It helps to go over a thing and review it quietly out of the circus atmosphere you fellows create.”

  “We create,” the Chicago Tribune demanded with a smile. “You can blame our friends the photographers and TV boys for that.”

  “You do your bit,” Brigham Anderson said with an answering smile.

  “The hearings are definitely closed for good, then, and we can expect a subcommittee vote sometime tomorrow or Friday,” the Dallas News recapitulated. The chairman nodded. “And how about the full committee?” the News added.

  “Of course that’s up to Tom,” Senator Anderson said, “but I wouldn’t expect it to be very long delayed.”

  “Probably floor action by Friday, Brig?” AP asked, and the chairman smiled.

  “Could be,” he said.

  “And you do expect confirmation, don’t you?” the Providence Journal said.

  “I’d consider it probable,” Brigham Anderson said. “Now I’d advise you boys to hurry up and get a good lunch, because I have an idea it’s going to be a lively session this afternoon.”

  And this time he was right.

  ***

  Chapter 6

  It began right after the “morning hour,” that handy parliamentary catchall which in the Senate naturally runs longer than an hour and furnishes the forum for the introduction of bills, insertions of material in the Congressional Record, and five-minute speeches which in the Senate naturally are often extended by unanimous consent beyond five minutes. Today’s morning hour ran from noon to one thirty-six, and the minute it ended Fred Van Ackerman was on his feet demanding a quorum. The two bells rang commandingly through the two office buildings and the Senate side of the Capitol, and the minute Harley Hudson announced that sixty-five Senators had answered to their names, and a quorum was present, Senator Van Ackerman started talking. When the Majority Leader and the members of the subcommittee arrived in the chamber a few minutes later it was to find the Senate sitting in strained silence while Fred raved on against Carney Birch, who cowered like some small, malodorous wood animal in a seat beside George Hines. The whole thing presented a tableaux so out of keeping with the Senate that the Majority Leader, hurrying to take over his desk from Stanley Danta, stopped by Warren Strickland’s for a moment before crossing the aisle.

  “What in the hell is going on?” he demanded in an urgent whisper, and Senator Strickla
nd gave him a sober look.

  “I don’t quite know,” he said. “It just began a couple of minutes ago when Fred took after Carney.”

  “What in the Christ for?” Senator Munson demanded explosively, and Warren Strickland shrugged.

  “Carney gave a prayer that Fred thought was anti-Leffingwell,” he said.

  “My God, are we getting that tense about it?” Bob Munson asked.

  “Fred seems to be,” the Minority Leader said.

  “Now, Mr. President,” the junior Senator from Wyoming was crying in his repetitive fashion, his voice rising and falling and seeming always just on the verge of complete frenzy, “it is not enough that this great man, this great public servant, yes, this man who may be able to show us the way to lasting peace, to lasting peace, Mr. President, is attacked and smeared—yes, Mr. President, attacked and smeared!—in the press and elsewhere. Now it must come to the floor of the Senate and we find the Senate chaplain, the Senate chaplain, Mr. President, joining in this chorus against him. Have the attacks not been vicious enough, Mr. President? Must they now enlist the Senate chaplain, yes, the Senate chaplain, Mr. President, in their conspiracies? I demand to know, Mr. President, yes, I demand to know, Mr. President. I demand to know!”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, moving to his own desk as Stanley Danta left it and moved over to his with a welcoming smile, “I hate to interrupt the Senator in mid-flight, but since he is in a demanding mood, I think it might be interesting for the benefit of all Senators, including those who came in after the quorum call and were not here for the opening, which I imagine is most of us, if we were to have the clerk read these fearfully offending remarks of the chaplain so that we may all judge them. It is not that I dispute,” he added with the driest hint of mockery, “no, it is not that I dispute, Mr. President, the vivid and no doubt accurate reportage of the junior Senator from Wyoming, but I do think that for myself at least I would like to have the words themselves read back. Will the Senator yield for that purpose?”

  Fred Van Ackerman shot him a dark and suspicious look and then suddenly decided to comply.

  “Read it, Mr. President,” he ordered. “Have him read it and we’ll see.”

  While the official reporter riffled back through his shorthand notes, the Majority Leader leaned across the senior Senator from South Carolina, seated in placid inertness beside him, to Stanley and remarked with a grin, “I’ve always told Carney he’d put the Lord into politics just once too often. I guess this is it.”

  “Watch out for Fred,” Senator Danta said seriously. “He’s about to blow his top.”

  “You know, Bob,” Seab remarked softly, “if I were you, you know what I’d do with that young man?”

  “What’s that, Seab?” the Majority Leader asked.

  “I’d destroy him,” Senator Cooley said, and he meant it absolutely. “Yes, sir, I’d destroy him before he gets any bigger. He means trouble, Bob; I’ve seen his kind come to this Senate before, and they always mean trouble, Bob. Destroy him, Bob, while you still can.”

  The Majority Leader knew he could, and the means flashed swiftly through his mind, keeping him off good committees, preventing his bills from ever coming to the floor for debate, floating rumors of contention and dislike in the press, attacking him obliquely in speeches around the country, using all the little cruelties of parliamentary technique to razor a man down to political nothingness inch by inch. It could be done, and not with any great difficulty, either, at this stage of the game; but he only shrugged and grinned.

  “Of course, Seab,” he said amiably, “he’s on my side at this moment, you know. Maybe that’s why you want him destroyed.”

  “Just take my advice, Bob,” Seab Cooley said gently. “Just take my advice, or you are going to be mighty sorry someday.”

  “Yes,” the Majority Leader said, suddenly serious. “I think you’re entirely right, Seab, but I’ve got to handle him carefully on this one, because he is on my side.”

  “Suit yourself, Bob,” Senator Cooley said indifferently, “but don’t say somebody didn’t tell you.” It was a conversation Bob Munson was to look back upon bitterly only five days later and reflect how shrewd the old fighter was still in his assessments of men.

  “Is the reporter ready?” Harley asked, and the official reporter nodded and began while the Senate listened attentively and Carney, aware that he was in the process of gathering defenders, sat up straight beside Senator Hines and looked as though he were beginning to enjoy it.

  “TheSenateconvenedatnoon,” the reporter read in a hasty monotone. “TheReverendCarneyBirchChaplainoftheSenategavethefollowing—”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Munson interrupted patiently, “can the reporter go a little slower, please? And we don’t want the whole proceedings. Just go to the prayer.”

  “Lord,” the reporter said carefully, unconsciously giving the word Carney’s proprietary emphasis, and there was a snicker from somewhere on the Minority side, probably Verne Cramer. “Lord, who hath brought us together in this great assemblage to decide the fates of men and our great nation, give us the grace and the strength to study with care the things we do, lest in the heat of haste and partisan passion we may make decisions that would later cause us regret and perhaps send to high places men whom we are not sure are worthy of our nation’s trust. Lord, give us the patience to study long and carefully such men, and if we satisfy ourselves truly of their merit, but only then, let us enable them to do our nation’s work. Lord, let us be humble and let us remember this. Amen.”

  “There, you see?” Fred Van Ackerman cried triumphantly. “If that isn’t an attack on Robert A. Leffingwell, Mr. President, I ask you, what is it, Mr. President? I defy the Majority Leader, Mr. President, yes, I defy him, Mr. President, to deny that that is an attack on Robert A. Leffingwell. I defy him, Mr. President!”

  “I get the idea, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said. “The Senator defies me. Well, I am not going to debate the chaplain’s prayer with the junior Senator from Wyoming, which I think would be a precedent unique in a body which is never one to hesitate when it comes to establishing unique precedents. Even for the Senate, Mr. President, I think debating the chaplain’s prayer would be unusual. If the Senator wishes to make an issue of it, he can move to discharge the chaplain and get another chaplain. Does he wish to do so, Mr. President?”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Carney said feebly to George Hines, “he wouldn’t really, would he?”

  “You’re safe, Carney,” Senator Hines assured him. “Only you’d better watch your manners after this.”

  “Oh, I will,” the chaplain said fervently. “Believe me, George, I will.”

  “Mr. President,” Senator Van Ackerman said, more mildly, “I think the distinguished Majority Leader is trying to make a joke out of this now, and I’m not going to oblige him. Of course I’m not going to move to discharge the chaplain, Mr. President, even though,” he added with deliberate cruelty, “I think we could find plenty who would be a whole lot better. I just say it’s symptomatic of the way in which this whole matter has been handled this week by the subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A great man has been crucified before that subcommittee, Mr. President. Members of the Senate have made a mockery of his sincere beliefs, they have attacked and vilified him, they have permitted a man of proven mental unbalance to smear him and attempt to assassinate his character and reputation, and they have lent him their forum and sat by idly while he did it. It’s been unfair, Mr. President, yes, I say it’s been damnably unfair.”

  “Mr. President,” Brigham Anderson said, “will the Senator yield to me?”

  “Yes, I’ll yield to the Senator from Utah, who has presided over this farce,” Fred Van Ackerman said viciously, and there was a sudden tensing through the Senate and the crowded galleries at his tone. The Senator from Utah, however, looked at him calmly and spoke in a level and unhurried voice.

  “The Senator knows,” he said patiently, “that the nom
inee has been given every consideration before our subcommittee. The Senator is aware, because he was there, that the nominee, after the testimony of Herbert Gelman, was given the unusual opportunity to cross-examine him without let or hindrance by the subcommittee, and he also knows, for he was there, that the subcommittee extended to the nominee, had he cared to use it, its power of subpoena so that he might have brought other witnesses before us had he so desired. The Senator knows, for he was there, that the subcommittee interposed no barriers between the nominee and his right to say on the record whatever he wished to say concerning the proceedings, the charges against him, and the defense of his own character. These are the things the Senator knows, and I wonder, Mr. President, why he is attempting now to give the country, through the medium of the press which is busily transmitting his words at this moment, the impression that it has been otherwise. I would like to know,” Brigham Anderson concluded quietly, “why he is dealing fast and loose with the truth in this matter.”

  “Mr. President,” Fred Van Ackerman cried, and his voice sailed up suddenly into its almost pathological whine, “personal privilege! Point of personal privilege, Mr. President! The Senator is violating the rules of the Senate, Mr. President! He is accusing me of lying, Mr. President! I demand that his remarks be taken down and that he be directed to proceed in order!”

  Half a dozen Senators were on their feet at this, among them Orrin Knox, the Majority Leader, and Powell Hanson, but Harley Hudson spoke in a tone of surprising bluntness which made clear that he didn’t need anybody’s help.