by Allen Drury
“Even Harley’s in on it!” the Philadelphia Inquirer blurted right out loud. There was a stir of amusement in the press gallery, but on the floor everybody looked dead serious.
“Then, Mr. President,” Senator Hanson said, “if the distinguished Majority Leader will permit me, I should like to ask unanimous consent that the secretary of the Senate advise the junior Senator from Wyoming that this resolution is being considered and suggest to him that he might wish to be present in the Senate.”
There was silence, and the Vice President took his time about his response.
“There is apparently no objection,” he said finally, “and it is so ordered.”
While the tension exploded and a babble of excited talk and comment filled the big brown room, the principal protagonists remained in their places, Orrin studying his papers thoughtfully, Powell leaning on his desk, Lafe exchanging some quick comment with Verne Cramer, the Majority Leader sitting back impassively, Senator Cooley looking straight ahead with a sleepy little smile on his face, his eyelids drooping. For ten minutes the Senate waited; then there was a sudden stir and excitement out in the hall, pageboys pulled open the doors quickly, Senator Van Ackerman entered. There was a burble of excitement, abruptly stilled.
“Mr. President!” Lafe Smith said, jumping up. “Do I have the floor?”
“No one else has it,” the Vice President pointed out. “The Senator from Iowa has it.”
“What does the Senator from Wyoming desire?” Lafe asked with a deadly courtesy. “Does he wish me to yield to him for anything? Does he have a statement to make before we vote? Is there anything he has to say which can explain his conduct? Can he give us any reasons why we should not censure him? I await the Senator’s pleasure, Mr. President.”
“To coin a phrase,” Bell Syndicate whispered in the silence that followed while everyone looked at Senator Van Ackerman, “I’d say Fred’s face was a study.”
And so it was, and so, it appeared, it was going to remain, for after several moments in which he alternately paled and flushed, clenched his fists and unclenched them, looked about furiously and then looked about pleadingly, not seeming to know exactly what he wanted to do or even if he wanted to do anything, the junior Senator from Wyoming made his only contribution to the debate on the resolution.
“At least I will be here, I will say to the Senator from Iowa!” he shouted suddenly into the silent chamber. “At least I will be here!”
“All right,” Lafe said indifferently, not even bothering to look at him, for it was all over and they all knew it, “be here. Mr. President, I ask for the Yeas and Nays.”
“He’s got ’em,” AP said as more than forty hands went up.
“The Yeas and Nays are ordered, and the clerk will call the roll,” Harley said, and the clerk did, slowly and portentously and rather like God, as The Wall Street Journal murmured to the Denver Post. “The whole thing is rather like God,” the Denver Post retorted. “It scares the hell out of me.” “I hope it does the same,” the Journal said cheerfully, “to Fred Van Ackerman.”
And so it apparently did, for when the clerk reached his name he cleared his throat several times and then said in a low voice they could hardly hear, “I think—under the circumstances—I should vote ‘Present.’” And did.
At the end of it, with ninety-four Senators having responded, the clerk ran through the roll of the absentees and then turned to the Chair to report the final tally. Into the profound silence that fell upon the chamber the Vice President spoke quietly to make official what they already knew.
“Ninety-three Senators having voted Yea and one Senator having voted ‘Present,’” he said, “the resolution of censure against the junior Senator from Wyoming is agreed to.”
In the wild flurry that followed Lafe Smith shouted for recognition again, and the Vice President, after hammering furiously for order and finally securing it, gave it to him.
“I just want to serve notice, Mr. President,” he said, “that if the junior Senator from Wyoming ever again mentions the name of the late senior Senator from Utah, in this forum or any other, I shall introduce a resolution for his expulsion from the Senate. I think,” he said dryly, “I may have the votes.”
“Mr. President,” Warren Strickland said, rising quickly at his desk across the aisle, “will the Senator yield?”
“Gladly,” Lafe said.
“I just wish to say,” the Minority Leader remarked softly, “that if the prohibition just uttered by the Senator from Iowa is ever violated, I shall do what I can, insofar as I am able, to assure him the united support of the Minority.”
“And now, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said quietly into the startled silence that followed, “if I may have the floor, I think I should like to make the remarks I mentioned earlier concerning the passing of our beloved colleague. If Senators wish to leave, they may do so,” he said, knowing that not one would, “but since I also intend to discuss events leading up to his death and perhaps relate them to other matters pending before the Senate, I might suggest that they remain if they can. What I have to say may be of some interest to them.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” the Times murmured dryly above. “Somebody has to tie this can to Leffingwell’s tail, and I guess Bob is going to do it.”
Gravely and quietly, he did, while the Senate sat in intent silence to hear him. At first it seemed to them that this was to be basically just another eulogy; but as he proceeded, telling just enough of what he knew to bring the blame not only to Fred Van Ackerman but closer and closer to the nominee and finally to the President himself, some other purpose began to emerge. Before long the shrewder among them had begun to guess it—toward the back of the room Murfee Andrews of Kentucky took out a five-dollar bill, laid it on his desk, and said, “He will,” to Alec Chabot of Louisiana, who took out another and laid it on his desk and said, “He won’t,” whereupon they shook hands with mock solemnity; and as he went on slowly and carefully to his conclusion, blending it all together with the skill of many years of speaking and many years of managing the minds of men, giving to it just the right mixture of sadness, regret, and righteous indignation, an extreme tension began to grip the Senate again. When he concluded, the press gallery burst into excited life as reporters swarmed to their typewriters to bat out the biggest sensation of a day of them, carrying to the country and the world the news that
MUNSON QUITS AS MAJORITY LEADER IN PROTEST AT ANDERSON DEATH
SAYS PRESIDENT ‘HOUNDED’ SENATOR FROM UTAH;
DECLARES HANDS OFF ON LEFFINGWELL, REFUSES
RE-ELECTION; RE-ELECTION SEEN CERTAIN
All in all, as everybody agreed later when there was time to stop and think, it was quite a day in the United States Senate.
There were three immediate results that made the Senator from Michigan feel much better and made him think that perhaps he was going to regain both his self-respect and his standing with his friends after all. The first was that Lafe went by his desk on his way out at adjournment and, without saying anything or looking at him, simply rested his hand, open palm down, firmly upon it for a moment as he passed; and the second was that Orrin overtook him in the hall and, without offering to stop, said shortly, “That’s better!” as he swung on by.
The third consequence came as soon as he reached his office. “Mrs. Harrison is on the phone,” Mary said. “She has been for ten minutes. She said she would wait until you came in.”
“Darling,” Dolly said without preliminaries, “I think that was just wonderful. I am so proud of you.”
“Are you really?” he asked, and he must have sounded rather forlorn, for she seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time as she replied.
“Yes, you poor mixed-up ex-Majority Leader,” she said. “I am. Damn it, darling,” she added, “why don’t you marry me?”
“Well,” he said with a flash of returning humor, “why don’t you ask me?”
“All right,” she said. “I wi
ll. I am. I do.”
“You don’t have to make a Federal case out of it,” he said with a chuckle. “I accept.”
And so that, after so long a time, was that.
As for Fred Van Ackerman, he went down fighting, or what for him at that particular point in a suddenly eclipsed career passed for fighting. There was a hastily-called press conference, filled with peculiar incoherent, rambling statements, some vague references to the Senator from Utah which weren’t explicit and which the press refused to take down, some bitter outcries against damned Knox and damned Smith, and finally a rather dazed prediction that the subcommittee would vote for Leffingwell and he would still win out. “Mark my words,” he repeated automatically four or five times, “they’ll confirm him. Mark my words.”
But in this he proved at least partially mistaken, for at five-thirty in the afternoon it was announced that the subcommittee had met at the call of the acting chairman and voted three to one, Senator Richardson dissenting, to report the nomination to the full committee with an unfavorable recommendation. The subcommittee had the last word too, because when the press phoned Senator Van Ackerman’s office to see if he had any further comment his administrative assistant said in a hostile voice that he had left for a month’s vacation in Arizona.
“He won’t be here to vote on the nomination, then?” the Herald Tribune inquired politely.
“He won’t be here,” the administrative assistant said.
And that, after so long a time, was that. It would be a while yet before all the effects made themselves felt upon him, but for all practical purposes the junior Senator from Wyoming had had it.
***
Chapter 4
Next morning, the senior Senator from Illinois noted cheerfully, the newspapers were giving him hell. The Times and the Washington Post in particular spoke with a combination of primness and severity concerning the events of Monday, and there was evident in their comments a growing alarm over the prospects of the man they favored as Secretary of State.
“This newspaper,” the Times said, “deeply regrets the tragic event of Sunday night which removed from the American political scene one of its ablest and most promising young men. But we do not feel that this should be taken out of context and used as a club with which to beat down all support for Mr. Leffingwell and turn the battle over his nomination into a posthumous vindication of Senator Anderson. This is obviously what Senator Knox had in mind yesterday when he stage-managed the abrupt and extraordinary censure of Senator Van Ackerman, the sensational resignation of the Majority Leader (a little too much credit on that, Orrin thought), and the unfavorable vote of the Foreign Relations subcommittee.
“So far, the Senator from Illinois has succeeded brilliantly in what he has set out to do. We sincerely hope that today sanity will return to the Senate and that the full Foreign Relations Committee will remember that what is involved here is not a death, however tragic, but the future life of this great country and perhaps of the free world as well. Any other course, it seems to us, would be to make a mockery of the Upper House and its proper place in the American scheme of things.”
The Post devoted to the subject an angry cartoon—which portrayed Orrin triumphant in a Senate chamber strewn with the bodies of the Senator from Wyoming, the Majority Leader, and the nominee, under the caption, “I Just Want People To Follow The Rules”—and a column and a half of editorial.
“It seems obvious,” this concluded, “that Senator Knox is conducting a ghoulish and unprincipled campaign, using the corpse of his young friend as weapon, to turn the honest sadness all men feel at his death into an hysterical drive against Robert A. Leffingwell. Now that the Senator from Wyoming has been censured (No one, Orrin noted, paused to defend Fred) and the Majority Leader has resigned, few obstacles remain in the way of his success. It is our earnest hope that the Majority Leader will speedily reconsider his decision of yesterday, respond to the importunings of his many friends, and return to fight the good fight for Mr. Leffingwell. Only some such major event, it seems likely, can stem the tide now running against the nominee and deny the senior Senator from Illinois the grisly triumph he seeks.”
Only a real alarm could prompt that kind of harshly personal attack, he knew; the Post must really feel that it was on the run. He only hoped it was right, though knowing the Senate he would not be prepared to rest easy until the final vote was held.
On the air much the same tune had been played; both the CBS and NBC news round-ups had contained strong intonations of disapproval and dismay concerning his activities. But his telegrams and mail, he saw with satisfaction as he went quickly through his office routine before leaving for the memorial service at the Cathedral, were beginning to turn decisively in his favor. By ten-thirty, when Lafe called to suggest they share a cab, he had received more than five hundred wires and almost one hundred special-delivery letters. Of these close to four hundred were approving; the remainder, with varying degrees of abuse and vituperation, were not. Lafe reported essentially the same. As his secretaries finished the count an ironic thought occurred to him and acting upon it at once, he put through a call to the director of the Post.
“Good morning, Ned,” he said blandly. “I just wanted to call and thank you for all your many compliments to me this morning. I know they came from the heart, and I appreciate them.”
“We didn’t want you to feel neglected, Orrin,” the director of the Post said cheerfully.
“I didn’t feel that way at all,” Senator Knox said with an equal cheerfulness. “By the way, I have a news item for you. Our mail up here is beginning to run about two to one in favor of what I’m doing and against Leffingwell.”
“Oh?” the director of the Post said cautiously. “That’s interesting if true.”
“Yes, it is,” Orrin agreed. “I thought inasmuch as you made a front-page story out of it last week when the State Department said its mail was running four to one for Leffingwell, maybe you’d want to publish another, now that it’s running against him. Just as part of that fair, objective tradition of our great free press.”
“We might,” the director of the Post said slowly, “if that’s general on the Hill.”
“Would you really, Ned?” Senator Knox inquired. “Where would you put it, on page thirty-four?”
“I think we’d put it wherever we thought, in our best judgment, it ought to be,” the director of the Post said coldly.
“I’m sure you would,” Senator Knox said approvingly. “On page thirty-four. Well, you’d better check it, Ned. There might be a story in it. I’ll see you at the Cathedral. I assume you’ll be there. It would be fitting.”
“I did what I could to prevent it,” the director of the Post said angrily.
“I am aware you did,” Orrin said in a friendly way. “And I imagine you’ll be using that good deed to excuse a lot of things in the next few days, won’t you?”
“This isn’t winning you the friendship of the Post, you know,” its director said. Senator Knox made an impatient sound.
“Do I give a damn?” he asked, “and does it matter? We decided that issue fifteen years ago. Anyway, he’s licked and you know it. That’s all that counts now.”
“Thanks for calling, Orrin,” the director of the Post said dryly. “I appreciate your advice about the news story.”
“I thought you might like to give it equal play with the one you ran last week,” Orrin said. “Just for the hell of it.”
“All I can say is,” the director of the Post told him, “that our check had damned well better show what you say, because it’s sure as hell going to be on page one.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Orrin said. “See you in church.”
And having accomplished one of his major objectives, for now he would receive a very self-consciously fair break in the news columns however bitterly he might be attacked on the editorial page, he went out to meet Lafe and go to the Cathedral.
On the way their conversation was desultory, mostly
speculation about Moscow’s sudden excited announcements that it would have “a statement of the greatest importance to humanity” sometime in the next forty-eight hours—“probably invented the Waring Blender,” Lafe remarked, a rather puerile jest he was to recall shamefacedly later—and their talk did not touch upon what was uppermost in their minds, the sadness of the event in which they were about to participate. It was by just such deliberate concentration on other things that people got through such moments, and politicians, who must attend many farewells for many people, usually had the technique highly developed. At the Cathedral they found they didn’t have to work at it, for the memorial service had been turned into a political battleground and there was quite diversion enough. He might have known, Orrin thought, for this was a contest between two men who did not intend to miss any tricks on either side. But it shocked Lafe, and he hoped it would shock a lot of others. So much the better for him, if that was the way his opponent wanted to play it.
“Well, by God,” Lafe exclaimed in a disbelieving voice as they swung into the Cathedral yard past the long lines of parked cars and the little groups of black-clad men and women standing about talking soberly in the brilliant sunshine, “do you mean to tell me he’s actually got the gall to come here?”
“Of course,” Senator Knox said shortly as they paid the cabbie and got out. “What else did you expect him to do?”
“I didn’t expect this,” Lafe said darkly.
Near the entrance several big black White House limousines were drawn up in impressive array and through the crowd the Secret Service men were already casually on guard. Standing together in a little group to one side of the door were the Assistant to the President, the Secretaries of State, Agriculture, Defense, Justice, and Labor, and some other White House staff people Orrin didn’t know. Someone he couldn’t quite see was in the center of the group, and when it parted a little and he caught a glimpse of him the Senator could hardly believe his luck.
