Advise and Consent

by Allen Drury

  “I have decided,” he said, “to create a special commission, somewhat similar to the Hoover Commission, to study and overhaul the administrative side of the government, something which has not been done for some years and which I think badly needs doing. To the post of executive director of this commission, a post for which I think his administrative abilities amply qualify him, I should like to appoint Robert A. Leffingwell. It is not a post which requires Senate confirmation, and I shall not submit his name to you for confirmation; neither is it a policy post, for I take it the Senate does not want him in such a post. But it is a post where I think he can be of real assistance to the country, and I should like to think that you will understand my reasons and will not criticize them too harshly.

  “I feel that I can use him. I feel the country can use him. I had a long talk with him yesterday afternoon, after he had submitted to me his resignation from the government, which he felt he should do in the light of your vote, and I am satisfied that he will justify your confidence if you will give it to him. I will say to you, too,” he added thoughtfully, “that I have the assurances of the man I have decided to nominate for Secretary of State that he too is willing to give him a second chance in this post which will in no way impinge upon policy, foreign or domestic. I would hope, now that the heat of controversy has died a little, that you would understand and support this particular solution for this particular problem.”

  He paused, and in the little private conversation Bob Munson was carrying on in his mind he paid tribute to the unexpected and surprising shrewdness of the man before them. For this of course was by no means an ideal solution for anything, but rather an astute and practical move to both mollify and win the active support of the many vocal and powerful elements that had backed the nominee. In this it was both politically perceptive and quite symbolic of the government in which it occurred. In a way, he thought sardonically, this was a perfect democratic solution, not wholly satisfying anybody, not wholly antagonizing anybody, not white, not black, not good, not bad; pragmatic, realistic, sensible within the context and climate in which the President, any President, must operate if he would lead his widely diverse land; and gratifying completely neither the idealistic who had opposed Robert A. Leffingwell nor the idealistic who had supported him.

  At these thoughts, wry and half-amused and filled with the wisdom of many years experience with the government of his country, the Majority Leader glanced at Orrin Knox with a quizzical grin and shook his head in mock wonderment; but the senior Senator from Illinois did not seem amused. Instead he looked back with a strange expression Senator Munson did not understand, and nodded absently. The Majority Leader wondered in some alarm if Orrin were going to raise more hell at this late date. He hoped not. Surely he wouldn’t if Harley asked him not to. Harley, after all, was the President.

  “I come now,” the President said, “to the nomination for Secretary of State. I shall say little on this score, because I do not need to. I shall say only that I hope you will speedily confirm his nomination, for I must leave tomorrow morning for Geneva and the time is short.”

  He paused and slowly gathered up the sheets of his speech, looking down upon them thoughtfully and placing them neatly back in their folder before he spoke. Then he looked up again, directly and strongly out across the room, once again meeting their eyes squarely all around the Senate.

  “I nominate,” he said quietly, “for the high office of Secretary of State my old colleague and dear friend, the senior Senator from the State of Illinois.”

  Into the pandemonium that followed UPI looked dazedly at AP.

  “But—but—but—” He said.

  “God damn it, man,” AP shouted, clapping him on the back, “don’t stand there and gibber. Get up there and write!”

  And so they did.

  ***

  Chapter 5

  Long before the presidential party started at 9 a.m. Sunday from the White House out across Fourteenth Street Bridge and over the Potomac, the crowds had begun to gather at National Airport, coming up from Maryland, over from the District, in from nearby Virginia. By eight-thirty, when the presidential plane and the accompanying plane for the State Department delegation to the conference were wheeled slowly out on the apron, there were an estimated 175,000 people massed about the field entrance to the MATS terminal; and shortly before nine-twenty, when amid screaming sirens and the usual accompaniment of motorcycle outriders the President’s limousine and the four cars following arrived at the field and drove out on the apron with a flourish, police and press estimated that the figure had grown close to 300,000.

  To this great gathering, covered by every means of press, television, and radio, carried throughout the nation and overseas, the President’s words were brief as he stood on a platform facing them in the bright blue day. Flanked by the leaders of the Senate, the new Secretary of State, the Speaker, and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, he looked wind-blown, kindly, earnest, and unperturbed.

  “My countrymen,” he said in a clear voice that boomed across the field in the waiting hush, “I am leaving now for Geneva. I go on your behalf, and I think,” he said, “that I go with your love.”

  At this there was a great roar from the crowd and he paused, obviously touched.

  “Apparently,” he said, “I do. I hope this will be noted in certain places where it will do the most good.”

  There was a burst of laughter and applause.

  “I cannot promise you,” he said soberly, “that the United States will emerge from this conference with all her objectives in the cause of peace achieved.” A deep silence suddenly fell. “But I can promise you,” he said, and his voice rang out firmly and emphatically, “that she will not come home with any of her objectives abandoned, or any of her principles yielded, or any of her courage diminished.” And a great roar came again.

  “The United States and her President,” he said, “are unafraid. We go in good faith, pledged to do our honest best, striving always for a decent and lasting peace. From this purpose we cannot be intimidated or diverted. Humanity knows it can trust us. We will not let humanity down.” And the roar came again.

  “Now,” he said, almost conversationally, “it is time to say good-by—or, rather, au revoir. In these brief hours that I have been your President, you have been more than kind to me. Your love has sustained me in all I have done for you so far. I know it will sustain me until I return, bringing safely home to you the dignity, the future, and the honor of the United States of America—intact.

  “God bless you all. Thank you so much for coming out to see me off.”

  He waved and turned, and while the roar of shouts and applause grew and swelled again, the members of his party also waved and began to enter the planes.

  He held out both hands, one to the Speaker and one to the President Pro Tempore, and gripped them firmly.

  “Take care of things,” he said, and they both smiled in a fatherly fashion.

  “Don’t you worry, Mr. President,” the Speaker said. “Old Seab and I, we’ll mind the store.”

  “Yes, sir,” Senator Cooley said, and he gave the President’s hand an extra squeeze. “Now just you don’t worry about a thing, Harley. Just you don’t worry. After all,” he grinned sleepily and poked the Speaker, “Bill and I, here, we’ve wanted to be President too, you know, from time to time. Now’s our chance to show our stuff.” He chuckled. “Yes, sir, now’s our chance to show our stuff.”

  “God bless you both,” the President said seriously. “I only wish you could be with me.”

  “Keep us advised,” the Speaker suggested, and the President nodded.

  “Daily,” he said.

  And then with one last wave to the crowd he entered his plane, the door closed, the great silver machines began to taxi slowly down the runway, turned at the far end and came back, faster and faster and faster until suddenly they were airborne and on their way.

  The crowd followed them intently, in utter silence,
until they were no more than little silver dots. Then suddenly they were lost, and over all the great field a curious, profoundly moving sigh went up before the throng began to disperse and go home.

  Sitting silently in the forward plane as it passed over Baltimore and moved up the spring-green Maryland countryside, the presidential party was lost in its thoughts. There seemed little need for conversation and for a while there was none.

  Senator August read a magazine or stared out the window. The President, appearing perfectly calm, leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. The Majority Leader, feeling comforted by this homely sight, tossed a quick, kindly glance of amusement at the Minority Leader, and did the same. Only the new Secretary of State seemed wide awake and unable to doze.

  He that would bring home the wealth of the Indies, it had said, must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

  Well, he had gone forth—the country had gone forth—now they in this plane were going forth, hoping to bring home, not the wealth of the Indies, perhaps, but only, if they possibly could, a little pinch of accommodation with this enemy so hostile to every human decency in the world; and not necessarily carrying the wealth of the Indies with them, but only a few scraps of things, the memory of a meeting in Philadelphia, a speech at Gettysburg, a few fragments of valor still echoing down the American wind from distant battles and far-off things, Chancellorsville and The Wilderness, the Alamo and San Juan Hill, Belleau Wood and the Argonne, Bataan and Corregidor, Omaha Beach and Salerno, Midway, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal; a certain way of looking at things, a certain way of living, a form of government that might or might not turn out to be all it was cracked up to be, when all was said and done: on that the final judgment had not yet been rendered.

  And what of his own pilgrimage stretching back down the years to Springfield and ahead to—what? He couldn’t say—he would have to wait and see—time would have to tell. It would be just his luck, he thought with a wry inward smile, for the President to stumble in his good-hearted innocent way upon some utterly unexpected triumph that would bring him home a hero, cancel out his determination not to run next year, and so once more foreclose his own chances....And if he did, so what? He would not fret over that, Orrin thought. It would probably be for the best in a greater design than his.

  Who knew? Who could tell? At least he was no longer so restless, at least he was beginning to find a reasonable equanimity, at least in the rushing events of the past three days, beginning with the shattering revelation of what he had done to himself at the convention and culminating in his appointment as Secretary of State, he had begun to take things as they came, without too much impatience and too much anguish and too much regret. And that, perhaps, was wealth enough of the Indies for him.

  So they rode on, old friends from the Senate together carrying their country’s hopes, while below America sped away, the kindly, pleasant, greening land about to learn whether history still had a place for a nation so strangely composed of great ideals and uneasy compromise as she.

  Washington‒Orlando‒Sanibel

  October, 1957‒November, 1958

  ***

  Memories of Al

  Kevin D. Killiany

  I first became aware my uncle was a writer in 1961, somewhere around my seventh birthday and shortly after I’d figured out his name was Al and not Owl. Prior to that I’d known him as a giant, the only person I knew taller than my father, who visited our house and always spoke to me as though I were a very short adult. I was a rambunctious child, known for trying the patience of everyone around me, but according to my mother I would often sit next to Uncle Al in companionable silence, drawing or playing with some toy, while he read or reviewed galleys. I have no memory of this.

  What I do remember is my mother in 1961 showing me a sketchbook filled with head-and-shoulder portraits she was very excited about. She explained who each person was and the decisions she’d made for depicting them in great detail—certainly more detail than a seven-year-old could take in. But she captured my attention when she explained the pictures were all for Uncle Al’s new book. Being seven, I concluded that pictures for a book meant Uncle Al was making a coloring book and I’m told I made several suggestions. (A few years later I made a similar mistake with his Three Kids in a Cart—a collection of his essays and interviews from the 1950s—expecting it to be a book of children’s stories.) My mother, Anne Killiany, was an artist and a journalist who—in keeping with tradition in the 1950s—had put her career on hold to raise my brother and me. She was excitedly showing sketches to her uncomprehending son because doing the cover and interior illustrations of A Shade of Difference was her first professional work in eight years. That Uncle Al leveraged Doubleday into offering her the chance—she was not a shoo-in, her work had to be vetted by their art director—had to do with Uncle Al’s character. Not to be confused with nepotism, for there were many non-family examples throughout his life, whenever Al could use his influence to better the prospects of another, he would.

  Allen Drury’s character informed his writing. Much was made by contemporary reviewers of his staunch opposition to the Soviet Union—and almost all of them labeled him a conservative as a result; few noticed that Uncle Al’s political views spanned the spectrum. True, he saw the federal government’s role as being one step removed from the lives of individual citizens—enforcing standards or providing resources when needed, but otherwise not directly involved—so he would be considered a proponent of small government. But he thought free education for the young—and job training for the unemployed—made good business sense. He advocated racial equality in the 1950s and defended the rights and dignity of the gay community at a time when the very word “homosexual” was censored. Underlying all of his positions was a belief in the fundamental integrity of human beings. Even the worst villains in his novels are motivated by their sense of what is right; though some of his characters are delusional in their convictions, they always act out of those convictions.

  Sometime in my teen years I decided I wanted to be a writer. Given the examples of my mother and uncle, I assumed being a writer meant also being a journalist, and over the years I often asked each about their craft. Uncle Al was much more forthcoming about journalism than writing fiction in those days, and his rules for good journalism were simple: A journalist should report the facts accurately and completely; provide context and background when needed; never leave out things he does not like or disagrees with; and clearly label speculation and opinion as speculation and opinion. He saw a dangerous trend in people trusting the media, in accepting what they were told instead of checking the facts. Seeing two minutes of a speech on TV or reading an account of the speech in the paper should not take the place of hearing the entire speech or reading a transcript. He thought people were becoming too complacent in letting the media tell them what they should know and that broadcasters and publishers were abusing that complacency. This is a theme that runs through all of his political novels, and though at the time he was writing the media were overwhelmingly liberal, he would be just as critical of today’s conservative press and TV. He would no doubt be horrified by uncredentialed bloggers with no expertise beyond basic rhetorical skills being accepted as authorities on foreign policy or domestic programs. He believed the journalist was obligated to provide readers with the information they needed to make intelligent decisions and had no business trying to shape public opinion.

  Allen Drury’s journalism is showcased in A Very Strange Society—his study of apartheid South Africa in 1966. His first-hand accounts and in-depth interviews with leaders on both sides of the issue—some conducted at great personal risk—are set amongst a collage of local news reports, statistical data, and government statements as he let South Africa itself set the context for his report. I read A Very Strange Society shortly after the Soweto uprising—nearly a decade after it was released—and asked him why he hadn’t offered any solutions to the social injustice he’d seen. Uncle Al told me that though he’d been cr
iticized at the time for not spelling out what he thought must change in South Africa, it would have been presumptuous for him as an outsider to do so. His purpose as a journalist had been to find out what was happening beneath the public façade and to report on what he discovered.

  His training as a journalist shaped how he approached writing a novel. Most of the time Uncle Al invested in writing a novel went to research, tracking down as many primary sources as he could for information on every aspect of his story before he wrote a single word. After he was established as a novelist, he was able to hire a personal assistant to comb libraries in search of information he needed, but when it came to locations, he always went in person. If he described an actual street corner in a real town, it was likely he’d stood there, and if a character ordered a specific dish in a real restaurant, Uncle Al probably had a copy of the menu. Before writing A God Against the Gods, he made several trips to Egypt, traversing as closely as possible the paths Akhenaten had trod over three thousand years ago, The last few years he was able to travel saw him in Asia, tracing the Silk Road and getting to know the Mongol people—researching a novel he didn’t get a chance to write. What he discovered in his research often shaped the course of his novel. He did not work from an outline so much as he carefully thought through all of his characters and the world in which they lived—to the point he knew what situations would arise and how his people would respond. When the research was complete and he’d marshaled his resources, Uncle Al wrote the book.