by Allen Drury
“Of course I do,” he said with a renewed impatience. “But I’m not saying I might not have done the same had I been—had I been in a position where my advice was sought. It wasn’t. If it had been, I couldn’t honestly tell you at this moment what I would have counseled.”
“Well,” Patsy said, really dreadfully shocked at this apparent betrayal of what everyone on the Right Side had always thought Bob Leffingwell stood for, “I guess if you don’t want to introduce Walter, then, we’ll just have to get somebody else. But I had so hoped—”
“I repeat,” Bob Leffingwell said, “I’m not saying I won’t introduce Walter. In fact, I will. But I’m going to reserve the right to qualify my own position as I see fit.”
“You want it both ways,” Patsy said, though she told herself she mustn’t be spiteful, it would only antagonize. “You want to be in both camps at once. I never thought I’d have to see the day when Bob Leffingwell abandoned his principles.”
“Perhaps Bob Leffingwell is learning a few,” he said crisply. “Give my best to Ted when you talk to him, because I’m not going to, at this point.”
“He would value your advice,” Patsy said soberly. “That’s the only reason I asked.”
“My advice is to keep quiet,” Bob Leffingwell said in the same crisp tone. “But I don’t suppose he’ll take it.”
Sitting in his office in Sacramento, however, staring thoughtfully down at the crowds of state employees hurrying to work along the walkways of the Capitol, the Governor of California was not being as hasty as his friend feared and his sister desired. It was still early in the West but already the full flood of Eastern opinion was shrieking from the headlines, blaring from the radio, snarling with a suave indignation from the television screens. The little turns of phrase that do so much to tear down something Walter and his world wish to tear down were everywhere apparent to the perceptive citizen:
“The sudden and abrupt American move against Gorotoland.…An action which many Americans themselves regard as indefensible.…A situation in which the rebels, apparently seeking only to establish an independent government free from colonial control, are suddenly confronted with the ghastly ghost of colonialism, strangely revived by the West’s leading democracy.…A minor skirmish and a few American lives, transformed instantaneously into the sort of issue that could destroy the world.…The President’s inexplicable, and many people feel, inexcusable decision.…”
Walter and his world had wasted no time, and dutifully the chant was being picked up in the West as well.
Ted Jason sighed as he looked at the state’s morning papers spread across his desk. The homogeneity of Walter’s world impressed him anew. It had been increasing ever since World War II until now it was virtually a solid mass of automatic opinion, swinging on cue against this issue, for that personality, as though someone punched a button. From Manhattan to the Golden Gate the cry was predictable, consistent, and virtually impenetrable by any dissenting opinion. When the big boys in the big city spoke, those who considered them the epitome of sophistication wanted desperately to speak like them. In pursuit of that goal, a blanket of conformity stultifying to thought and murderous to genuine discussion lay upon the nation. Orrin and the President, Ted told himself grimly, would have a tough time making their way against it. It wouldn’t matter much if the entire populace started out solidly behind them, Walter and his world would do their damnedest to swing the balance the other way. And if, as was certainly the case now, many Americans were divided, uncertain, and confused, the current might be too strong for even the President to overcome.
Should Ted, then, swim with it and seize what advantage he could? The way was open and it could be easy. Perhaps the President, all unknowing, had handed him the key to the White House after all. Quite possibly he had if Orrin ran, and—heady thought—perhaps he had even if he himself should run. Governor Jason was absolutely certain that if he issued a strong statement denouncing the President’s decision, the entire apparatus would be his to ride as far and as high as he could. And that, he realized with a cold-blooded calculation as he studied the harshly self-righteous journals before him and remembered the indignant and condemnatory broadcasts he had heard and seen with breakfast, might be far and high indeed.
Still, there were other things. He had to admire the President’s guts, taking such an action on the very eve of a campaign: such things were usually deferred until after, when politically it was quite, quite safe. Many a staunch defender of the nation was braver after November than he ever was before. Harley Hudson had preferred to meet the issue head-on and do it now. So, too, had Orrin Knox, who had gone into it with his eyes open, knowing it was to be a decision that he too must carry should the President retire and he become an active candidate for the nomination. Ted Jason, not for the first time, was forced to admire the courage and integrity of his principal opponent.
And his own courage and integrity? Recalling how Ceil, very glamorous and Givenchy as always, had paused in the doorway to look back at him this morning, he had wondered if these qualities were showing signs of the strain they were under.
“Sweetie, I must dash,” she had said with her cool little humorous air. “That thing the P.T.A. convention is putting on, you know, that breakfast for distinguished ladies. Of whom,” she commented with an amused expression, “they seem to think I am one. I shall try not to make a speech. If I do, I shall try not to mention Gorotoland. But, my dear”—giving him that long, slanting glance that he sometimes felt might penetrate his defenses, though it never had and they both knew it; but Ceil kept trying in a humorously halfhearted way—“my dear, what about you? Can you get by without, today?”
“I don’t know,” he had confessed. “Do you think I should?”
“Whatever you decide I shall be for,” she said with the look repeated, the humor exaggerated. “I’m a politician’s wife. I go along.”
“That’s not responsive to my question,” he told her with his calm, self-possessed smile.
“I repeat,” she said with her cool, cordial little laugh, “I’m a politician’s wife. You name it, I’m for it.”
“Then you think I shouldn’t say anything. Sit down a minute,” he had added impatiently, but with the basic good nature that underlay all their discussions, “and stop being the social butterfly long enough to apply that magnificent brain of yours to it.”
“Sweetie!” she cried. “You say the nicest things!” But she complied and, disposing herself gracefully across from him at the huge old table gave him a long, analytic stare which he returned unflinching. “You aren’t sure, are you?” she observed finally. “I thought Ted Jason was always cold, calculating, self-assured, and ruthless. As the papers say. Not so much this morning, eh?”
“The stakes are very high,” he remarked, gesturing at the papers spread about. “Look at this reaction.”
“Very high in every way,” she agreed, slipping off one of her gloves and studying her long, handsome fingers critically in the sunlight that fell across the comfortable room. “Politically and personally both. I imagine if you hop on the bandwagon it might carry you right on up. I also imagine your voice would be more powerful than any other single voice in slowing the bandwagon down, if you so decided. It poses a problem.” She slipped the glove back on, clasped her hands on her purse, and looked at him with her shrewd, level gaze. I’m glad it isn’t mine.”
“Tell me what to do,” he suggested. She smiled and shook her head.
“I know what honor would suggest, but perhaps conviction is too strong for it. And ambition. It isn’t everybody who’s lucky enough to have those two coincide. Perhaps you should make the most of it.”
“But you don’t think I should.”
“If it’s genuine conviction, why not?” she said, but, as always, he couldn’t find the real Ceil in it. The real Ceil was somewhere back inside where he would always pursue in vain. Which, he thought with an ironic little amusement that reached his eyes and was answered in hers,
was why he would always keep on pursuing.
“It seems to be genuine conviction with a good many of those,” he said, gesturing again at the papers. She nodded.
“And also Walter Dobius and the other big boys say so, so it’s stylish. But, I repeat: you can stop it if you will. And very probably, as I say, no one else is in exactly the position you are of being able to stop it.…Excuse me, sweetie,” she said with a sudden briskness, “but the distinguished ladies of the P.T.A. are awaiting the arrival of one more distinguished lady in their midst. I must run.”
“First Lady of California,” Ted Jason remarked with an ironic but friendly smile as she came around the table, leaned down, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “First Lady of—”
“Don’t bedazzle a poor girl’s head with dreams. I repeat, I’m that necessary adjunct of politics, a wife. Lead on, McDuff, and whither thou et cetera. I’ll try not to mention Gorotoland.”
“Good,” he said with a smile. “Ceil,” he added as she reached the door. She turned back, tall and stunning and willowy but, as he knew better than anyone, shrewd as nails and tough as steel underneath.
“Yes?”
“I think you’re somewhat more than an adjunct.”
She gave him a dazzling smile and blew him a kiss.
“I hoped as much, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, get out,” he said with a grin, turning back to the papers. “Go on, get out.”
She gave him another smile, this time filled with a genuine friendliness and amusement, and did so.
But that, of course, was little help in solving his problem. It was all right for Ceil to advise, as she surely had, that he say nothing to oppose the President and, if possible, support him; but much as he admired his wife’s brains and intuitive grasp of politics, the matter was not so simple.
If he spoke out now in support he probably could give the President the extra edge he needed to carry the country wholeheartedly with him; he probably could effectively slow down the world of Walter Wonderful. But what would that do to his own chances for the nomination and election—and what, also, would it do to his own convictions in the matter? He might not be as rabid as Walter—like many on this day who admired and followed Walter, he was a little taken aback at the extreme virulence of his column attacking the President—but he did have very grave personal doubts about the wisdom of what had been decided last night at the White House.
If he spoke in opposition, it would be considerably more than ambition that prompted it. And if he spoke in support, it would in fact require of him more of a conscious effort, more a deliberate forcing of himself into a not entirely comfortable position. Yet speaking in support of course had its imperatives and its appeal, depending upon how seriously one conceived the United States to be threatened by Communism and how actively one thought it should defend its rights and protect its citizens.
He was held by this dilemma for a while, wandering in the gray no-man’s-land between conviction and desire, ambition and duty. Which was which, and what was the true nature of any of them? Who ever knew, when the crises came and history said: decide—and you were one of those history had chosen to do the deciding?
He had been sitting thus, staring unseeing at the screaming headlines, the insistent columns, the harshly demanding editorials, for perhaps five minutes when his secretary buzzed and a light flashed on his telephone. Across three thousand miles of a troubled country he heard with a startled surprise and an immediate tension the quiet greeting of its Chief Executive, apparently not at all upset by the gale in which he found himself.
“Hello, Ted,” the President said. “I’m pleased to find you in. My luck.”
“My pleasure, Mr. President,” the Governor said, recovering rapidly and preparing to listen with extreme care to every nuance in the comfortable voice. But the President’s next remark made it clear he was not indulging in subtleties today.
“I wonder where you stand, Ted. Perhaps you can tell me.”
“Why—” the Governor began. Then he laughed. “You’re so direct you leave me momentarily speechless.”
“Only momentarily, I hope,” the President said in a friendly tone, but not allowing him time to really gather his thoughts. “Well?”
“As a matter of fact, I’ve been sitting here reading the newspapers and realizing that I really don’t know where I stand.”
The President chuckled.
“Oh, well, if you’ve been reading the newspapers you know where you stand. There’s only one position with them—or most of them, anyway, the most powerful. The position is that I’m history’s greatest scoundrel and World War III is here. Do you agree?”
“I find it difficult to agree with extremists of any kind,” Governor Jason said carefully; so carefully that the President chuckled again.
“I could take that personally, you know—at least if I adopted the line about me that Walter Dobius and his friends have adopted this morning. Well, then, if you aren’t ready to tell me at the moment, let me put it to you this way: what would you have done?”
“How can I say,” the Governor inquired smoothly, “since I couldn’t possibly place myself in your position with all the facts you had at hand when you made the decision?”
“They weren’t so very different from what has already been made public,” the President said dryly. “I’m not one of the fact-hiding Presidents, you know.”
“I do know,” Ted Jason agreed, “and I admire you for it. I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful, but, really—I don’t have the facts, at least as they came to you fresh from Africa last night, so how could I know what I would have done had I been where you are?”
“You might have to face that one of these days.”
The Governor laughed.
“That I doubt. Harley M. Hudson is going to be President of these United States for quite some time, I imagine.”
“Maybe you can beat Harley M. Hudson on this issue,” the President suggested calmly, “if you decide to make it an issue. Or Orrin Knox,” he added, so smoothly that it was a second before Governor Jason realized the slip he had made, “or whoever.”
“I doubt that,” the Governor said, giving no indication he had caught it. “I imagine anyone who wants to run a winning campaign will pretty well have to endorse Harley M. Hudson’s position, won’t he?”
“Perhaps,” the President said. “And perhaps not. That’s one reason I’m calling. Do you?”
“I haven’t made any statement yet,” Ted Jason said, “though of course I’ve had plenty of opportunity. I’m sticking to ‘no comment’ for the time being.”
“Probably sensible,” the President said. “I want you to know, however, that it would be a great help to me if you would endorse my action. Just as it will make us mortal political enemies,” he added calmly, “if you don’t.”
The Governor made an acknowledging sound.
“Suppose I don’t do either one, for the moment? What would your reaction be then?”
“I should be disappointed,” the President said, “but not actively annoyed. Assuming that in due course you saw your way clear to supporting your President and the leader of your party.”
“It’s complicated for me a little,” Governor Jason said thoughtfully, “because I am not sure what I would have done. I am not sure that this is the wisest course. I am not sure that we should be doing what you have committed us to. Why, for instance, make the issue here and now? Why not some other time, some other place?”
“All places and all times are the same in this onslaught against us,” the President said somberly. “It had a beginning, once, many years ago, but once it began it has never stopped, it has never even paused. It is a continuous thing, and it is up to us to decide where and at what time we shall try to stop it. One time is just as good as another, one place as good as another, one issue just as valid as another, for they are all on the same footing in the eyes of the Communists, they are all attacks upon us, and so we might as well look at
them the same way. The attack is total. It may be a military skirmish, a cement wall, a diplomatic negotiating table, a cocktail party, a riot, a visit—anything and everything. I simply chose this time and place because I personally—and, I will say, most of my advisers agreed with me—felt that it was time for certain things to stop.”
“So you started others,” Governor Jason suggested. “Understand me,” he added quickly, “I am not being flippant. You will realize that I am trying to be as honest with you as you are being with me.”
“I do realize. I appreciate it. I don’t want to force you into something you honestly can’t accept. I’m not that kind of President, either. But of course if you oppose me I can’t ignore it. It’s going to have consequences. Inevitably.”
“Suppose I were to endorse what you’ve done,” Ted Jason said slowly, “so that Orrin and I were on exactly the same footing as far as support of you is concerned. What would your attitude be in the convention? Would you be neutral as between us? Or would you endorse Orrin? Or would you endorse me? Or,” he said, taking a gamble on the President’s good nature, “is it all academic because you plan to run yourself, anyway?”
“Will my answer help you make up your mind on a matter which you tell me is one of such fundamental conviction with you?” the President inquired dryly. “Are you for sale?”
“I am not,” Ted Jason said coldly, and prepared himself for the explosion his next remark would bring: “Though you seem to be bidding.”
But Harley Hudson was a surprising man in a lot of ways to his political contemporaries, and instead of flaring back in anger he simply responded with his comfortable, unperturbed laugh.
“I suppose I deserved that. And I suppose I am, yes. And you still haven’t told me. So what shall I do about you, Governor?”
“I don’t see that you have to do anything,” Ted Jason said, more calmly, feeling suddenly that he was emerging from this conversation the winner. “When I have made up my mind I shall speak out. It will be a matter of conviction, too. Believe me.”
