by Allen Drury
“Thank you,” he said at last. “And Orrin: don’t sound so elegiac about it. Don’t say ‘if you’d ever made it.’ You still may.”
The Secretary shot him a glance that was, the President was relieved to see, good old skeptical Orrin Knox again, in person.
“Huh!” he said with a snort. “How?”
“I’ll tell you,” the President said. When he finished the Secretary studied him for several moments with a shrewd, appraising gaze.
“Do you want me on the ticket?” he demanded.
“Do you want to be there?”
Orrin laughed.
“I asked first.”
The President chuckled.
“That, I am afraid you will have to determine yourself,” he said lightly. Then he dropped it and became serious. “Given a choice between Ted Jason, who hems and haws and doesn’t really agree with me, and you, my right arm who has participated in all these decisions and helped to make all these policies, who do you think I want on the ticket with me? Of course I want you on the ticket. But suppose you had gone that long distance across this desk from that chair to this—would you think you were in a position to make the outright choice? You’re a practical politician, so I’ve been told—”
“You know I’m not at all,” the Secretary interrupted with a rueful grin. “I’m sentimental and impulsive and emotional, and I let my feelings run away with me sometimes when I wish I hadn’t. But go on.”
The President smiled.
“I’m just saying what I’ve been told—and you know there are many reasons why I’ve got to do it this way. Not the least important is that there really is a serious split in the country, and it really should have a chance to work itself out in the convention. That contest for Vice President is going to be a safety valve. There’s got to be one, and that’s where it’s got to come.” He paused and shot the Secretary a quick, shrewd look. “Doesn’t that make sense?”
Orrin’s glance was equally shrewd.
“It also takes you off the hook.”
“I know that,” the President said impatiently, “I’m admitting that. But you do concede there are other elements, just as valid.”
“Oh, yes, of course there are. It’s a very astute idea all around, and, I grant you, probably a necessary one.…The one thing I’ve got to do, it seems to me, is announce at once so there won’t be the slightest doubt that I, at least, am supporting you.” He gave an ironic smile. “How do you know there’ll be a contest? Have you talked to California?”
“I have,” the President said with an equal irony, “and there may not be. In which case, you’ll be even better off, won’t you? And so will I. I really will keep hands off, but don’t forget: I don’t want to do it this way. I think it’s best. Things might be a lot different if I had my druthers.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” Orrin said, “I think I’d better get back to the Department and call in the press.”
“Why don’t you just issue a statement after my press conference? I wouldn’t lay myself open to questions at this point, if I were you. You don’t have to.”
“That’s true,” Orrin said. The President rose and came around the desk, holding out his hand.
“Orrin, my friend: thank you and good luck.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Orrin said, and found he must turn hastily away, for it was not so easy to say farewell so fast to so many long-held hopes. “I’ll be in touch,” he tossed over his shoulder in a muffled voice.
Promptly at 5 P.M. his statement was issued through the State Department press office:
“I shall be a candidate for the nomination for Vice President of the United States.
“I make this announcement, happy to know that if I should be nominated, I will be on the ticket with a President whose policies I believe to be the only safe and effective policies for America to follow in these troubled times.
“Those policies I endorse 100 percent.
“That President I support 100 percent.
“Let no one anywhere have any doubts where I stand.
“I ask all who have been my friends in the past to rally to me now. The task is hard, the road difficult, but with the help of all who uphold the courage and honor and above all the survival of the United States of America, we shall win.”
And now—having begged off from a dinner at the French Embassy, which he regretted but felt was best under the circumstances—he had eaten a quiet dinner with Beth, watched the President’s speech, and was just beginning to realize what had happened. It was only now when Beth snapped off the set to leave a sudden terrifying silence in the room that the event and its full implications came rushing upon him in such a fierce attack that he thought for a moment his being might not be able to stand it. Everything up to that moment had gone so well and so fast that he had really not had time to think about it very deeply. Now nothing stood between him and that abyss from which men’s hopes, once toppled, rarely re-emerge.
He tried to hide the reaction, in a mobile and candid face, but he was in the presence of a close student of thirty years’ standing.
“Now, just take it easy,” she said quietly, coming to sit beside him on the sofa. “It isn’t the end of the world.”
“My world,” he said with a wry shrug.
“What nonsense!” she said comfortably. “Your world! Poor old Orrin Knox, all he is is Secretary of State, a likely Vice President, and maybe President someday.” She chuckled and took his hand with an elaborately pitying squeeze. “Poor old fellow, I feel for you!”
“Well,” he said with the trace of a smile, “it is, in a way. ‘Maybe President someday.’ My somedays are running out, Hank. I’m getting past the first fine, fresh bloom of presidential likelihood. This is the third time around the track, and now it’s only Vice President if I do get it.”
“But—”
“I know all the arguments. If they didn’t require the death of a man I have always been fond of and in the past year have come to really admire, I’d be sold on them too. But not wishing Harley any bad luck, and having to think of him as being, obviously, in very good health, I have to contemplate eight years as Vice President, after which I shall be well into my sixties and too old to seek the Presidency. I’ll have been around too long, Hank.” He grinned ruefully. “Plenty of people think I have been already, but they’ll be sure of it, then.”
“You just never know,” she said. “You literally don’t. What’s the alternative? Let Ted take it by default and maybe have him become President someday, with all his wishy-washy ideas?”
“He isn’t so wishy-washy,” Orrin said thoughtfully. “He’s just cautious. More so than I am, that’s for sure.”
“The millions of people who believe in Orrin Knox—and millions do, my boy, don’t forget that—believe in him exactly because he isn’t cautious every time, he doesn’t always hesitate and trim. Once in a while he has the guts to state some principles, dream some dreams, and go for broke.”
“Lady,” he said with some return of his normal humor, staring into the fire, lit for coziness though they were now safely into spring, “would you like a job writing campaign copy? I have just the spot for a nice young copywriter like you.”
“Well, it’s true,” she said, flushed and indignant, “so don’t make fun of it. That will continue right along, you’ll carry it into the Vice Presidency with you just as you have at every step of the way since Illinois. Don’t knock it. It can’t be said of everybody in this town.”
“True enough,” he said, “true enough. And of course if I do get it, it will strengthen Harley’s hand considerably in his policies, there’s no doubt of that.…Even though, of course, having Ted get it would strengthen him even more in the immediate contest in November.”
“Will it be much of a contest? Who do they have in the other party? Surely you don’t think Warren Strickland can beat Harley?”
“No,” he said, considering for a moment the able, amiable, and not overly aggressive Se
nate Minority Leader from Idaho, who appeared to be the likeliest choice of the minority party to be its sacrifice candidate this year. “In the first place, his heart isn’t in it, in the second place there’s no real opposition stand he can take that wouldn’t be entirely too extreme for his own temperament to accept, and in the third place the registration’s against him. Plus the fact that he likes Harley and has supported him right along in foreign policy. No, they’re just going to be going through the motions this time. The real battle’s with us, as it usually is. But, Hank,” he said soberly, “can I win that convention? Do I really have a chance? Hasn’t the outcry of people like Walter Dobius created such a mood in the country that a candidate upholding the Administration’s policy will be beaten? Isn’t Ted really riding the popular wave?”
She studied him thoughtfully before replying.
“You don’t think so for one minute,” she said finally. “Neither do I, or lots of people. Helen-Anne called, for instance, right after your statement was released, to say she’s ready to work for you for Vice President, if you still want her. She thinks you’ve got a terrific chance. So do I. And so, old dear, underneath all the heroics about Orrin Knox on his way to pasture, do you. So suppose you buckle down, Wynsocki, and get to work. O.K.?”
He smiled.
“Oh, yes. I will, of course, you know that. But, Hank”—and his expression changed suddenly to a strangely young and vulnerable wistfulness that took her back to Illinois and other dreams and the long road that now appeared, in truth, to be ending short of the goal he had set himself when they were first married, so long ago, “it would have been nice—to be President.”
“Oh, my dear,” she said softly, taking his hand again in hers and turning her head to the fire so that he would not see the tears in her eyes, “one can’t tell on these things. If it’s meant to be, it still will be. If it doesn’t happen, then we’ll just have to conclude that we were the only ones who meant it to be—not someone else.…”
But he did not reply, nor, for a while, did she dare glance at him. They sat for a while in silence, there before the fire, while in many places and many hearts others were determining what position, if any, Orrin Knox should occupy from now on in the peculiar but oddly magnificent history of his country.
***
Chapter 4
And so, he thinks as he steps out on the Truman balcony for a last moment in the soft spring air and his ritual look at the Washington Monument before bedtime, the deed is completed and Harley M. Hudson, an honorable man who has never yet broken his pledged word, has done so. There have been many opportunities in the past year to realize what is meant by the loneliness of the Presidency and its hard, cruel choices, but he knows that this is the sharpest and most poignant moment of them all. He had meant it with all his heart when he stood before the Senate a year ago and said, “I shall not be a candidate for the Presidency next year.” He had meant it up to three weeks, or even two, or maybe even two days, ago. Then he had changed and betrayed the hopes and plans of many men … betrayed himself.
But, he honestly believes, saved the United States, which is why Presidents do these things. He tells himself, as he sits down for a moment on one of the chaise lounges and lets himself relax a little from the great tensions of this most momentous day, that it is probably the height of egotism—or insanity—or something—to equate his own political fortunes with the preservation of the United States. And yet this, too, is something Presidents have to believe, if only to rationalize what they do through the imperatives of ambition.
There comes a point in this office, he realizes now, at which it is literally impossible for the occupant to distinguish any longer between his own interests and the interests of the United States. The White House in time, even for the most determinedly idealistic, gradually obliterates the line between self and service. Presidents after a while—and sometimes a much shorter while than in his case—reach a point where they simply cannot regard themselves objectively any more. A few have made the decision to retire, and stuck to it, but history does not record many; and none with the complication of problems that bedevil him, in a world that hourly grows more complex and more dangerous to every living thing.
So—pledges are broken. Decisions are reversed. Yesterday’s absolute becomes today’s maybe and tomorrow’s negative. History bends Presidents to its will as it bends other men. So be it.
Yet he cannot help but feel a sad regret for the self that used to exist until, at some time in recent days and hours, he had come finally, perhaps subconsciously, to the conviction that he had to run. He had wanted to keep his word, but events wouldn’t let him. People wouldn’t let him. The country wouldn’t let him.
He had known, when he set out upon the course that led through Gorotoland to the vetoes and then to Panama, what the reaction of certain very noisy segments of the populace would be. You could always count on the shouters, the joiners, the conveniently short-memoried idealists, and the professional phonies to clamor against every strong stand you might take anywhere. But though he had been prepared for the dimensions of their outcry, he had not been prepared for its extraordinary violence. It had created in him a real alarm that its practitioners would succeed in twisting the realities of Communist imperialism permanently out of shape in their countrymen’s minds, so that America would be even more confused than she was already in her appreciation of the dangers that beset her. The alarm in turn led directly to his decision to run. It came down to something as simple as the picture he had seen on the front page of The Greatest Publication just last week. It showed two Marines training their rifles upon a hut in Gorotoland. ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK FOR MARINES, the caption read, with a snide air of arch disapproval. “Two U. S. Marines get ready to respond to alleged ‘ambush’ in rebel-held Goroto town.”
“Good God!” he had exploded with a sudden uncharacteristic profanity to Lucille, “Why in the hell haven’t they got a right to respond if they’re being fired upon? And who the hell said it was an ‘alleged’ ambush?”
It is ten thousand little things like that, all adding up to one great big slanted misrepresentation of both Gorotoland and Panama, that have finally made him lose his last trace of tolerance for Walter’s world. Its members haven’t wanted him to run, but now he is going to, and lick them soundly. He hopes they are happy.
They probably are, he thinks with a contempt that is also unusual (the pressures must really be getting to Harley Hudson, he tells himself dryly, he is beginning to react like a nasty old man to his critics discomfiture), since he is giving them the sop of a contest for Vice President. On one level—their level—he does not have the slightest doubt that this is exactly what it is: a sop. He knows who his own choice is, and he has told him so frankly in their talk this afternoon. He does not believe for a second that the convention will select anyone else. His reasons for throwing the contest open are what they have all surmised and discussed with him during the day, plus one more reason locked in his own mind. He is counting on the implacable enmity of Ted Jason’s supporters toward himself to guarantee that they will fall into the trap, make an all-out fight for it—and lose, discredited and defeated and pushing their reluctant candidate willy-nilly into the discard along with them, all in one neat package.
Thus he has been able with a relatively clear conscience to take a step which he knew would greatly disappoint Orrin: because he is sure the disappointment will not last long. He is convinced Orrin will become Vice President, and four years from now will be another day. Certainly by that time Gorotoland and Panama will be long decided, or the world will be gone, one of the two; and he will be sixty-six, if he lives. Then he will retire, and no changes. Orrin will be the logical and only choice to succeed him. Or if he doesn’t live, Orrin will succeed him sooner. Either way, it is a good bargain he is offering the Secretary of State.
The whole thing, however, has to be done openly and democratically and in exactly the fashion he has announced. He has told Orrin truthfully
that he has no intention of intervening. And he has not been disingenuous about the need for a safety valve, either. Out of it, he is certain, the country will get a needed catharsis for raw nerves and frantic emotions, and he will get the running mate he wants.
So he turns to go in, after his little ritual of looking at the Monument and pondering the choices of Presidents; a little startled but not surprised to find that Lucille is standing just inside the doorway watching him.
“How long have you been there, spying on your President?” he demands amicably.
“A few minutes. Have you got it all worked out?”
“I think so. Are you pleased with what I’m doing?”
“It’s exactly what I’ve wanted,” she says with her rosy smile. “Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” he replies with a rather grim humor as they walk along toward bed together. “Have you any concept of the number of places on this earth in which my name is mud tonight?”
But here, as the full weight of night descended upon Washington, the last woozy political argument ended at the Press Club bar, the last loudly arguing dinner party broke up in Georgetown, and all but one restless political heart succumbed at last to the even rhythms of sleep, he was perhaps a little harder on himself than the facts warranted. But there was no doubt that the world was thinking of little else.
I MUST RUN: THE PRESIDENT’S PLEDGE, the Times said in London. PRESIDENT CHANGES MIND, DECLARES HE WILL RUN, the Times said in New York. H.H. SAYS “I GOTTA,” the Washington Daily News reported cheerfully in the capital. VICE PRESIDENTIAL RACE WIDE OPEN, the other big news went. PRESIDENT INVITES BATTLE FOR SECOND PLACE; KNOX ANNOUNCES, PRESSURE GROWS ON JASON.
Endlessly the event was discussed, analyzed, turned inside out, taken apart, and put back together around the globe. Hardly a soul escaped it as the hours went by. Five in particular were enthralled.
In recaptured Molobangwe, sputtering through the night with sporadic exchanges of fire between rebels and Marines, His Royal Highness Terence Ajkaje, 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele, joined his top American military advisers at his ramshackle palace in a quiet unofficial toast to the President’s success; and then later, after his guests had gone, he slipped away, accompanied only by a single bodyguard, to the sacred baobab tree near the royal compound where, on a thunderous night when he was six, his mother had taken him to croon her successful prayer: “Make my son M’Bulu—make my son M’Bulu—make my son M’Bulu!” There was no storm now, only the great soft sky of Africa, and the M’Bulu’s words were not said aloud; but Harley M. Hudson was prayed for most sincerely this night by one who, in one more of life’s endless little ironies, had only six months ago been his spiteful and determined enemy.
