Decision
Page 62
She had tried to cry but could not.
She had tried to penetrate the impenetrable mask but could not.
She had tried to keep hope alive but could not.
It was not until the first faint light touched the stately avenues, the beautiful buildings and monuments, the slow, winding river, the lush green hills of Maryland and Virginia and the tops of the trees through which Earle Holgren stared up unseeing at the empty sky that there was, at last, the tiniest stirring in the bed.
Slowly the eyes opened, slowly they focused. Slowly the ghost of a smile, the faintest of recognitions, crossed the face.
She and the nurse cried out, doctors and other nurses came running.
“Hi,” he whispered very faintly.
“Hi,” she said and at last began to cry.
The senior doctor passed a hand before the eyes, which flickered and followed; listened carefully to heart and chest, took pulse, studied temperature; finally nodded and gave her hand a hard encouraging squeeze.
“He’ll make it,” he said and she cried the more. “He’s on his way back.”
Justice of a sort—though not in all respects of a kind the Court or John Marshall might have intended—had been rendered.
And, human nature being what it is—and professed intentions having given way in some degree, as they so often do, to the human inadequacies of all concerned—a decision.
November 1980–January 1982.
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DEMOCRACY
From an introduction to the anniversary edition of Advise and Consent published by Easton Press. Copyright © Easton Press, 1987. All rights reserved. We would like to thank MBI, Inc., owner of Easton Press, for their kind permission to use this material.
“Do you still believe in democracy?” one is often asked. “Do you still think there are good men in Congress?”
Why, yes, of course one does. There is no more wonderful system ever devised by man for bringing greater freedom, greater satisfaction, greater overall happiness to a greater number of people. The democratic system is not perfect, nothing is; but considering the alternatives offered the world, it is still the best there ever was and, quite probably, the best there is ever going to be. It is the envy of the world and a standing challenge to that tyranny over the mind of man against which Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues pledged eternal hostility.
No wonder the tyranny seeks constantly to tear it down. No wonder that all who have the vision and the imagination to appreciate its worth must always, in whatever way each is given, stand firm in its defense.
We are the most favored of peoples. Our particular democracy makes us so. It is naïve indeed not to believe in it, for it is the greatest gift ever given any people in all of history.
And our members of Congress, who represent us in this? Sure, there are some rotten apples. There are time-servers and self-servers and some, bearing great and famous names, who are hypocrites and double-dealers and fully unworthy of their public trust. But you get plenty of those back home on Main Street, too. There are just as many jerks and scum-bums there as there are on Capitol Hill, and some of them are real pillars of the community, too. But they are greatly outnumbered by the kind, the decent, the earnest and the honest; and while the rotten triumph rather more often than one would like to see, the diligent and decent and honest manage, in the long run, to keep the balance which, in the very human system we have, is perhaps the best we can hope for. It is enough to get us by, and to keep the democracy going; and that is not such a paltry benison to have.
The system could be perfect, but human beings are not perfect. Human beings, if they are halfway decent—and the majority are—do their best; and that is sufficient unto the day, and grateful we should be that this is so.
And the best thing of all about having written [Advise and Consent]? It is a sentimental thing, and it happens, not every day, but fairly often, in Washington. Not too long ago it happened in the Senate Press Gallery when I was walking past the UPI booth from which I began covering the Senate 43 years ago on Nov. 23, 1943. A young man got up from his desk—word processors, now, not the clattery old Underwoods they gave us then—and held out his hand.
“Mr. Drury,” he said, “I just want you to know that you’re the reason I’m in Washington. I read Advise and Consent when I was a kid and I made up my mind that I was going to come here some day. And here I am.”
It happens every now and then, and not only on the Hill but in government offices, at Washington dinners and cocktail parties: young men and women, drawn to this fulcrum of the world by some mysterious and irresistible pull, to which they tell you you have contributed, in some small but fundamental way. It is a most moving moment.
Orrin, Seab, Brig and the rest perhaps have served their country better than they or their creator ever dreamed.
That the book has been instrumental in drawing some bright young minds into the running of their country is a reward never imagined or sought.
But it is a great one, indeed.
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