Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason

by Allen Drury

“Unless you can stop it in the Court,” the Post said. “And you will, won’t you?” he pursued, his expression openly worried. “There won’t be any slip-up, will there?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tommy said thoughtfully, “but of course you never know. I think the vote will hold just as it went today in the session. But we are still surrounded here, you know, and the mood is very ugly, and one or two might waver—although I don’t really think so. I think we have the votes. Although even then—” his expression became, if anything, more moody, more somber—“it may not be that easy. ‘The Court has made its decision,’ Andrew Jackson said, ‘now let the Court enforce it.’ It’s been a long, long time since a President said that, but when you come right down to it, upon what does our power depend? On that same old thing—‘the consent of the governed.’ And when that consent is withheld, as it could be by an extremely popular and determined President backed by a violent and lawless constituency which recognizes no law but the law it can force upon others—then what, my friend? Then what?”

  “We look to you to save us, Tommy,” the Post said quietly. “Which sounds dramatic, but expresses the fact.”

  “I shall,” Justice Davis said firmly. “If the Lord is still with America, and I feel He is, I shall. I must be on this Court for some reason—much,” he interjected with a sudden smile, “as many of my critics over the years may have doubted that there was one—and perhaps this is it.”

  “I’m sure of it,” the Post said. “It has to be.… Do you think you’ll vote sometime tonight?”

  The little Justice nodded.

  “I expect so.” He smiled again. “My impeachment may take a little longer.”

  “The vote will change that,” the Post predicted. “It will be forgotten. The vote will change the whole emphasis and trend of everything. This is the watershed.”

  “I think so,” Tommy Davis said. “I am approaching it in that spirit.”

  And so he was, as his friend’s troubled visage faded from the screen and the silence of the book-filled, leather-bound room reclaimed him. He was coming as close to praying as he had in a long time; telling himself, with a trace of his old impish humor, still lively even in this heavy hour, that this was directly violating the separation between church and state. Hadn’t he handed down several ringing decisions on this subject? Of course he had! Well, Lord, he thought with a wry little smile, that’s our little secret, right? I know You will forgive me, and be amused, as I am.

  Which was really, he thought as a sudden renewed burst of sound outside drew him to the heavily curtained windows, about the only thing left to inspire amusement at the moment. The thought was strengthened as he lifted his hand to draw the curtains very slightly apart so that he might peek down at the mob below. As he did so a great shout went up and simultaneously some heavy object hurtled through the window and crashed, muffled by the draperies, to the floor.

  Instinctively he jumped back, then approached it cautiously as another shout, this one quite distinguishable—“KILL PIG DAVIS! KILL PIG DAVIS!”—arose outside. He paused. It might be a bomb, it might be a grenade, it might be any one of a dozen lethal things. They who were shouting meant it, he could tell that from their tone. He decided to leave whatever it was where it was and retreated to his desk, where he sat down, trembling a little inside but even more determined, if possible, than he had been before.

  “You will not change me, rabble,” he said aloud to them in this room which had really been his home, above all others, for more than twenty years. “You will not change me, at all.”

  And presently, when nothing exploded and nothing further came in, he quieted the trembling altogether and composed himself for a little prayer, which he began a trifle self-consciously but soon found he was quite open and unabashed about.

  “God,” he said quietly, “give me strength to help my country, which is so mixed up right now. I know her heart is still good, her purposes still valid. I accord to the man who leads her the same sincerity, though I think he is dreadfully mistaken—dreadfully mistaken. But I do not accord that sincerity to those who have gathered vulture-like behind his banner, for them I believe to be killers of the hope and murderers of the dream.

  “He wanders, God, bemused by their importunings and their pressures, and shattered, I think, by what he found in Russia. Since he wanders, his foot must be held to the path. He must not be allowed to stray toward dictatorship and suppression of the thing that has made America unique: the right to voice opinions freely and openly as long as they are peaceable and non-violent, and as long as those who voice them do not attempt to deny the right of expression to those who disagree with them.

  “That is the issue here, God: that is the issue. Bemused, uncertain, possibly terrified, the President lends his name to dictatorship in the wan hope that it will somehow strengthen his hand and make the bad things go away. But the bad things do not come from the honest worries of his own people: they come from abroad. He cannot strengthen himself by punishing his own people for what others do. If he does that, he plays their game and helps give them what they want. He runs the risk of destroying America altogether, under the pretext that denying her freedoms will somehow save her.…

  “So it has come to me, Lord,” he said with a heavy sigh. “So it has really come to me. The deciding vote is mine, and great are the pressures against me. I am not afraid of them, and with Your help I shall defy them and do what is right for my country. If—” he paused and his eyes widened in somber thought—“if this brings upon me retribution, even death, then I hope I shall meet it unafraid.…

  “I love this country: she has been good to me, and good to so many. Her record is not perfect, her justice not infallible. Her treatment of some of her children has sometimes been cruel and downright shameful. But always her nobler elements have tried to correct those things, constantly they have striven to make those things better; and more often than they are given credit for, they have succeeded.

  “The heart is here and the heart is good. Help me to defend it, Lord, as I believe You have chosen me to do. Guide me, strengthen me, encourage me, sustain me—and I shall do justly in Your eyes, and in the eyes of my country when, after storms have died and tempests passed, it renders final judgment on what I am about to do.”

  He sat for a moment staring far ahead, far away. Then he rose and went firmly to the window, stooped down and retrieved the object that had come through: a rock wrapped in a paper whose message, no doubt scabrous, he did not bother to read as he tossed it into a waste-basket. A sharp blast of air came up from behind the draperies, outside a sudden savage roar greeted the sight of their agitation as he moved them and let them fall back. He returned to his desk with an impassive face, sat down, took a yellow legal notepad from a drawer, began to draft his decision: remembering as he did so some of the phrases he had just articulated in his prayer, and thinking, with a wry little bow to heaven, Lord, I think You may have helped me get a good start on writing my opinion.

  He was deep in the task when there came a discreet knocking on the door. He looked up with a smile, thinking this must be his dinner, finally, from the restaurant—said, “Come!”—and looked up to see, not Henry, the waiter who usually served him, but one of the young law graduates who came to the Court regularly as clerks to the justices—the newest, he believed, whom he had only seen around the Court in the past few days, and whose sponsor’s name he had not yet had a chance to find out.

  “Yes?” he asked pleasantly, as two more young men entered after the first and quickly and firmly closed the door upon the ancient, amicable Court policeman outside. “What can I do for you?”

  JUSTICE DAVIS FOUND DEAD OF HEART ATTACK IN CHAMBERS. WORRY, STRAIN OF HELP AMERICA BATTLE BELIEVED CAUSE AS BETHESDA HOSPITAL PANEL FINDS “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT NATURAL CAUSES” INVOLVED IN SEIZURE.

  COURT PAYS TRIBUTE, THEN UPHOLDS HELP AMERICA ACT ON 4 TO 4 TIE VOTE.

  BLOOD BATHS BREAK OUT IN PANAMA, GOROTOLAND AS MOSCOW ANNOUNCES “ALL SO
VIET FORCES NOW AT FINAL STATIONS AROUND THE WORLD.” PANAMA CANAL CLOSED TO ALL BUT COMMUNIST-BLOC COUNTRIES.

  EX-PRESIDENT ABBOTT INTRODUCES RESOLUTION TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT JASON. HOUSE LEADERSHIP CLEARS WAY FOR IMMEDIATE DEBATE. CONFIDENT ADMINISTRATION LEADERS IN SENATE, CERTAIN HOUSE WILL DEFEAT PROPOSAL, PLEDGE SPEEDY TRIAL—“IF, WHEN AND AS.”

  “Mr. President—” Walter Dobius said in a guarded voice, somewhere around 1 a.m., “Bill—I have just received information I think you should have for the debate.”

  “Yes?” William Abbott said, coming full awake from a troubled, uneasy sleep in his comfortable bachelor apartment at the Sheraton-Park. “What does it concern?”

  “Several—departures,” Walter said carefully.

  “Where are you?” the ex-President demanded. “At home?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Come up at once. I’ll notify the Secret Service to let you through.”

  “Are they safe?” Walter asked with a harshness he could not keep out of his voice.

  “Mine are,” Bill Abbott said grimly. “I offer no guarantees of any others.”

  2

  “Mr. Speaker,” Bronson Bernard began, first on his feet as Jawbone gaveled the House to order after the prayer and the routine morning business, “Mr. Speaker, I want to warn the House—”

  “Mr. Speaker!” William Abbott cried angrily. “Regular order, Mr. Speaker! Nobody warns anybody until we get this debate properly under way. Suppose you let the proponents of this resolution have their say as they should have and then we’ll have warnings from this—this other crew.”

  “Mr. Speaker!” Bronnie cried with an equal anger and a greater grievance. “Mr. Speaker, how can you permit—how can you countenance—oh, the language, Mr. Speaker! We’re not a crew, Mr. Speaker. We’re the people who represent the people. We’re—”

  “Well, now!” Jawbone said sharply, giving his gavel a smart rap that brought them both up short. “The gentleman from Colorado and the gentleman from New York don’t realize it, but there’s a messenger from the White House waitin’ there at the door, he’s just come in, now, and we’ve got to hear him, so you-all be quiet!” And he rapped the gavel sharply again as a sudden silence fell on the packed chamber and everyone turned to look, with a piercing and devouring gaze, upon the nondescript and obviously quite nervous individual who stood just inside the door, carrying a briefcase under his arm.

  “Mr. Speaker,” the messenger intoned solemnly, “a message from the President!”

  “A message from the President!” Jawbone echoed solemnly.

  In the customary way the messenger then came forward down the attentive aisle, opened the briefcase, took out a sheaf of papers, handed them to the Clerk of the House, closed the briefcase, turned on his heel and departed as he came.

  The doors closed behind him. The tensely expectant silence closed in again.

  “The message has been duly received and will be appropriately referred,” Jawbone said hurriedly in the customary way. “The Chair will now recognize the gentleman from Colorado to continue the debate on his resolution.”

  “Mr. Speaker,” William Abbott said in a tone of annoyed disgust, “for heaven’s sake. This is the first word we have received from the President of the United States in days, while all sorts of hell has been breaking loose. At least shouldn’t we know what it is? Is it just a routine appointment of a postmaster or is it something more vital to this House which we should know about?”

  Jawbone flushed and spoke sharply to the Clerk.

  “Very well! Hand it up here!”

  The Clerk obeyed. Jawbone glanced at it quickly, looked up with a sudden gravity.

  “I apologize to the gentleman and to the House, I really do, now. It appears to be a message on the national defense.”

  “I suggest the Clerk read,” Bill Abbott said, looking both surprised and skeptical.

  “I’m gettin’ to that,” Jawbone said with a certain testy dignity. “Read, Mr. Clerk.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Clerk said in his flat, somewhat sing-songy voice. “A message on the national defense. To the Congress of the United States—”

  “Who writes these things?” Bob Munson murmured to Lafe Smith ten minutes later in the Senate, where the message was also being read, and where it was obviously in its final moments. “How do you say so little in so many words?”

  Lafe nodded.

  “Why send it at all? It doesn’t mean a damned thing.”

  And indeed, as the reporters in the Press Gallery above dashed out to try to make something of it for the wires, and while the broadcast reporters retired to their booths in the Radio-Television Gallery to do likewise, it was obvious that it did not. But it was also obvious that they had to write and broadcast as though it did, for the President, as often happens with the occupant of that office, had them on the hip. It might not have meant anything in a realistic sense but in a political sense it meant all it needed to mean, right at that moment. It meant that the President was in the White House, on the job, and concerned about the welfare of the country. It meant that anyone who wanted to impeach him was just silly, because he was right where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to do. How could anyone argue otherwise?

  Yet there were those, of course, who tried.

  “Mr. Speaker,” William Abbott said when the Clerk of the House had concluded and Jawbone had stated the usual formula: “The message will be referred to the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees for appropriate action”—“Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine why the President sent such a message. It says nothing, Mr. Speaker. I tried to jot down its salient points on this piece of paper—” he held it up for the House to see—“I have no notes. Nothing but clichés. Nothing but empty words. He urges us to be concerned for the national defense—he suggests we study its needs with great care—he commends us for our diligence—he expresses faith in our wisdom—he fades away. No notes, no sense, no nothing. What are we supposed to do about it? How is it supposed to enlighten or encourage us? Does anyone know?”

  “Yes,” Jawbone said with a sudden nervous decisiveness, “I think I do, and if the gentleman from Tennessee—” he beckoned to one of his cronies, who obediently came forward—“will assist me here by takin’ the chair for a bit, I’ll try to tell the House what I see it to mean… Now,” he said, when he had come down to the well of the House and taken his stand at the lectern, “first of all, one thing it means is that we have a President, I’ll say to my old friend from Colorado, we have a President. We don’t have some silent little ole do-nothin’ figure who jest sits there and sits there, Mr. Chairman. He’s there, Mr. Chairman! He’s not a figurehead or a do-nothin’, Mr. Chairman! He’s a real live President and he’s on the job!

  “Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, he sees our nation’s need and he wants us to do somethin’ about it.

  “He’s tellin’ us to get busy, Mr. Chairman, he’s tellin’ us to get on the ball. He’s sayin’: get with it, Congress! Face up to this touchy li’l ole situation we’re in! Give me a strong rearmament bill, you-all! Let me have it! Give me the money to buy the missiles, the bombers, the submarines, the air-eo-planes—”

  But here, of course, Jawbone lost his youthful constituency, and with it, insofar as the national defense was concerned, the House; as in exactly the same fashion across the Capitol, Arly Richardson lost the Senate. Both had seen the light—they thought. Both had found a tricky way out—they thought. Both were swamped immediately by the noisy objections of their restive and unruly colleagues.

  “Mr. Speaker!” Bronnie Bronson cried, all sincerity, indignation and genuinely honest dismay.

  “Mr. President!” cried Fred Van Ackerman, all insincerity, phony indignation and shrewdly exaggerated outrage.

  “Mr. Speaker,” Bronnie said, obviously struggling to master his horror at this abrupt resurrection of the ghosts of militarism, imperialism, industrialism and all the other awful isms his education had trained him against, �
�how can the Speaker say such a thing? How can he offer so inexcusable and dreadful a suggestion? Where in this message of the President does he find any call to arms, Mr. Chairman? Where does he find a warrant for his reactionary attempt to return to the long disgraced and discredited ways of old-style big-stick diplomacy? Where does he find a warrant for trying to blast any possibility of negotiating with the Russians by offending them with a sudden move towards rearmament?

  “I say this is not the meaning of the President’s language. I say this is not the answer needed by the times. If that is what members are going to try to read into this brief statement from the President, Mr. Chairman, then I say let it indeed be buried in the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees and may it never see the light again!”

  “The Majority Leader astounds me!” Fred Van Ackerman cried with equal fervor in the Senate. “Absolutely astounds me, I will say to this Senate! Of all the topsy-turvy, upside-down, bass-ackward interpretations of the simple honest language of a great President! Where does it say he is calling on Congress to rearm? Who says he wants us to increase the military strength of America as a substitute for honest negotiations? And who is so naïve as to think we could possibly build up our forces in anything less than a couple of years anyway?

  “What would be the purpose of such an idle threat, Mr. President? It is sinister—oh, it is sinister! I am astounded and dismayed by the distinguished Majority Leader. I thought he was on our side, Mr. President. I didn’t think he was with the reactionaries, the war lovers and the peace destroyers! If he is, he stands alone, Mr. President! He stands alone!”

  “Well, I—” Arly Richardson began in a dismayed tone. “Well, I—nobody wants, Mr. President—nobody wants—”

  “Well, now,” Jawbone cried with an aggrieved haste. “Well, now I will say to my young friend—”

  “I move the message be referred immediately to the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees with instructions that they do not report back to the House on its contents,” shouted Bronnie Bernard.