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

by Allen Drury

  “Mr. President,” Senator Van Ackerman said, not quite concealing the triumph in his voice, “I move that the office of president pro tempore of the Senate be declared vacant immediately and that the Senate proceed forthwith to the election of a new president pro tempore.”

  (“So that’s his game,” the L.A. Times said in a tone of utter disbelief to the AP. “He’ll never do it,” the AP predicted grimly. “You hope to God,” said the L.A. Times.)

  It was obvious the same thought had leaped instantly into the minds of many of the older members. They were astounded by the sheer audacity of it. No one would ever know whether Fred had been carrying the plan in his head right along or had simply seized on a target of opportunity, but its ultimate implications were clear enough: the president pro tempore of the Senate was third in line for the Presidency, following the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.

  It was no wonder at least a dozen Senators were on their feet at the same moment, all shouting, “Mr. President! Mr. President!” in a frantic attempt to gain recognition.

  “The distinguished Minority Leader, the Senator from Idaho,” Lacey Pollard said, his face suffused with its over-rosy glow, his voice husky as his breath grew shorter with strain and excitement.

  Warren Strickland turned to face the Senate.

  “Senators,” he said, “I shall not waste the time of the Senate with any lengthy attack on the motion of the junior Senator from Wyoming. The least important thing to say against it is that it is out of all order and tradition of the Senate. But since—” he raised a hand instantly with a grimly ironic little smile to meet the murmur that greeted the words—“since we appear to be entering upon an era in which the order and tradition of the Senate do not mean very much to many of its members, that is a minor thing. Much more serious is the fact that the motion, if it succeeds, will simply throw the Senate into a bitter and divisive battle at a moment when we, like all agencies of government and all Americans everywhere, should be concentrating on just one thing, namely: how do we get the country out of the terrible pickle it is in?

  “What is the point in changing the president pro tempore at the present time? Simply to satisfy the pique of the junior Senator from Wyoming? Many of you are new here, but we who are veterans can assure you that there is no point in trying to do this, for he has a pique that springs up at any hour, for any cause, on any occasion. It is impossible to satisfy him. And, Mr. President,” he said with a sudden gravity as Fred Van Ackerman stared at him with a blankly angry scowl, “it could very well prove very dangerous to do so. Because it is obvious, at least to many of the older hands here, that he is out for much bigger game than the scalp of Senator Pollard. Taken together with the far-reaching authority over civilian thought just granted him by the President of the United States, it becomes a downright ominous thing.”

  “Mr. President,” said the new young Senator from South Dakota, rising from his seat with an earnest if somewhat elaborate manner, “will the Senator yield? Could the Senator explain something that has struck me as very curious, since I’ve arrived here? There seems to be a very strong and very personal undercurrent of dislike, among the older members, for the Senator from Wyoming. Yet as far as I know, and as far as I have been able to see—and I think this applies to a good many of us newcomers, Mr. President, because we’ve had some discussions about it in the past few days—he doesn’t appear all that bad. Sometimes he’s a little outspoken and a little overvigorous, maybe. But outspokenness could be considered honest candor, and vigor could be considered a virtue, in the strenuous world of legislative battle. Why is it, I wonder if the Minority Leader could tell me, that so many of his seniors despise him? It tends to make many of us newcomers rather sympathetic towards him, I think. I wonder why it is?”

  For a moment Warren Strickland did not answer, as through his and other veteran minds passed the sad story of the death of Brigham Anderson and all the bitter, unhappy memories surrounding Robert A. Leffingwell’s first nomination to be Secretary of State. For a second he was tempted to try to explain. But how could you, if your listeners were not really interested, and if you knew you could not convince them? Brigham Anderson was only a name in old newspapers to them—Bob Leffingwell actually was Secretary of State, now—what had all the fuss been about?

  He sighed, so impossible was it to convey to these bright young men why the Senate had acted as it did then, and why it had all been so important and had so many implications reaching to the very heart of U.S.-Soviet relations in those days so recently past.

  The era was already as dead as Brig himself.

  “I could say many things on that subject,” he remarked finally, “but you would not understand them and you would not believe them. Suffice it to say that resentment, in the opinion of many here, is well-founded. And suspicion of motives and future intentions, is, we believe, well-justified on the basis of past behavior. That is not the issue here today, however—”

  “Oh, yes, it is, Mr. President!” Fred cried, interrupting without even the minimal courtesy of seeking recognition. “Oh, yes, it is! There is a little clique in this Senate which is out to get me for one reason pure and simple: because I am the President’s man, and any way they can strike at the President is fine, in their minds. Why, Senators!—” and he turned again to face the Senate, appealing to it directly, “do you suppose there would be this animosity against me if I didn’t support Edward M. Jason, the greatest statesman we have ever had in the White House? Do you suppose if I hadn’t been actively leading his campaign for the Presidency ever since—yes, even before—yes, well before—he announced his intention to run, that they would be attempting to stop me now? Do you think if he hadn’t entrusted me with great responsibilities to assure domestic peace and tranquility so that he can have the climate of cooperation in which to put forward his great plans for peace, that they would be hostile to me now?

  “Oh, no, Senators! Oh, no! That wouldn’t be their game. What is their game? It’s to discredit and eliminate Edward M. Jason, that’s what it is! Fred Van Ackerman is just an incidental, just a convenient little whipping boy. It’s to eliminate Ted Jason, and don’t you let them tell you differently! Watch it, I say to you new, earnest, sincere, liberal young Senators who have just taken your seats! Watch out for this old mossback, reactionary, vicious clique which is trying to run this Senate! You went a long way toward cleaning house when you voted out that great statesman, the distinguished Senator from Michigan as Majority Leader. That cleared the way enormously for the President’s programs, just as he said it would. That’s why you did it. Now let’s clean house the rest of the way! Let’s get rid of the last holdover! Let’s eliminate the last mossback! Let’s don’t let them kid you into eliminating Edward M. Jason in the guise of an attack on Fred Van Ackerman! You know better than that!”

  And he sat down with a shrewdly triumphant look as many on the floor and in the crowded galleries burst spontaneously into applause.

  For a couple of minutes there was no response from the scattered remnants of what worried members of the media were rapidly coming to think of as “the old Senate”—the Senate that had mustered sufficient moral indignation and integrity to censure Fred for blackmailing Brigham Anderson to death; the Senate that had nurtured doggedly a certain concept of what America ought to be in the world; the Senate that had acted, in its slow, rather stodgy, but ultimately just way, like the Senate. That Senate had vanished, decimated and revolutionized by the landslide victory and coattails of Edward M. Jason.

  This was “the new Senate.” In it, Fred would have to capture the votes of most of the freshman members on both sides of the aisle, plus a good number of the holdovers as well.

  Troubled hunch and frightened instinct told experienced observers that he might well do it. While there remained perhaps forty who despised him, there were many in both parties who leaned in his general political direction, many who believed in “You’ve got to support the President,” many who were skeptical
, for reasons of philosophic disagreement or youthful resentment or long-held grudge, of the old guard that had for so long run the Senate. It was obvious that in the last couple of minutes he had made enormous headway with his cleverly aggressive statement.

  In this unhappy realization, those members of the Senate who feared and disliked the Senator from Wyoming looked instinctively to the man who had led them for more than a decade. Convinced with a cold sickness in his heart that it was already a lost cause, Bob Munson stood up slowly and with meticulous care addressed the chair.

  “Mr. President,” he said, “do I have the floor?”

  “The chair recognizes the distinguished Senator from Michigan,” Lacey Pollard said, in a tone so unconsciously but openly woebegone that for a moment there was a little flicker of amusement, not kind, across floor and galleries. Bob Munson waited gravely for it to pass and then spoke with a solemn and somber mien.

  “Mr. President, the junior Senator from Wyoming says some are attempting to attack the President through him. That is not the issue. We are trying to stop the increasing acquisition of power by a Senator who is ruthless, unprincipled and, many of us believe, inimical to the basic principles and human decencies of the democratic system as it has been practiced for more than two hundred years in America.

  “No, Senator!” he said sharply as Fred leaped to his feet and opened his mouth to start an indignant clamor. “Don’t try to yell about my language or get high and mighty about my saying personal things about you. No one has done more in the past six years to lower the tone of debate in this body than you have, and we’re not going to waste time on your phony complaints after the language you have consistently used on other Senators, both today and in the past. So sit down. I’m going to speak your own language now. Is that clear?”

  “Mr. President—” Fred began furiously.

  “Is that clear?” Bob Munson shouted suddenly, an open hatred his friends had never heard before in his voice. That, too, was deeply disturbing, for it indicated as well as anything how things were disintegrating on the Hill under the pressures of the times.

  “Well—” Fred said; and dropped it as abruptly as he had begun, shrugging with an elaborate indifference as he sat down.

  “Now, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said, mastering himself with an obvious great difficulty, “whether new members here see it or not, there is a pattern in these recent days. A very sinister pattern, in the judgment of many Americans, including some here who have known the Senator from Wyoming a lot longer than you have. His organization known as NAWAC has become openly hostile, openly threatening. A dictatorial measure has been imposed. Mrs. Knox has been murdered. Extraordinary powers over the citizenry and over the media have been granted the Senator from Wyoming. Justice Davis has died at a very opportune moment—”

  Again Fred started to surge angrily to his feet, but the new young Senator from Oregon beat him to it; and after a second, realizing he had allies eager to do his work for him, he sat slowly down again.

  “Mr. President!” cried the young Senator from Oregon. “Oh, Mr. President! Surely, surely the Senator from Michigan is not implying that there was something sinister in Justice Davis’ unfortunate death! Surely he is not attempting to link the Senator from Wyoming to all these events which he sees as sinister. Surely he is not charging that the Senator had a hand in all these things. Now, that is too much, Mr. President! That is too much. I don’t know how other Senators are affected, but as for me, I’ve had it. The Senator from Wyoming might be the worst man who ever sat in this body, but when the Senator from Michigan says things like that, I just rebel and refuse to go along with him. I just can’t take it, Mr. President. It’s too much.”

  Again there was an explosion of applause from the galleries; and at Bob Munson’s side Lafe Smith whispered worriedly, “He’s probably right, Bob.” But the Senator from Michigan was no longer as rational and well-balanced a debater, no longer as shrewd a manager of the Senate, as he used to be. His own defeat and the anguish of these terrible days had finally got to him. He plunged ahead.

  “Senators say they just can’t take it, Mr. President. What have the Senate and the country had to take from this individual already? What more will they have to take in the days ahead? His influence is evil now, it has always been evil. But there is one difference: before, he was powerless, even in this Senate—except to do mischief, which maybe was power enough. Now he is getting power outside, real power, and the mischief he can do is growing in geometric proportion to the power he is acquiring.

  “We cannot stop the President giving him power. That is one more of the many baffling destructive decisions this President has taken in the last few days. But we can stop the Senate from giving him power—”

  “Oh, no, you can’t!” said the new young Senator from Arkansas in a half whisper that cut sharply across Bob Munson’s voice and brought a murmur of ironic laughter in its wake.

  “We can try!” Bob Munson said angrily. “By God, we can try! Because mark you, my smug new friends, mark you: this Senate knows the Senator from Wyoming, and it knows what he is like and—”

  “Mr. President,” the earnest young Senator from South Dakota said smoothly, “will the Senator yield? I repeat what I said a while ago—we don’t know the Senator, and we don’t know what he is like, and why should we believe all these hostile and unfriendly statements about him? I repeat, I’m baffled. It doesn’t add up, somehow.”

  “It wouldn’t be, would it,” the young Senator from Oregon inquired with an exaggerated naiveté, “that older Senators simply disagree with a liberal? Because if that’s the case—” he grinned amicably, and a number of his freshman colleagues joined him in pleasant laughter, “good heavens, there are a lot of us here who are in for a hard time!”

  “The Senator is deliberately reaching for something to confuse the issue!” Bob Munson snapped. “No one here has discussed the Senator from Wyoming’s liberalism, or lack of it. There are some of us, I say for the information of the Senator from Oregon, who were ‘liberals’ while the Senator from Wyoming was in nursery school. Real liberals. Genuine ones. People who favored social progress and worked for it, fought for programs, put laws on the books—really made liberalism mean something. And at the same time remembered that personal liberty makes for social progress and not the other way around; and that when there has to be a choice, personal liberty has to come first, or the whole thing goes under. That’s the kind of liberals we are, I will say to the Senator from Oregon. His friend is far from that.”

  “Mr. President,” the Senator from Oregon said smoothly, “now I think the Senator is just being disingenuous. He knows and we know that the motivations behind this unwarranted and unfair attack upon the Senator from Wyoming are exactly what the Senator from Wyoming says: he backs the President and he’s a liberal. All else is so much chaff. I think the Senator from Wyoming has a very good point about cleaning house. Why don’t we get on with it without a lot more talk?”

  “Because I have a right to talk!” Bob Munson said angrily. “Because that’s what the Senate is all about—talk, the right to be heard, the right to express a viewpoint, the right to agree or dissent. And that, I suspect, is what the move of the Senator from Wyoming is all about, too. He—and presumably his President—wants to bring this Senate under control and stop it from talking. It’s too uncomfortable, too bothersome, all this opposition, so out with it! Plus another factor: that the Senator from Wyoming sees another opportunity on the horizon. President pro tem of the Senate isn’t all that important an office, except in one contingency. We all know what it is.”

  “Oh, Mr. President!” the Senator from Oregon said with a mocking laugh. “Is the Senator from Wyoming really engaged in a deep dark plot to make himself President? Then why doesn’t he support the resolution of impeachment instead of doing his best to block it? Why doesn’t he join this slimy campaign to scuttle Ted Jason? If that’s his game, Mr. President, he’s missing a big bet, it seems to
me, a really big bet.… No, Mr. President, with all respect to the Senator from Michigan, I think he’s outstayed his time and his welcome and his purpose for being around here. I think many of us,” he added blandly, “feel the same way about you, Mr. President. Can’t we have a vote? Please?”

  “Mr. President,” Senator Munson said with a harsh contempt, “Senators who connive in what is going on here at this moment have no conception of what they are engaged in. They have no background, no perspective, no understanding. They are being led like lambs to the slaughter.”

  “And, Mr. President,” the Senator from Oregon said with a bored humor, “no doubt they will live to rue the day, right? Can’t we have a vote, Mr. President? Please?”

  And from floor and galleries he received support as many Senators and many visitors joined in an impatient cry of “VOTE! VOTE!”

  “Mr. President,” Bob Munson said angrily, “I yield the floor, but before I do I will just say this: the Senate is at a turning point this afternoon. Very likely the country is too. New Senators here take it all very lightly, full of fun and frippery. Many of them are obviously not subject to persuasion, I can see that. To those who are less closed-minded, and to all who are veterans here, I say only: much more rides on this than whether the Senator from Texas stays or goes as president pro tempore. Think, I beg of you, think. We must think. The hour,” he concluded somberly into the momentary hush that greeted his impassioned peroration, “grows very late.”

  “VOTE!” came again the cry that was becoming characteristic of these turbulent days in which the methods of democracy were being used shrewdly and skillfully to drive democracy down. “VOTE!! VOTE!!”

  “I’m afraid I overdid it,” he confessed gloomily to Lafe Smith as he settled back in his chair. “But—” his face became contorted for a second with a look of naked hatred he made no attempt to conceal from the now sympathetic and avidly watching press, “I despise him so.”