4
On your mark, get ready, get set, go, was exactly it, Bob Munson reflected as he approached the familiar door with its picture of Lake Michigan and “Mr. Munson—Come In” at the end of the corridor on the second floor. He had soon found that his job, in which there were infinite problems and many rewards, could reasonably well be summed up in just some such jibe as Seab had uttered when they left the cab. When he became Majority Leader his day automatically expanded to sixteen, eighteen hours, the Capitol, which had dominated his thoughts for twelve years, became their absolute center, and he swiftly learned that his world began and ended in ninety-nine minds whose endless surprises he could never entirely anticipate. No sooner had he got somebody pegged in one place than he turned up somewhere else; his plans for steering legislation had to be constantly revised to accommodate the human material with which he had to work. Even such solid citizens as Stuart Schoenfeldt and Royce Blair were quite capable of jumping the reservation when issues got too close to home, and when it came to someone of the caliber of Courtney Robinson, for instance, all bets were off. Many a time he had discussed an issue earnestly with Courtney, been assured with the greatest sincerity that he was true-blue and steadfast, and then found as the roll call neared that the elocutions rapidly became elaborate to the point of obfuscation. Finally with great pain and reluctance he would be assured that there were “just too many reasons, just too many reasons,” for the vote to be cast as he wished. Sometimes he did not even receive this courtesy, and it was only when the reading clerk called the names that he knew what would happen. Then Courtney would smile and wave graciously across the chamber, and later come over to apologize heartily for being a bad boy.
* * *
Fortunately for the orderly progress of the American government, this situation did not arise every time or with everybody. There was a bedrock he could count on, and he presently came to base his strategy upon it. He felt he had, on almost every issue, a bloc of approximately thirty sure votes; and to them it was usually not too difficult to add the nineteen or twenty more he needed for victory. Sometimes he hardly bothered to check, for many things went through more or less automatically. But on the big issues, such as defense, foreign aid, public power, the major appropriations, the major nominations, he always went automatically through the list, questioning, cajoling, sounding out, sometimes promising, sometimes warning, sometimes putting it on a basis he hated but one which occasionally proved effective when nothing else did—“Just as a favor to me.” This was Seab’s favorite gambit, and they sometimes met in battle array over the prostrate form of some poor wee, sleek, timorous, cowerin’ beastie like Nelson Lloyd of Illinois or Henry Lytle of Missouri, desperately anxious to be friends with everybody and not offend either the powerful Majority Leader or his almost equally powerful opponent. Then it all had its humorous moments.
In the main, however, it was a serious business for the most part, and to a considerable degree a labor of love that had its own compensating satisfactions. He sometimes wondered, when he was arguing earnestly with someone as vapid as Walter Calloway of Utah or bargaining with someone as crafty as George Hines of Oregon, whether those who began it all had foreseen the down-to-earth applications of their monumental idea. Sometimes he would come out of the chamber and walk past the statue of Benjamin Franklin, who stood just off the floor at the foot of the stairs to the gallery, fingering his chin with a quizzical smile, and wonder if old Ben and the rest of them had ever had any idea, that steamy summer in Philadelphia, that their brain child would develop into as practical and bedrock a human process as it had. But then he would remember some of their discussions and decide that he probably knew why Ben was smiling. Dealing with prickly John Adams was probably no different from reasoning with prickly Orrin Knox, and certainly Arly Richardson in a pet could be no more difficult than Edmund Randolph.
Thus comforted by his wry imaginings of the past, he would reflect that this, in essence, was the American government: an ever-shifting, ever-changing, ever-new and ever-the-same bargaining between men’s ideals and their ambitions; a very down-to-earth bargaining, in most cases, and yet a bargaining in which the ambitions, in ways that often seemed surprising and frequently were quite inadvertent, more often than not wound up serving the purposes of the ideals.
In this eternal bargaining there were five principal middlemen: the President of the United States, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the House Minority Leader. Through these five changing-houses flowed the passions, the prejudices, and the purposes of the land, and on their particular skills in leading men depended that delicate balancing of dream and desire which moved the nation forward. At a time such as the present when all five were for all practical purposes equally adept, this made for a good deal of genuine progress in many matters. There had been times, as under the Roosevelts or Eisenhower, when one of the middlemen had either been strong beyond proportion or weak beyond proportion, when the balance was knocked out of kilter and the government either raced forward at a speed too fast to be comfortable or stalled at dead center and drifted helplessly through desperate crises without purpose, plan, or conviction at the heart of it. This was a penalty, and one that Ben and Company perhaps had not foreseen; but it was a penalty inseparable from freedom, and so far, despite great risks and perils, the country had survived them all. Whether it would under present circumstances was of course the question; and on that, it was too early to tell. All we can do, he told himself as he unlocked the door giving into his private office, took off his coat and hat, and prepared to buzz Mary to bring him the mail and start the day, is the best we can; aware that he was not alone in this, and that already, on the Hill, around town, and out in the country, others were already at work on the complex situation created by the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell; some to help, some to hinder, but all, according to their lights, to do the best they could.
* * *
It wasn’t that you objected to these little duties you had to perform, Lafe Smith told himself as he paid his cabbie, ran up the steps into the Senate side of the Capitol, and hurried down the poorly lighted hallway toward the Senate restaurant. You liked people, usually, or you weren’t in this business. But the juxtaposition of breakfast with his upright constituents from Council Bluffs and a night with Little Miss Roll-me-over-and-do-it-again was one of those little ironies they didn’t tell you about in the civics books. They told you about the machinery, but they never let on that human beings were what made it run; they talked grandly about a government of laws, not of men, concealing from the idealistic and the young the apparently too harsh fact that it is men who make and administer laws, and so in the last analysis it is the men who determine whether the laws shall function. They made it all so unreal, somehow; and it wasn’t unreal at all; at least he didn’t think it was. Certainly he didn’t feel unreal, hadn’t last night, and didn’t now. It all hung together candidly in his pragmatic mind: Senators like it just as much as anybody, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less Senators for that. It was the sort of insight into the world that not very many of his colleagues knew he had. They all knew he had enough experience to have insight, but few were aware he had developed any.
However, he had, and those who realized it kept it in mind. That was why Bob Munson, for one, was so fond of him, totally unlike as their basic characters seemed to be; and that was why Lafe Smith was moving closer to the little group around Bob who generally called the tune for the Senate. And that was why, without even being asked, but just because he knew Bob would want to know, that he was about to make a quick, smooth, accurate, and reliable survey of what the Midwest thought about the nomination. Sometimes a single conversation could illuminate a whole region for you, if the people were representative and voluble enough; he knew his breakfast guests were. He had a good idea what their reaction would be: the Midwest wanted none of it. He wasn’t so sure he did himself, as a matter of fact, though that would depend on Bob and a lot of other things.
Just ahead of him, white-haired, kindly, and a little nervous about this venture into the great world of government, he saw his company, and with the engaging, comfortable grin that put constituents and conquests equally at ease, he stepped forward, held out a hand to each of them, said, “I’m Lafe Smith, sorry to be late,” and led them on into the restaurant.
* * *
At the press table in the restaurant as Lafe and his guests went by, Associated Press stopped in mid-coffee, looked up at United Press International and the New York Times and asked:
“What do you think he’s going to do?”
“Him?” UPI said. “Whatever Bob tells him to do.”
“I’m not so sure,” the Times remarked. “I don’t think this one is going to be so easy for Remarkable Robert.”
“A presidential nomination?” AP snorted. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
“But Bob Leffingwell,” UPI said. “And the Russians. And Seab Cooley. And what have you.”
“When Bob holds his press conference before the session we’ll have to ask him if this nomination is an example of that bipartisan unity we’ve been hearing about so much,” AP said. “I’ll bet it is.”
“I’ll bet he won’t tell us,” UPI said. “He’ll consider it a secret.”
“Oh, well,” AP said with a dry chuckle, “by noon he’ll have it all sewed up anyway.”
“That I doubt,” said the Times.
* * *
Dolly’s bedroom window, like most other windows in Vagaries, looked right out into the trees, and that was where Dolly was looking, too. The morning papers were spread across the bed and Dolly—Mrs. Phelps Harrison, generally described as “one of Washington’s most prominent hostesses”—was dreamily observing the first feathering green tips of spring along the branches. The sun was shining brightly, a crisp, fresh wind came in from the slightly opened window. It was a sparkling day out, and one of Washington’s most prominent hostesses knew she ought to be up and doing.
Instead, she was lying here thinking that once again events had conspired to guarantee the success of a party at Vagaries.
Things couldn’t, she reflected happily, have dovetailed more conveniently for her. When she had sent out the invitations she of course hadn’t the remotest idea that the date would fall on the day the President finally decided to appoint a successor to Howie Sheppard as Secretary of State. It was simply fate and her favoring star, therefore, that the guest list should include not only Howie, but Bob Leffingwell as well; and not only those two, but Bob Munson, Tom August, most of the Foreign Relations Committee, Orrin Knox, half the Cabinet, Lord and Lady Maudulayne, Raoul and Celestine Barre, Krishna Khaleel, and even Vasily Tashikov, to say nothing of a wide scattering of other Administration, Hill, and diplomatic people. This was the party of the spring at Vagaries—in three years’ time the society columns had become trained to the point where they automatically referred to it as “the Spring Party,” without other identification—and it was always big. This time, though, she had an idea it was going to be positively sensational. Once again in a time of crisis, Vagaries might hold the key.
This, as she had congratulated herself so often before, simply confirmed again her great wisdom in deciding to settle in Washington in the first place. She had always had a lively interest in politics and world affairs, had fortunately been blessed with the native intelligence and shrewdness to give it point, and after the divorce, when she was more or less at loose ends as to what to do next, the idea had suddenly shot into her mind, “Why not go to Washington?” She and John used to visit there occasionally on business trips in the past, she had always liked and been thrilled by it, and now that she was adrift at forty-three with the family millions and no particular geographic ties, there was no reason why she shouldn’t.
“I’m going to live in Washington,” she had told everybody, and everybody had exclaimed; but not half so much as they did when they subsequently learned from press, radio, television, and newsreel just how overwhelmingly successful the move had proved itself to be.
Of course, that was the thing about Washington, really; you didn’t have to be born to anything, you could just buy your way in. “Any bitch with a million bucks, a nice house, a good caterer, and the nerve of a grand larcenist can become a social success in Washington,” people said cattily, and indeed it was entirely true. Dolly was no bitch, but the principle applied. First came the house—Vagaries, gleaming whitely, secretly yet hospitably among its great green trees on ten beautifully landscaped acres in the park, just happened to go up for sale less than a month after Dolly reached Washington and Dolly bought it outright at once—and then you began the routine. You got somebody you knew to introduce you to somebody she knew, and then you gave a small tea or two, and then a small cocktail party or even a small dinner, being careful to include the society editors of the Star, the Post and the News in one or more of them, and you were on your way. Then after the word had begun to get around a little, and you perhaps had been introduced to a Senator or two, and maybe a Cabinet officer and his wife or one of the military, you could sail right into it full steam ahead, set a date, send out invitations broadside to a couple of hundred prominent people, hire yourself the best decorator and caterer you could find, and sit back to await results. Since official Washington loves nothing as much as drinking somebody else’s liquor and eating somebody else’s food, the results were all you could hope for, and after that there were no problems. The quick-leaping friendships of stylishly dressed, scented, powdered, and bejeweled women screaming “Darling!” at one another, together with the amused tolerance of their amiable and almost always thirsty husbands, could quickly be parlayed into an endless round of party-going and party-giving that very soon took you to a social pinnacle limited only by your wealth and stamina. Before long you would find that Time and Newsweek were beginning to mention you in coy little asides in their news columns, and then would come the day when you picked up a magazine from the rack and found that all those carefully staged photographs at your last affair had finally resulted in a LIFE GOES TO A PARTY AT DOLLY HARRISON’S, and you could relax, at last, for you were finally, indubitably, beyond all peradventure of doubt and beyond all fear of challenge by mortal man—or, more importantly, woman—In.
After that, it was just a matter of continuing to lay out the food and the drinks and you could keep going indefinitely; especially if, like Dolly, you wanted to make it something a little deeper and more important, and so in time began to refine your guest lists to the point where they included not only the most important but also the most interesting people in Washington. Sometimes these were the same, but quite frequently they were not, and an astute realization of which was which and how often to mix them did much to give your hard-bought social standing a foundation as permanent as anything in the capital with its shifting official population could be permanent.
So it had been with Dolly, who along with her sister millionairesses was now one of the fixtures of the Washington scene. And, she told herself with considerable justification, quite possibly the best of them. Certainly her parties had a purpose—or at least they had since she had met Bob Munson. It was an event that had occurred last summer at Gossett Cook’s place in Leesburg, and it had been an event that had changed her life a good deal already. She was determined that it should change it a great deal more before she was through.
Later in the morning she would have to call Bob and talk about the party and find out what she could do to help with the nomination. Because she was quite sure that once again, as on several occasions before, she and Vagaries were going to be a big help to Bob. This thought with all its ramifications and frustrations annoyed her as it always did, and with a sudden, “Oh, poof!” she hopped out of bed, rang for the maid, and prepared to go downstairs and begin checking over the preparations for the party.
At the White House the press secretary went through the first batch of wires for the day and found them running about two to one against Bob Leffingwell. An impatient expression crossed his face. The Old Man wouldn’t like it, and it would just make him more stubborn than ever. The press secretary sighed.
* * *
The trouble with the president of General Motors, in the opinion of Roy B. Mulholland, was that he thought he owned the Senators from Michigan, or at least the junior Senator from Michigan, namely Roy B. Mulholland. He didn’t try to pressure Bob Munson very often, except indirectly through Roy, but he was always after Roy about something.
“Now, God damn it,” he was saying vigorously over the line from Detroit, “we don’t want a radical like that for Secretary of State. Now do we? Do we?”
“Bill,” Senator Mulholland said with a trace of asperity, “I tell you I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“Well, make it up, man,” the president of General Motors said impatiently. “Make it up. Time waits for no man, you know. And you can tell Bob from me that we’re going to be watching his actions on this very closely. Very closely indeed.”
“Don’t you always watch Bob’s actions very closely, Bill?” Roy Mulholland asked. “I can’t see as it makes much difference to him.”
“Someday it will, by God,” said the president of General Motors. “Someday it will. The day will come, even for Bob, you wait and see. And for anybody else who doesn’t make the right decision for America.”
“You like that phrase don’t you, Bill?” Roy Mulholland said. “I’ve read it in at least three of your recent speeches.”
“Now don’t be smart-alecky like Bob, Roy,” the president of General Motors ordered sternly. “Just make the right decision for America, and we’ll be for you.”
“I’ll have to talk to Bob,” Senator Mulholland said.
“He’s more important to you than the voice of the people, eh?” said the president of General Motors tartly.
“In this instance,” Roy Mulholland replied with equal tartness, “he is.”
“Well, you tell him what I said,” the president of General Motors reminded him. “You tell him we’re watching him. And you, too.”
“I’ll tell him, Bill,” Senator Mulholland said, “and I’ll be conscious of your piercing gaze. Give my love to Helen, and take care of yourself.”
“Sometimes I wonder about you, Roy,” the president of General Motors said in a disappointed tone. “Sometimes I do.”
* * *
On the East River a couple of mournful tugs were arguing with uneasy persistence with the fog. Senator Fry looked out upon them through the vast glass expanses of the United Nations Delegates’ dining room in a mood that nearly matched the weather. Already he was getting repercussions from the Leffingwell nomination. He had run into one of the members of the Saudi Arabian delegation in the hall just now, a billowing white vision of dark-eyed concern.
“Meestair Leffeen-gwell—” the Saudi had said abruptly. “Meestair Lefeen-gwell—Does eet mean you are shaingeeng your poe-leecy een the Mheedle Heast?”
Hal Fry had suppressed an irreverent impulse to snap, “No, eet does hnot!” but had restrained himself. He had decided, rather, to give as good as he usually got from that sector.
“In the mysterious ways of Allah and the President of the United States, my friend,” he had said calmly, “the inscrutable becomes the indubitable and the indubitable becomes the inscrutable.”
“Yayess?” said the Saudi in polite puzzlement. “Yayesss?”
“Yes,” said Hal Fry firmly, and walked on.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t all quips and quiddities, by any means. It was going to raise hell in the Arab world, he could see that, to say nothing of a good many other places. And as for the Indians—well, he might ask K.K., but he knew that all he would get would be one of those typical Indian answers which go winding and winding off through the interstices of the English language until they finally go shimmering away altogether and there is nothing left but utter confusion and a polite smile. Still and all, he supposed he should find out if he could; and there was K.K. now, off on the other side of the room, and there was no time like the present. He picked up his coffee and made his way purposefully over. The Indian Ambassador looked up and flashed his gleaming smile.
“Senator Fry,” he said in his rapid Brit’sh-In’ja way, “how good of you to grace my humble table with your honored presence.”
“Good morning, K.K.,” Hal Fry said amicably, “you can refrain from the flowers.”
“How, please?” said Krishna Khaleel. “You are always joking me, Hal.”
“Nothing,” Senator Fry said gravely, “could be further from my mind. I meant we could dispense with the frills and get down to business. What position are you folks going to take on Bob Leffingwell?”
“Ahhh,” said K.K. softly. “Bob Leffingwell.”
“The same.”
“He is an interesting man,” the Indian Ambassador observed.
“Fascinating,” Senator Fry agreed.
“Controversial, however,” the Ambassador added.
“Most,” conceded Senator Fry.
“But able,” Krishna Khaleel hastened to remark.
“Among the best,” Hal Fry admitted.
“It is a problem,” K.K. said with a sigh.
“It is a problem,” Senator Fry agreed cheerfully.
“Well,” K.K. said abruptly. “You want to know what we think. We think this appointment could be one of great importance for the world, one which could do great good for the world. But we also think it could cause trouble in the world, and could precipitate difficulties in the world. Now then. It is a question, is it not, of whether it would cause good for the world, or whether it would cause bad for the world, and if the first, and indeed the second also, you understand, whether it would be the position of my government that the good it might cause would be sufficient to counterbalance the bad it might cause. It might, you see, cause both things in one man, you see. Such is the diversity of human nature. And one should not take too firm a position on the basis of human nature, for human nature, our friends in the West to the contrary, is always changing, is it not? And therefore sometimes it is better to ignore human nature and look at the long view of things. Although of course one cannot leave human nature out of account, for it too is important for the world. This is what we think of the nomination, since you ask me, Hal.”
Senator Fry conceded defeat with a laugh.
“You damned Indians,” he said genially, “are always using syntax as a weapon. Why don’t you ever say what you mean, right out?”
“Half the troubles in this world, my friend,” said Krishna Khaleel with sibilant explicitness, “are caused by people saying what they mean right out. You Americans always want to bring things to a head; you always want to make things come to an issue. But heads and issues are not good for the world, my friend. They make people take positions. Positions can be dangerous. Possibly positions are not good for the world. Or possibly they are, of course. Is it not so?”
“You lost me on the last curve, K.K.,” Senator Fry said dryly. “I fell right out of the bus and I’m going to have to walk home. I’ll tell Washington what you think.”
“I shall tell Washington myself,” Krishna Khaleel said firmly. “Is there not the party at Dolly’s tonight? I shall be there.”
“So shall I,” said Hal Fry.
“A lovely woman, Dolly Harrison,” the Indian Ambassador said thoughtfully. “A little too obvious about her feelings for the good Bob Munson, but very kind of heart, I think.”
“She’ll catch him yet,” Senator Fry said with a chuckle.
“A consummation devoutly to be hoped,” K.K. remarked; and added with a twinkle, “There, I have said something right out. Dolly and Bob—I am for it, I approve. The Indian Republic is for it, it approves. The world is for it, it approves. Is it not so?”
“It is so, O Akbar,” said Hal Fry with a grin.
* * *
“In about another hour,” Bob Munson said, “we’re going to begin to get the reaction on Leffingwell from the country.”
“You want to dictate a form letter?” Mary Hastings asked.
“How did you know?” Senator Munson said.
“I anticipate,” Mary said. “Isn’t that what you pay me for?”
“I pay you,” said Bob Munson, surveying the dark-eyed, dark-haired, quick-witted forty-six-year-old intelligence that ran his office staff, “to be the best damned administrative assistant on the Hill. And so you are. Take a letter to whom it may concern—Joe Doaks, Susie Soaks, and all the folks—
“‘Dear So-and-So, With reference to your letter of present date, I want you to know how much I value your opinion on the President’s nomination of Mr. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State. It is obviously an office of the greatest importance to all of us, and it is only through voluntary expressions of opinion from back home, such as yours, that we in the Senate can make up our minds about it.’ Paragraph. ‘As you know, in my position as Majority Leader, I am to some extent bound to follow the Administration view on most matters, but I consider this so vital that I am, for the time being, reserving final judgment on what I shall ultimately do. Your letter is one which will weigh heavily in my decision. It was most kind of you to write, and I appreciate it deeply. With warm regards,’ etc. That isn’t too evasive, is it?”
“No more than usual,” Mary said.
“Well, damn it,” Bob Munson said. “You know our problem. We can’t commit ourselves too much in advance on something like this, there are too many factors involved. We’ve got to allow a little leeway, in case Seab turns up the fact that he was convicted for dope or white slavery or something. You know that.”
“Yes,” Mary said comfortably, “I know that, Senator. It’s a good letter and about all you can say at the present moment, I should judge.”
“Then don’t give me back talk,” Senator Munson said. “I can’t take it, in my delicate condition of being pregnant with the hottest nomination in the present presidential term. Now let’s get rid of whatever else there is. I’ve got to get on my horse and get out around the building.”
* * *
Little warning bells rang on all the news-tickers in all the offices all over town that had them. “This is to advise,” the teletype machine said impersonally, “that Robert A. Leffingwell will not, repeat not, hold his previously announced press conference at 10:30 AM today.”
* * *
“This building,” one of the Capitol guides was telling the day’s first batch of tourists, listening attentively in the great rotunda, “stands on Capitol Hill 88 feet above the level of the Potomac River, on a site once occupied by a subtribe of the Algonquin Indians known as the Powhatans, whose council house was located at the foot of the hill. The building covers an area of 153,112 square feet, or approximately 3 1/2 acres. Its length from north to south is 751 feet, four inches; its width, including approaches, is 350 feet. It has a floor area of 14 acres, and 435 rooms are devoted to offices, committees, and storage. There are 679 windows and 554 doorways. The cornerstone of the Capitol was laid on September 18, 1793. The northern wing was completed in 1800, and in that small building the legislative and judicial branches of the government, as well as the courts of the District of Columbia, were housed in that year when the government moved here from Philadelphia. The southern section of the Capitol was finished in 1811, the House of Representatives then occupying what is now known as Statuary Hall. At that time a wooden passageway connected the two wings. This was the situation when the Capitol was burned by the British on August 24, 1814, entering up the narrow, winding steps known as the British Stairway which you will see later in your tour.
“Restoration of the two wings was completed in 1817, and construction of the central portion was begun in 1818 and completed in 1829. Congress, which met in a special building erected on part of what is now the present Supreme Court grounds across Capitol Plaza, moved back into the Capitol in 1819.
“The building of the present Senate and House wings was begun on July 4, 1851. The House moved into its present chamber on December 16, 1857, and the Senate occupied its present chamber on January 4, 1859. The original low dome, which had been constructed of wood covered with copper, was replaced by the present dome of cast iron in 1865. There are two Senate Office Buildings and three House Office Buildings included in the Capitol grounds, which now cover an area of 131.1 acres. The statue on top of the Capitol which you saw as you approached the building is the Statue of Freedom, which stands with its back on downtown Washington. This is no reflection on our government, but is so turned because the East Front is the official front of the Capitol, the original builders having thought the District of Columbia would grow toward the east instead of the west.
“The Capitol dominates the city of Washington and is generally accepted throughout the world as the most familiar symbol of the Government of the United States, this great country of ours which is the world’s greatest democracy and are we glad of it. Now if you will follow me—”
* * *
The Secretary of Agriculture, on his way out of the White House after seeing the President, met the Secretary of Defense on his way in. “Say,” he began, “what do you think of—” The Secretary of Defense held up a cautionary hand. “Not me, boy,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’.”
* * *
When Brigham Anderson came past the press table shortly before ten, everybody was still there drinking coffee. Committees hadn’t started yet, the day was still young, the daily budget of gossip not yet exhausted. Nobody was in much of a hurry to get to work, and the appearance of the senior Senator from Utah just went to prove that work, as often happened, might come to you if you sat at the proper crossroads and waited for it. So everybody said, “Hi, Brig,” and invited him to sit down.
“If I dare, at this august table,” Brigham Anderson said. “What’s the topic before the house this morning?”
“As if you don’t know,” AP told him.
“What?” he said innocently. “The nomination?”
“Is there any other topic this morning, Senator?” the Times asked humorously.
“It’s something, isn’t it?” Brig said. “We’re going to have a battle royal before we’re through with this one.”
“What are you going to do, Senator?” the Baltimore Sun asked bluntly.
“Yes, give us a lead for the afternoon papers,” UPI suggested. “Senator Anderson condemns Leffingwell nomination. Says it’s unpatriotic, un-American—”
“Attitude believed influenced by earlier fight with nominee on Power Commission,” AP added.
“Now, wait a minute,” Brigham Anderson said. “Curb these high-priced imaginations and slow down. Senator Anderson isn’t condemning anything, yet.”
“But he will?” AP asked quickly.
“Look,” Brig said, “stop trying to get me in dutch, will you? I’ve got to sit on that committee and judge the nomination. I’m not ready to say anything at all about it yet. There are many aspects of it that I want to explore before I’ll be ready to sound off on it.”
“Can we quote you on that much?” asked the Times; Brigham Anderson hesitated.
“I guess so,” he said slowly; “make it ‘many aspects I want to explore before I am ready to take a position on it,’ though. ‘Sound off’ is much too informal for a Senator, you know.”
“And you’re such a formal Senator,” the Times noted with a smile.
“Hush,” said Brigham Anderson. “Don’t tell people. I’m always afraid they’re going to bounce me out of the club any day for being so casual about it all. Why, I even fraternize with newspapermen, and you know what that does to a fellow’s character and standing in the community.… Actually, I’m much more interested right now in what kind of roses to plant this spring than I am in Bob Leffingwell.”
“Assuming we can accept that persiflage at face value,” AP said, “what kind of roses are you going to plant?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me,” Senator Anderson said. “I have room for about five alongside the house, and I can’t decide what they should be. All white; all red; white, red, and yellow, red, white, and blue—you can see what a problem it is.… But I’ve got to run. You let me know if you decide what I should do, will you?”
“You let us know when you decide what to do about Bob Leffingwell,” the Times told him. The Senator flashed his engaging, boyish, grin as he started toward the door, then came back and leaned confidentially over the table.
“As a matter of fact,” he said in a half whisper, “I’m damned if I know,” and left on their laughter.
“He’s certainly a hell of a nice guy,” UPI observed.
“Yes,” AP agreed, “and he’s going to play a hell of a big part in this one, too.”
“Maybe,” said the Times in a remark he was to remember and ponder over many times later, “a lot bigger part than he or any of us knows.”
* * *
Across Capitol Plaza in the beautiful marble edifice that prompted Justice Sutherland to say that he felt as though he and his brethren were nine black beetles in the Temple of Karnak, Thomas Buckmaster Davis, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was busy on the telephone. The telephone was made for Washington, and Mr. Justice Davis was possibly its most devout disciple. Day in, day out, night in, night out, Tommy was on the phone, arguing, commenting, urging, suggesting, criticizing, lecturing, injecting his lively personality into the workings of government on every conceivable issue under the sun, regardless of whether anyone asked for, desired, or even listened to his opinion.
One of a long line of political Justices running from Jay to Frankfurter (with whose judicial opinions Tommy didn’t always agree), Mr. Justice Davis was a born participant in practically everything. The Chief Justice had mildly reproved him about this once, noting that the ideal of American political theory was that the Court should be above politics. “When was the Court ever above politics?” Tommy had snapped, and the C.J. hadn’t tried to argue very hard. “Well, people should think it is, anyway,” he had said, rather lamely. “You make it so obvious it isn’t.” “It’s a free country,” said Mr. Justice Davis firmly.
There was illuminated in this brief exchange much about the relationship between the Court and the country, and more particularly, between Tommy and his colleagues. Tommy, it was true, had put his finger on something, and the C.J. with equal perspicacity, had done the same. Whatever the Court’s awareness of the current political climate might be, and it was usually very good, there was a sort of agreed understanding among its members that they wouldn’t admit it, publicly at any rate. Mr. Justice Davis gave a sort of tentative lip service to this, when he remembered about it, but most of the time he made no bones about his own avid involvement in any phase of politics that happened to interest him. This was all phases, and inevitably this brought considerable public criticism and a certain frigidity into his relations with his eight fellows. It was obvious every day when the clerk cried, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” and the Justices emerged in their stately massed ballet from behind the red-velvet curtain that Mr. Justice Davis and his brethren were not entirely happy with one another.
Today, however, the Court was not meeting, nor were any conferences scheduled, and there was nothing to interfere with Tommy’s favorite pastime. The Leffingwell nomination, he was aware, provided perhaps his greatest recent challenge, and he was rising to it with all the vigor at his command. At the moment he was arguing with the general director of the Post, who was giving him a bad time.
“But what other position is there for a liberal to take?” Tommy was demanding. “My dear boy, my dear boy; oh, my dear boy!”
“I’m still not sure we’re ready to go all out,” the general director of the Post remarked doggedly.
“But my dear boy,” Tommy said, “suppose the Senate doesn’t confirm him. Think what a black eye it will be for the liberal cause.”
“Suppose the Senate confirms him and he does the wrong thing in foreign policy,” the general director of the Post shot back. “Think what a black eye it will be for all of us.”
“Surely you don’t mistrust Bob Leffingwell!” Justice Davis said in a tone of shocked surprise. “After all he has done for the country, all these long, valiant years. Surely there couldn’t possibly be a better choice.”
“W-e-l-l,” the director of the Post said slowly. “In many ways, you’re right, of course. But so much more is involved in this—”
“Then why hesitate?” Tommy demanded triumphantly. “Isn’t that all the more reason for being for him? Has he ever failed us? Hasn’t he always been on the right side? Why, I can remember clear back under Roosevelt, he was one of America’s greatest fighting liberals. And he’s never changed one bit since; even when”—and the Justice’s tone grew a little pointed—“even when some others wavered now and then, endorsing Eisenhower, and so on, Bob Leffingwell never did. Doesn’t that entitle him to the support of all true liberals now?”
“Oh, I expect we’ll be for him, all right,” the director of the Post said hastily, “but it may be more gradual and not so immediate.”
“It’s got to be immediate,” Tommy Davis said firmly. “It’s got to be, my dear boy. Otherwise, they will get the jump on us. All the reactionary forces in the country are mobilizing right this minute to defeat this nomination. We’ve got to mobilize, too. We’ve got to act fast. This is the latest battle in the unending war we liberals always have to fight. Will you fail us when the trumpets sound, my dear boy? Will your banner be trailing in the dust when ours goes gallantly ahead?”
“Very dramatic, I’m sure,” the director of the Post responded. “But you do have a point. I’ll have to talk it over down here and see what we decide. I will say yours isn’t the only telephone call I’ve received along the same lines. It could be we’ll come out strong for him tomorrow morning.”
“I hope so, my dear boy, I hope so with all my heart,” Justice Davis said. “Nothing would make me happier than to have you call back this afternoon and say it’s all settled.”
“W-e-l-l,” the director of the Post said hesitantly. “Perhaps.”
“Just to make an old liberal happy?” Tommy said wistfully. “Just so he will know that all the good company is together again and marching forward—”
“When the trumpets sound,” the director of the Post finished for him. “All right, Mr. Justice. I’ll call.”
“Thanks so much, dear boy,” Tommy said. “I know you won’t fail us. It’s so important.”
“Indeed it is,” said the director of the Post thoughtfully.
* * *
The Star and the News were thoughtful, too. Their early editions, reaching the Capitol shortly after ten thirty, sounded a note of cautious reserve on Robert Leffingwell. “We assume,” the Star said, “that the President has excellent reasons for nominating Mr. Leffingwell to this all-important post, and indeed there is much in his public record to warrant this sort of confidence. Still, we hope the Senate will take its time and satisfy itself completely as to the nominee’s qualifications. In this area, in this era, the country cannot afford a mistake.” “We’d like to see this one given plenty of thought,” the News said. “We’ve seen much to praise in Bob Leffingwell’s record, and also plenty to criticize. We’ve done both, as we deemed necessary. Now we say to the Senate: take it easy and make sure you’re right. Better safe than sorry, when we and the whole free world have so much at stake in this nomination.”
* * *
The trouble with the president of the United Auto Workers, in the opinion of Bob Munson, was that he thought he owned the Senators from Michigan, or at least the senior Senator from Michigan, namely Bob Munson. He didn’t try to pressure Roy Mulholland very often, except indirectly through Bob, but he was always after Bob about something.
“Now, God damn it,” he was saying vigorously over the line from Detroit, “we want to get organized and get this nomination through as soon as possible. We want to help, Bob. We want you to let us know what we can do.”
“John,” Bob Munson said with a trace of asperity, “I think maybe this one is going to be difficult enough without stirring up a lot of old animosities to complicate matters.”
“Rubbish, Bob,” the president of the UAW said tersely. “Rubbish. We’ve got to beat these reactionary bastards at their own game. You’re going to need all the assistance you can get, Bob, and we intend to help you. We want you to know that, Bob. Incidentally, what about that lily-livered pantywaist of a colleague of yours? What are they going to scare him into doing?”
“I haven’t talked to Roy yet,” Bob Munson said. “I imagine on this one he’ll make up his own mind.”
“Well,” said the president of the UAW darkly, “you tell him we’re going to be watching his actions on this one very closely. Damn closely.”
“Aren’t you always watching his actions very closely, John?” Bob Munson asked. “I can’t see that it makes much difference to him.”
“Well, someday it will, by God,” said the president of the UAW belligerently. “Someday, by God, it will. He’ll get it yet, you wait and see, even if he does have General Motors and half the fat cats in Michigan in his corner.”
“Isn’t it enough to own one Senator from Michigan, John?” Bob Munson asked. “Don’t I satisfy you? Must you have a union label on us both?”
The president of the UAW uttered an expressive four-letter word.
“Who owns you?” he asked bitterly. “When did anybody ever own you? By God, Bob, you’re the slipperiest character in seventeen counties. Every time we think we have you pegged you slide out from under us. I’ll bet we can’t even count on you on this one, even if you are Majority Leader.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Bob Munson said.
“We’ll be watching you, Bob,” the president of the UAW promised. “We’ll be watching you, by God, and Roy, too. Don’t try any funny stuff on this. And we’re going to help too, Bob, God damn it, so don’t try to push us aside.”
“You wait until you hear from me before you start anything,” Bob Munson said angrily, and his tone suddenly hardened into one that would brook no nonsense. “I mean it, John. I don’t want you messing this one up with any of your God damned phony-liberal headline-grabbing crusades. You stay out of this until I give you the word, do you understand me?”
“Well, all right, Bob,” said the president of the UAW in a startled voice, “if that’s the way you feel.”
“That’s the way I feel,” Senator Munson said crisply, “and you keep your hands off this until I tell you. Goodbye.”
“Well, goodbye, Bob,” said the president of the UAW hurriedly, “if that’s the way you feel.”
* * *
“I really don’t see why he didn’t tell me,” Harley Hudson was saying in an aggrieved way as the plane prepared to set down at National Airport. “Certainly I can be of some help to him in the Senate, even if he does act as though I can’t. Don’t you think I can, Tom?”
At this frank display of a rather woebegone approach to life, which the Vice President had kept fairly well bottled most of the way up from South Carolina but had finally expressed with embarrassing candor, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shook his head as though brushing away a persistent fly, or as though confronted with a problem for which there was no solution; as indeed there wasn’t, for this one.
“I’m sure you can, Harley,” Tom August said in his gentle, professorial voice. “I’m sure he will make use of you. After all, you know everybody.”
“Of course I know everybody,” Harley Hudson said, “and they listen to me, too. Not as much as they do to Bob Munson, of course, but I have some influence, don’t I, Tom?”
“I believe you do,” Senator August said reassuringly. “I do believe you do. I wouldn’t worry about it, Harley; I’m sure you’ll find when you get to your office that he wants to talk to you and enlist your help. After all, it would be very foolish of him not to, I should think.”
“I should think so, too,” said the Vice President rather wistfully, “but sometimes he hasn’t, you know. Why, I don’t know half of what goes on, Tom. I wouldn’t say that to everybody, you understand, but you’re an old friend. It hurts me sometimes, it really does. Why, supposing anything should happen, Tom; I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”
“Now, hush, Harley,” Senator August said abruptly, feeling as though this were entering a realm of self-revelation so devastating that he should at all costs head the Vice President off, “now, hush. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing at all is going to happen.”
“I don’t know,” Harley Hudson said unhappily. “Lately I’ve been waking up at nights and worrying about it. You don’t suppose it’s a premonition, do you Tom?”
“No,” Senator August said. “I wish you wouldn’t worry so, Harley. Nothing’s going to happen, and even if it did, I’m sure you’d do the right thing. We all know you would.”
“I’d be scared to death,” the Vice President said simply.
“You wouldn’t have time to be scared,” Senator August said.
“Oh yes, I would,” said Harley Hudson. “Oh yes, I would.”
“Well,” Tom August said as the plane taxied to a stop, “I refuse to listen to you get yourself into a state about it any longer. He likes you, and he’ll want your help, and so will we all. See, there’s a White House car waiting for you, right now.”
“I’ll bet it isn’t for me,” the Vice President said in a lonely voice. “I’ll bet it’s for you.”
And so it was. There was a young State Department officer with it, and he informed Senator August that the President wished to see him at once, and if the Senator didn’t mind, could he come right along now—? After which, for he was a polite young man, he asked the Vice President if they could drop him anywhere.
“I have my own car waiting, thanks,” Harley said stiffly. “You see?” he added to Tom August. “You see?”
“Hush,” the Senator said, looking pleased and flattered in spite of himself. “I’ll see you on the Hill, Harley.”
“Give him my regards,” the Vice President said, rallying his lacerated feelings for a parting shot, “tell him I said hello.”
“I’ll tell him he should make use of you in this,” Senator August said, meaning to be kind but sounding smug instead.
“Oh, swell,” Harley Hudson said bitterly. “Oh, fine and dandy. You do that, Tom. You do that very thing.”
* * *
Shortly after eleven o’clock in his closely guarded Embassy on Sixteenth Street opposite the National Geographic, Vasily Tashikov framed a cable to Moscow on the Leffingwell nomination and sent it forward to the coding room for transmission. It was a shrewd if somewhat incomplete appraisal of the appointment, an assessment of its world and domestic political implications, and a suggestion for certain actions to be taken in the event of favorable action by the Senate. After it left his desk the Ambassador called home and reminded his wife that they were to attend the party at Mrs. Harrison’s that night. She did not particularly want to go and neither did he, but they knew it was both a duty and an opportunity: a chance to spend an evening with people they despised, to whom they felt infinitely superior, and to whose destruction and that of their country the Ambassador and his lady were implacably and inescapably dedicated. He had received orders, given on a rising tide of confidence in victory, to be as brutal as he pleased in his diplomatic conversations, and Vasily Tashikov was looking forward with some satisfaction to doing just that
* * *
At Her Majesty’s Embassy out Massachusetts Avenue and at the French Embassy on Belmont Road, the nomination was also of some interest. Lord Maudulayne, pausing in a busy day to take a call from Kitty in New York, was advised that she had talked to Senator Fry, “and he sounds dreadfully amused about Bob Leffingwell.” Senator Wannamaker, though, she reported, did not, and it was likely there would be quite a fuss in the Senate about it, she gathered. She would be flying in with Celestine Barre at four thirty, and would he be good enough to call Raoul Barre at the French Embassy and tell him so? Both ladies wanted orchids for Dolly’s party, so he could order hers at once, and don’t forget to tell Raoul the same. She did think the whole Leffingwell thing was going to be exciting, and what attitude should she take officially if she happened to meet somebody she knew when she and Celestine went to the UN for lunch with the heads of the British and French delegations?
“Don’t take any attitude,” Claude Maudulayne said. “Let them guess. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Is that what you’re really doing?” Lady Maudulayne wanted to know.
“That’s what I’m really doing,” her husband replied.
“Oh,” she said thoughtfully. “Then I will, too. It will be difficult though, don’t you think? He is so controversial, and everybody knows we will all be affected by his appointment, won’t we?”
“I expect so,” Lord Maudulayne said. “By all means be as blank as the Sphinx if you see K.K.”
“Pooh to K.K.,” said Lady Maudulayne in a tone that left no doubt of her feelings about the Indian Ambassador. “That tiresome—”
“Ah, ah,” Claude Maudulayne said reprovingly. “Ah, ah. Ties that bind, you know. Little brown brethren, dinner jackets in the jungle, we all went to Oxford and spent our hols together, and so on. The Commonwealth forever. One big, happy family, right?”
“One big happy my foot,” Kitty Maudulayne said crisply. “Sometimes I think this whole thing is—”
“—is the best of a bad bargain and a bad bargain is all we can get in this happy era,” her husband said with equal crispness, “so please don’t say anything revolutionary to anybody.”
“I’ll try not to,” Kitty promised. “Will you have a car meet us at the airport?”
“I think I can,” Lord Maudulayne said. “Have a good time at the UN.”
“I will,” his wife said. “Don’t forget to call Raoul.”
“Immediately,” Lord Maudulayne said.
And, as good as his word, which was generally recognized in Washington to be very good indeed, he put the call through as soon as Kitty hung up. After a couple of minutes with secretaries he achieved his objective and heard the pleasantly accented voice of the French Ambassador brighten with pleasure.
“My dear Claude!” it said. “To what do I owe this always happy event?”
“To wives,” Lord Maudulayne said.
“Ah, those charming little ladies,” Raoul Barre said fondly. “What have they done now, gotten themselves arrested for vagrancy in New York?”
Lord Maudulayne laughed.
“Nothing as drastic as that, old chap,” he said. “Kitty was just on, and she wants to be very sure that I know, and you know, that she and Celestine want orchids for Dolly Harrison’s party tonight.”
“Ah, is that all,” the French Ambassador said. “I was afraid it was something much more desperate and costly than that.”
“She also wanted to know,” Lord Maudulayne said, “what she should say to people who asked her what she thought about the Leffingwell nomination.”
“Oh?” said Raoul Barre carefully.
“Yes,” his colleague replied.
“And you said—?” Raoul suggested.
“Nothing,” Lord Maudulayne said quickly. “I was blank as the Sphinx.”
“I see,” the French Ambassador observed.
“You do?” the British Ambassador asked.
“When did the Sphinx become British?” Raoul inquired.
“A temporary adherence,” Lord Maudulayne said airily. “I’m sure I’ll be as voluble as anything presently, but right now, no.”
“No?” said Raoul Barre in a disappointed tone. “My dear Claude, I find myself in the same predicament as the lovely Kitty. What am I to tell people who ask me, if I cannot get guidance from the one who holds my poor country’s hand and makes sure she proceeds in the paths of righteousness?”
“Hmm,” Lord Maudulayne said. “I wonder if we deserve that?”
“On occasion,” the French Ambassador said. “On occasion, as you well know, clever Albion. Actually, you will be glad to know that I, too, am sphinxlike. Not that anyone has asked me yet, but someone will before long. I am sure of it.”
“Yes,” said Lord Maudulayne. “I will. I am. What do you think?”
“Always unpredictable, always,” Raoul Barre said with a mock sigh. “First the Sphinx and then the bulldoze. Well, I wonder if I should tell you.”
“I think you should,” Claude Maudulayne said. “I definitely think you should. Our hosts will be after us, you know; we can’t escape them for long. By all means let’s have a united front, old boy.”
“The Americans!” said Raoul Barre with a real sigh this time. “They pin one down so. I shall tell them for the moment—not much. After all, the President must deem this man worthy to be our prophet on the road to greater salvation, or he would not have nominated him. I am sure he is quite as adept at combining sermons and sleight of hand as all the others have been lately.”
“You sound bitter,” Lord Maudulayne observed; his colleague snorted.
“I?” he said in an exaggerated tone. “I?”
“So you are doubtful, then?” the British Ambassador said.
“I am,” the French Ambassador agreed. “Very. I do not know which way this American animal is going to jump, you know? He is scared and he is lazy; it is a fateful combination. And he cannot yet quite believe that this tune he need not send to ask about the bell tolling, for this time it really could be tolling for him. He cannot grasp it yet; when he suddenly understands, what then? What will he do? That is what I wonder. It is what I wonder about Bob Leffingwell.”
“There are others I would feel more comfortable with at a time like this,” Lord Maudulayne agreed.
“Several,” Raoul Barre said. “If my friends in the Senate ask me, I shall be polite—and reluctant. I shall indicate a doubt, perhaps, to those astute enough to see it, of whom there are a good many in that great body.”
“That was my own idea,” Claude Maudulayne said. “I just wanted to see if you agreed. I thought perhaps on this we had best see eye to eye.”
“I believe so,” Raoul Barre said. “I do believe so. After all these years of telling us that we all survive or go down together, they have finally created a situation in which it is true. We didn’t want it to be that way, but they fought for us and aided us and told us what was best for backward peoples whose progress didn’t match theirs and lectured at us and negotiated with us and prayed over us until it came true. Now we are stuck with them. If they go, we go. We all go. And that includes that deliberate dream of gentlemen in London and elsewhere who insist on staying asleep because the dream is so pleasant, your delightful Elizabeth’s Commonwealth and Empire. What do you hear from the Indians?”
“K.K. is at UN,” Lord Maudulayne said. “I hear nothing yet. I understand he will be at Dolly’s. I may hear something then.”
“I too shall offer an attentive ear to the exquisitely involved English of our distinguished colleague,” Raoul Barre said dryly. “I do not know that I shall learn, but I shall listen.”
“I too,” Lord Maudulayne said. “Thanks for your time and your advice. We will see you at Dolly’s. Don’t forget Celestine’s orchid.”
“Immediately,” said Raoul Barre.
* * *
“Darling,” Dolly said when her call finally reached the Majority Leader in his second office on the gallery floor of the Senate wing, “I just wanted to see how you were feeling. I just wanted to know if there was anything I could do about Bob Leffingwell.”
Bob Munson smiled.
“Not much,” he said, “except be your usual charming self tonight and see that everybody mixes. We want a lot of mixing about Bob, the more mixing the better.”
“How does it look so far?” Dolly asked.
Senator Munson grunted. “I’ve been so tied down by mail and calls in my other office I’ve hardly had time to find out. I wanted to get out around a little before the session began, but there were too many things to do. Most of Michigan picked this morning to call me, so I’ve been running errands.”
“It’s good for you. It keeps you humble to remember that you may be Majority Leader to us, but you’re just an errand boy to them.”
“Thanks,” Bob Munson said. “I knew there must be some good purpose in it. What have you been doing?”
“Getting ready for the party. It seems to me I’ve been over everything fifty times, though I’m sure it was only twice.”
“How many are you expecting this time,” Senator Munson asked, “five hundred?”
“About three,” Dolly said.
“Vagaries will be taxed to the limit,” the Senator observed. “I hope every single one will be directly involved in the nomination.”
“Not every one, but a good many. But do you know, the funniest thing? Louise Leffingwell called a little while ago and said they couldn’t make it.”
“God damn him anyway,” Bob Munson said flatly. “What was the excuse?”
“Bob has a touch of virus, she said.”
“He’s just playing hard to get,” Bob Munson said. “But maybe it’s just as well, after all. His being there might serve to inhibit the conversation, and as it is we can say what we think. Except that a lot of us won’t, of course.”
“Isn’t this going to be important diplomatically?” Dolly asked. “I mean, won’t the allies be interested? Won’t they try to influence it, even?”
“I expect they will,” Bob Munson said. “I’ve got to talk to some of them tonight.”
“They’ll be here,” Dolly said, “including K.K.”
“Hal Fry saw him this morning at the UN,” Senator Munson reported. “He called to tell me K.K. is also playing hard to get.”
“Well, darling, Tashikov will be here and maybe he’ll say what he thinks.”
“Yeah,” Bob Munson said dryly. “I’m sure of it.”
“Bob,” Dolly said seriously, “are you entirely happy about this?”
“It’s my job to be happy about it,” Senator Munson said. “How else can I feel?”
“I knew it. If Claude and Raoul are against him and K.K. quibbles and Tashikov smiles, I’m going to be scared.”
“So am I,” Bob Munson said, “assuming Tashikov would be so indiscreet as to smile, which I doubt. Anyway, we’ll just have to see.”
“Well, you let me know what I can do to help,” Dolly said; then her tone changed. “How’s your sense of the ridiculous?”
Bob Munson grinned. “I won’t know till midnight, I suspect, and then if I’ve mislaid it somewhere I’ll have to come through the back door in blackface, I suppose, to avoid comment.”
“Why don’t you make an honest woman of me and then you can forget comment?” Dolly asked.
“Oh, comment’s all part of the game in my business,” Senator Munson said.
“Now, darling,” Dolly told him, “don’t be like that. Just don’t be like that. It isn’t fair.”
“I’m trying to be fair,” Bob Munson said. “I said I’d wear blackface.”
“Damn you anyway, darling,” Dolly said lightly. “I’ll see you tonight, and I don’t care about your sense of the ridiculous after all. I’m sorry I asked.”
“I’m not,” Bob Munson said. “I would have been devastated if you hadn’t.”
“Oh, damn, damn, damn, damn,” Dolly said. “I refuse to talk to you any longer.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” Bob Munson said with a chuckle. “Somewhere among the three hundred.”
“Well, don’t try the back door,” she told him. “It will be locked, blackface or no blackface.”
“I love you, too,” Senator Munson said. “Don’t slip on a French pastry.”
“Go to hell,” one of Washington’s most prominent hostesses advised him. “Just go on and go.”
And that, the Senator thought with amusement, was why life in Washington had become considerably more interesting recently. A couple of months ago when he had stayed overnight for the first time at Vagaries he had made some teasing comment about it all being rather ridiculous anyway, fifty-seven and forty-three, and Dolly had promptly given them their catchword.
“Darling,” she had said firmly, “You know as well as I do that the first thing people have to forget is their sense of the ridiculous. Otherwise nobody could ever do anything.”
Since then, Bob Munson reflected, the sense of the ridiculous had not intruded overmuch, even if its absence had not automatically produced an early rush for the altar and that “most fashionable Washington wedding of the year” that Dolly made no bones about wanting. He suspected it would come in due time, but he wasn’t in any great hurry at the moment.
* * *
The two people connected with official Washington who had absolutely no thoughts whatsoever about the Leffingwell nomination this morning were walking down Connecticut Avenue window-shopping arm in arm.
“You know,” Crystal Danta said, “I believe we can do the dining room in blue.”
“Suppose I like black?” Hal Knox suggested. She laughed.
“That’s what my father tells me about your father,” she said. “Stubborn and contrary.”
“That’s just contrary,” Orrin Knox’s son said. “I haven’t begun to be stubborn yet. You’ll find out.”
“I will, will I?” Crystal said speculatively. “I might tell you the Dantas have a long family tradition, too. I wouldn’t push my luck, if I were you.”
“I have so much,” Hal said.
“You do?” Crystal asked.
“I have you, haven’t I?” he said with a grin.
“You,” she said placidly, “are so sweet. Let’s go into Sloan’s and spend a million dollars.”
“Good,” Hal said. “I just happen to have it on me.”
* * *
“Bob,” Lafe Smith said earnestly, “I don’t think the Midwest is going to go for this. I had breakfast with one of my county chairmen and the old boy was fierce. I’ve never seen him so upset.”
“How do you feel about it?” Senator Munson asked. His visitor fidgeted a little in his chair.
“I want to stand by the President if I can, Bob,” he said.
“Can you?” Bob Munson asked.
“Ask me in a week,” Lafe said with his quick, appealing grin.
“I want to know sooner than that,” Senator Munson said. “I’m counting on your help.”
“I want to give it to you,” Senator Smith assured him earnestly. “You can count on it, Bob. I’ll be happy to run all the errands you want, you know that. Just give me a little time to make up my own mind, is all.”
“I’m afraid that’s the theme song I’m going to hear this afternoon all over the Senate,” Bob Munson said.
“It’s too important to jump at,” Lafe Smith said thoughtfully. “Too much hangs on this, our whole world position and all. We can’t have somebody in there who would sell all those little countries down the river just to appease the Russians, you know.”
“You surprise me, Lafe,” Bob Munson said with a tinge of irony that he promptly regretted, “I didn’t know you cared.”
“People misunderstand me,” Lafe said, rather wistfully. “I do care. We live in a hell of an age, and I do care. You have to care, these days, there’s always somebody screaming off stage.”
Bob Munson shivered.
“God help us all,” he said.
“I hope so,” Lafe said, rising. “I’ll see you later, Bob. I’ll keep my ears open and let you know anything I hear.”
“I appreciate that, Lafe,” Bob Munson said. “I really do.”
* * *
“Do you see what I see?” AP asked UPI as they cruised the corridors of the Old Senate Office Building in a rather aimless pre-session search for news.
“I wonder what that means?” UPI said.
“It means,” said AP, “war.”
“Seab and Orrin Knox?” UPI said skeptically. “Well, maybe. Shall we hang around and see?”
“Let’s,” AP said.
Halfway down the corridor, Orrin Knox was half-in-half-out of the doorway to his private office, looking impatient as he always did when anyone stopped him, no matter who or what the occasion. Despite the look, however, he was deep in obviously congenial conversation with the senior Senator from South Carolina, who had overtaken him on the third floor on his way back from a meeting of the Finance Committee. It had been a meeting in which Senator Knox had, as usual, lost his temper with the Secretary of the Treasury and had wound up twisting his body indignantly from side to side as he hit the table with the flat of his hand and made blunt remarks about the Secretary’s general grasp of economic theory. The Secretary, as usual, had remained amiable, forthright, and unimpressed, and Orrin only now was beginning to regain his normal quick-triggered composure.
“I told him that three and one half percent rate wouldn’t work when he first announced it three months ago,” he said indignantly. “I knew it wouldn’t, it isn’t logical, it isn’t sensible, it’s just a lot of economic hogwash. And it isn’t working, either.”
“He’s a mighty stubborn man,” Senator Cooley observed soothingly. “A mighty stubborn man, Orrin. I’m glad you told him what you thought.”
“He knows what I think,” Orrin Knox said impatiently. “He’s always known what I think. He just laughs at me and goes his own way. I don’t know what land of economic shape we’re going to be in when he gets through with us.”
“Maybe he’ll listen in time, Orrin. You just keep after him and don’t give up. You’re the best safeguard we have against all this economic tomfoolery, that’s what I always believe. I don’t know where we’d be without you, Orrin. I truly don’t.”
“Well,” Orrin Knox said with a grin and the sudden skeptical honesty that was one of his saving graces, “I dare say we’d survive. But, by gollies, he does make me mad sometimes.”
“I’m a little mad myself this morning, Orrin,” Seab Cooley said carefully. “It does seem as though the Administration just won’t leave either of us alone. It’s vindictive, that’s what it is. Yes, sir. Plain vindictive.”
“What, Bob Leffingwell?” Orrin Knox said with a smile. “Somehow I guessed you wouldn’t be feeling good about it, Seab.”
“No, sir,” Seab Cooley said firmly. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“Want to come in for a minute and talk it over privately?” Orrin said. “I don’t want to take your time, but our friends in the press are watching down the hall and big pitchers have big ears.”
“Gladly,” Seab Cooley said with alacrity. “Gladly, thank you, Orrin.”
“Well,” said UPI, “I guess that shows us.”
“I guess it does,” AP agreed with a chuckle. “Well, we’ll just have to catch them over on the floor during the session.”
“Let’s stick,” UPI said. “Nothing better to do for the next half hour.”
“Right,” AP said.
Inside the comfortable, brown-paneled office with its standard big senatorial desk and deep leather armchairs, the customary collection of framed certificates of election, honorary degrees, pictures of the President, Vice President, and fellow Senators cluttering the walls, and its view down the Mall to the Virginia hills beyond, Senator Knox gestured to a chair and settled back behind his desk.
“Now,” he said, thoughtfully paring his fingernails as he talked, “how much help do you think you’re going to get?”
“I haven’t rightly begun counting yet,” Senator Cooley said slowly, “but I expect a good deal, Orrin. Yes, I expect a good deal.”
“I may support him, you know,” Senator Knox remarked casually. Senator Cooley remained impassive.
“That’s your privilege, Orrin,” he said calmly. “That’s surely your privilege.”
“Or again, I may not,” Senator Knox observed.
“That’s your privilege too, Orrin,” Seab Cooley said. “It surely is.”
“I’ve got a lot of things to make up my mind about before I’ll know. I don’t think it’s going to be enough to be against him just as a matter of personal spite.”
Senator Cooley moved indignantly in his chair.
“I don’t know anybody who’s going to act on that basis, Senator,” he said stiffly. “I truly don’t. Who do you think would do a thing like that?”
“You would,” Orrin Knox said bluntly, “and you know it perfectly well. But it isn’t going to be good enough this time.”
“Any man who calls me a liar—” Senator Cooley began angrily. Senator Knox held up a hand.
“It isn’t good enough, Seab,” he repeated. “We’ve all heard about that so often we can recite it by heart. It’s got to be better than that.”
“Where I come from,” Senator Cooley said softly, “that’s all you need to know about a man to decide what to do about him. He called me a liar, Orrin. Right smack dab to my face he called me—”
“I was there,” Orrin Knox said calmly. “It isn’t good enough. You can’t decide a Cabinet nomination, particularly State, on the basis of a personal feud. At least, the Senate can’t. Maybe you can, but the rest of us can’t. There’ve got to be better grounds.”
The crafty look his colleagues knew so well came over Senator Cooley’s face, and with it his slow, sleepy smile.
“Maybe there are, Orrin,” he said gently. “Maybe there are.”
“Such as?” asked Orrin Knox.
“All in good time, Orrin,” Seab said softly. “All in good time.”
“You’re bluffing, Seab,” Senator Knox told him. “I’ve known you for twenty years, you old reprobate, and I know when you’re bluffing.”
Senator Cooley grinned.
“Be mighty hard to prove at this point, Orrin,” he said amiably. “Be mighty hard, I think.”
“Will it be hard later?” Senator Knox inquired.
“Maybe by that time,” Senator Cooley said quietly, “it won’t be a bluff, Orrin.”
“Well,” Orrin Knox said practically, “if you want anybody to go along with you, Seab, you’re going to have to do better than that. We’ll—they’ll—want proof of things. Your word for it won’t be good enough.”
“You’ll—they’ll—have it, Orrin,” Seab said dryly. “Of that you can be ab-so-lute-ly sure, Orrin.”
“Well,” said Orrin Knox, “I—they—we—will have to wait and see, Seab. In the meantime, you know I have doubts. Lots of doubts. Keep in touch with me on it, and we’ll see how things go.”
“I will, Orrin,” Seab promised. “I surely will. And thank you.”
“Thank you, Seab,” Orrin Knox said. “See you on the floor.”
“On the floor,” Seab Cooley said, opening the door suddenly to disclose AP and UPI, who were standing by as close as they dared.
“Howdy, boys,” he said amicably as he started down the hall, “how you all?”
“Senator,” said AP, “did you and Senator Knox agree to oppose—”
“No comment, boys,” Seab said bluffly, “no comment, no comment, no comment at all. No, sir, no comment a-tall.” And he went padding away down the hall with his sloping, shuffling walk, still muttering absently to himself, “No, sir, no comment at all.”
* * *
In the oval parking apron in front of the West Wing of the White House, Senator August, facing the ring of reporters and television cameras which greets all major visitors to the President, was insisting gently that he couldn’t possibly tell his questioners about his talk with the Chief Executive.
“Did it concern the Leffingwell nomination?” CBS asked. Tom August gave his shy, modest, diffident smile, and replied in his almost inaudible voice.
“I think it would be a safe assumption that the subject came up.”
“Senator,” NBC said, “is it true that the President wants you to hold a committee meeting tomorrow morning and dispose of the whole thing by Monday?”
“My goodness, where do you boys pick up such rumors?” Senator August asked wonderingly.
“Is it true, Senator?” insisted UPI, unimpressed.
“I think it is quite obvious that the President wants the matter expedited as much as possible,” Senator August said gently, “but I hardly think it would be possible to move that fast.”
“Will you try?” AP demanded.
“Oh,” Tom August smiled, “we always try.”
“Senator,” the Times said, “do you expect Senator Cooley to make a strong fight against the nomination?”
“Senator Cooley,” Tom August said softly, “always makes a strong fight on everything he undertakes.”
“Senator,” the New York Daily News asked, “did the President give you a deadline date when he would like to have the nomination completed?”
“I think you will find,” said Senator August in a tone of gentle reproof, “that the President is wise in the ways of Congress and knows how it reacts to arbitrary deadlines.”
“Then he didn’t set one?” the Newark News pressed.
“Oh,” Tom August said gently, “I didn’t say that.”
“Then he did set one,” UPI said.
“Oh, now,” the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee said with an air of wistful regret that he wasn’t getting his message through, “I didn’t say that, either.”
“Thank you, Senator,” said someone in a tone of crisp annoyance.
“Thank you,” said Tom August politely.
* * *
From the oval office he had just left a call was going forward at the same moment to the Majority Leader.
“I had Tom August in,” the confident voice was reporting. “He’s out front now being very important about it all for the television cameras. I think he’ll do what we want.”
“What is that?” Senator Munson asked.
“A special meeting of the committee tomorrow morning, a pro forma appearance by Bob Leffingwell, a brief executive session afterwards, and a favorable report on the nomination to go to the Senate on Monday. Vote on confirmation late Monday afternoon.”
“Where are you calling from?” Bob Munson asked curiously. “It can’t be Washington, DC.”
“Why not?” the President asked, a trifle defensively. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Only forty or fifty Senators are wrong with it, at this point,” Bob Munson said. “You don’t seem to realize the issue you’ve created, Mr. President. This isn’t going to be solved over a weekend.”
“You can buy off Seab, I tell you,” the President said comfortably.
“In the first place,” Senator Munson said, “I’ve tried and I can’t, and in the second, it goes a lot deeper than Seab. A lot of people are genuinely worried about Bob Leffingwell as Secretary of State at a juncture like this.”
“Do they assume I’m not worried about things at this juncture?” the President asked with a considerable degree of annoyance.
“I don’t mean it that way,” Senator Munson said, “but a lot of people aren’t prepared to accept your judgment without arriving at their own. It’s that kind of thing.”
“Well, give them a week, then,” the President suggested. “That ought to be long enough. Maybe you can tell Tom I said so.”
“Oh, we’ll try it your way first,” Bob Munson said, “but just don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work.” Then on a sudden nervy impulse he tried a long shot. “I can no more see that nomination clearing the committee in one day,” he said, “than I can see Harley Hudson as President of the United States.”
He knew the shot had gone home, for there was a sudden silence on the line. When the President spoke, it was coldly.
“That’s an odd analogy,” he observed. “What made you think of it?”
“I don’t know,” Senator Munson said blandly. “It just seemed to pop out.”
“Well,” the President said angrily, “you can pop it right back in again.”
“Very well,” the Senator said, “if you honestly think I should.”
“I think so, Bob,” the President said in a much more reasonable way; and then, in the first really impulsive move Senator Munson had ever known him to make he said tentatively, “Bob?”
“Yes, Mr. President?” Bob Munson said gravely.
“Sometime when you’re free, come down and we’ll talk.”
“I would like to, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said quietly, “if it would be any help.”
“I think it would,” the President said. “You bear everything alone, in this office, but once in a while you have to at least try to share it with somebody else.”
“Alice won’t do?” Senator Munson suggested.
“She isn’t well herself,” the President said, realized his slip, hesitated, but then went on, “and I wouldn’t want to worry her needlessly.”
“I’m sure it is needlessly, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said, “but I will be down as soon as I can.”
“You’re a real friend, Bob,” the President said with a revealing gratitude, “to a man who isn’t permitted very many.” Then his voice lightened. “It’s in the Constitution somewhere. Having real friends is one of those reserved powers that aren’t granted to the President.”
“Well, glad to be of assistance,” Bob Munson said in a businesslike tone. “We’ll try to get the nomination through for you tomorrow and Monday, but be prepared to put a good face on it at your next press conference, because I really don’t think we can act that fast.”
“I appreciate whatever you can do, you know that, Bob,” the President said. “I know it’s in good hands. Try to keep Tom August in that rosy glow I put him into down here.”
Bob Munson chuckled.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
Which, he thought as he said goodbye, was a perfect example of what might be termed the Chairman’s Law. There were ways and ways in which an Administration could take the Senate Foreign Relations Committee into camp, but perhaps the most effective was the accorde intime with the chairman. A gentleman whose normally healthy ego was almost invariably considerably inflated by his position as head of what was, in general, the most important committee of the Congress, he was usually easy prey for the whispered aside, the just-between-us confidences of the State Department and the White House. Take him up on the mountain and show him the vistas of the world, tell him about his own monumentally important contribution to it, consult him with well-publicized secrecy on projected moves in foreign policy, always include him when you entertained visiting foreign dignitaries, let him think you were deferring to his opinion while you did as you pleased, cozen him regularly with the most blatant flattery, of which he was eager to believe every word, and nine times out of ten he was yours. With him, usually, went an indirect but effective control of the committee, for its customary disposition was to follow the chairman’s lead and take his word for it in matters which could be clothed with a sufficient aura of portentous mystery.
With this time-honored formula, tried and tested and found infallible in half a dozen recent Administrations, Tom August had been persuaded on numerous occasions to follow the President’s wishes. If the formula was about to fail in this case, Senator Munson knew, it was because this case was of a nature the formula was not quite broad enough to cover.
Just before he left to go down to the floor for his regular pre-session talk with the press, at about the moment when he was really beginning to worry about the implications of their elliptical conversation on the President’s health, two more calls came in for him. One was from Tom August’s and Harley Hudson’s recent host in South Carolina, dutifully fulfilling his historic role of adviser-to-everybody-about-everything, and the other was from the best-publicized cardinal in the hierarchy, dutifully fulfilling his role as the most egregious busybody in American politics. The Senator listened patiently to the adviser’s sagely innocuous comments, unh-hunhed his way through several vapid moments with the Church’s most ubiquitous prince, agreed heartily with them both that the Leffingwell nomination was certainly important, all right, and hung up with the fervent hope that he had satisfied them once and for all. He had troubles enough without being pestered by those two.
* * *
“In just a moment,” the guide was telling his gallant band, by now a little wan and footsore, “you will enter the Senate of the United States and watch a session begin. You will see the Majority Leader, Senator Robert D. Munson of Michigan, holding his regular press conference at his desk, where he talks to reporters every day before the session, briefing them on what is going to happen during the afternoon. The Vice President of the United States, the Honorable Harley M. Hudson, will be in the chair as the session begins. The invocation will be delivered by the Reverend Carney Birch, Chaplain of the United States Senate. If you don’t see very many Senators on the floor at first, this is because many of them are still attending committee meeting elsewhere in the Capitol or in the office buildings. Much of the most important work in the Senate is done in committees, which accounts for the fact that attendance may seem light at times. Also, Senators may be in their offices answering mail or performing other duties for their constituents. A quorum call may be demanded by any individual member, and when it is, you will hear a bell ring twice. This bell rings throughout the Senate side of the Capitol and in the office buildings and is used to call Senators to the floor to debate or vote on important matters. So don’t be disappointed if you don’t see very many Senators on the floor right away, because they are either in committee or attending to other matters for their constituents. Also, some of them may be eating lunch, which I’ll bet you and I would like to do right now. Now if you will just file in quietly and take your seats where the gallery attendant tells you—”