by Gore Vidal
The Pippert account of the agony of the Lances makes almost as good reading as the adjacent article, “Exercising Your Authority Over Satan.” Apparently, Satan can be defeated not only by Faith but by the repetition of sacred texts guaranteed to undo the wicked incantations of those who walk up and down and all about this great republic, peddling abortion, contraception, and the Equal Rights Amendment. Ultimately, the writer tells us, “the battle will be won or lost according to which side uses its mouths right.” Among the bad-mouthers are the residents of the Moslem world where “the powers of darkness have expressed themselves…through those Islamic chants. And let me say in all love, without being controversial, for in some ways Islam is a good religion, it just has one problem: its god is the devil.”
Apropos Islam, it should be noted that earlier this year Bert tried to obtain control of Financial General Bankshares, Inc., a $2.2 billion holding company that owns banks in four states. Bert’s associates in this caper (currently halted by order of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia) are—aside from LaBelle—such devil-worshipers as Sheikh Kamal Adham, Faisal Saud Al-Fulaij, Sheikh Sultan Bin Azid Al-Nahyan, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zaid Al-Nahyan, Abdullah Darwaish, and the Pakistani financial wizard Agha Hassen Abedi, who recently paid off Bert’s $3.4 million bank loan, simply because he liked the cut of Bert’s Twice-Born jib.
Christian Life identifies Wesley J. Pippert as “a professional news correspondent with UPI”; he is also “an approved supply pastor with the United Methodist Church” whose special concern “as a Christian reporter is how the mass media can better handle the moral aspects of public issues.” Although Rev. Pippert is in no doubt about the moral correctness of Bert Lance, he tends to hurry through the events that caused Bert to resign as budget director last fall. A year ago last January Bert “reported [to the Senate Finance Committee] assets of $7.9 million and debts of $5.3 million. He also agreed to sell 190,000 shares of stock in the National Bank of Georgia, Atlanta, in which he held controlling interest.” Four months later, “there were news reports that a surge in the prime rate and the pay-cut Lance had taken were hindering his ability to keep up the interest payments on his debts.”
As a Christian reporter and supply pastor, Rev. Pippert finds nothing wrong in any of this. In fact, if the increase in the prime rate was in any way attributable to Bert’s policies then that would be a definite plus for Bert Lance, Fiscal Conservative. Another plus is that pay cut. Yet the money that Bert saved the American taxpayer would not have made much of a dent in interest payments he was obliged to make on $5.3 million worth of loans.
“Lance had been accused of permitting $450,000 in overdrafts by himself and his family at the family-owned bank in Calhoun,” etc. There were new hearings. Although Bert handled himself well, The Mass Media would not let up. Finally, “His eyes welling, President Carter went on nationwide television to announce his friend’s resignation….Then [the?] Lances flew home to Georgia….Despite his sense of peace, Lance had serious questions about what had happened. ‘It’s important we not lose the freedom of the presumption of innocence,’ he told this reporter.” Bert turned a cold eye on The Mass Media. “ ‘God has a laser beam that’s a whole lot stronger than that other laser beam,’ he said in a reference to the beam of the television camera.”
When Rev. Pippert asked LaBelle to confirm whether or not the Lances’ lavish $2 million fifty-room-plus Atlanta home was for sale, she said that it was not. After all, “ ‘We were not on the verge of bankruptcy, but if we were, who cares?’ This was typical of lovely, long-haired Mrs. Lance. A talk with her does not dwell on the material world for long. Inevitably conversation with her turns to the spiritual, for that’s where her heart is.”
Bert’s heart is very much in the same place. “Lance led the White House Bible study,” Rev. Pippert tells us, “but prefers not to talk about it.”
“That’s something that’s very personal to everyone over there. I sort of took a pledge with that group that we really wouldn’t talk about it. We got together on a very personal basis.”
Lance did say that Carter, who had a conflict at that hour, expressed a desire to come.
Lance also did considerable lay speaking to religious groups.
Now Rev. Wesley J. Pippert gives way to Mr. Gary Sledge of 40 Overlook Drive. LaBelle has a tale to unfold and unfold it she does (“with Gary Sledge”) in the pages of This Too Shall Pass. Between the two of them they manage to illuminate the Bert Lance Continuing Scandal not at all. Nevertheless, many good things are said—indeed, good news is everywhere spread, for the book is dedicated to the Lances’ old family friend “the Glory of God through his Son Jesus Christ.”
The prologue is datelined “Calhoun, Ga.” First sentence: “This too shall pass.” When (and if) “this” passes, “hopefully we grow wiser, more patient, more loving.” LaBelle tells us that not only has she been going through a pretty awful time lately but “Let me just list the human afflictions that have touched my life: alcoholism, drugs, broken homes, suicide, death, violence, serious illness, car accidents, jailings, homosexuality, murder, adultery, runaway children.” Sly Mr. Sledge knows that television series are usually shot in series of thirteen. Each of LaBelle’s thirteen human afflictions would make for at least one powerful episode in a high-rated series.
But after this scorching teaser, LaBelle neglects to Tell All. No doubt on the ground that we are all so used to suicide, murder, and runaway children in our daily lives (i.e., television). Instead, LaBelle zeroes in on something truly hated and feared out there on the circuit, The Mass Media. As a Christian, LaBelle tries to forgive the press. If she fails,…well, it is the effort that counts and if Jesus does not want LaBelle for a sunbeam at the end of life’s journey, it will not have been for want of her (and Mr. Sledge’s) trying.
“Our family is not so different from any other. But I’d like you to walk with me down the Lance road of life, if only to illustrate how wonderful is the Lord on whom we rely.” Actually, the Lances are quite a bit different from most people. For one thing, they have managed to acquire a whole lot of money real fast. For another, Bert was for many years a chief adviser and lender of money to what may prove to be our most mysterious president. Nevertheless, the fact that Carter and Lance in tandem were for a time allowed to preside over the republic’s affairs does indeed illustrate the loony sense of humor as well as true mystery of our Lord and His ways.
LaBelle begins at a high moment: the morning of the day that Bert is going to talk to the president about resigning as director of the Office of Management and Budget. For months the scandal has been breaking all around them. LaBelle is aroused from a…what else, Mr. Sledge? “fitful sleep” by “laughter and many loud voices and the sound of shuffling feet.” Whose laughter? whose feet? The Mass Media are outside in the street. “We were under seige [sic], as we had been throughout September.”
Bert brings her breakfast in bed. Things look bad. Bert leaves for the White House. LaBelle dares not look at the Washington Post because “recently there had been a story on the front page…about my brother Banks’ death two years before. The writer implied that our family’s financial situation was rocky, that Bert was somehow responsible, and that this was the reason my brother had taken his own life. All that was untrue.”
According to LaBelle, Beverly Banks David committed suicide “when his high expectations for himself were not realized, he felt unreasonable guilt or failure.” This is dignified reticence. We are given no revelations of the sort promised in the prologue. Yet there is evidence that, wittingly or unwittingly as Mr. Sledge might say, LaBelle’s brother had been very much involved in Bert’s shenanigans at the National Bank of Georgia. In fact, according to the SEC, thirteen months after the death of Beverly Banks David, his bank account was $73,401 overdrawn, presumably by the Holy Ghost.
Later that afternoon, Bert comes home, having “played tennis with President
Carter….He looked exhausted….I could see the suppressed anger in his face, the tiredness and the letting go….Then at supper in the garden, we asked God to give us wisdom and strength and to show us his [LaBelle knows God too well to capitalize the pronoun] will….God was not far off. He was near. We talked to him intimately and often.” Actually, it was Jimmy Carter who was far off by now, sweating ice over the so-called Lance Affair.
Like the stern Nixon women of an earlier epoch, LaBelle was against resignation. But Bert had had it. He was going to resign even though “I had a dream about what could be accomplished in this job.” The first Kuwaiti Mutual Fund? The first International Bank of Georgia and Abu Dhabi? Dreams, dreams….
The next day LaBelle hightailed it over to the White House to put the arm on Jimmy. “The President was very cordial, very gracious….He always is a friend to everyone in our family on a person-to-person basis, despite the formalities of his office. I think the President believes strongly that Christ’s love and concern can only be shown in this way.” But Jimmy was concerned about that old devil The Mass Media. “He spoke honestly about his public relations problem caused by Bert’s name being in the news so long.” Although LaBelle knew that she was filled to the brim with Christ when she told Jimmy that Bert should remain in office, Jimmy was every bit as filled with Christ when he came to the conclusion that Bert should get his ass out of town.
Like Saint Jerome battling with the pagan shade of Cicero, LaBelle and Mr. Sledge wrestle with this exquisite theological problem. “I knew that the President had presented his views in the light of faith. He, just as Bert and I, had prayed about this situation and each of us reached different conclusions—but each of us had come to realize the profound love in Christ we shared.” Thus LaBelle papers over the inexplicable plurality of Truth.
Since Jimmy and LaBelle can’t both be right, she surrenders if not to the Holy Ghost to the Gallup Poll: “I have often learned [that] God’s purpose and my intentions are not always the same. Yet everything comes in his own time!” A striking image, worthy of Ecclesiastes. Back at the house (“I was suddenly tired”), LaBelle dealt compassionately with The Mass Media at the door. Then, “I went back to the TV but only the afternoon game shows were on, so I turned off the set and read a daily devotional book.”
The rest of This Too Shall Pass is a somewhat mechanical ghost-story of LaBelle’s family and early life, marriage and motherhood, riches and heartbreak, and (above all) a steadfast Faith. Inevitably, she falls from a horse; inevitably, she is told that she “must remount with dignity.” Daddy owned the Calhoun bank while Bert’s father had been president of Young Harris, a small Methodist College in northeast Georgia. As a child, Bert had experienced “an exciting mix of intellectual conversation and theological discussion.” Then he moved to Calhoun where he went to school with LaBelle, who “had a dream. I wanted to be an actress on Broadway or in the movies. See Hollywood and the Pacific Ocean.” But, luckily, she chose to “think and work for Christ. The Christian road is a hard one, but it is the most rewarding road.” And so it proved to be for Bert and LaBelle.
LaBelle did not go with Bert to an outdoor political barbecue, attended by “a young state senator named Carter….Bert was attracted initially by Jimmy’s forthright approach and community conscience.” Apparently, they were as alike as two black-eyed peas in a pod. Each had so much in common with the other: “Concern for progress in Georgia…raised in a small town…strong commitment to public service…boyhood dreams of going to sea…both were involved in agribusiness, Jimmy as a farmer and warehouser of peanuts, Bert as the financial underwriter…born-again Christians.” Civil rights? LaBelle passes on that one. Martin Luther King is not a name to conjure with amongst those who read this sort of inspirational Christian literature.
In due course, Jimmy becomes governor; he appoints Bert head of the Bureau of Transportation. Bert donates his salary to charity. When “Jimmy had hopes of higher office…[Bert] presented Jimmy with a set of small medals of all the states, saying he now had dominion over one—someday he hoped he would have dominion over all.” As soon as Jimmy’s term of office ended, he proceeded to seek dominion over all the states while Bert stayed home and tried to dominate Georgia. “We announced Bert’s candidacy [for governor] at a party held out at Lancelot, at which Bert spoke from the bed of an old wagon….” Bert lost. Jimmy won.
Bert was offered the big job at Management and Budget. Should he take it? He agonizes with LaBelle: “ ‘It would mean a dramatic cut in salary,’ Bert said. ‘But it’s a matter of duty. A citizen owes something to his country. I can’t turn my back on a nation that’s given us so much. In a free society we all must pay the “rent.” ’ ” The dream…always the dream!
The Lances join the Carters in Washington. LaBelle was soon “encircled by new friends and prayer partners. Shortly after we got settled in Georgetown, I invited Cabinet wives to join me in a prayer group which met at our house.” LaBelle also “taught a Bible class for senior citizens at the Dumbarton Avenue Methodist Church….”
Then, on May 23, Time magazine struck. Something about irregular bank loans. LaBelle was impervious at first: “I knew Bert would never do anything illegal.” But The Mass Media had tasted blood. They did not let up until they had sent Bert and LaBelle back to Calhoun, their finances tangled but their faith in God more resolute than ever. The Lances were also bucked up by the president, who promptly sent them abroad as “co-chairmen of the Friendship Force—America’s people-to-people outreach to other nations. Rosalynn Carter is the very active honorary chairman.”
That’s all LaBelle has to say about this organization. Christian Life is a bit more explicit. Apparently, this “non-profit, non-government organization designed to promote world peace through friendships” was invented by Rev. Wayne Smith of Decatur, Georgia. “The exchanges last about ten days….Once there, the ambassadors stay in guest homes, live, work and share with their hosts” for eight days. Each “ambassador” shells out $250 for an “embassy” of ten days, but can that possibly cover the costs of the trip? If it doesn’t, who pays? But then, whatever the Lances get mixed up in tends to be mysterious—like the Lord Himself.
Has it come to this? Franz Joseph would mutter, as he gazed down at the mob of shouting dress extras below his window at Schönbrunn palace in Burbank, California. Cut to the hunting lodge at old-world Mayerling. Sulky Crown Prince Rudolf wonders, what does it all mean? as he draws a bead on LaBelle…I mean Maria Vetsera. Slow dissolve to the funeral cortege, to the grieving Franz Joseph, to Hitler riding through the streets of Vienna.
Rhetorical questions never get answered either in Golden Age movies or in modern-day United States. At most, grand juries, congressional committees, district courts sometimes manage to extract a few pale perjuries from the odd scapegoat. Presumably, this will happen in the case of Bert Lance when he goes before a grand jury in Atlanta to answer charges of criminal misapplication of bank funds. Three federal agencies are also on his tail for assorted crimes while his secret attempt to take over Financial General Bankshares, Inc. has been temporarily stopped by a federal judge. Will Bert be found guilty? And if so, of what is he actually guilty?
With some pride, the Inventor-owners of the United States announced that their republic would be “a government of laws and not of men.” The world applauded. It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man. The republic was then given to lawyers to govern. Predictably, lawyers make laws, giving work to other lawyers. As a result of two centuries of law-making every aspect of an American’s life has either been prescribed for or proscribed by laws that even as they are promulgated split amoeba-like to create more laws. The end to this Malthusian nightmare of law metastasized is nowhere in sight.
Plaintively, Bert acknowledged this state of affairs in his last appearance before the Senate. He maintained that he had not really broken any law, while desperately sig
naling to the senators that if you were to obey every dumb law on the statute books you could do no business at all. The senator-lawyers would doubtless have been more understanding if their client-constituents had not been watching them on television.
One rationale for the necessity of new laws is the need to protect that vague entity known to lawyers as the public, to corporations as the consumer. Yet each virtuous law promptly creates counterlaws designed to serve those special interests that do not have at heart the public’s interest. As a result virtually any polluter of rivers, corrupter of politicians, hustler of snake-oil who can afford expensive legal counsel is able to sail with the greatest of ease through the legislative chambers and courtrooms of the republic. This is the way that we are now, and that is the way we have always been. Nevertheless, from time to time, the system of ownership requires a sacrificial victim to show that the system truly works and that no one is above the law—except those who are.
What sustains a system that is plainly unjust if not illegal? The Lance affair suggests an answer. One third of the American population claim to be twice-born Christians. Although redemption is big on the evangelical Christian circuit, punishment of sinners is even bigger. To the fundamentalist Christian mind, evil is everywhere and every day is a lovely day, as John Latouche’s lyric goes, for an auto-da-fe. According to hard-core white fundamentalists, Jews are forever guilty of the murder of our Lord. As children of Ham, blacks are eternally inferior to whites. The Pauline injunction that slaves obey their masters still applies in the sense that those without money must serve those with money, for money is the most tangible sign of God’s specific love. Sexual activity outside marriage must be punished by law in the here-and-now as well as by God in eternity. The unremitting rage of the fundamentalist Christian against so many varieties of sin is the source of innumerable laws that have bred, in turn, other laws of the sort that now enmesh Bert Lance, the Georgia Laocoön.