by Allen Drury
“Patsy’ll have the whole world buzzing by tonight,” the Secretary said ruefully, “which is what she wanted to do when she talked to Helen-Anne.”
“Walter, dear,” Patsy said with a careful urgency, for she knew as well as anyone how delicate you had to be with Walter, his ego was so monumental and his dignity so insecure, and altogether he was such a pompous little a—but, no, she mustn’t let herself entertain irreverent thoughts like that. Most people thought he was God.
“Walter, dear,” she said, deciding to try a rush of girlish enthusiasm, “most people think you’re GOD. That’s why you’ve simply got to do it.”
Forty miles away in Leesburg, in the study she had seen on a couple of occasions, book-lined, leather-filled, glowing snug and cozy in the dark snowy afternoon, she could hear the self-satisfied amusement: a little surprised, as people often were at Patsy, but not arguing with her thesis.
“And some think I’m the devil,” Walter Dobius said in his deliberate voice. “You have an intriguing beginning, though. What comes next? What is it that I have to do?”
“You have to let us—you have to be willing to allow us—you have to be prepared to break some of your strongest rules to permit us—”
“Patsy,” Walter Dobius said, “you’re too much. Stop this phony suspense and tell me what I’ve got to do. You know very well there’s nothing you can’t command from me. Now, out with it.”
“Well, of course we know you have all the honors in the world and couldn’t possibly want another, but—”
“If you’re going to give me GAFSA,” Walter said, “I accept. I couldn’t be more honored. When will it be?”
“Walter, you naughty boy! I’ll bet Helen-Anne has been talking to you.”
“Not lately,” Walter said, a trifle grimly. “No, I just guessed. I think you’ve made a good choice,” he added, quite without egotism, a statement of simple fact. “After Bob Leffingwell’s fiasco, the award needs to be made respectable again.”
“I think we’ll have Bob say a few words before you speak,” Patsy said coolly. “I’m not ashamed of Bob Leffingwell. Nor are you, to judge from some of your columns.”
“Oh, no,” Walter Dobius said calmly. “I still consider him our best public servant. Considerably better,” he remarked acidly, “than the gentleman who became Secretary of State in his place.”
“That’s exactly why we felt the Foundation should give you the award,” Patsy said eagerly. “To show the world that we still believe in the Right Position on things. Which you, dearest Walter, always state so effectively. Goodness!” she said with another burst of enthusiasm. “I really don’t know where the country would be without you, Walter!”
“You don’t mean that,” Walter said complacently, “but I won’t argue.”
And you do mean that, Patsy thought, so I won’t argue either. Twerp.
“Walter,” she said earnestly, “this is going to be Friday night—”
“My anniversary.”
“Yes. And Ted and I hope that you will deliver a major address. A Major Address,” she repeated, giving it the capitals. “It is a sounding board, you know, even though you do have your own in the column all the time.”
“Sometimes a different forum lends one’s thoughts an extra weight,” Walter agreed gravely. “I appreciate the opportunity. Why do you think I’m going to cancel out on the Ambassador of Thailand’s dinner Friday night? It takes a lot to make one pass up the Ambassador of Thailand!”
“Walter, you’re wicked,” Patsy told him with an admiring laugh. “Poor little Boomabakrit and Madame will have to write REAMS to Bangkok explaining why you didn’t show up. But I do think you should make a major address. Everybody will be expecting it.”
“All my addresses are major,” Walter Dobius said, again without the slightest trace of either egotism or humor. “This one, though …” His voice trailed away and it was all Patsy could do to keep from saying, “Yes?” But he came back strong and she couldn’t have been more pleased. “This one,” he said with a sudden firmness, “should put things in perspective about the election this year, once and for all.”
“No one can do it better than you can, Walter,” she said fervently. “In fact, everyone has been waiting for you to speak. People think they know where you’re going to stand, Walter, but they don’t really know. Millions and millions of people really and truly are waiting for you, Walter. Millions and millions can’t make up their minds until you explain it to them. You know you must, Walter, and this is the perfect occasion. It needs more than a column. It needs a speech.”
“I agree, it should be a speech. Supplemented by columns later, of course, all through the campaign.”
“Oh, of course. I always say you’re one of the most active campaigners in the country every four years, even though you can’t enter in directly and always have to be objective and fair.”
“I try to be,” Walter said placidly. “It isn’t always so easy, but I try to be.”
“You are,” she assured him. “You are.” A little silence fell, for this was the most difficult part of her call and she knew it must be approached carefully. Among the many other things upon which Walter prided himself was a spirit of fierce independence, going back, he always said, to his “ancestors on the bogs and moors.” They had given him, he always said, a desire to “go my own way, all men’s servant and no man’s slave.” He had actually said this, in a speech to the graduates of the Columbia School of Journalism. It had received a tremendous hand, so it must be true. Obviously it was what his worshipers wanted to hear, at any rate. Patsy began cautiously.
“Of course, Walter, dear,” she said with an offhand amusement, “some people might think it a foregone conclusion who you’ll back this year. Wouldn’t they be surprised if they were mistaken!”
“Wouldn’t they be,” Walter said. Again a silence fell. Patsy decided abruptly to plunge right ahead.
“Walter, we would really look awfully silly if you spoke at our dinner and endorsed Orrin, now, wouldn’t we?”
“You would, indeed,” he agreed blandly. “D’you think it’s a possibility?”
“Walter, you’re TEASING!” she exclaimed, aware that he never did, save in a heavy-handed, awkward, not-quite-funny and indeed rather pathetic way. Though she was sure that if anyone ever told Walter Dobius he was pathetic he would have been utterly enraged—and quite shattered, though the world would never know it. He chuckled and went on.
“Just having my little joke. You know perfectly well who I’m going to endorse, don’t you? I should think it would have been obvious long ago.”
“If you do, it will be such an ENORMOUS help to Ted. We will always be so GRATEFUL.”
“Did I say Ted?” he inquired, so calmly that a real spasm of dismay gripped Patsy’s heart for a second.
“There you go,” she said, “there you go. Oh, Walter, you must stop, now. You’ll give me a nervous breakdown if you act coy about it. I couldn’t STAND it!”
“You must remember, my dear,” he said, and she could tell he was quite serious now, for the clipped, pompous heaviness his friends and colleagues knew so well was in his voice, “that I do have some obligation to be objective and fair. These aren’t just words that one takes lightly or evades, you know. In an honorable profession, these are the stoutest guideposts. For twenty-five years I have tried to abide by them and I shall do so now.” He paused, and repeated firmly, “I shall do so now.”
“But, then—” she protested.
“I must weigh the facts and reach my judgment quite independently, Patsy. Quite independently. It’s the only way I can justify the faith the country has in me. It’s the only way I can continue to hold it. Surely you know that.”
“You don’t have to justify it,” Patsy said flatly, “and you don’t need to worry about holding it. You know that. You only have to worry about doing what is best for this nation in this election. On that basis, I do believe there can be only one answer, Walter. Isn’t tha
t right?”
“Why doesn’t Ted come to see me?” he asked idly. “I’d like to talk to him.”
“Certainly, if that will help you decide on the obvious.”
“It isn’t that I don’t like Ted. I do like him. It may be that I like him very much. But there are factors more important than personal liking to be weighed here. I have a responsibility to judge carefully and choose carefully because, as you say, millions of people are depending upon me to help them make up their minds. I can’t take that lightly, Patsy. Some might, but I can’t.”
“I know you don’t, and that’s why it seems to me there’s only one answer.”
“Have him come talk to me,” Walter Dobius said again, and Patsy was tempted to snap, “Of course he’ll be glad to wait on you, he’s only the Governor of California.” But she didn’t say it, because she knew that Ted would wait on him, though he would record the humbling little requirement somewhere in his mind and eventually get around to evening things, as he always did.
“The dinner will be at the Statler at eight,” she said. “White tie this time, I think.”
“You are doing it up grandly. And Ted?”
“He’ll be coming into town around 3 P.M.,” she said, suppressing her annoyance. “Suppose we drive out and see you then. If the snows are gone.”
“Can’t he see me sooner? I have to go up to the UN on Tuesday to cover the Security Council debate on our threatened intervention in Terrible Terry’s Gorotoland. Things are getting very sticky over there, as you know. And then I have to speak to the American Medical Association in Cleveland on Wednesday. Which doesn’t leave me much time to get ready for your do on Friday.”
“What time will you be back on Thursday?”
“Ten A.M., weather permitting.”
“Very well,” she said in a level tone. “I think we can be there at noon.”
“Do have lunch with me,” he suggested dryly. Patsy laughed.
“Make it a good one, Walter dearest!”
“I’ll tell Arbella to give it the works. By the way,” he said in a needling tone, “have you any message you want me to give your distinguished husband when I get to the UN? Or aren’t you exchanging messages these days?”
“Felix has had to go back to Panama,” Patsy said, and could have bitten her tongue for letting herself be tricked into revealing something her husband had told her must be kept secret for the time being. Of course Walter pounced on it at once.
“Oh?” he said, a lively interest in his voice. “What’s going on down there?”
“Now, Walter,” she said hastily, “don’t start jumping to conclusions.”
“What’s he going to do, overthrow the government? I’ve been hearing some very interesting rumors from down there lately. How about it, now, Patsy?”
“No, really, Walter,” she said earnestly, “there’s nothing. Really nothing. Just something in connection with ‘Suerte’ I think—the Labaiya family estate, you know. Just a business matter.”
“Patsy,” Walter Dobius said, “I don’t think you’re leveling with me. But maybe you will on Thursday. If I accept your award on Friday. Don’t you think?”
“Possibly,” Patsy said coolly. “Well talk it over, Walter, and see.”
“And meantime,” he said, relenting, “I’ll be giving very careful thought to what I’m going to say on Friday, because this one really will be a major address. Patsy. The award deserves it, the occasion deserves it, and my hosts deserve it.”
“And the country. Don’t forget the country, Walter.”
“The country is my constant care, Patsy. I carry the country with me night and day.”
“Oh, Walter,” Patsy said, thinking. Oh, God. “You ARE wonderful.”
“One has a certain position,” Walter Dobius said. “One has an obligation to keep it up.”
***
Chapter 2
Now the whirling globe has whirled six months and on the face of the land and the surface of the seas the races of man are engaged in their customary kindly attempts to cripple, hurt, and thwart each other in the name of world peace and the cold reality of a ruthless self-interest. In the United Nations, in great cities and distinguished capitals as well as in some not so great and not so distinguished, the game of advantage goes on, and with it a steady advance in all the subtle and not-so-subtle decays and attritions of a sad and luckless century. In some places, most notably in the great white city sprawled along the Potomac, some idealism still struggles against the deep disillusion of the times, men still talk earnestly of planning for a better tomorrow, working for a lasting world peace, improving the lot of the restless human tide that laps ever higher against the citadels of law and orderly change that furnish the only hope of saving a civilization apparently bent upon its own destruction. Likewise in Moscow and London, Rome and Paris, Peking and Bonn and many another, men still pay the lip-tribute of a self-defined nobility to what they are about. But it is apparent now, as it has been for several decades, indeed ever since the Second World War ripped apart the fragile fabric so flimsily tacked together after the First, that many powerful forces are engaged in policies diametrically opposed to those which men of good will and good heart might reasonably be expected to follow if they genuinely wished to save their planet from its ultimate disaster.
Nonetheless the tasks of government and diplomacy go on, as do the tasks of daily survival for the individual. People, in the simplest but most powerful cliché men know, have to go on living. There is a power in this, a forward surge, a life-force if you like, which ignores the dreams or failures of presidents and prime ministers, kings and commissars. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker have to go on eating, sleeping, sheltering, and begetting. And on they go, regardless of what is created or ruined for them at the top.
At the top, men try to make some sense of what they do, but too often the secret eludes them. Yet they too go on, for there is nothing else for them to do. They ride the juggernaut, but despite their efforts they do not control it. The juggernaut also goes on, suffering for a little the attempts of some to guide it, and then shaking them off as it roars inexorably on toward whatever fate an obscure and mysterious Providence has in store for it.
In some places the decision as to who will have the chance to try to guide the juggernaut is made in more orderly fashion than in others. In some places it is done by election, in others by committee, in still others, less tidy, by ravening revolution and bitter death. Nowhere is it done with more exhaustive—and exhausting—care than in the United States of America, and upon no choice, in these dying years of the century, does the world concentrate with a more worried and fearsome attention than it does upon the choice of the man who will sit in the White House in Washington.
His country may be confused in its aims, uncertain of its future, baffled and distressed by humanity’s exasperating refusal to see things the way it does, but there is no denying the awesome power to build or destroy that lies at the hand of this single individual chosen by all the complex and subtle pressures of a complex and subtle land. It is a land the world simplifies, because in many respects the world cannot understand it, but it is by no means as simple as the world makes out. And particularly is it not simple when it comes to electing a President, for there the range of contributing factors is as wide as the gulf that separates Walter Dobius from the butcher and baker who read him in Canarsie, the people involved as diverse as the whole broad land from which they spring.
In this year in which Orrin Knox will attempt for the third and last time to win the White House, in which the Governor of California will meet him head-on in the same attempt, in which the world will again watch, always fascinated, frequently fearful, and sometimes appalled, while the great Republic teeters and trembles on the edge of what may appear to be disaster but always turns out to be just one more smooth and well-ordered transition of power, the people and factors are various indeed.
Some will be found in Africa, where the chaotic Goro
toland of His Royal Highness Terence Wolowo Ajkaje—“Terrible Terry,” the 137th M’Bulu of Mbuele—is at last beginning to explode from the internal pressures of his relatives and the external pressures of the Communists. Some will be found in Panama, where Patsy’s husband, Felix Labaiya-Sofra, is flying home for purposes that are perhaps less his own than he thinks. Some will be found at the United Nations and in the Congress of the United States, some at the national conventions of America’s political parties. Many will be found in the shrewd, didactic world of Walter Wonderful.
A mother and her little girl, sitting even now by a coldly rushing stream in Utah’s Uinta Mountains; a determined if increasingly wry, Lothario who represents the dignified state of Iowa in the United States Senate; several distinguished ambassadors; a Negro Congressman from California; Edward Jason and Orrin Knox and their respective families; a Justice of the Supreme Court; Senator Fred Van Ackerman of Wyoming, national spokesman for the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT); LeGage Shelby, chairman of Defenders of Equality for You (DEFY); Rufus Kleinfert, Knight Kommander of the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism (KEEP); the Speaker of the House; certain influential members of the National Committee—all these will be involved in the political battle that will swirl around the White House this year. To it each will contribute, and each extract, what the Lord sees fit to allow; not as much, in some cases, as he or she might desire; more, in some cases, than he or she intends, in these opening stages of a campaign implicit with the ultimate destinies of many things.
To some participants the final rewards will be bitter. But to others—just enough to provide some testimony to their countrymen that the system really does work despite its handicaps, that the good in it really does in the long run triumph over the bad, there will come the knowledge and the satisfaction expressed a year ago by Crystal Danta in a conversation with her father. Senator Stanley Danta of Connecticut, the Senate’s Majority Whip.