Capable of Honor

by Allen Drury

  “I hope so,” the President said.

  “Count on it,” said Bob Munson.

  And now he will need Bob’s help again, and the Speaker’s too, and many another’s before it is successfully over. He wonders what the reaction will be, and when the buzzer sounds once more and they come on the line from Bob’s office, his voice is humorous but they can sense a little worry in it as he asks, “Are you both sitting down? I think you should be.”

  These were the visits, the director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform thought with an ironic little inward sigh, that tried men’s souls. Busy, bright, interested, and didactic, his caller’s sharp-featured little face peered at him earnestly from across the desk, its expression as eager for agreement as it was avid for gossip. Pushing seventy if he was a day, Mr. Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis of the Supreme Court was one of the more famous monuments of Washington and knew it. He fixed Bob Leffingwell now with a determined eye and leaned emphatically forward.

  “My dear boy,” he said, “my dear boy! You mean you still haven’t decided what to do about Ted Jason?”

  “What has Ted Jason decided to do about Ted Jason?” Bob Leffingwell inquired. “Does anybody know?”

  “There has been,” Tommy Davis admitted thoughtfully, “there has been some—hesitation, shall we say—since the banquet. Not enough, you understand,” he added hastily, “to affect in any way the ultimate success of a marvelous candidacy, but enough to—perturb, you might say—those of faint heart and little faith. I am not one of them,” he added stoutly. “I believe in Ted Jason. Conscience Must Decide The Issue!”

  “Mmmmhmm,” Bob Leffingwell said. “Conscience seems to be having a lot of trouble.”

  “I was talking to Patsy only yesterday,” the little Justice said, “and SHE said”—he fell into an unconscious parody of her manner—“that she simply KNEW her brother was going to make his position formally known before much longer.”

  “That’s good and specific. Personally, I don’t think she knows a thing.”

  “I think it would help everyone,” Justice Davis said, “if we could get a clear statement of the need for Ted to run from someone in a really unimpeachable position—really unimpeachable.”

  “No one more unimpeachable than Ted,” Bob Leffingwell said with a shrug.

  “Now, my dear boy,” Tommy Davis said, “I do hope you won’t be willfully obtuse and obdurate. I really hope not.”

  “Me? I’m not being obtuse and obd—”

  “Yes, you are, my dear boy,” his visitor said severely. “Yes, you are. I was saying to Ned over at the Post just last night that if you would only step forward and seize the opportunity that events have now given you—if you would only take the step the country is waiting for you to take—if you would only grasp the nettle—”

  “Tommy,” Bob Leffingwell demanded, “what on earth are you talking about? What nettle have you and Ned planted for me to grasp this time? And who in the country do you think gives a damn whether I grasp it or not?”

  You minimize your own importance, my dear boy,” the Justice said, still severely. “You occupy a unique position. You really do. You influence a great many people you don’t realize at all. You mustn’t minimize them, or yourself. They are waiting.”

  “I don’t influence anybody any more,” Bob Leffingwell said, “and if this is some elaborate scheme you and the Post have cooked up for me to bring pressure to bear on Ted Jason—well,” he said with an ironic smile, “you really must be hard up. I thought Walter Dobius was in charge of lining up people to pressure Ted Jason.”

  “Walter has done a superb job,” the Justice said. “Is doing, a superb job. And of course many others in comparable position are doing all they can, but—”

  “But what? What more do you need?”

  “Well, there is the danger, you see, that it may all seem like a press and television campaign. That Ted is really just—just the press and network candidate. That it’s all just—propaganda, you know? That there really isn’t any grassroots demand for him.…There’s a possibility people may think that.”

  “Yes,” Bob Leffingwell agreed solemnly, “I can see that there is a possibility. However, I don’t think there was any doubt at the banquet that he has plenty of support outside the press. You don’t get that kind of ovation just on headlines and help from the networks. That was genuine, all right.”

  “But it’s what people outside think that counts,” Justice Davis said. “You know, in Washington we sometimes get a little—self-centered, you know? There are lots more people in the country than just—us, dear boy.”

  “Oh, are there really?” Bob Leffingwell inquired. “I’ve been in this town sixteen years and I’ve never been sure of that since the day I arrived. Are they really out there? Well, well.”

  “Yes, they are,” Tommy Davis said sternly, “and it is time for you to speak to them. They need to be told by someone besides Walter and the metropolitan press and the networks that Governor Jason is the man for them. They need to have it said by someone they look up to—and respect—and admire as an individual, not just as a—as a columnist.”

  “Careful, now, Tommy,” Bob Leffingwell said. “You’re coming close to treason.”

  “Well, it should be someone outside Walter’s crowd,” the little Justice said stubbornly. “Anyway, you’d get reams of publicity on it. You’d be on the front page of every paper in the country and you’d be interviewed on every program there is. It would amount to the same thing, really. It would just seem like a fresh point of view, that’s all, and that’s what we need, right now.”

  “Tommy,” Bob Leffingwell said, and began to move papers about on his desk as though resuming work, for there was no point in prolonging this, “I think it’s very flattering that you and Ned still think anybody gives a damn what I say, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. Since I got beaten for Secretary of State, I haven’t exactly been the white knight on a charger, you know, in the mind of the country.” His eyes darkened as he thought of his error of judgment in lying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about his long-ago, innocuous Communist associations, an error he would regret for the rest of his days for reasons far more fundamental than just being defeated for Secretary. “Let’s face it, I was a damned fool.” He gave his visitor an honest look, suddenly so naked and tortured that Tommy Davis averted his eyes. “No one respects me any more. I don’t respect myself. What makes you think that anyone at all could be influenced by what I say about Ted?”

  “My dear boy,” Justice Davis said solemnly, “you entirely underestimate your own character. What you did was—regrettable, perhaps, from one point of view—though I supported you in that decision, and always will—but you have recovered magnificently. Magnificently! People do respect you. You haven’t complained, you haven’t gone around whining about it, you haven’t rationalized or justified. You’ve taken the job the President gave you and done very well with it, and you’ve come out all right. You really have, believe me. Now surely you know that.”

  “I know,” Bob Leffingwell said honestly, “that I’ve come back pretty well. I’m not going to overdramatize myself. But the fact remains, Tommy, that when a great many of my countrymen think of me they think”—and his mouth gave a sudden bitter twist—“liar!”

  “They do not!” Justice Davis exclaimed. “They do not, Robert Leffingwell! I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, do you hear me? They may think misguided, or—or misled, or—mistaken—but they don’t think—that. They’ve gotten over that. Now don’t you ever say that again!”

  Bob Leffingwell sighed and shook his head.

  “Well. In any event, Tommy, when you said ‘the job the President gave me,’ you said it all. I’m not going to speak until he decides what he’s going to do. I owe him too much. He saved me, that rather bumbling but very kind gentleman you and Ned and Walter and the rest of you despise so much. I’m his to command, and the last thing I would do is attempt to fo
rce his hand or make things difficult for him. Besides which,” he added with a certain coldness in his voice, “I am not so sure as you apparently are that I disagree with what he’s doing. There’s always that to consider, you know.”

  “My dear boy,” Justice Davis said, and there was genuine dismay in his voice. “Surely you don’t—surely you can’t—surely it isn’t—but, surely! When things are going as poorly as they are? When we’re bogged down everywhere you look? When we have the whole world against us? When it seems as though everything he does is stupid and ill-advised and ruinous to the country? When all he does is what Orrin tells him to? My dear boy! Now you do appall me!”

  “I’m not so sure I disagree with Orrin, either,” Bob Leffingwell said, feeling a real satisfaction at the way the bustling little face across from him appeared to be disintegrating in abhorrence and confusion. “They may have a point, Tommy. We don’t know yet whether they do or not.”

  “Very well,” his visitor said coldly, standing up with an abrupt motion that almost tipped him over, so that he had to support himself with one quivering little old hand against the desk. “I must say I am most disappointed in you. Bob. Ned will be too, and so will Walter and—and so will everyone. You occupy a unique position. You have a chance to do a great service to the country and the world by issuing a statement calling on Ted to run. You refuse to do it. You simply refuse, and for the basest of motivations—because you agree with this insane policy! I must confess I do not understand you, my dear boy, I simply do not.…However,” he said, and it was obvious that he was making a great effort to speak with calm and tolerance, “I may be able to forgive you, ultimately, for I am sure it is simply a temporary aberration. I am sure you will be found when the time comes on the side of Right and Justice. Even though,” he couldn’t help concluding sadly, “we could so use you now!”

  “Conscience must decide the issue. Tommy,” Bob Leffingwell told him. “Thanks for coming by.”

  “They will be so disappointed at the Post,” Mr. Justice Davis said with a last wistful glance as he turned toward the door.

  “Tell them not to cry,” Bob Leffingwell said.

  But although he said it as a parting shot, and though it gave him genuine satisfaction to show the busy little Justice and all his friends that he was no longer captive, as he once had been, to either their friendship or their enmity, it was with an unhappy restlessness that he resumed the duties of the day as the door closed behind the Court’s most ubiquitous member. He was not out from under all the burdens of the bitter battle over his nomination to be Secretary of State, though he knew he was on his way. But he still had a way to go. It was with a genuine surge of gratitude, as though he were about to talk to someone who, in his kindly, fatherly way might have all the answers to soothe a still-regretful heart, that he heard his secretary say over the intercom, “Pick up the phone, please, for the President.”

  Where is he now, the clever, arrogant little man who thinks the world skips to his tune, the President wonders half an hour later, and what is he doing and what will he think when he hears my voice, and what it has to relate?

  Probably sitting at his typewriter at “Salubria” damning me up and down again; and whatever he thinks or says will have a snarl in it, and there will be further damnations and maledictions forthcoming.

  Well, Mr. Walter Dobius, he advises in a silent dialogue while he reads absentmindedly through the National Aeronautics and Space Agency report on the plans to send another manned expedition to the moon now that the first is safely home after its protracted stay, as far as I am concerned you can continue to do your twisted worst and I can survive it. I have so far, and I shall continue.

  He reflects with some wry amusement, as his secretary reports a little difficulty in finding her quarry, that Walter since the banquet has reverted to the image he has so carefully created over the years. He has not, in any speech or column since, poured forth quite the venom and invective he disgorged immediately following the American intervention in Gorotoland. Although obviously strongly opposed to Administration policies, he has resumed the mantle of objective statesmanship and maintained it even when his world again ran amuck in flame and froth following Panama. Walter’s tone since the banquet has been one of cold disapproval and acrid pity for policies so misguided, but his views have been stated with a clever regret for misguided men rather than a bitter open blame of them. The naked feeling that overwhelmed him with Gorotoland and the vetoes has not been permitted to appear again. His faithful followers, in all their dutiful millions from Harold and Reggie in London to Dottie and Dick in Minot, North Dakota, are reassured and comforted. Because he is shrewd enough to realize how unrelieved invective sounds over a period of time, Walter has conquered his runaway emotions and become dignified again. And since the attention span of the general public in these days of overproduced news is roughly two days, it has not taken long for his worshipers to accept the quickly refurbished portrait of the statesman-philosopher. Now most of them only remember vaguely that Walter Dobius got a little hot under the collar, back there when things first broke—but he’s really back on the ball, now, giving them the real inside scoop on Washington with a background of twenty-five years of unimpeachable integrity that a few days of forgivable human irritation can’t diminish.

  Washington knows, however, that his animosity and his opposition are basically as grim and unrelenting as ever. For some reason Gorotoland, the vetoes, and Panama are personal issues between the Administration and Walter. Having set the tone and hied on the pack, however, he no longer has to lead it: its members continue to function dutifully without him, aware that he is giving an over-all respectability to their unrelenting campaign, which will continue as long as the Administration dares to follow a course that ignores what Walter and his world are determined the course should be.

  And now, of course, with the situations confused and chaotic on two continents, there are meaty matters to bite into.

  GOROTOLAND: ANOTHER VIETNAM? queries a CBS special; the answer of course is Yes. PANAMA: CAN INTERVENTION SUCCEED? wonders NBC; the answer of course is No. THE GRIM, UGLY WAR OF BOG-DOWN AND BETRAYAL, Look describes Gorotoland, and the inescapable conclusion is that the United States had better get the hell out of it as fast as possible. THE PANAMA CANAL: A BITTER ISSUE SPARKS A PEOPLE’S PROTEST, Newsweek reports, and Felix Labaiya emerges a mighty sweet-smelling democratic rose, while the “alleged Communist infiltrators seen by U.S. spokesmen behind every bush” are dismissed with the skeptical sneer which half-a-hundred “genuine people’s revolutions” in recent decades of course make fully justified and completely mature.

  Daily the headlines gloat on U.S. reverses, hourly the bulletins emphasize the bitter choices and handicaps of an Administration struggling to make some sense of the international chaos deliberately created by the Communists, history’s most irresponsible wrecking-crew. A month has passed without absolute, eternal victory everywhere, and already the phrase “an American policy which obviously is not succeeding” is beginning to appear in column after column, commentary after commentary, program after program.

  Bog-down and betrayal, the President is logically being forced to conclude, are quite all right as long as the enemy isn’t being hurt too much in return. They can go on for years and nobody in Walter’s world will say Boo. But let the other side be hurt, let the United States really go into action, and at once the chorus swells: America is awful, the policy isn’t succeeding, the peace of the world is being dreadfully damaged by the rude, crude, brutal, bad United States.

  The other side is being hurt, the President knows, and far more than Walter’s world is willing to tell the public that depends upon it for information. Slanted photographs and slanted stories and the ruthless twisting of the news to blackguard his Administration do not change the private reports that come steadily in. Obifumatta’s hold on the areas of Gorotoland he occupies is tenuous at best, dependent more and more upon a policy of fearful atrocity that is blandly
ignored by Walter’s world as it sends its tender dispatches about “Rebel Village Devastated by U.S. Attack,” or, “Son of Rebel Chief Loses Leg in War’s Holocaust.” Felix Labaiya is fighting as desperately against attempts of “the alleged Communist infiltrators seen by U.S. spokesmen behind every bush” to capture his revolution, as he is against attempts by the United States to recapture the Canal, yet somehow this is not the message which gets through to America.

  The President knows, however, and so does Walter and so does his world; and it is with some difficulty that the President manages to show them even a minimal courtesy, so deliberately are they suppressing and distorting the facts in their attempt to bludgeon his Administration. It is not something which can any longer be sluffed off with an easygoing, “Well, they’re as human as anybody else,” or, “It’s only natural to be a little prejudiced,” or, “They mean well.” These things used to suffice, but the world has moved on. Walter and his particular clique are no longer content to report policy. Now they seek to arrogate to themselves the right to make it, using all the powerful weapons of communication which are theirs. No more is this something which can be dismissed with a forgiving wisecrack. It is a deadly serious business, now, against which every President and every Administration has to be constantly on guard and with which they must constantly contend.

  Walter’s world is out for high stakes, indeed: to run the country, regardless of who sits in the White House, or who on Capitol Hill.

  The reasons for this the President, because he is a fair-minded and basically very tolerant man, has to conclude are not particularly sinister or unpatriotic. Rather they spring from idealism carried to arrogance, patriotism carried to intolerance, egotism carried close to the point of insanity. Nobody is more sincere than Walter’s world; nobody has a greater concern for the country; nobody knows better how the universe should be run. And in corollary, everyone who questions must be attacked, everyone who disagrees must be vilified, everyone who opposes must be slandered and condemned no matter how sincere and justified he may be.