Getting It Right

by William F. Buckley

  “Sure.”

  Romney tilted his glasses over his nose and moved closer to the lamp.

  “It says here that under the new law there is to be special care taken for: ‘watches, figs, linen towels, thermometers, stainless steel flatware, carpets, rugs, sheet glass, fur-pelt hats, garlic, smoking pipes, printed silk scarves, scissors, ground fish fillets, cover seed, bicycles, lighter flints, velveteen fabrics, violins, umbrella frames, tartaric acid, baseball gloves, ceramic tiles, straight pins, safety pins, clothespins.’” Romney roared, put down the magazine, and walked over to sit down again opposite his friend. His old, twenty-five-year-old friend, he now thought Woodroe to be. Fellow Mormon. Fellow conservative. Fellow soldier in the anti-Communist struggle.

  Romney led Woody out to the door. “Wait a minute.”

  He turned a light switch on, a second one off. “Look up at the ceiling.”

  The room dark, Woodroe gazed up proudly at the illuminated surface, at the peaks of the Rocky Mountain range he knew so well, and loved so deeply.

  15

  JOHN F. KENNEDY WAS in a deliberative mood. He sat up suddenly from his seat behind the imposing desk presidents had used since 1880. He pressed a button on his telephone. “Tell Salinger to come in.”

  A moment later he interrupted his thought and buzzed again. “Cancel Salinger. Tell Mr. Bundy to come see me.”

  McGeorge Bundy had a singular capacity for organizing thought and for suggesting an appealing line to draw through scattered events. Kennedy wanted to feel his way through the reports of renewed Soviet testing of their intermediate-range ballistic missiles. He fretted over the relative torpor of U.S. progress in the missile field. Yes, always, always something to think about, to worry over, that had to do with the Cold War.

  But then, JFK was good at handling crises. He had learned very early from the disaster—a mere three months after he took office—of the military operation at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. He had acted quickly, appearing on television and addressing the nation. He hadn’t exactly taken personal responsibility for the fiasco of the armed attempt by Cuban exiles to displace Fidel Castro. But he knew to make the one point that proved psychologically critical. He had looked beyond the bungled invasion of the Bay of Pigs, beyond the residual problem of one thousand Cuban prisoners held by Castro, beyond the angry stirrings of Congress.

  What blame there is to be assigned is mine, as president.

  That had been very successful; his ratings had soared.

  But the Cuban setback had been exactly that—a setback. A solid entry in the ledger more and more people were keeping: good news/bad news for the Communists, good news/bad news for the United States. His popularity had held through the breath-catching construction of the Berlin Wall four months later, in August. And then, in January, the Soviet defense minister, Malinovsky, informed the world in Pravda that Soviet missiles could now destroy all the industrial centers of the United States and also those of any country that allied itself with the United States.

  Fuck. That’s Soviet bully-talk. He knew well the sound of it. It was something else that was bugging him. His father had once told him that, back in the days when he, the Founding Father, was busy accumulating the family fortune, he had met time after time with business figures. “My eye was pretty good, Jack. In meetings like that, one guy would say something. Something a lot of people wouldn’t even notice. But I caught it. Sometimes I didn’t realize it—realize that something had been said I wanted to pay attention to—until later. Sometimes until maybe a week later. But then it grew. And other things that were said, well, took a seat further and further back in the room. Good trick that, assigning importance to things that prove to be important. They won’t teach you how to do that at Harvard, but think about it. It might prove more useful, when coping with a professor, to know that he likes Cole Porter than all the stuff he’s telling you about Aristotle. It’s the perspectives that matter to you that count. Everything else is shit.”

  President Kennedy reminded himself that in the two hours since he had seen that morning’s New York Times and read about one more critical political speech by a Republican, his mind had turned to the story of that one speech, by that Republican, given under those auspices.

  He buzzed again. “Cancel Bundy. Get Bobby. Attorney General Kennedy. Get him on the phone.”

  A sold-out meeting in New York’s Madison Square Garden! Sponsored by a right-wing youth organization. Young Americans. Young Americans for Freedom, they called themselves. Their principal speaker was Barry Goldwater. Sold out! Twenty thousand people! How the hell did that happen? There’d be congressional elections in November. It would be two years before the Republicans would be shaking out a presidential candidate to oppose him. Was there any other Republican who could fill Madison Square Garden? Tricky Dick? Rockefeller? Scranton? Not likely.

  The telephone buzzed.

  “Yeah, Bobby. Did you see about Goldwater at the young people’s, the young Americans’ meeting in New York?”

  The attorney general, alone in his office after shooing out two aides, said yes, he had seen the item.

  “Well, what’s the right wing up to?” the president continued. “That man Welch discovered last year that Ike was really a secret Communist. What are they on to now? Is God a Communist?”

  Bobby laughed.

  “. . . Well, that’s good news,” the president said. “I want to talk about that whole scene, Goldwater especially. And the General Walker business. Has anybody put him away yet? That lunatic. Somebody’s going to shoot him someday—wish I could.”

  The attorney general said Walker was a pretty big figure.

  “Big where? In Texas? Everything’s big in Texas. I suppose even General Walker can be big in Texas, but nobody gets to be bigger than your big brother in Texas in 1964. These guys got any IRS problems? . . . Yeah, that’s an important date, your lunch speech. I won’t hang you up. But we should keep our eyes on the right wing.... Malinovsky? Malinovsky you want to talk about? Well, he’s shown us his, one day we’ll show him ours. Get to that speech, Bobby. Talk to you later.”

  16

  GENERAL WALKER HAD BEEN TOLD by letter from Bob Welch that Woodroe Raynor, a very promising second-year employee, was being sent to Dallas to work out of the John Birch Society office there, in close quarters with Helena Crowder. “But it’s also my idea that he should maintain close liaison with you. You are a great asset of the anti-Communist movement in America,” the Founder wrote, “and we want to continue to be in touch and to be helpful and, as required, to coordinate plans.”

  Woodroe, who had been coached on reading between the lines, groped for its full meaning. He knew that he was to look in closely on the general’s activities and report back to the Belmont office, his first loyalty.

  The past year had been very active for Edwin Anderson Walker. First the Pentagon had removed him from his post in Germany, protesting that he was indoctrinating U.S. troops with Birchite literature. Six months later, his professional career ended when he resigned from the army, by doing so forfeiting a considerable pension. And then, in January of 1962, he had announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas.

  The six-foot-three general was by now a familiar figure. “Texas is my home state,” he reminded the reporters who came to the crowded announcement at the Driskill Hotel in Austin. “I was born in Central Point, an’ Texas always figured, in my mind, as the heart of the real America. And that’s the America I hope to represent, the America I was taught about at West Point. I did my best to represent the real America in Korea and I got in trouble for doin’ just that in Germany. But whatever it is that’s infected the United States Army and the State Department—an’ the White House—can’t have infected the State of Texas.”

  The local headlines focused mostly on General Walker’s charge that a former Mexican president, the left-wing Lázaro Cárdenas, was secretly acquiring arms. The scene in Mexico, Walker said, was comparable to the scene i
n Cuba that had culminated in Fidel Castro’s takeover.

  Political analysts doubted Walker had the clout to win the nomination, or finances sufficient to make a big showing. But then, in April, General Walker was called to testify before the Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee. In a prepared text he charged that “high-ranking U.S. government officials” were members of a “hidden control apparatus” that was bending the army and other organs of the United States government to the will of the international Communist conspiracy.

  That statement—that language—gave rise to press surmise that the John Birch Society had coached the general for the meeting with the Senate committee. This was correct—the statement had been written by Medford Evans, a Society scholarly associate and an editor of American Opinion. On the matter of his removal from command, General Walker said that it was saddening that the commander in chief, President Kennedy, had acted as “both prosecutor and judge” against him.

  The Senate chamber, crowded with General Walker’s supporters, several times broke into applause, especially when friendly Republican senator William Jenner trained attention on the history of the general’s heroic exploits in years gone by. This the senator managed to do by coming up with devices by which to return to the biographical point. “Would you have thought, General Walker, when you made a surprise landing on the Hyères Islands—that’s H-Y-E-R-E-S Islands, Mr. Chairman—killing or capturing a strong German garrison and clearing the way for Seventh Army landings on the mainland—would you have thought, General, that the government you then served would have protested your teaching what it is that the enemy in Germany believed in, or the enemy in Korea believed in?”

  No, the general had responded, he would not have guessed that possible. There was applause. Senator Stuart Symington, the Democratic chairman of the Senate subcommittee, held down the applause and warned against its repetition. The purpose of the investigation, he reminded the witness, was precisely to inquire whether, in the opinion of that committee, the general had been mistreated.

  At a ten-minute break, General Walker was informed by an aide that soon after the general had been sworn in, demonstrators had assembled outside, headed by George Lincoln Rockwell. The troop of twenty-odd American Nazis had displayed banners and placards supporting Walker and denouncing “SENATE TRAITORS.” Two of the Nazis, including Commander Rockwell, had actually come into the chamber, prepared to listen to the testimony. “They were asked to remove the Nazi buttons on their lapels,” Walker’s aide reported. “They refused, and were taken out.” Walker nodded his head in sober understanding.

  The succeeding hour was spent accumulating information on exactly what it was that General Walker had done in his education program and what literature he had distributed. He described that material at some length, but was not precise on just what the books and pamphlets said, or implied, about the loyalty or disloyalty of government officials, or on where, exactly, and under whose auspices, the information had been garnered.

  The committee concluded its session and adjourned at noon. Walker was led to the press room. The first questions were to be expected, having to do with the general’s charge that a hidden control apparatus had taken control of U.S. affairs. General Walker, his presence imposing, his manners impeccable, took on the questions volubly, but it was hard for reporters to make out exactly what he said. The general’s confusion was in part syntactical, but it was not knowable what exactly he had intended to say.

  After a few minutes, Washington Daily News reporter Tom Kelly, seated in the front row, asked, “How do you account, General, for the fact that the American Nazi Party is outside, giving you its support?”

  General Walker accosted that question by striding forward, lifting Mr. Kelly up by his lapels, and punching him in the face.

  The uproar was eventually contained, but the press conference was certainly over. General Walker, a security guard at either side prepared to subdue him if necessary, turned to a veteran reporter from the Washington Post and bit out his thoughts: “Does that son of a bitch know that I led a parachute drop raid against the Nazis in 1945?” The press scurried away with their stories and their photographs.

  General Walker returned to Texas and gave campaign speeches, attempting to generate support for his candidacy. In Abilene, he said that the Communist conspirators didn’t observe No Trespassing signs on American soil; and anyway, as Senator McCarthy had proved and as the John Birch Society was busy day and night documenting, “Our people don’t really want to just post No Trespassing signs anymore.” In Austin he vowed to continue the fight whatever happened on primary day. What did happen on May 5 was that General Walker came in sixth in a race of six candidates.

  The postmortem the next day at Belmont was, initially, despondent. “General Walker is through,” Jesse Andrews, putting down the AP wire ticker, said to Robert Welch at their ten o’clock coffee. But Welch emphatically refused to agree. Andrews pressed his point: The primary vote was only the most recent thing. There was the physical brawl at the Senate, “and, Bob, the general’s problem is getting things said right about our movement.”

  “The election meant nothing. Elections don’t ever mean anything.”

  “Yeah, but the general doesn’t, well, doesn’t have much self-control and can’t really defend our position very well. You notice, the Young Americans for Freedom put off giving him an award at their Madison Square Garden rally? In fact, the Young Americans for Freedom are evenly split over whether to go through with a scheduled award for him at their fall meeting.”

  “So? We’re going to start taking lessons from the Opportunist Right? What are you advising, Jess, that we wait to hear whether National Review okays a continued relationship with General Walker?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Well, the NR people tried to do it to Ayn Rand and she’s still around. And we have more chapters and more subscribers than a year ago.”

  Robert Welch always had the last word, and he said simply that the Society would keep its eyes on the general, while supporting him fully.

  But a critical point had arrived.

  The George S. Patton John Birch Society Chapter in Dallas was headed by Helena Crowder. And Helena Crowder was a formidable member—wealthy, resourceful, active, and enterprising. She wrote to Welch. She had a great idea, she said. Organize a statewide political rally for Thanksgiving Day and announce at that rally that the George S. Patton Chapter would change its name to the Edwin A. Walker Chapter. “We’ll have the affair in the football stadium. We’ll get the right people in Hollywood to come. It will be the biggest rally of the year, just two weeks after the congressional election.”

  Helena Crowder wanted Bob’s reaction.

  That was when Welch decided to send Woodroe Raynor, his top young aide, to Texas. To deal with General Walker. And with Helena Crowder.

  17

  ARRIVED IN DALLAS, WOODROE soon learned that the activist conservative community acknowledged Helena Crowder—blond, heavyset, imperious—as its leader. More than that, she was den mother, hostess, financier, coach, cheerleader, and chairman of the board. It required an active curiosity to establish that there was a Mr. Crowder. Jerry Crowder was in the oil business, successful, quiet, laconic, amused and amusing. He was not always wholly amused by his wife’s frenetic political activity. Soon after she was elected head of the George S. Patton Birch Chapter, he told her she would need to have a separate telephone line at home. Helena saw Jerry, and raised him: she would have a separate telephone line, yes, but she would also occupy, on the first floor, an office in separate quarters.

  Jerry Crowder retreated, spending more and more time at the Dallas Petroleum Club. He amused himself and some fellow club members, though not by any means all of them, when he posted on the bulletin board a form asking members to sign their names if they were members of the Communist Party. Everybody finally got the joke, but when Helena heard about it she announced that she would not speak to him, nor expect him t
o speak to her, for twenty-four hours, “not one word.” Even so, she twice broke her quarantine, for the purpose of reminding Jerry that she was independently wealthy. “You may not be as concerned as others think you should be about the Communist threat to your oil and gas wells, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be concerned about what a Communist government would do to my father’s trust. To say nothing of the Bill of Rights.” Jerry nodded, clasped his throat with his left hand, and scrawled in block letters on a piece of paper, “I’d comment, but can’t speak.” Helena left the room and slammed the door shut. At lunch with Sam Eustace, her personal lawyer and childhood friend, she was reminded that Jerry was a staunch conservative who contributed generously and had had an active hand in supporting John Tower, Texas’s first Republican senator, at the special election a year ago.

  The Dallas office of the John Birch Society had two full-time employees: a secretary and a file clerk. But a battery of volunteers, seated at the thirty-foot counter with its telephones and writing pads, did regular duty, telephoning members and potential members, distributing literature sent down from Belmont, and calling attention to special events. In another room there was the special project of Helena Crowder. It had begun in February, when General Walker announced his race for governor. Mrs. Crowder announced her intention of taping every one of the general’s speeches and making them available to other John Birch Society chapters. To this end she had procured four Phillips tape recorders. They were efficient, but not speedy: you could run a tape of a human voice at approximately twice the speed spoken, copying it onto a second reel, but nothing speedier than that. Since the general’s speeches ran usually about fifty minutes (counting the applause), she could reduce to twenty-five minutes the playing time of a tape for the purposes of duplication. But Unit A linking to Unit B while Unit C linked to Unit D meant only two tapes per hour. Sending one to each of the 260 chapters was a prodigious undertaking, especially when General Walker was giving a fresh speech every day. Perhaps the young Raynor could figure out a way to expedite that operation.