The Golden Age

by Gore Vidal

  “That must be the whole population of Hyde Park,” she said to Hopkins.

  He laughed. “Only local Democrats and the folks from Poughkeepsie. The rest are all home in mourning. He’s never carried his hometown.”

  Suddenly, there was a great cheer from the crowd, as the President appeared, wearing a cloak that effectively covered the wheels of his chair; he was flanked by Eleanor and his daughter Anna.

  When the cheering stopped, the President chatted with a few of his neighbors; fretted at the absence of this one or that one, which got him a great laugh, since he had named the town’s leading Republicans.

  Finally, he thanked them all, ending, “You will find me in the future the same Franklin Roosevelt you have known a great many years. Good night to you all.” With that, he was wheeled inside and Hopkins did a little jig of triumph.

  “Just like Hitler in France,” Caroline could not resist reminding him.

  “Every dog has his day.” Hopkins was triumphant. “This is ours. Hitler’s has just ended.”

  SIX

  1

  Although Peter had once thought it a good idea to go on to Harvard after graduating from the University of Virginia, he got out of bed one morning in August and realized, halfway to the bathroom, that if he were ever to learn anything of interest he must not go near a university again.

  “I have been told that the winters in Boston are dreadful.” Frederika had been undistressed by his unconventional decision. “I can’t think why they don’t hold their classes in summer.”

  “We are supposed to be doing our farming then. Anyway, if I’m to be a first-class wastrel, I shall need a warm climate like Washington.”

  “Africans, your Aunt Caroline calls us, living in tropical bliss.” Frederika was swathed in what looked to be mosquito netting while a large hat shaded her face. She feared the sun’s lethal rays.

  “Torpor is more like it,” was Blaise’s contribution. But he, too, was neutral about Peter’s decision as they sat beside the pool. Back of them a tall hedge of boxwood hid the shallow brick steps that meandered through a rose garden and then turned into rose-colored marble as it straightened itself out and became the formal river entrance to Laurel House on its wooded eminence.

  “I like selling space.” Peter was determined to be as good a sport as his parents.

  “No one likes selling space.” Blaise was authoritative. “But it gives you an idea of how a paper works. If that sort of thing interests you. You don’t mind my prying, do you?”

  Relations between father and son had been much improved since the convention summer of the previous year. Peter had a knack for making politicians sound interesting. Blaise had appreciated this peculiar gift. “Actually, I preferred your pieces to Joe Alsop’s.”

  “But Joe knows everything.”

  “Yes. And then he tells you everything he thinks he knows. You know nothing. And you have no ideas at all. This is a blessing in a journalist.”

  “A relief, anyway.”

  Frederika seemed to enjoy the new amity between father and son. “He takes after you, Blaise.”

  “No ideas!” Blaise’s neck, where not already sunburned, reddened. “I’m nothing but ideas. For God’s sake, I’m a publisher.”

  “Like Cissy, yes.” Frederika shut her eyes. A warm wind floated up from the Potomac. While Frederika dozed, Blaise went into the men’s section of the pool house, where Peter had observed his sister, Enid, being made love to by Clay Overbury, now her husband, as well as aide to Senator James Burden Day, whose daughter, Diana, was becoming, more and more, the center of Peter’s daydreams. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in the pool. He was scowling. Why? Billy Thorne. Diana’s image had been replaced by that of her unlovable husband, now a temporary employee of the Tribune while he tried to get financing for a radical political review: the adjective was his, to be taken on faith or with a grain of salt or not at all. Billy Thorne had lost a leg in Spain, fighting fascism. This loss had made him briefly a hero of the American left and so, inevitably, he wrote a book. It sold almost as well as Why England Slept, which had been written for the son of the American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s by Arthur Krock of the New York Times; Henry Luce had then written a predictable introduction. Although there was an element of overkill about the Kennedy project that Billy could hardly match, the two young authors were often coupled that season in deeply thoughtful journalistic pieces about Youth Today and could they—would they—measure up as their predecessors had so selflessly done in 1917, 1898, 1860, 1846 … Peter began to grin as he saw the outline of a piece in his head. Should he do it for the Tribune or for the first, perhaps never to be published, issue of what Billy Thorne called The American Idea? It would be an excuse to see more of Diana.

  Frederika was suddenly wide awake. “What time did I order lunch for?”

  “You never tell me,” said Peter. “I never ask.”

  “Twelve people, including the Vichy spy.” Frederika exercised her memory.

  The Vichy spy was the usual designation of Gaston Henry-Haye, ambassador from the unoccupied but Nazi-controlled section of France. Morbid curiosity had made him, if not popular, ubiquitous in Washington.

  “Then there’s … if Blaise didn’t forget … Oh, my God, there he is!” At the top of the brick steps that led down from the rose garden to the pool stood Herbert Hoover.

  Peter leapt to his feet; then, in response to his mother’s helpless arm-waving, he pulled her upright as the former president made his stately way toward them: a white suit was his only concession to the month of August in a city that allegedly shared the same line of latitude as Cairo. George Washington had a lot to answer for, thought Peter, as Frederika became a gracious, apologetic hostess.

  Hoover was equally gracious, apologetic. “My error. I have a new secretary. I’ve come too early.”

  “No. No!” Blaise came charging out of the pool house, blue blazer, silk ascot, orange trousers all in perfect place.

  Frederika fled up the stairs while Blaise introduced Hoover to Peter, who started to withdraw, but Blaise told him to stay.

  “The fault’s mine,” said Blaise, offering Hoover a wicker chair beneath a dying elm tree. “I told your secretary a half hour early because I wanted a chance to talk to you before the others arrive. Peter’s working with me on the paper …”

  Hoover’s rarely seen smile was benign. “I have no secrets, Mr. Sanford …”

  Blaise laughed. “Perhaps I do, Mr. President. But not in the family.”

  Peter did his best to look reliable, an effect achieved by thinking entirely of Diana and wondering how far things might yet develop between them. From the oblique hint or half-stated criticism, she was no longer as thrilled by the hero of the Lincoln Brigade as she had been when they first met and had startled everyone by a late-night visit to a justice of the peace in Maryland. It was well known that Senator Day could not abide his new son-in-law while Diana’s mother, Kitty, was totally preoccupied with the wildlife of Rock Creek Park. She spoke intimately to certain birds, lectured squirrels, gave material advice to possums while largely ignoring the one-legged stranger in her attic. Actually, as Peter knew, it was Diana’s unexpected interest in Billy’s as yet unsponsored magazine that had brought together this most unlikely couple. She had done her best to interest Peter in The American Idea; thus, interesting him in herself. They sometimes had lunch near the Tribune, usually when Billy was elsewhere, searching for sponsors in a city that regarded itself as embodying the sole American idea: the winning of elections and the subsequent division of spoils among the victors.

  “What do you think, Mr. Sanford?” The President was now looking at Peter with what appeared to be interest.

  Peter tried to play back the last few words. One was Philadelphia. The convention?

  “I told President Hoover what you told me,” Blaise cued him, “about those altered microphones.”

  “Oh, yes!” Peter generated a degree of what he hoped might
be mistaken for boyish enthusiasm. “I could hear you. But I was at the front of the gallery. I could also tell that there were a lot of dead spots all around me. I think I know who switched the mikes.” Why not feed presidential paranoia? Go all out.

  “The Willkie people, of course.” Hoover was now leaning forward in his chair, right ear cocked toward Peter.

  “Yes, sir, and I’m pretty sure the person in charge was Samuel Pryor.”

  Hoover sat back in his chair. “From Connecticut? I see. Yes. If I could prevail upon you to prepare a private memorandum …”

  “We’d be delighted,” Blaise answered a bit too quickly for both. “Now, sir, may I tempt you once more with a platform …”

  Hoover shook his head. “I always thought that President Roosevelt—the real President Roosevelt, Theodore—made a great error in writing a column for that Kansas newspaper after he left office. I think we are at our most useful when we speak softly to those who follow us. Although even a whisper from me to that chameleon in the White House would be hardly welcome. Yet I have no personal animosity toward him. None!” Hoover could at least lie with as much apparent sincerity as his blithe successor. “Mr. Sanford, I don’t rule out the occasional interview. Written questions. Written answers, of course. But I won’t write a column. Even so, should I have something on my mind …”

  Peter was relieved that he would not be assigned to the great man, who apparently did have something on his mind. “Everyone knows that I don’t care for the President’s foreign policy. He wants us in the war. But so far Congress has been able to keep him on a short leash with no help from our recent candidate, Mr. Willkie.”

  “Remember when Wendell said that if FDR was elected, we’d be at war by April? Well, that was five months ago.”

  “Speeches,” Hoover sighed. “Mr. Willkie will say anything. In fact, I happen to know what he said when he and the President had lunch at the White House a few weeks ago. They discussed the creation of a new political party. An interventionist party. A socialist party. Imagine!”

  Blaise nodded. “I’ve heard the gossip.”

  “Mr. Willkie also paid me a call at the Waldorf Towers.” A bleak smile. “A dis-courtesy call you might say: I took some pleasure in reminding him that despite his large vote, he ran behind several governors.” Hoover interrupted himself; turned to Peter. “You said—about the microphones—that it was Sam Pryor who gave the order to switch them?”

  “So we think, sir.”

  “Curious. After the election I tried to get in touch with Mr. Willkie. He was in seclusion, I was told. With Sam Pryor. In Hobe Sound, Florida. Interesting.” Hoover turned back to Blaise. “I might write a single piece for you and your syndicate. Or, perhaps, an interview might be better. We’ll see. Anyway, I want to do something along the lines of the Willkie–Roosevelt lunch last July. On the possible breakup of the two parties. I would make the case that it is already beginning to happen at the highest level, which is why I regard my former secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, as the second most dangerous man in the United States.” A dragonfly—in shock?—stopped in mid-flight, just over Hoover’s rosy head.

  “I agree with you about the number one dangerous man.” Blaise was suddenly a Republican clubman, ready to denounce that man in the White House as a traitor to his class. “But why Stimson, for second place?”

  “When Roosevelt made him secretary of war just before the Philadelphia convention, he said he wanted a bipartisan Cabinet. Actually, he wanted, and now he’s got, a War Cabinet. Colonel Stimson, as he likes to be called, is even more eager for war than the President.”

  This, thought Peter, was The American Idea in action, who was for—who was against—what?

  The “what” came quickly. “In 1931 I discovered that Henry was using the State Department to make policy of his own. He deplored, as I did, what the Japanese were doing in China. But unlike his president, Henry wanted us to invoke economic sanctions against the Japanese. He was, he confessed in his modest way, evolving a ‘Stimson Doctrine,’ presumably to compete with the Monroe Doctrine.” Hoover’s sarcasm was heavy. He waved the dragonfly away. “He wanted to make all Asia our responsibility. That means if the Japanese would not let go of Manchuria, we would go to war with them. When I realized what he was up to, I called a Cabinet meeting and read Henry the riot act. I agreed that although Japanese behavior on the mainland of Asia was deplorable, we were in no way threatened, economically or morally. I have the impression that he thinks of himself as a stern moralist, appointed by heaven to force people to be good, even if he must shoot them first. I then said that I would never sacrifice any American life anywhere unless we ourselves were directly threatened. Oh, I stared him down—he was seated just to my right at Cabinet. I also reminded him that to go to war on the mainland of Asia at a time when our civilization was unusually fragile, to say the least, would be absolute folly. I know Asia firsthand. He doesn’t. I know we’d be obliged to arm and train a million Chinese soldiers. This would involve us with China in a fashion that would excite the suspicions of the whole world.” He chuckled, “Oh, I took some pleasure in tearing up Colonel Stimson’s blueprint for a war in Asia.”

  Deliberately, Hoover took a handkerchief; mopped his forehead; and continued. “I am told that men of great imagination can often foresee what wars are like and so will have nothing to do with them. The Colonel, of course, has no imagination at all, and as I am an engineer, I’m not supposed to have one either. But I do have something Roosevelt and Stimson will never have. Experience. Franklin goes on and on about how he hates war because he has seen war. As usual, he lies. He toured a battlefield or two after Germany had surrendered. And that was that. He saw no war. Does he hate what he has never experienced? Who knows? But I had to feed the victims of that war and I don’t want anything like that to happen ever again. But Stimson does. Roosevelt does. I find them unfathomable. You know, Roosevelt tells this tall tale about when he was in the Navy Department, and the Marines were occupying Haiti—Professor Wilson’s contribution to their welfare. Anyway, Franklin claims to have written the Haitian constitution. As if he’s ever read ours! People forget that when I was elected president, we were occupying most of Central America and the Caribbean. I pulled the Marines out of Haiti, out of Nicaragua, and then when our war-lovers insisted that we invade Cuba and Panama and Honduras, I said no. They invoked the Monroe Doctrine. I invited them to read it. We should never possess more military strength than is needed to make sure that no one will ever dare invade us. But then after the … uh, debacle of 1932”—Peter saw a look of real pain in that round innocent-eyed bejowled face—“Stimson, still in my cabinet, sneaks up to Hyde Park to sell himself to the President-elect. Obviously, the price was right. Those two are made for each other.”

  “Mr. President, you must write all this for the Tribune.” Blaise was excited, to Peter’s surprise. Peter had not expected his unimaginative father to get the point to Hoover’s originality so perfectly disguised for so long from his countrymen by his forbidding and consummately dull persona.

  The butler was now at the top of the brick steps. “Mrs. Sanford is ready, sir.”

  Hoover stood up. “Naturally, a fallen statesman is always willing to mount whatever pedestal he can find. I’ll make some analysis of our elderly secretary of war’s peculiar view of the world, and his alliance with that mysterious presence in the White House.” Flanked by Blaise and Peter, Hoover moved with firm tread up the steps, where rambling roses grew to left and right.

  “I am anti-war as you may have guessed but not because, as some deep thinkers believe, I am a Quaker, born and bred. I’m perfectly willing for us to fight if we have to. But I see something worse than war on the horizon. I am certain that the next war will absolutely transform us. I see more power to the great corporations. More power to the government. Less power to the people. That’s what I fear. Because once this starts, it is irreversible. You see, I want to live in a community that governs itself. Well, you can
’t extend the mastery of the government over the daily life of a people without making government the master of those people’s souls and thoughts, the way the fascists and the Bolsheviks have done. In his serpentine way, Franklin is going in the very same direction that they have gone in, and I think he knows exactly what he’s doing while Stimson is simply stupid, a common condition.”

  “Why, sir, did you make him your secretary of state?” Peter was bold.

  They were now at the lawn facing Laurel House. The lunch guests were gathering on the terrace. “Well, I could say that I, too, suffer at times from the common condition. I, too, can be stupid.”

  Blaise scowled at Peter’s impertinence. But Hoover was matter-of-fact. “Perhaps I was, in Stimson’s case. I suppose I didn’t think I needed any help with foreign affairs. Most of my professional life was spent abroad, working with foreign governments. I suspect I just wanted to have Stimson around so that I could keep my eye on him, and all the other Wall Street boys.”

  The guests on the terrace were now applauding Hoover. He gave them a mock-Rooseveltian wave.

  “See how they admire you, Mr. President.”

  Hoover was now examining the guests as they saluted him. “I think every last one of them gave money to Willkie.”

  “They had no choice, sir …” Blaise began.

  But Peter broke in on his father. “Sir, did you really say that line about the poem?”

  Hoover actually laughed, something generally thought impossible. “Yes, I did. When the Depression was at its worst, everyone wanted to know what we should do. General Electric even offered to take over the government and run it for me like—well, General Electric, I suppose. Oh, I was given a great deal of advice. Finally, I was inspired to say, what this country really needs is a great poem. Something to lift people out of fear and selfishness.”