by Gore Vidal
“But Truman will win?”
“He’ll win tonight. He’ll lose in November.”
Krock was then handed a copy of the platform, which was still being read aloud. He nodded with the satisfaction of a wise man proven right yet again. “They are keeping Truman’s civil rights plank, designed to keep the Southerners happy.”
“Slavery is restored?” Peter could not resist.
“Well, let’s say the total reconstruction of Southern institutions has been delayed.”
But the surprises began almost immediately. There was a sudden roar of disapproval from the delegates.
“Floor fight.” Krock went into a huddle with his colleagues while Peter moved on to the Tribune’s table, presided over by Harold Griffiths, former film critic, former war correspondent, and now political analyst for the Tribune, with a syndicated column. Peter and Harold had ceased to be friends when Harold had become totally attached to the ever-rising fortunes of Clay Overbury while Peter had taken his sister Enid’s side. Since no one knew whether or not Peter would one day take over the Tribune, Harold always treated him with a certain not entirely mock deference, while Peter never let on that he knew anything at all about the plans his father and Harold had for Clay.
“At last some drama.” Harold was puffier than he’d been prewar; and the malicious twinkle in his eye was somewhat glazed-over from drink. “By the way, it’s Senator Barkley for vice president. Justice Douglas turned the job down. Said, ‘I don’t want to be the number two man to a second-rate man.’ ”
“There go all the lights at the Supreme Court.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Clay?” Harold was always tentative when he mentioned Clay to his brother-in-law.
“No.”
“He’s a delegate. But Burden isn’t. Funny, since he’s running again in two years. I suppose he’s getting old.”
“Not fast enough for …” Peter cut his sentence short.
“For what?”
Peter changed the subject. “What’s the title of that film they’re doing about Clay?”
“The last I heard it’s still ‘Fire over Luzon,’ with Audie Murphy.”
“The real hero.”
“Another real hero.” Harold was sharp.
“Of course. Why didn’t Tim direct?”
“Studio didn’t want him …”
There was a sudden eruption of applause pounded into irritable silence by Rayburn’s gavel striking the speaker’s stand. A stout rosy-faced young man had just arrived at the podium.
“His Honor the Mayor of Minneapolis.” Harold was now making notes. “Hubert Humphrey. He’s all set to drive the South out of the party.”
“Maybe a good thing.”
“Maybe not. The Negro vote isn’t worth a dozen states.”
The hall became very still as Humphrey spoke. Party politics in America was now entering a new phase. Humphrey wanted the so-called moderate plank on civil rights replaced by the one that his committee had just written, following closely, he maintained piously, the Truman Administration’s original guidelines.
Harold chuckled. “I’ll bet old Harry’s got murder on his mind. This is the silver bullet that’s going to kill him off.”
Peter tended to agree. The young mayor was declaring war on states’ rights, the engine whereby the Negro population was so efficiently excluded from power in the South. Although Truman had followed Roosevelt’s moderately inclusive policy toward the Negro, he himself was every bit as racist as the white Missouri constituency that he had represented in the Senate. He was also as politically expedient as the next politician, and no matter what his personal views he would go where the votes were. Apparently the time had come, if Humphrey was right, to loosen the Confederate grip on the party. Would Truman be sufficiently adroit to weather so vast a sea change? Peter recalled something that Hopkins had told his aunt: “To govern the United States, you must move to the right. To win an election, you must move to the left.” This cynical wisdom was now about to be tested.
A majority of the delegates, to Peter’s surprise, were now moving to the left. Humphrey’s plank was accepted by a thunderous voice vote. There was pandemonium in the hall. The Alabama and Mississippi delegations served notice that they would leave the convention after the vote for president. Presumably, for another party as yet unborn.
During the speeches seconding the nomination of Truman, Peter had only one wish: to get out of the heat of the hall into what someone had said was a cooling light rain. Better wet than dead of heat.
Peter left the stage for the shadowy space that led to some sort of backstage where Senator McGrath, the national chairman of the Democratic Party, was supposed to have an air-conditioned office.
Beside the door to a corridor that led to the outside, Peter found the Senator, whom he knew through Burden Day. McGrath was mopping his face with a hand towel. He shook Peter’s hand with the towel. “I think I’m having a stroke,” he said.
“I was told you had an air-conditioned office …”
“I’ve been given a special hot box. I can’t stay in it. Nobody can. But I don’t want to go up onstage yet.”
Peter looked longingly at the relatively cool outside where a streetlamp illuminated a section of railroad track. “Why not go outside? It’s stopped raining.”
“Can’t. He’s there. Don’t tell.”
“Who?”
“The President. My room’s too hot and too small to hold him. So he’s enjoying the view of the railroad, with Senator Barkley. I must say he’s a good sport. They just got in from Washington and now he’s going to have to sit there for the next three hours.”
Peter, more than anything, wanted to see the world’s most powerful man abandoned beside a railroad track. “You don’t suppose …?”
McGrath shook his head. “Nobody’s going near him.”
“Three hours is a long time to be with just Alben Barkley.”
McGrath laughed. “If you can keep on like that, maybe …” He went outside. Spoke to a seated figure; then he waved to Peter, who stepped, as if in a dream, into history.
The President was seated in what looked to be an uncomfortable kitchen chair while Alben Barkley occupied a sort of red leather throne. To either side of them, almost out of view in the dim light, stood two policemen, like sentries.
Truman was immaculate in a white suit. Barkley rumpled in statesman brown. “Mr. Sanford.” Truman had risen; shook Peter’s hand, as did Barkley. “Come visit with us for a moment.” Truman looked about him. “Pull up that crate over there. And let’s enjoy the night air.”
Peter placed the crate opposite the President and sat down.
“How’s the temperature inside?” Truman looked uncannily cool in his unwrinkled white suit.
“They say it’s about a hundred degrees on the rostrum. The television lights are blinding.”
Truman sighed. “They said we had to have the television. Whole country watching, they told us. But, of course, everybody sensible is going to be sound asleep by the time the voting’s started. Alben, you ever think we’d live to see the day when people at home—if they aren’t sound asleep—could watch a convention going on?”
“No, Mr. President. But then I’m still not used to radio. When I started out we didn’t even have proper amplifiers. Luckily, I had a voice like a bull in rut. I was built for political picnics in the blue grass.”
“You’re older than I am.” Truman was droll. “I keep forgetting.”
“Mr. President, you keep right on forgetting.”
“Oh, I approve. It might make me a bit uneasy having a young go-getter for vice president.”
“Do you think that’s how you seemed to President Roosevelt?”
Truman laughed. “I was his vice president for five months and I don’t think he ever figured out who I was. Every time we talked it was always like we were just introduced. Of course, he was dying the whole time. You could tell that. By the eyes. You’d be talking to him and sud
denly they’d just switch off. Like a lightbulb.”
“Lucky the people never knew.”
“Maybe unlucky. You know, we should get some legislation on that. A presidential illness or disability act. Of course, if I have a stroke, old as you are, you’ll have to take over.”
“How? Remember Wilson? We had over a year of a president who couldn’t function while his wife ran the country. The Constitution doesn’t really take into account what we have to do with a president who’s conscious enough not to want to be replaced but can’t do the job.”
In the dim light, Truman smiled. The teeth brighter than the magnified eyes that, due to a trick of lighting, were now inscrutably dark. “I can tell that you’ve been giving a whole lot of thought to this problem ever since I told you you were my choice tonight.”
Barkley chuckled. “What did they say of old Adlai Stevenson? There goes the Vice President with nothing on his mind but the President’s health.”
Truman turned to Peter. “Tell your father I appreciated his support during all that Eisenhower nonsense.”
“I will, sir. He takes the view that military men are not suited to politics.”
“Well, I’m not so sure Ike isn’t one of the best politicians around. After all, at his level of the military it’s nothing but politics. And then, four years of dealing with Churchill and de Gaulle and Stalin is certainly a crash course in foreign affairs. I certainly wish I’d had his experience before I got put in the hot seat.”
“The Senate,” said Barkley, “isn’t exactly outer Mongolia.”
“I’m not so sure. I suspect you and I learned more about what made people tick when we were still county judges. Now that’s real life. That’s real work. Those are real people. You need to be smart to be a judge, while any fool can get to the Senate.”
“And stay forever.” The two men laughed—at the same inside joke? As always, Peter was charmed at how candid a professional politician could appear to be and yet never give the game away.
“I remember when I first came to the Senate in nineteen and thirty-four. You’d already been there—six? No, eight years. Anyway, I was feeling pretty lost and so I wandered into the cloakroom, where the few senators that were in there, Republicans, of course, just ignored me. So I sat down and looked at a newspaper and wondered just how this adventure was going to turn out. Then old Ham Lewis came over to me. From Illinois. Wore a red wig. Shook my hand. ‘Welcome to our clubhouse.’ Oh, he was a courtly man. Anyway, we chatted about this and that. Then he must have suspected that I was feeling a bit forlorn because he leaned over like he was going to tell me some great secret and whispered in my ear, ‘I spent my whole first year here wondering how on earth I had managed to get to the United States Senate. Then I spent the next thirty years wondering how on earth the others made it here.’ ” Peter and Barkley laughed. Then Truman gave Peter’s shoulder a genial tap. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sanford. Give your father my regards.” The audience was over. As Peter got to the stage door he heard Truman say, in a matter-of-fact voice, “I know you don’t believe it, Alben, but I’m going to win this election.” Peter could hear no more.
McGrath—was he one of the fool senators?—met him backstage.
“How was he?”
“Cool and candid.”
“Did he say anything about Mayor Humphrey?”
“Not a word.”
“He used the word ‘crackpot’ to me.”
At the Tribune table, haggard in the heat, Harold Griffiths had unbuttoned his shirt. The roll call of the states was almost over. Peter could not resist saying, “I just had a chat with the President.”
“Did he confess to being an admirer of your paper?” Harold’s nerves, never entirely steady, were fraying in the damp heat.
“I don’t think he’s ever heard of it. I was simply son of Blaise.”
“Well, that’s currency of the realm.”
It was after midnight when Truman was nominated for president with 948 votes to Senator Russell’s 263. Rayburn attacked the lectern with his gavel; then he shouted that there had been a motion to nominate, by acclamation, Alben W. Barkley for vice president. The thunder of “ayes” made the air vibrate. Then a band, led by James Petrillo, head of the Musicians’ Union, played “Happy Days Are Here Again,” FDR’s theme song, while someone released a flock of white pigeons, signifying peace, into the tropical air. For an instant, each bird seemed intent upon attacking Sam Rayburn. Furiously, he fought them off.
As the pigeons, now blinded by television lights, ricocheted around the hall, Barkley gave a short acceptance speech that was no match for his Bryanesque oration of the day before. Then he introduced the President.
Truman emerged from the darkness at the back of the stage, a dapper small figure whose white suit shone in the television lights as if it were illuminated. He was politely, dutifully, perhaps sadly, cheered at what everyone knew would be the end of his career. Truman put his black notebook on the lectern; opened it.
To Peter’s surprise, Truman spoke not from a text but from notes that appeared to be scribbled in his own hand. Peter had a good view of his back as he pulled himself up very straight and took charge of the delegates, of the Democratic Party back of them and of the American majority back of them in the country.
“Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make those Republicans like it—don’t you forget that.” The unfamiliar word “win” took a moment to sink in. Then there was a roar from the delegates. Were they beholding a miracle? Was Lazarus rising before their eyes? Could they really win?
Gone was the statesman’s drone that Truman affected when he thought an occasion required presidential dignity. This was a tough Missouri machine politician rallying his troops in order to rout the enemy and seize the crown.
Hands chopped at the air as he listed what his Administration had done for the people. What the Republicans had not done or stopped him from doing. He blamed the Eightieth Congress for obstruction. The people had won a great war and enjoyed great prosperity during sixteen years of Democratic rule while the Republican Party had done its best to halt any measure that might serve the people at large. The language was crisp, folksy: the accent that of the hillbilly populist majority of a still rural nation.
It became clear to Peter that the campaign would not be so much against the vapid Dewey but against the Republican Party in the Congress, who said they wanted civil rights but then had done nothing when he called upon them to act.
Truman was now working the audience and himself into a frenzy, at whose peak he dropped his bombshell, near atomic in its effect. “I am, therefore, calling this Congress back into session July twenty-sixth. On the twenty-sixth of July, which out in Missouri we call Turnip Day, I am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws to halt rising prices, to meet the housing crisis—which they are saying they are for in their platform.” He rose to a rhetorical crescendo as he listed other measures which “they say they are for.” Each got its cheers from the audience. Then he shouted, “Now, my friends, if there is any reality behind the Republican platform, we ought to get some action from a short session of the Eightieth Congress. They can do this job in fifteen days, if they want to do it. Then they will still have time to go out and run for office.”
At the end, Truman waved to the cheering audience; then turned away from the lights. He shook the hand nearest him, which belonged to Sam Rayburn. At that exact moment, a dazed pigeon, mistaking Rayburn’s bald head for a solid rock to rest on, settled upon the statesman’s head. Grimly, Rayburn brushed the bird off. Truman exited, laughing.
“Turnip Day,” said Harold Griffiths, after consultation with another journalist, “is a Missouri jingle; ‘On the twenty-sixth of July sow your turnips wet or dry.’ ”
“He sowed them tonight.” Peter was looking forward to a copy of the largely improvised speech.
He was fairly certain that at no significant point had Truman mentioned the name of Roosevelt. He was now himself,
unshadowed, alone; of course he must still fight and win his Turnip Wars.
3
The brick house in N Street was like all its neighbors in that corner of recently gentrified Georgetown. In front of the house, a large magnolia grew out of the cobbled sidewalk; at the newly painted dark green front door, a guard kept watch over what little traffic there was coming and going. Since Peter was expected, the guard ushered him into a hallway, where he was greeted by the lady of the house, a harassed young woman whom he recognized from large Washington parties where she formed a part of the permanent chorus to great events.
As befitted a member in good standing of the whispering gallery, she whispered even in her own house. “He’s very tired, Mr. Sanford. But he does want to see you. He’s in the study.” She opened a door and motioned for Peter to enter a dark book-lined room, as gloomy as the dark autumn day itself.
At a desk, in front of a window looking onto a garden gone to seed, Henry Wallace, haggard and unshaven, necktie askew, was busy typing on a portable machine. He still had his dedicated admirers who would, in a few days, vote for him as president, the Progressive Party candidate for the sole legitimate heir to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
“Mr. Sanford.” Wallace shook Peter’s hand. He was taller than Peter had expected; solidly built, with shaggy hair somewhat grayer than it looked in photographs. “Sit down.” Peter sat on a horsehair sofa, Wallace opposite him. “I’ve got too much to say, as you must have noticed.”
“I know. I’m grateful,” Peter added to his own surprise. He seldom betrayed any partisanship when it came to interviewing, or merely inspecting, national leaders.
“Are you?” Wallace’s smile was weak. “Well, it’s about over.” He looked at his watch. “I have thirty minutes.”
“I’ll just listen, if you don’t mind. This is for after the election, anyway. A sort of final impression. You look, if I may say so, mortally tired.”