Come Nineveh, Come Tyre: The Presidency of Edward M. Jason

by Allen Drury

  “I say so too,” Sarah Johnson said as Mabel sat back looking flushed but doggedly determined while Lafe smiled at her encouragingly and took her hand. “I say give him a chance. I don’t know him like you-all do, not having worked with him in politics so long as you have, but to me he seems to be well-meaning and sincere. Certainly lots of other folks think so, his vote shows that. I say maybe he can get peace. I believe he really intends to try. Let’s let him. Isn’t that the fair way to go about it?”

  “Of course it is,” Dolly Munson said firmly. “Of course it is.”

  There was a silence, increasingly amused on the part of their gentlemen companions.

  “It appears to me,” Cullee Hamilton said presently, “that Ted has the ladies’ vote and we’d better shut up.”

  “He didn’t have mine,” Dolly said, “but that isn’t the point. The point is, just as the President said a while ago, that Ted is about to become the only President we have. So let’s wait and see and wish him all the luck in the world. After all, we drank to that. Let’s do it.”

  “It does appear,” the President said with a chuckle, “that us old cynics are outnumbered, so perhaps we had best surrender, gentlemen. And maybe we should repeat that toast before we end this farewell banquet of the Lost Cause.” His face became grave, his voice filled with a sudden deep emotion, his aspect turned solemn. He raised his glass and they raised theirs. “To the next President of the United States. May God give him the strength he will need to lead us safely in the paths he proposes.… ”

  A few minutes later they stood together chatting and laughing under the North Portico waiting for their cars to drive up and take them back to their respective homes. A heavy snowfall had started while they were dining, blown in on a new storm from the west.

  “Will you be on the platform tomorrow?” the President asked Beth Knox. She nodded.

  “He wants the Knoxes and Lucille to be there.”

  “I shall be,” Lucille Hudson said quietly. “I don’t like him, but it seems the thing I should do. If he feels it will strengthen him in his task, then I feel I must help him.”

  “The Knoxes feel the same way,” Beth said, turning to her son and daughter-in-law. “Isn’t that right?” she demanded firmly.

  “Well—” Hal began, but Crystal took his arm and gave it a shake.

  “We’ll be there,” she promised. “Including Storm Cloud, Jr. Right, Storm Cloud, Jr.?”

  “You women!” Hal exclaimed, but smiling a little. “Yes, damn it, we’ll be there. And he’d better be good, damn his guts.”

  “He will be,” the President said. “I think we can count on Ted for a real spectacular—whatever it may be.”

  Cars came, friends departed. Bob and Dolly Munson were the last to leave.

  “You’d better get back in or you’ll catch your death of cold,” Dolly urged the President as their car drew up. “We’ll see you at noon tomorrow.”

  “We will indeed,” Senator Munson said. He turned back after Dolly got in the car.

  “You really don’t have a guarantee of any kind from him, do you?” he asked quietly. The President replied with an equal quietness.

  “Not a damned thing.” He sighed. “Frankly, Bob, I’m scared to death.”

  The Senate Majority Leader nodded.

  “Yes,” he said grimly. “So am I.”

  And so, in a sense, though they would never believe it and he would never admit it, was he. Not in a panic sense or a paralyzed sense or even in a hesitant sense, but rather in some deep underlying way that came, he supposed, from the fact that his limitations, measured against the job he was about to undertake, seemed suddenly substantial. It was the first time in his life that Ted Jason had ever felt any doubt about his ability to do anything; and since he was about to embark upon the biggest challenge of them all, it was perhaps a healthy thing, for him and for his country.

  Lying awake in the guest suite at Patsy’s, as the clock crept slowly past midnight and on toward 1 a.m., he reflected that at this time tomorrow night he would be sleeping in the Lincoln bed. This would symbolize a great change, he thought wryly, but to the White House staff it would probably just mean a new set of clean sheets. Maybe that was all it would mean to history, too—here he comes, there he goes, change the sheets and away with him—but he did not really think so. He thought, and it was a solemn and profoundly sobering thought, that this time it would mean a little more than that. This time it would mean one of the sharpest breaks ever between one Administration and the next.

  No one, not even George Wattersill, Roger P. Croy and the others who had submitted their suggestions and drafts for the inaugural address, knew what he would do twelve hours from now when, oath taking completed, America and the world quieted down to hear the words of the new President. He had written the heart of his speech himself and had shown it to no one. He had, in fact, kept it on his person, in the breast pocket of his suit, ever since the moment two nights ago when he had completed it in the privacy of this same room.

  In spite of his conviction that what he intended to do was right, and his continuing awareness that the overwhelming majority of his countrymen presumably wanted him to do it, he could not escape a feeling of mixed elation and uncertainty. Was it the right thing? Did his countrymen, operating on that faith in Presidents which is all they have to go on when they vote, really want him to act in the specific fashion he intended? Would the events flowing from it confirm his own convictions and permit him to enter history as a strong and worthy leader—or would they shatter all his hopes, make of his intentions a shambles and write large across his record the single word DISASTER?

  He was not, he knew, the first man in the White House to undergo such doubts and agonies on the eve of great decisions, and presumably he would not be the last. The knowledge was reasonably comforting but not enough to answer the fundamental question. Each in his time, apparently, had to meet his responsibility in his own way and on his own terms. There was no easy answer for Presidents. Yet reviewing his course in the last two months, he was not unhappy with it. He felt that most things he had done led logically to what he was about to do.

  Toward the President he felt that he had conducted himself with considerable skill, not provoking him to an open break, yet at the same time firmly keeping his own options open. There had been a brief period, after he himself had taken the initiative in arranging a break during the campaign, when he had thought he might have alienated the President permanently. But he might have known that he could count on the old man’s devotion to party and concern for country: lifelong political instinct told him he must come back to Ted’s support in the end. After the one sharp speech in Colorado, he had done so. No one could have been more decent or more cooperative than he had been as soon as the election was over. The “informal co-President” arrangement had worked very well. Their relationship had eased many transition situations and their differences on foreign policy, even though sharp, had not resulted in any further public friction. Again the President’s instinct had come to Ted’s assistance. The rapidly gathering mystique of Ted’s swiftly approaching accession to power had guaranteed an outward show of harmony. And he in turn had agreed to accept the President’s term “gradual restructuring,” aware that the words and their application provided a necessary face-saving, not only for the President, but for all the millions who still, despite his massive electoral triumph, were wary of Ted Jason.

  The important thing was that Ted had kept open his options and his freedom to act when the time came. Quite deftly, he thought, he had kept the President and the conservatives reasonably mollified during the transition period. With equal deftness, he thought, he had satisfied his own followers, not giving them as much as they wanted as fast as they wanted it, but daily reiterating and strengthening the vigorous promise of action to come, along the lines they believed were best.

  The problem of NAWAC to some degree remained, but it was his firm belief, as he had told the President, that it wa
s a diminishing problem that would vanish permanently with his inauguration. He was not aware of much recent activity from the organization, and after Fred Van Ackerman’s statement on the Riot Control Act, nothing much had been heard from the Senator. He had come in several times to see the President-elect about jobs for constituents in Wyoming, but each time he had been businesslike and as pleasant as Fred Van Ackerman could manage. He had not referred to the legislation again, nor had he discussed anything in the area of foreign policy. Ted could only conclude that the statement had been just a form of bluster—the sort of thing that Fred might like doing just to make some people uneasy, but no real threat to anyone or anything.

  Nor had LeGage Shelby or Rufus Kleinfert, or DEFY or KEEP, lifted their heads above water in these recent weeks. As far as Ted knew or had been told, all was quiet.

  In the media, too, a pleasantly flattering calm prevailed.

  The Times, the Post, The Greatest Publication, Walter Dobius, Percy Mercy, Frankly Unctuous, NBC, CBS, ABC—a happy expectancy filled their pages and dominated their commentaries. Finally they had their ideal President, the man who would pull their country away from the world and turn it once more inward in the great new isolation they had all, for one reason and another, desired with such hysterical persistence for so many years. Their news stories, their editorials, their “news specials” and “roundups” and solemn “analyses” glowed with an eager anticipation. They, too, seemed to have abandoned an earlier uneasiness about NAWAC.

  The same mood echoed through the world, where journal after journal, statesman after statesman faced toward Washington with high hopes and confident expectations. The things they expected varied as widely as their own self-interests, but of one thing they were certain: Edward M. Jason meant peace, or at least the absence of war. For most, this was the extent of, and the answer to, their concern.

  From his countrymen, too, he had daily received letters running into the many thousands—over 3,673,000 pieces of mail since Election Day, so the overburdened White House mail room told him. The tenor of nearly all was the same:

  “Dear Mr. President-elect: We place in you our hopes for a world reborn and free from the monster of war.… To our dear President Jason: As the parents of two teen-age sons, we look to you to end the awful threat which hangs over them and their generation.… Dere Mr. Jasson: God bless you and kepe you to lede us forever in the ways of Christan peece.… Dear Mr. President: It is hard to escape the conviction that you have been Divinely chosen to lead the world’s unhappy peoples into a genuine, war-free Promised Land.… ”

  And from some few, of course, perhaps 300,000, so he was told, out of the 3,673,000, a more worried note:

  “Dear Mr. President: As concerned citizens who have always believed that America should play her rightful and responsible part in the world, we wish to suggest most earnestly … Dear Mr. President-Elect: You say you want peace and an end to war. We believe you. We do not believe, however, that peace should be achieved at the expense of … Dear Governor Jason: We most earnestly request that you weigh with the greatest care all the implications of the policies you propose. We think that peace at any price is too great a … Dear President-Elect: We pray with all our hearts that you will always keep firmly before you the knowledge that the very life of the United States itself may be at stake in …”

  To all he had arranged to have the staff send the same reply:

  “Dear—I am deeply grateful for the patriotic concern which has prompted you to let me know your thinking on the task that lies ahead for all of us. You may be sure that your views will be of great assistance to me as I enter upon my new duties. With your support, and the help of Almighty God, I shall strive to do all things for the honor and well-being of our beloved country.”

  Hope, doubt, faith, fear, worry, concern—but the strongest of these which came to him from his countrymen was hope. Second only to it was faith—a deep, blind, absolute faith in him as a leader and as a human being, which could not help but move him profoundly many times every day as he went about the fascinating, if sometimes tedious, business of putting together a new Administration. To some extent he took this as his due, but often enough to start the growth of a decent humility he realized that it was a rare and voluntary tribute by his fellow men and women. He was determined not to betray it. And he was confident, as he had told the President, Justice Davis and Robert A. Leffingwell, that with the help of his counterpart in Moscow, he would not.

  He had reviewed Tashikov’s letter many times in his mind, had gone through his periods of doubt about it, emerged on the other side serene in the conviction that it was a genuine and irreversible signal to him that the Communists, too, desired a real and lasting peace. At first, inwardly as wary and skeptical as the President, though he would not admit it to him and could not admit it to his supporters, he had tried privately to get a reaffirmation from the new Soviet Ambassador in Washington. That gentleman (whose military rank of general had caused a little mild, quickly dropped speculation in the press) had received him in the gloomy electric-fenced embassy with a bland and impassive countenance and a firm refusal to transmit his request to Moscow. “Mr. President-elect,” he had said calmly through an interpreter, “the Chairman has made his views completely clear in his letter. What could be clearer? To seek further clarification or repetition could only be considered, I am afraid, an expression of disbelief in the Chairman’s word. Is that the desire of the new American President? If so, it would seem to my government, I am afraid, a most drastic betrayal of the sincere peace-loving hopes of Chairman Tashikov and the entire Soviet people.”

  “No, indeed,” he had replied hastily, while the general and the interpreter stared at him with bland, opaquely interested eyes, “that is not my intention at all. Such a thing is farthest from my thoughts. Please convey to the Chairman my apologies if any such interpretation can be placed on my request. Tell him I withdraw it and that I shall proceed firmly and with great hopes in the spirit of San Francisco.”

  “To the spirit of San Francisco,” the general said with grave approval, and, “To the spirit of San Francisco,” he was given time to reply before the interpreter rose and politely showed him out.

  So he could not betray Tashikov either, nor had he, of course, any such intention. Reviewing the conversation later, he found that he was almost ashamed of himself for ever having entertained for a moment any doubts of the Chairman’s good faith. After all, Tashikov had done exactly what his new envoy said: he had made his views completely clear before all the world, and it was, in truth, an unfriendly and unfair thing to doubt them for a second. It might be the fact, as the President had asserted, that certain aggressive Soviet designs appeared to be going forward; but that, after all, was perfectly understandable. Tashikov was new at the job. He faced an entrenched bureaucracy and a military that had been moving together in an aggressive direction for several decades. He could not justly be expected to reverse things overnight. No doubt he was as determined as Edward M. Jason to change the course of events as soon as he was sufficiently strong in his new position to do so.

  Again Ted felt ashamed of himself for questioning for even a moment so honorable and peace-loving a man. He determined then and there that in dealing with the Soviet Union, he would, if necessary, bend over backward to assist and encourage the leader whose task was as difficult, and whose motivations were as idealistic, as his own.

  Now as he lay in Patsy’s guest suite and felt himself at last beginning to grow drowsy despite the great excitements of the coming day, the uneasy underlying fears vanished altogether. He was satisfied with the things he had done in preparation for his Administration. He was satisfied that peace was no longer a mirage, but something that he and Tashikov together could achieve. As his part of the bargain he felt to exist implicitly between them, he was determined to take the steps he would reveal to the world in his inaugural address, now only eleven hours away.

  There would be in it, he knew, some surprises for
many of his countrymen: but they were surprises just and right and long overdue. He was confident they would be accepted by his fellow citizens and the world as the great and constructive forward steps to peace that he sincerely believed them to be.

  As he drifted quietly off to sleep, he was inadvertently, if honestly, overlooking something he could not have known before but now was about to learn: that Presidents are sometimes full of surprises; and that sometimes there are surprises for Presidents.

  And so Inauguration Day arrived, sharp and bright and sparkling. The storm, ending just before dawn, had left the great white city covered with more than a foot of snow. Hasty crews had worked desperately all night to keep Pennsylvania Avenue open for the triumphal passage of the new President to the Hill, his return to the White House and the parade that would follow. For the sake of the parade their endeavors were necessary, but for the general public they need not have bothered. Not since Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural in March of 1933 had there been such a fervent outpouring as now was making its way to the Hill. No amount of snow, clogged roads, skidding cars, minor accidents, traffic jams was going to stop it. If streets were blocked, cars were locked and left and their occupants proceeded on foot. By 10 a.m. all the main arteries from Maryland were closed, all the bridges from Virginia were solid with abandoned cars. Vehicular traffic had come to a halt save for the police, Army, Secret Service and other official cars that skimmed nervously up and down Pennsylvania Avenue between White House and Capitol prior to the ceremony. Sometimes silent but more often singing, the believers in Edward Jason trudged toward the Capitol, happy and hopeful and greatly excited, in the cold clear sun.

  From those whose business it was to engage in the tricky and inaccurate game of public guessing, there came the customary dutiful estimations. One million were in the city as noon approached, said Associated Press. One million five hundred thousand, said UPI, not to be outdone. Probably close to a million and a half, agreed CBS and ABC. At least a million anyway, said NBC, sounding slightly miffed. Probably five hundred thousand along the mile from White House to Hill, said UPI and AP, agreeing. Pushing five hundred thousand, conceded NBC and CBS. Well over, said ABC. In front of the Capitol, filling the temporary wooden stands, spilling out across the park, solid to the very steps of the Supreme Court a block away, at least another five hundred thousand, said everybody. And still they came, plowing through the trampled drifts, pushing in behind those already in place along the Avenue, breaking through police lines again and again—but happy. Always happy. Here and there a few wore the mailed-fist-superimposed-on-dove emblem of NAWAC, but even these were smiling and excited, if wary, on this wonderful day. Even they for once seemed happy. Nothing but good was expected by this crowd, and nothing but good, it seemed to those trained observers who watched it with microphone or pencil along the line of march and before the East Front of the Capitol, could be expected from it.