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

by Allen Drury

  Finally Bob Munson spoke in a reflective, distant, almost disinterested fashion.

  “You want to go to Geneva,” he said, his eyes and his thoughts far away. “I went to Geneva once with another President, Harley Hudson, a couple of years ago. And when we got there, we were confronted with all the wildest dreams of the Communists wrapped up in one package—demands that we get out of this and get out of that, withdraw here and withdraw there, cut back our armed forces to the bone, give in to Communist imperialism entirely. We were threatened that if we did not there would be instant retaliation against our cities, presumably atomic, from orbital bombs, from the submarines that are stationed permanently off our coasts, and in other ways. And the world knows what Harley said. He said they were crazy and he was going home. And he got up and led us out of that hall, and we did come home. And nothing happened.… I wonder,” he said, still in a distant, musing way, but with his eyes now coming back to focus steadily on those of the President, “if you would have the guts to do that. And I wonder further why you think it is that you aren’t going to be confronted with something very similar to what Harley got, in view of what has already happened out of Moscow in these last few hours?”

  For a long moment the President returned his gaze, unwavering. Then he glanced up, as if seeking some reassurance, at his predecessors on the wall. Then he glanced back at the Majority Leader and framed his reply in careful yet confident words.

  “In the first place, I cannot tell you what I would do in such a situation, for I have no certainty—nor do you—that it will be presented to me. I would hope that whatever I did would be done with the same courage and the same dignity as that shown by President Hudson, God rest his soul. We owe him a very great debt for what he did on that day, and whether you think so or not, Senator, I am not forgetting it.…

  “Now: you ask me why I think there is a middle ground to be found. I will tell you why. Because I believe that Chairman Tashikov—”

  “Christ!” Hal Knox said in a muffled whisper, but the President, though an icy look came into his eyes for a second, ignored it and went calmly on.

  “—is not the man who originated these actions of the past few hours. I do not believe that the man who sent me the message on the eve of my election is the man who ordered these frightful things. I do not believe the spirit of San Francisco can be that lightly dismissed. I believe he still adheres to it, and I think it is up to me to help him come back to it.

  “I think,” he said, and his voice too became contemplative and far away, “that he is a prisoner of his military. I do not believe that any sane man would condone, connive or cooperate in doing what has been done. I think he had no choice. I think in a very real sense he is trapped. I think it is up to me to get him out so that we can all breathe safely again. I think I can do it if I pretend to go along part way—if I show a spirit of peace and cooperation—if I provide the standard forms of diplomacy and play the game with a straight face as it has always been played.

  “Then, I think, there will be hope. Then, I think, we can work it out. If I can just get him to Geneva, out of Moscow, into the public spotlight, away from what I believe to be his captors—then I think I can do it.

  “You talk to me,” he said, quietly but with a certain indignant bitterness just the same, “about taking gambles. I submit to you I am about to take a gamble; in my way, just about as brave a one as Harley Hudson took. I submit to you that the alternative is world war and the end of everything. I would appreciate it, if I may say so once again, Mr. President and those who agree with him, if just once”—and the bitterness became more sharp and open—“if just once you would grant me my integrity, my patriotism, my good faith and my intelligence. I really would appreciate that.”

  “Hear, hear!” the Vice President said harshly.

  “I say amen!” Jawbone Swarthman echoed. “I certainly say amen!”

  “I, too,” Tom August agreed.

  “And I,” George Wattersill and Ewan MacDonald MacDonald offered fervently together.

  “And I,” said Bob Leffingwell quietly, at last. “Personalities don’t help. If this is the decision, this is the decision.”

  “Well, then, Mr. President,” William Abbott said with an equal quietness, “I think you should know that when Bob and I run for re-election to the leaderships on the Hill this afternoon, we will make this the issue and it will be a clear-cut vote by the Congress of the United States on whether they approve of your handling of this or not.”

  For several moments the President stared at him with an expression that yielded nothing. Then he put out his arms straight against the edge of the desk and pushed himself back to his full seated height.

  “Very well,” he said in a quiet but unyielding tone that showed he was completely committed at last. “If you do, you will lose.”

  And in the afternoon—after he had appeared on television at 11:30 a.m. to announce and explain his message to Moscow, concluding just two minutes before the sessions began at noon in Senate and House—he proved to be right, though it was a bitter battle and one with ominous overtones to come.

  In the Senate, sarcastic Arly Richardson of Arkansas, triumphing by a vote of 63-34 over the man who had beaten him for the job a dozen years ago, toppled Bob Munson at last from the Majority Leadership in which he had become a Washington fixture.

  And in the House, exploding all precedent, an ex-President just returned to his Congressional seat was handed a sensational slap in the face when his colleagues voted 323-102 to deny him the Speakership and gave it to a bouncing, beaming, ecstatically voluble J. B. Swarthman of South Carolina.

  In all the terms in which what remained of “the old Washington” thought and operated, both defeats were almost unbelievable. But this was the New Day, and it had arrived with a vengeance that left even the most delighted and approving of commentators floundering. Walter Dobius and his colleagues sought, bemused, for words. Frankly Unctuous and his colleagues gulped and stammered in the astounding glare of events. They wanted the New Day but found it almost impossible to grasp. In his first test with the Congress, their man in the White House had won two sensational victories, hands down. They almost could not believe it.

  Nor, as he walked slowly back to the Old Senate Office Building with Dolly and Stanley Danta, could Robert Durham Munson, senior United States Senator from the state of Michigan; now, as he had to keep reminding himself through the gloom of a shattering and unprecedented rebuff, just another Senator. It had been a long, long time since Bob Munson had been “just another Senator”; and considering all the implications to be found in his defeat, and in the manner of it, he considered that the event held a significance far beyond one bruised ego. It did indeed indicate the New Day, and he found the fact profoundly disturbing. He had seen the future, to paraphrase a famous ubiquitous saying, and he didn’t like it. In fact, as he had just put it to his wife and Stanley, it scared the hell out of him.

  The debate had begun mildly enough, as such things customarily do at the start of each new Congressional session. First had come the swearing-in of new Senators. Then John DeWilton, senior Senator from Vermont, had risen in his likably pompous way, like some silver-topped cockatoo, to move the name of the Minority Leader for the Majority Leader’s job. Warren Strickland, back in his front-row seat as Minority Leader after his foredoomed fling at the Presidency, had smiled and bowed with a suitable irony to acknowledge the equally ironic applause of the sixteen Senators left on his side of the aisle after November’s Jason sweep.

  At that point Stanley had arisen at his desk beside Bob Munson, who sat comfortably relaxed across the aisle from Warren, to make the customary amendment to the motion, substituting Bob’s name for Warren’s. At that point things began to go wrong with a sensational suddenness.

  “Mr. President!” Fred Van Ackerman cried from his seat in the second row behind Bob. “Mr. President, I wish to further amend the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut to substitute for the name of t
he senior Senator from Michigan the name of the senior Senator from Arkansas, the Honorable Arly Richardson. I so move, Mr. President!”

  “Mr. President—” Stanley Danta began in surprised protest. But before he could proceed further the new junior Senator from Oregon, a thirty-year-old so youthful in appearance that the guard on the door literally had challenged his entry a few minutes before, was on his feet to cry, “I second the motion of the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. President!”

  And from at least a dozen of his equally freshman colleagues, springing up all over the majority side, as Johnny DeWilton expressed it disgustedly later, “like a pack of damned chorus boys,” came cries of “Second! Second! Question! Question! Vote! Vote!”

  “Mr. President!” Stanley Danta shouted, aided now by Lafe Smith, Cullee Hamilton and half a dozen others, also on their feet and shouting. “Mr. President!”

  After a pause, during which he studied Stanley with a bland look so close to insolence that Stanley could hardly believe it, Roger P. Croy, presiding for the first time as Vice President, rapped twice with a deliberately languid gavel.

  “For what purpose,” he inquired, elaborately polite, “does the senior Senator from Connecticut arise?”

  “The Majority Whip,” Stanley said with a rare show of anger (while from somewhere behind him someone said mockingly, “But not for long”) “arises to protest the railroading tactics which are apparently being resorted to by some in this body.”

  “Mr. President,” Fred Van Ackerman demanded with a sarcastic laugh, “isn’t the Majority Leader’s election always railroaded? Hasn’t the Senator from Connecticut been conniving for a decade in railroading the Majority Leader’s election? What’s the sudden noble fuss about, Mr. President? What’s so new here?”

  “Mr. President,” Stanley said, and the anger was suddenly raw in his voice for a man he utterly despised, “I did not yield to the junior Senator from Wyoming, a man known all too well to this Senate—” there was a murmur of boos across the floor, echoed and increased by the packed galleries—“to make his usual flippant, obstructive and ungentlemanly comments. The Senator is proposing a fundamental change in the organization of the Senate and I think it should be debated.”

  “Have your debate, Senator,” Fred Van Ackerman advised disdainfully. “We have the votes.”

  “And who,” demanded Stanley Danta harshly, “are ‘we?’ Are they Senators who have sat in this body long enough to know the junior Senator from Wyoming for what he is, a man censured by his colleagues two years ago for his part in destroying one of the most decent men who ever served here, the late Senator Brigham Anderson of Utah? Are they newcomers here who have no knowledge as yet of the customs and the traditions of this Senate—” there was a sudden explosion of laughter, harsh, sarcastic, so unexpected that for a moment he hesitated and almost lost his thread of thought—“no knowledge of our traditions and customs, Mr. President, and therefore easy game and easy prey for a fast talking freebooter—”

  “Now, Mr. President!” Arly Richardson exclaimed, rising to his feet abruptly while around him the boos and laughter for Stanley Danta grew louder. “The Senator from Connecticut is impugning the personal honor and integrity of a fellow Senator. I demand he be required to apologize, Mr. President!”

  “The Senator from Connecticut,” Stanley Danta said, angrier than his colleagues had ever seen him, “does not see, he will say to the Senator from Arkansas, how he can impugn something which does not exist. The Senator from Connecticut—”

  But now the booing, filled with an anger as great as his own, hummed and buzzed not only from the floor but from the galleries where it could now be seen that a number of the black-leather-jacketed thugs of NAWAC were scattered through the audience. Apparently they had not disappeared quite as readily as Ted Jason had prophesied. After they had expressed themselves sufficiently the Vice President put a stop to it with a sudden sharp rap of the gavel.

  “The Senator from Connecticut,” he said calmly, “will proceed in order. If he wishes to proceed.”

  “Yes,” Stanley snapped, “I do! The Senator from Wyoming, as I say, is attempting to overturn here a man who has served with great distinction and integrity as Majority Leader for a dozen years. He is attempting—”

  “Oh, no, Mr. President,” Fred Van Ackerman interrupted, not even bothering to seek recognition. “That is not the man I am seeking to overturn, I will say to the Senator. The man I am seeking to overturn is the man who will, if he is re-elected to this powerful position, do everything he can to thwart and defeat the plans of the greatest leader for peace this nation has ever elected to the Presidency. That is why I wish to defeat Robert D. Munson!”

  There was a burst of applause and cheers from many Senators and from the galleries. He looked about with a grim satisfaction as Bob Munson, half turned in his seat, studied him with an impassive face—too impassive for Fred, who suddenly jabbed an accusatory finger in his direction and sent his voice into its familiar, psychotic whine.

  “There he sits, Mr. President! Yes, there he sits, this man who would destroy the plans of our great new world figure, our great new architect of world peace who wishes to relieve humanity of its burden of war! There is the enemy of Edward M. Jason, nurtured in the bosom of this Senate like an asp and an adder to sting and destroy! I say to you, Mr. President, we cannot afford to re-elect him Majority Leader! The Senate cannot afford him—the country cannot afford him—the world cannot afford him! He cannot honestly serve with this President because he does not believe in this President! The effrontery of him, Senators, the effrontery! The ego, the awful ego! He wants to be Majority Leader just because he has been Majority Leader! And that isn’t all, I say to you. He wants to hang onto his office like a dog in the manger so he can hurt and obstruct this great new President. He doesn’t want to serve and help this great new President, he wants to hurt and obstruct him. That is his reason. Senators! Strip him of his influence and get him out of the way of Edward M. Jason! …

  “I defy him,” he said, making one of his sudden baffling shifts to a quite ordinary conversational tone, as his colleagues and the galleries stared at him, fascinated, “to look this Senate straight in the eye and tell us that he approves of the policies of Edward M. Jason 100 per cent and will work for them 100 per cent.

  “I defy him, Mr. President. I do not think he can do it.”

  And abruptly he sat down with a grimly satisfied little nod of his head and a smile so tight and tense it looked like death.

  There was a renewed burst of applause from the galleries, led ostentatiously by NAWAC and joined by what the Congressional Record referred to next day as many Senators. The Vice President made no attempt to control it. Presently it was succeeded by a humming, buzzing, waiting silence as Bob Munson, still outwardly impassive, looked thoughtfully straight ahead, and in the Family Gallery above, Dolly, accompanied by Beth and Crystal, twisted her handkerchief, unknowingly, into tatters.

  Finally, just as Roger P. Croy was about to say something, the Majority Leader rose slowly to his feet, straightened his shoulders and gave him a stare as bland and unyielding as his own.

  “Mr. President,” he said slowly, and the crowded old chamber became instantly hushed and attentive, “I see that we have here, indeed, the New Day, in which no attempt is made by the Chair to control these demonstrations from the galleries, which are against the rules of the Senate.”

  There was an angry booing, mostly from the representatives of NAWAC. He spoke into it with a flat, blunt anger, his eyes holding Roger P. Cray’s.

  “Why don’t you perform your duties, Mr. Vice President? I am sure you would if they were applauding me.”

  For a long moment the Vice President, flushing to the roots of his silvery mane, gave him angry look for angry look. Then his eyes dropped, he rapped the gavel as half-heartedly as he dared, and said, in a muffled voice, “The galleries will be in order.”

  “What?” Bob Munson demanded sharply.

 
; “I said the galleries will be in order!” Roger P. Croy repeated loudly.

  “And what else?” Senator Munson asked with an ominous quiet, as the parliamentarian hastily scribbled a sentence and shoved it under Roger Croy’s angry nose.

  “The-galleries-are-guests-of-the-Senate-and-they-will-be-requested-to-leave-if-there-are-any-further-demonstrations!” the Vice President snapped, so rapidly the words tumbled upon themselves.

  “Very well,” Bob Munson said. He reached down, lifted a glass of water from his desk, took a sip, replaced it. “Now, Mr. President,” he said, “since we have here an issue raised by the junior Senator from Wyoming which I did not wish to touch upon, but which he wishes to, I will answer him. In a way, perhaps, he is right to raise it, for it goes to the fundamentals of what this Senate is, and what it wishes to be, during the Presidency of Edward M. Jason.

  “I will say at the outset that I do not find too much in the events of recent hours to lead me to believe that the new President of the United States has yet found his way in foreign affairs.”

  There was the start of a boo, but this time Roger P. Croy did use his gavel slightly more than lackadaisically. The boo subsided, reluctantly.

  “He has made a beginning only, and in the opinion of a good many, I believe, including myself, it is at best an extremely controversial and uncertain one. His opening decisions, promulgated from the steps of this Capitol yesterday at noon—and promulgated, I will grant, in complete good faith and good will on his part—have been greeted with a reaction of the most violent and hostile kind from the Soviet Union. He has just attempted to respond, in the message to Moscow which he described to us over television less than an hour ago. No one at this moment can say what the future holds. The fate of peace—the fate of this nation and the Russian nation—perhaps the very fate of the world itself—quite literally hangs in the balance at this moment.