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

by Allen Drury

  Far in the distance came the put-put-put and larger and larger in the chill winter sky grew the little whirling speck as all the thousands crowding around the Capitol stared with a strained and anguished intensity down the Mall toward the White House hidden in its trees. Once before a President had arrived by helicopter to address the Congress, but then it had been at night, in spring, warm and steaming, and he had not been going to Moscow but returning—tired, but as he told the Congress and his countrymen, hopeful and encouraged. Those—ah, those had been the heady days!—of peace and love and cynical dreams, and many, many solemn agreements writ in many, many solemn words on many, many solemn pieces of paper that now lay folded and forgotten in silent and untroubled archives far from the dreadful deceits of clever, clever men who all thought, alas for the world, that they could outsmart one another. They had not been able to, for all their devious trying, and so now another President was coming by helicopter to the Congress, to tell its members and his countrymen about another mission to Moscow.

  What would he say?

  What could he say?

  Such being the imperatives of Presidents, it could hardly be an intimation of defeat.

  Hope must go with this President, as with all Presidents, to Moscow or wherever they might travel; and hope, desperate hope, was what awaited him at the Capitol, to be inspired and strengthened and gathered together to add to his own so that it all might fortify him for his fearsome, inscrutable journey. Something waited, there beyond, for Edward M. Jason and his people. What were they to make of it, on the day of his departure?

  Some had already decided, and perhaps they were the lucky ones, for they, at least outwardly, had no doubts.

  “I would accept the invitation of the President to go with him to Moscow,” said ex-President, ex-Speaker William Abbott, “if I thought that anything I might have to offer would change in the slightest the way he is proceeding in this matter. But repeatedly in recent days I have tried to offer advice and it has been consistently and arrogantly refused. Nothing leads me to believe the situation is any different now. I can be better employed here doing what I can to arouse public opinion, either to support him if he comes back with a reasonable compromise of views with the Russians, or to oppose him if he shall have proved to have given them all they want, which is our heads.

  “History has known for more than half a century that the United States only had to lose its nerve once—just once—and the jackals would be at our throats.

  “We have and they are.

  “I wish the President God’s help but I wish our unhappy country even more. My presence in Moscow would be empty window dressing. Here at home, I can perhaps be of some help to him—or to the country. Whichever needs it most.”

  Senator Fred Van Ackerman, speaking as chairman of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce, and for its fellow branches of the National Anti-War Activities Congress, was equally firm.

  “It is with a feeling of genuine relief and a deeply loyal appreciation of his great and farsighted statesmanship that the affiliated groups of NAWAC wish the President of the United States Godspeed on his mission to Moscow. We are delighted to note that he will be accompanied by the Hon. Arly Richardson of Arkansas, Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and the Hon. J. B. Swarthman of South Carolina, Speaker of the House. We are also pleased to note that his delegation will be free of the critics, the carpers and the faint of heart.

  “The three principal organizations which have merged their identities in the single entity of NAWAC-COMFORT, for which I speak, the Defenders of Equality for You (DEFY) and the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism (KEEP)—wish to give their wholehearted, 100 per cent endorsement to President Edward M. Jason and his policies. We believe his inaugural address and the actions he announced at that time, to change the course of the United States and redirect it into the paths of world cooperation and peace, will go down in history as one of the great American state papers and one of the great American policy decisions of all time.

  “We believe his responses to the apparently hasty and ill-advised actions of certain segments of the government of the Soviet Union has been moderate, statesmanlike and farsighted. We regret those actions and we do not believe they represent the true intent of the Soviet peoples or the genuine peace-loving elements within the Soviet Government. One of the great potentials we see in the trip of the President to Moscow is that he will be able to assist the genuine peace-loving elements in the Soviet peoples and Government to regain control of the destiny of their country.

  “We expect President Jason’s example of statesmanship to have a profound effect upon the Soviet leaders. We expect them to respond with forthrightness, practicality and candor to the opportunity afforded by his presence in the Soviet capital.

  “We wish him Godspeed, a safe journey and an achievement worthy of his own statesmanship and the hopes of his loyal countrymen.

  “One further thing we of NAWAC pledge. We pledge to support the President loyally and completely in whatever he may do in his search for peace. We pledge him our full and unqualified assistance in the carrying-out of his policies and their swift, efficient and orderly application both abroad and at home.”

  Which rang uneasy bells in the minds of many, not the least of them, though they too gave outwardly encouraging and fulsome praise, being the clever minds in the world of Walter Dobius. The words that flowed suavely in editorial columns and friendly news stories, that purred smoothly from news specials and roundups and commentaries, were dutifully approving and hopeful. But in the hearts of many in the media, a worm encouraged by the various uncomfortable things that had happened during the campaign was beginning to gnaw. They did not know, as many of them stood observing the crowds outside the Capitol, or awaiting the President’s arrival in the standing-room-only galleries of the House, how fast its insidious mandibles would work upon their arrogance and certainties before this day was over.

  “Mistuh Speakah,” shouted Fishbait Miller, grown gray in the service of his country and this one, familiar bellow, “the Prezdent of the Yewnined States!”

  And down the aisle he came, closely followed by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the rest of the new Cabinet. His face was solemn as he entered the House chamber but it swiftly relaxed as hands were outthrust from both sides and eagerly smiling faces looked fervently into his. Here and there men stood silent and unapplauding, the ones whose disapproval was expected: William Abbott and Senator Munson, Lafe Smith and Cullee Hamilton, Warren Strickland, Hal Knox and perhaps a hundred more. Yet even their expressions were not hostile, only gravely worried and prepared to be helpful, if he would only tell them how. It was still Ted Jason’s Congress, and as he stood at the rostrum to hear the other famous phrase about what a high privilege and distinguished honor it was for the Speaker to introduce the President of the United States—which Jawbone lingered over as lovingly as had all his predecessors—the desperate emotion that welled up to him from the absolutely full and now absolutely silent room was a palpable thing. It came from beyond the chamber, too, from outside the doors, as though the television cameras that searched floor and galleries for prominent and familiar faces were somehow bringing in as well as sending out. And what they brought was hope: willing to be encouraged, anxious to be strengthened, respectful of his sincerity but demanding reassurance with a desperation he knew he could not evade.

  He had known this, in fact, ever since Tashikov’s first harsh message two days ago, and in spite of the way in which he had managed to come through the various challenges he had received from within his own official family as well as outside of it, he had known from almost the beginning that it was indeed, as Valuela had perceived, up to him. His had been a risky and supremely lonely course in the desperate days since inaugural; and so, too, had it been a risky and supremely lonely life. Val had come closest in that period, but even their amicable nightcap in the solarium after midnight had ended in a moody silenc
e as both had stared out across the Ellipse at the Washington Monument and the muted gleam of the Potomac. Only the headlights of a few late-passing autos broke through the misty, faintly luminous glow of the snow-covered world. All else was unmoving, ghostly and still.

  “Well, my dear,” Val had said finally, rising a little unsteadily to give him a brief but heartfelt kiss on the forehead, “good night now, I must get my beauty sleep. Try not to worry too much. Tomorrow will be better.”

  “Good night, Val,” he had said, giving her hand a sudden, almost desperate squeeze, and returning the kiss on her weathered and heavily made-up cheek. “You’re not only an aunt, old girl, you’re a friend.… I think it will.”

  But of course tomorrow had not been better, nor had any of the succeeding hours, or minutes or even seconds, when all was said and done. There had been periods when inner tension had seemed to relax, when there had come a sudden surge of calmness and certainty, when, abruptly, there had appeared to be no problems and he had known that all would come right. Quickly they had passed. He had recognized them for what they were, the mind’s necessary relaxation before having to face the next bout of tension. Even though they had helped, they had not helped for long. Always the terrifying realities he faced came rushing back.

  Yet he felt, as he stood now smiling a little and bowing gravely first to one side of the aisle and then to the other while the Congress, the Cabinet, the Court, the media and the galleries stood applauding with a wild and insistent enthusiasm, that he had managed pretty well to conceal this from those around him. From somewhere in the crucible of these awful three days Edward M. Jason had gained substantial strength—at least the strength to put a good face on it, which was one of the major requirements of the Presidency in all crises, and this one most of all, the crisis to end crises unless he handled it exactly right.

  Somehow, he thought, he had managed to, so far.

  Somewhere in this terrible tangle of days and nights almost without definition, in the onrushing flow of events precipitated by the military masters of the Kremlin, he had undergone what Bob Leffingwell had dimly and somewhat skeptically surmised—an inner change, a reformation almost spiritual, a conversion from politician trying to satisfy a ravening ideological constituency to a man profoundly convinced of his own mission.

  Even though tension had been succeeded by calm, and calm again by tension, and even though there had not been much real slackening of the mental and emotional tightrope he was walking, somewhere far below in the inner citadels of his many-citadeled personality there had grown the genuine conviction that he did have a mission: to show to the world by precept and example that an American President could do what both the honestly idealistic and their cynical and politically motivated leaders demanded of him—offer the world a complete and genuine act of peace, without reservation and without guile.

  The conviction did not remove the tensions or the constantly waning and returning terrors, or the nervous strain, or the need for a couple of sleeping pills every night and an occasional tranquilizer during the day from the worriedly hovering White House medical staff. But it did give him, somewhere underneath, a foundation that he had never had in all his political life. The last two generations of Jasons had always had money as a foundation for their personal lives, but he knew there had not been much real foundation for his political life except a growing, finally all-consuming, desire to be President. This was sometimes enough to get you there but it was never enough to support you once you had achieved the ambition. Now he had found something—at what cost to his country, history would have to decide. But he had it.

  Buoyed up by this, while the desperate applause, yearning for miracles, continued to inundate him in supplicating waves, he was able to continue to stand there, a dignified, statesmanly, commanding figure from whom it appeared miracles might well be expected. Presently there was evident a growing impatience for this. The applause at last began to falter, some voices began to cry, “Enough!” and “Let him speak!” And finally, at last, he did.

  “Mr. Speaker,” he said, half-turning to Jawbone and to Roger P. Croy, seated behind and above him, “Mr. Vice President—my friends and colleagues of the Congress—” he turned back and faced them full-on—“we must indeed be friends in the cause of America, and colleagues in the cause of peace.”

  They applauded again wildly as he had known they would. The Secretary of State, to whom this line, like many others he was about to hear, was a stranger to the text on which he had collaborated until almost 4 a.m., remained impassive to the searching cameras; though at quite a cost, for he knew in that one sentence that while Edward M. Jason had seemingly agreed with him on a plan of action, he was about to elude him once again.

  “We meet,” the President said gravely, “at a time of crisis. Yet I think it is not a crisis of despair. It is a crisis of hope.”

  Again they applauded, save for those few, like William Abbott and Harold Knox, whose lack of response the cameras noted with a lingering and obviously disapproving attention.

  “Hope, because at last, I think, we are going to come to grips with the forces within the Kremlin which have precipitated this situation—the forces which have precipitated many such situations, lesser in degree but equally dangerous to world peace, on many occasions in the recent past. And we are going to find out who really rules Russia, and whether men of good faith and good will can find their counterparts in that land, and work with them toward the great goal of world understanding and world peace.”

  (“Two,” murmured UPI in the front row of the Press Gallery above, making a mark on his notepaper. “Two what?” whispered AP beside him. “Two world ‘peaces,’” UPI explained—“or world pieces, as the case may be.” “Funny,” whispered AP. “Oh, funny.”)

  “I believe this can be done,” the President said calmly. “That is why I am accepting the invitation of Chairman Tashikov and am going directly from this chamber to Andrews Air Force Base and from there, with only a brief rest stop in London, to Moscow.

  “Not as a yielding to the threats that have been made to me and to the United States in the name of Chairman Tashikov—but as an acceptance of the invitation to rational discussion and good-faith negotiation, which I know to be the true purpose and intent of Chairman Tashikov himself.”

  Applause came again, a little uncertain this time, a little more dutiful, but still with him wholeheartedly.

  “Together, I believe,” he said firmly, “Chairman Tashikov and I can cut through this tangle of unfortunate events of the past seventy-two hours. Together we can find a solution that will satisfy the best interests of both our great countries. Together we can find peace.”

  (“Three,” murmured UPI, making a mark. “Doesn’t count,” AP objected; “he left out the world.” “Don’t great peacemakers always do that?” UPI inquired innocently. “I’m giving him three.” “Ho, ho, ho,” said AP.)

  “My countrymen,” the President said, and a new note of gravity entered his voice and held them spellbound, “I would be less than candid with you today if I tried to pretend that I embark upon this journey without considerable handicap. You are all familiar with the ill-advised and impulsive actions taken by military elements in the Russian Government since my inauguration. You are familiar with the harsh statements which have followed upon those actions. You know that a majority of the nations of the world, acting in the United Nations, have chosen to place your country in the category of international criminal, and to give support to those military elements of the Soviet regime. You know that a deliberate attempt has apparently been made by those military elements to place me in the position of threatened supplicant going to Moscow, instead of the position of seeker after world peace (“Four,” said UPI.) which I like to think I occupy.

  “I not only like to think that,” he said with a challenging lift of the head, “but I like to think that my countrymen and decent men and women of the world everywhere regard me that way too!”

  The roar of a
pplause that he wanted rose up to him in full measure. He held the fighting pose, the buoyant angle of head, the fearless and determined look of eye, until at last it died away.

  “In that spirit,” he resumed quietly, “I go to Moscow. Not as a supplicant, but not defiantly, either. Not as a man who believes that he has all the right on his side”—the eyes of William Abbott, glancing sideways along the aisle, met those of the Secretary of State and glanced quickly away again—“for I do not think any American President can go anywhere and claim that—” there was a sudden little burst of applause, startled and pleased, from some of the younger members on the floor and from those members of NAWAC who had managed to gain admittance to the galleries. Again the Secretary and the ex-President exchanged glances, more openly troubled now—“but as a believer in world peace (“Five,” said UPI.) who has faith that honest negotiation can settle honest differences.

  “I know there are some,” he said, and a trace of scorn came into his voice which brought an appreciative murmur across the chamber, “who favor a different course. They favor oratory. They favor bombast. They favor defiance and threats of retaliation and waving the big stick. I am leaving them,” he said, and a roar of happy laughter greeted the sally, “at home.…

  “No, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, my friends and countrymen—I do not go as a warrior but as a man of peace. (“Six,” said UPI. “How about ‘Prince of Peace?’” suggested AP. “It’s been done,” said UPI.) I go in the belief that while the United States is not perfect—indeed, far from it—neither is any other government or nation on the face of this earth. I go in the belief that whatever has happened in the past three days at the direction of the military elements in the Russian Government has not had the true endorsement and support of those other, equally important elements in that government which are peace-loving. I believe those elements do exist and I believe that I can talk to them. And I believe that when I reach Moscow I shall find that what I and many of us have suspected right along is correct: that Chairman Tashikov, though his name has been used to endorse what is seemingly a militaristic course, is in reality as dedicated as I, or any other sane and responsible leader, to the cause of world peace.” (“Seven,” said UPI.)