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

by Allen Drury

  “I see him appearing—scarcely a week ago, Mr. President, yet it seems a year, so tumultuous have been the events proceeding from that day!—in front of this building to make his inaugural address. I see him, perhaps more swiftly and more completely than many of us expected, perhaps more swiftly and completely than the more cautious might have advised, yet with a deep and I believe genuine sincerity, withdrawing from around the globe those naked expressions of American power which have for so long proved so offensive to so many peace-loving states and peoples.

  “I see, then, a wholly unexpected, overly emphatic, overreactive response by the military forces of the Soviet Union, still apparently operating under a concept of the world which the President’s inaugural made instantly and forever obsolete. And I see an intense inward philosophical and political struggle going on in the Soviet Union concerning this, culminating in an appeal to the President of the United States to come to Moscow in the hope that differences might be resolved and peace be everywhere restored.

  “I see the President going, I see his return, and I see that all is not at once perfect, as my friend from Michigan and many other citizens had obviously hoped it would be. Apparently the battle has not yet been won in Moscow between those who believe in peace and those who believe in the outmoded expressions of power—as also, Mr. President, one must regretfully conclude that it has not been won here.

  “So I see the President, carrying his enormous burdens, seeking a moment of quietude and reflection before he comes to conclusions inevitably profound and far-reaching—and I also see, unhappily, a vast wave of impatience, mistrust, intolerance and fear hampering and hindering him at every turn. I see protest and dissent carried beyond acceptable norms. I see riots and violence designed solely for the purpose of thwarting the peace efforts of Edward M. Jason, and I ask myself, as I now ask the distinguished senior Senator from Michigan:

  “Can America afford this? Can we permit the peace efforts of this great President to be thwarted by protest and violence at home? Can we allow certain misguided Americans to destroy what may well be our last, best hope of peace—when we have before us now in this bill the means of assuring the President the domestic peace and tranquility he needs in which to make the decisions so vital to us all?

  “I wonder how the distinguished Senator would answer that?”

  And he looked about in his shy, apologetic manner and sat down to a thunder of applause that began in the galleries and swiftly spread to the floor. The Vice President, who had returned to take over the gavel from Lacey Pollard, rapped dutifully for order but it was not restored until the outburst had died of its own steam. Bob Munson waited patiently for it to subside and then replied with an expression unmoved and unyielding.

  “I will tell the Senator how I will answer that I think it is so much pious, wishful, self-serving fiction to claim that there is any separation whatsoever between the actions of the Soviet Government and the actions of the Soviet military. There is not one iota of evidence, except the theory put forward by the President himself in private conversations with some of us prior to his departure for Moscow, which indicates in any way that there has been any internal Russian quarrel about this at all. What has happened has been a deliberate, cold-blooded gamble by the Soviet Government in all its branches, to seize upon the opening offered by the President in his inaugural and make the most of it.

  “And,” he added somberly, “there is not the slightest evidence of any land now that the Russian Government and Russian military have the slightest intention of doing anything other than exactly what they are doing, no matter what decision the President may reach. He has sacrificed his advantages and no one, least of all the Russians, has any intention of giving them back.

  “Mr. President,” he said into a growing murmur of annoyance, disagreement and resentment, “I put this question in return to the Senator from Minnesota, and to all Senators who agree with him: is the President reaching any decision? Is he doing anything to meet this increasingly grave situation, which is rapidly becoming almost hopeless? Why do we need domestic tranquility for a man to make up his mind, when he is sitting in the White House apparently paralyzed by shock and apparently incapable of making up his mind on anything?”

  A great boo of anger and scorn gave him answer. But he only looked more determined, shook his head as though to knock off a swarm of hornets and continued in the same level, unimpressed voice.

  “No, I will say to the Senator, it won’t wash. There is a deliberate and carefully calculated plan here to relate this bill to the international situation. The President’s silence encourages this plan. He has said nothing on the foreign situation since returning from Moscow. He has said nothing on this bill. Those who wish American democracy ill are profiting from his silence to link this most viciously repressive and dictatorial measure with the perfectly understandable and legitimate uneasiness and dismay of many loyal Americans who have become almost frantic at the spectacle of their President retreating into silence when history cries out for him to act.

  “I tell this Senate, the two do not go together, no matter how hard the Senator from Wyoming, the Senator from Minnesota and their friends try to make us believe they do. Presumably in due course—and the sooner the better I devoutly pray—the President will emerge from his self-imposed silence and give us the leadership that is the job and duty of Presidents. Then we will know where we are going and be able to take hope again. Then the public outcry will die down. But if we pass this bill in the heat of this moment, it will not die down and go away. It will be law, and it will stay right there on the books to intimidate, dictate, threaten and control the life of every private citizen. We must separate the two. We cannot tie them together.”

  “Will the Senator yield?” Warren Strickland asked quietly from across the aisle. “Isn’t the Senator overlooking one possibility—that the President, when he does act, may not satisfy those Americans who are dismayed and distraught, but may continue along exactly the lines of what I can only call retreat and submission—” there was an ominous rumble from the galleries and he repeated the phrase calmly—“retreat and submission? And is it not then likely that the protests of many millions of loyal Americans will not diminish, but will grow more desperate and frantic? And so are not the proponents correct when they feel, as they obviously do, that the time to clamp their yoke on the people’s necks is now, rather than later when protest may be much better organized and much harder to control?”

  “Mr. President!” a dozen Senators shouted angrily, popping up all over the floor like so many infuriated jacks-in-the-box.

  For a second Bob Munson studied them carefully and then, with a shrug, said calmly, “Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Wyoming, hoping against hope that he will be brief.”

  “Very amusing!” Fred Van Ackerman snapped. “But, Mr. President, not an adequate answer to the vicious slurs and innuendoes which the Senator from Michigan and his friends have been casting on the President and on this bill—this great bill to help America and her great leader in their hour of desperation and need.

  “The Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Idaho are just making debating points, Mr. President. Whatever the President of the United States decides to do—and I am informed that top-level conferences are even now going on at the White House to determine our next moves—(‘That’s a lie,’ UPI murmured to AP, who nodded as his pencil scurried across his note paper)—whatever he decides to do, it will not remove the necessity for stopping disruptive and violent protests which seriously threaten our democracy and seriously cripple the President in reaching his decisions. I agree with the Senator from Idaho, the Minority Leader—protests are going to continue, all right, but it won’t be because anybody disagrees with what the President decides to do. It will be because there is a group—yes, Mr. President,” he exclaimed, his voice suddenly sailing into its high ranting whine, “yes, there is a group, which will always oppose peace, which will always oppose the efforts of dece
nt men to get peace, yes, a group which will not be satisfied until it has used the bomb on the Russians and wiped them off the face of the earth! That is the group we are contending with here, Mr. President! That is the group that seeks to defeat this bill by inflammatory arguments and devious means! There is a group, Mr. President, yes, there is a group, and it is composed of all those who want to see democracy destroyed, who want to see riots and protests disrupt the country, who want to see our great President thwarted and betrayed in what he is trying to do for world peace, a group who want to see democracy, yes, democracy itself, destroyed! There is a group—”

  “There is a group in this Congress,” Bronnie Bernard told the House in his gravest, most effective tones, “and I could not believe my own eyes and ears until I became a member of this body and saw it for myself, who will sacrifice anything if they can destroy the freedoms of this country. Mr. Speaker, I used to hear about this group in college—about how reactionary they were, how rabid they were, how right-wing and uncaring of democracy, how selfish, how self-indulgent, how evil. But I didn’t quite believe it, Mr. Speaker—no, not quite, although I could read in the newspapers every day, and see on television every night, the examples of this group’s evil conspiracies against this free people. But now I see it in action, Mr. Speaker! In action right here on the floor of this House! An ex-President gets up here, a new Congressman gets up here, a handful of other leftovers from an old reactionary way of thinking—” there was a ripple of laughter and applause mingled with a few boos—“get up here and they berate and denounce the President of the United States, they try to deny him the domestic peace and tranquility he needs to carry out his policies in the cause of world peace, they argue and they twist and they duck and they dodge, and what does it all add up to, Mr. President? Crap!” he said, probably the first time that term had ever been used officially in House debate, and there was enough tradition left so that it did produce a little gasp of surprise. So he repeated it firmly. “Yes, crap! Sheer, unadulterated, lying, hysterical, old-woman, poppycock crap!” The gasp turned to laughter, then to dutiful applause from the galleries and many on the floor.

  “The opponents of this bill,” Bronnie Bernard said with a fine self-righteous sternness, “are full of the awful things that it might do to democracy if some evil beings whom they don’t identify, and whom I for one don’t see anywhere on the horizon, should administer it. Well, Mr. Speaker, I am full of what a divided and disrupted country can do to our great President as he tries to make peace, and I am worried about the effect on our democracy if he gets pushed and bullied and harassed into doing the wrong thing. There’s your problem, Mr. Speaker! There’s your danger to democracy! Not in a bill to insure domestic peace and tranquility, which we have got to have in these dangerous times, but in unrestrained and unbridled protest and dissent, running amuck every time some little group or alliance of groups disagrees with the policies of the President of the United States! We simply can’t afford this anymore. We’re entering an era in which things are too tense, too difficult, too subject to being blown up by the errors of men. We need a united country as we have never needed it before. This bill guarantees it. Don’t deny America and her President the certainty of domestic peace! We’ve got to have it or we’ll go under. It is as simple as that.”

  And again he sat down, to heartfelt applause, though he knew that they would all be up again many times before this long day and night were over and the bill safely passed. As he expected—for in the past hour the debate had narrowed down pretty much to the two of them and the House was watching their contest with an intrigued and attentive interest—the new Congressman from Illinois was on his feet seeking recognition.

  “My good young friend from Illinois,” Jawbone said with a cheerful nod, “is recognized for more of his astute and enlightening remarks.”

  “Well,” Hal said with a tartness that would have done justice to his father, “I appreciate the Speaker’s jovial and avuncular welcome. I only wish it were matched by an equal perception and astuteness concerning the dangers of this vicious bill. Now, Mr. Speaker, I shall not try to match the inflammatory rhetoric of the gentleman from New York flame for flame. That would be impossible for my poor talents. But I should like to make a few points in response, if I may.

  “The gentleman is very strong on the reasons why we should waive democratic procedures and, in my belief, clamp a dictatorship on this country in the name of a particular President and what his supporters see as his particular campaign for peace. Doesn’t it occur to the gentleman or any of his friends what a terribly dangerous principle they enunciate? Democracy either exists or it doesn’t exist. If you suppress it in the name of one President and his particular cause, then why shouldn’t you suppress it for some other President and his particular cause? Indeed, if you pass this bill, you will have suppressed it, once and for all, because any President will be able to come along and claim that he has to have ‘domestic peace and tranquility,’ for whatever cause. It may be a war cause one of these days, I will say to my friend from New York and his friends; it may not be a peace cause at all.

  “This government wasn’t established to fluctuate according to who happens to be in the White House and what he proposes. It was established to be flexible enough so that it could protect democracy under any President and any cause. It was established to be flexible enough so that no matter who the President or what the cause, the basic framework of freedom would be preserved.

  “That is what I and those who agree with me think we are fighting for, I will say to the House. We say it doesn’t matter how you invoke Ted Jason’s name and wave the flag of peace—what you are really doing is trying to destroy the right of free dissent and peaceful protest—indeed, dissent and protest of any kind on any subject, for that is what the law will speedily become when it is once on the books. Sure, you think it will be gently administered in the name of Ted Jason for Ted Jason’s cause—but what of other Presidents who will come, and what of their causes, and how will it be administered then? You can’t tailor your democracy to the passions of the moment. It has to be a bridge and a continuation, otherwise it’s no democracy.

  “That is the basic issue on which I am arguing, and others are arguing. Sure, I’m afraid, I admit it—afraid of putting this kind of power in the hands of any government, because who knows what use can be made of it if evil men so desire?

  “That’s the basic argument, in my mind. And then there’s another. It seems to me that all the proponents of this measure are very sure of two things: they’re very sure of how the President feels about it, and they’re very sure of how the Russians feel about it. Yet has he spoken, Mr. Speaker? Have they told us in the slightest way whatsoever that this is all an internal argument between the Soviet civilians and the Soviet military? Do we really know his mood, or theirs? Has anybody told us?”

  He paused and there was an uneasy stirring in the room. But he went on quietly, talking now directly to the Speaker, who shifted uneasily but kept staring back, as if hypnotized, at the steady eyes that looked into his.

  “There were others along, you know, Mr. Speaker,” Hal remarked in an almost conversational tone. “The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate—and you, Mr. Speaker,” he concluded softly. “You. Why don’t you come down here in the well of the House and tell us all about how nice and kindly the Russians are, and about what you observed and what you saw and what you listened to while you were in Moscow with these kind and loving people?

  “I challenge you, Mr. Speaker. Come down here and tell us all about it, and then maybe we can believe.”

  He paused, and the room became very still as everyone turned to look at Jawbone, who, as he told Miss Bitty-Bug later in their apartment at the Watergate, felt like a squinch bug on a banana peel about to be gobbled by a goose. He looked about in some desperation as Hal persisted quietly, “How about that, Mr. Speaker?”

  But at that point—and
he told Miss Bitty-Bug he guessed it was just plain Providence, though of course he wouldn’t for the world have wanted it to happen as it did had he had anything to say about it-two things came to his rescue.

  One was Bronnie Bernard, leaping to his feet with an indignant shout of “Mr. Speaker!”

  And the other, coming rapidly down the aisle to where Hal stood tall and unyielding, a little quizzical smile on his face, was a youthful page carrying a note. He handed it to Hal, who opened it and gave it a quick glance.

  Simultaneously two more things happened. The Speaker said, “The gentleman from New York!” with a relief that would have appeared comic some other time, and Hal cried, “Oh, no!” in a tone of such agony that everything abruptly stopped and the room became deathly still.

  “Does the gentleman—?” Jawbone began uncertainly. “Is the gentleman—?” And then abandoning protocol, in a tone of genuine concern, “Are you ill, Hal?”

  “No, I—” Hal began, and then stopped, white-faced, struggling to get his breath, hands kneading and crumpling, smoothing and re-crumpling, the note while the frightened page stared up at him. “I—I’m all right—I—I guess. But my—my mother—has been kidnapped”—there was a wave of quite genuinely horrified “No’s!” from around the chamber—“and apparently—” he smoothed the note and read it through again, narrowing his eyes and squinting painfully, holding it far from him as though unable to believe its contents—“apparently the motive is not money. They say that unless I—unless I stop opposing this bill and actively support it—and unless the Congress passes this bill—she will be—be—‘liquidated’—is the word they use.… I suppose,” he said slowly, staring at Bronnie Bernard as though he were seeing him for the first time, “that this is—is your doing—or—or people like you.”