by Allen Drury
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” the President remarked in a startled tone. His predecessor sighed.
“Not so good on my side, either, Orrin—Mr. President,” he said. “The House is in a restless, ugly mood right now. We haven’t organized yet, as you know, because I couldn’t make a run for Speaker again until I left this place. So we’ve been poking along for the last few days with Jawbone Swarthman holding the reins, temporarily.” He smiled rather grimly. “May not be so temporary, from what I’ve been hearing in the last twenty-four hours.”
“No!” the President said. He stared out the window, a thousand calculations tracing their disturbing patterns on his face. Almost as if to himself he remarked finally, “I can’t have Jawbone in there.”
“You may have him,” Bill Abbott said, “though I’m going to do my best to stop him. But we’re on thin ice in this new Congress, Orrin—thin ice.”
“And your competition?” the President asked Bob Munson. The Majority Leader gave him an oblique glance.
“Who knows?” he inquired with some bitterness as he thought about the cantankerous senior Senator from Arkansas. “Arly Richardson, maybe. The old bastard has always wanted it; he’d give the young fellows a familiar name to rally behind—and he’s solid on the war issue, as they see it. Not,” he said, quoting the Post, “‘an Administration lackey,’ like me.”
“Arly’s a damned troublemaker,” the President said with heartfelt distaste. He sighed. “And an effective one, unfortunately. Warren, don’t tell me you’re going to be replaced, too.”
“No, probably not,” Senator Strickland said with a smile. “After all, I’m an almost-President, you know, I led the boys to battle and almost licked you, Orrin. I’d be hard to dump, so soon after election. But,” he said, more seriously, “I’ve got problems, too. This war thing cuts all ways from Sunday, in both parties. I think Bob and Bill will survive, but it’s going to be very close.”
“Well, then,” the President said, instantly practical and impersonal, “maybe I shouldn’t embarrass you all by asking your endorsement on what I’m doing in this new crisis. Maybe it should be every man for himself and devil take me if I can’t make it on my own.” He gave them a shrewd glance. “How about that?”
“Oh, no,” Bob Munson said, and “Oh, no,” said William Abbott—not quite quickly enough, in the President’s estimation.
“Now, see here,” he said with the sternness of long-time political and personal friendship. “I don’t want any nobility here. I want you two leading that Congress. If it will help you to get re-elected if you disassociate yourself from me on this, I want you to do it. We can worry about regrouping later, after you’ve won. Don’t let it get in the way now, okay? I can take the flak alone if I have to. I have before.”
For a long moment the ex-President and the Majority Leader exchanged glances, their expressions quizzical, skeptical, informed, sophisticated: balancing all factors, appraising all possibilities, matching Presidential needs, national needs, their own needs. Finally William Abbott broke it with a smile and a shrug.
“Might as well hang together, or we’ll all hang separately. Probably will, anyway. No, Orrin—very kind of you, very generous, very thoughtful—but, no. The country really does need a united front right now, so as long as we can hang on, I expect you will have Bob and me. Isn’t that right, Bob?”
“Indubitably,” Senator Munson said cheerfully. “Let the zombies howl.”
“The only thing, Orrin,” William Abbott added gently, and something in his tone made them all glance at him with a sudden attention, “is—have you really thought this through? Is this really what you want to do?”
“My father doesn’t do things unless he wants to do them,” Hal said with a sharp defensiveness that brought a momentary smile to the President’s lips.
“True enough,” Bill Abbott agreed. “I’m just asking if he really does want to do this.” He stared thoughtfully at his successor, sitting straight and unyielding behind the enormous desk.
“It’s what you did a month ago,” the President pointed out with a characteristic tartness. “Greater in degree, but essentially the same thing: confronting them—holding the line—saying: stop now, this is it, you asked for it, here it is.… Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” William Abbott said, “but I didn’t have to go so far. I went part way and stopped.”
“A month ago that was sufficient,” the President said. “Now we are actually under attack, they’ve started moving, I had no choice.… At least,” he added, and an honestly puzzled frown crossed his face, “I feel I had no choice. Don’t you agree, gentlemen?”
And he turned to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, heretofore sitting silent and attentive in the semicircle facing the desk.
“The only other option would have been to admit defeat and surrender under fire,” Robert A. Leffingwell said. He glanced respectfully but firmly at the ex-President sitting at his left. “Or so it seems to me, Mr. President.”
“All right,” William Abbott said. “And you, Mr. Secretary of Defense?”
Blair Hannah studied the question thoughtfully for a moment, his thin, rather florid face solemn under its crown of silver hair. But his response was equally firm when it came.
“I think so. After all, Mr. President, we have been attacked, you know.”
“All right,” William Abbott said again. “Now,” he said, leaning forward, looking intently at his successor, “I assume you know what you have on hand to do it with, Mr. President. I assume the Secretaries know.”
“Not very much,” the President agreed bleakly. “But that didn’t stop you, and I can’t let it stop me. We both had to respond.”
“In the hope,” Bill Abbott said softly, “that a firm and prompt response would bring them to a halt before they realized how weak we really are.”
“Yes,” Orrin Knox said quietly. “That is the hope. Tashikov told me that they knew, that they would never be bluffed again. Now we shall find out.”
“But, Orrin—Mr. President,” Lafe Smith protested, “surely we are not as badly off as that?…” His voice trailed away uncertainly into a silence broken by a harsh snort from the Secretary of Defense.
“Are we not?” Blair Hannah inquired. “Oh, are we not? What do you think you boys on the Hill have been doing in these recent years, cutting our budgets to ribbons, knocking back defense everywhere, reducing our forces and our arms in every sector? You’ve had a fine time with it, playing the turn-tail-and-make-the-critics-happy game. A fine time!”
“I haven’t!” Lafe said sharply, and at his side the Vice President leaned forward, too.
“And I haven’t,” Cullee Hamilton echoed with an equal sharpness. “And Orrin—the President—hasn’t. Or President Abbott. Or Senator Strickland. God knows we all have fought and fought and fought to retain an adequate defense. You’re a little too generous in passing out the blame, Mr. Secretary.”
“Well,” Blair Hannah said, more moderately, “of course I didn’t mean to be quite so general in my condemnation. I know there has been a constant group constantly fighting, and I know you all belong to it. I apologize for getting too dramatic about it. But, my God!” He paused and took a deep breath. “Do you have any conception of how weak we have really become over the past few years? It’s been an absolutely shattering revelation to me since I’ve begun to find out about this new job, I can tell you. Apparently we’ve been sleepwalking straight into disaster. And now,” he concluded in a voice remote and nearly bereft of hope, “this may be it.”
“But you don’t really think so,” Ceil Jason said quietly, “or you would not have concurred with the President. Nor would any of us concur with him. Isn’t that correct?”
Blair Hannah gave her a long look and finally shrugged.
“We have a fait accompli, Madam Ambassador,” he said. “Of course we support our President.”
“If you don’t really support him,” Ha
l Knox said angrily, “maybe you’d better get out of the Cabinet, Mr. Secretary!”
But at this his father, who had been silently studying them all, intervened with a calm parental firmness.
“Hal, you will be quiet, please. I understand the Secretary’s feelings. I understand everybody’s feelings. We’re in a very tough situation. I’m taking a very great gamble—the gamble that before they really realize how weak we are, the tide will have turned and we’ll be on top again. The gamble that this moment will come before we begin to run out of arms, supplies, matériel, ships, planes, guns, tanks, missiles … men.”
“And how long do we have to prove out the gamble, Mr. President?” Cullee Hamilton asked quietly. The President gave him a long and troubled stare.
“Not long enough,” he said at last. “But it seems to me it must be done.”
“Very well,” William Abbott said quietly. “As long as you have really thought it through, Mr. President; as long as this is really what you want to do. Not an impulse, not a flare of temper, not—if you will forgive me—what is known in some influential circles as a ‘typical Orrin Knox off-the-cuff reaction.’ But a cold sober judgment.”
The President gave him too a long, troubled look, and then spoke with a finality that closed the subject.
“We’re in a corner, Bill. They’ve finally made that mistake, the one that we’ve all tried to avoid for so long. And now there’s no way to go but straight out.”
“Right,” Bill Abbott said crisply, and turned to the rest.
“Well, gentlemen—Madam Ambassador and gentlemen—I’d say that about does it. Let’s get started on that statement. Mr. Secretary”—he turned to Bob Leffingwell, tense and worried but determined, as they all were now—“why don’t you transcribe for us? Mr. President, what do you want us to say?”
“I think,” he said, feeling as though he were very high on some mountaintop, breathing very thin air, not at all sure he would make it safely down but committed beyond recall, “that you might say—”
Top congressional leaders back Knox war moves. Abbott, Munson, Strickland pledge all-out support in “crisis forced upon us by communist aggression.” Many on hill express misgivings about action. Battle over leaderships looms in both houses.… president names mrs. Jason to UN post, orders U.S. resolution condemning red drive introduced in security council.… U.S. counter-offensives in Africa and Panama make little headway in first day’s fighting. Allies harsh on Panama blockade.… anti-war groups muster for mammoth demonstration at Capitol. First polls show many “appalled” by belligerent response of new president.
“We are appalled,” the Times said sternly, “by the belligerent response of our new President to the Sino-Soviet drive to restore some semblance of stability and democratic government in both Gorotoland and Panama.
“We would suggest that he is reacting hysterically, and perhaps fatally, to a dangerous but perfectly understandable reaction on their part to inexcusable United States meddling in the internal affairs of these two troubled lands.
“Orrin Knox has been in office twenty-four hours and already he is deepening our commitment to overseas war. He is also flirting, as such moves nowadays always flirt, with the dreadful possibility of atomic retaliation. And for what? A little country far away, in the heart of Africa, whose affairs are no concern of ours, whose people, desperately anxious for democracy, have a right to our support, not our obstruction. And a country, admittedly nearer at hand, whose people also yearn for democracy and for control of the Canal which, in justice and in right, belongs to them to do with as they see fit.…”
“Perhaps the most comforting thing about Orrin Knox,” the Post remarked with a savage jocularity, “is his utter predictability. Twenty-four hours—twenty-four hours? Scarcely twenty-four minutes!—and up he comes with a typical Orrin Knox off-the-cuff reaction. And in this instance, a typical off-the-cuff reaction that could very well blow the world to hell in a hand basket before another twenty-four hours.
“We do not condone the violence of the Sino-Soviet response to endless American meddling in the internal affairs of Panama and Gorotoland, but we can see why they felt they must act. The response of Orrin Knox to their response indicates why they felt they must move quickly and decisively before he could thoroughly muster U.S. power for further meddling. Had they waited any longer he might have been able to mount a real counter-offensive instead of the apparently doomed gesture now under way. And then the fat would really have been in the fire.
“He has appointed Mrs. Ceil Jason to the UN, and today a U.S. resolution condemning Russia and China will be introduced by her in the Security Council. This will of course bring a counter-resolution from the other side condemning American action. This in turn will be followed, we predict, by a speedy denunciation of U.S. interventionism. And then, if our brave new President has the ounce of sense we still like to hope he has, he will take the face-saving opportunity offered and speedily withdraw from his belligerence and let the peoples of the world decide their own destinies without his imperial supervision.”
Walter Dobius, more concerned with long-range implications, as he always prided himself he was, laid it on the line to his readers from “Salubria.”
“Orrin Knox has thrown down the gauntlet, much more rapidly and dangerously than anyone would have believed, to all who believe in peace and the sane resolution of the conflicts of men. Now if world peace is to be preserved the severest correctives must be applied—by the Soviets and the Chinese on the field of battle and in the United Nations, and by his own people in the Congress of the United States.
“Most observers here in the capital, stunned by this new display of the famed Knox belligerence, have no doubt but that the decision of battle will go against it. Most hope the decision will be rendered with merciful speed before too many more American boys are sacrificed on the bloody ancient altar of balance-of-power diplomacy. Any more, of course, is ‘too many more.’ Unfortunately some are already lost. We must pray that events will place an immediate limit on further tragically useless deaths.
“There is, however, an aspect more long-range and more fundamental for the future, and that must be decided this week in the Congress. No doubt motivated by reasons of long-time political loyalty rather than good judgment, the ex-President of the United States, who was before, and who aspires to be again, the Speaker of the House; the Majority Leader of the United States Senate; and the Minority Leader of the United States Senate have joined the President in his dangerous gamble. They have pledged him the full support of Congress.
“It is a support, the facts suggest, which they no longer control and can no longer deliver. And a prediction may be ventured that this will be made speedily apparent when all three of these gentlemen seek re-election today to their leadership posts.
“They will be judged by their peers on the issue they have chosen to stand on—all-out support for the President.
“It seems highly likely at this writing that they will be roundly defeated for it.”
And Frankly Unctuous, speaking from the Senate Radio-TV Gallery in a pre-session telecast, tied it all together in one of those smoothly rolling packages for which he received one hundred thousand smackers a year.
“Belligerence on the battlefield—and probable defeat there, in the United Nations and in the Congress. These are the prospects that await the brand-new Presidency of Orrin Knox.
“So, tragically, begins his opportunity to change his old warlike image, seize the torch passed on to him by the fallen Edward M. Jason and emerge as the world’s hope for peace.
“It is a sad and discouraging commentary on the arrogance of one man.
“No one in Washington, or anywhere else as far as we can discover, condones the perhaps overly harsh Sino-Soviet decision to punish American intervention in Panama and Gorotoland with a swift and decisive move to aid the freedom-loving elements in those two disturbed countries. But by the same token, no one—save a little handful of political fai
thfuls who may be facing consignment to history’s dustbin—approves of the violently over-reactive response of our new President.
“Orrin Knox could have gone to the United Nations and asked for its support in this new crisis. Given past American intransigence in the face of UN demands for withdrawal from Gorotoland and Panama, this might not have been forthcoming. But at least it would have been the peaceable, the constructive, the responsible method of approach. And it is possible that he might have won a signal victory there and emerged, greatly strengthened, to commence really genuine peace negotiations with Moscow and Peking.
“Now this, in all probability, will never be.
“In Congress, had he not forced ex-President Abbott and Senator Munson to go along with his war policy, he might well have secured their re-election to the leadership posts in House and Senate. Thus he would have assured himself a firm legislative foundation for a reasonable program.
“Now, tied to his falling banner and his failing cause, they will very likely be defeated for the leaderships. Thus he will face heavy problems in dealing with new and less obliging lieutenants on the Hill.
“Washington is talking already of what is being called ‘the tragedy of Orrin Knox.’ Its theme is false pride. Its fatal flaw is arrogance. Its impact upon all our lives may well make it the tragedy of America.”
And in similar language spoke once more all those vocal, vitriolic and well-publicized citizens for whom Supermedia provided the forum and set the pace: so yapped the pack from all its many burrows across the land.
“My God,” Lafe Smith said to a silent Ceil as, closely guarded by the Secret Service, they entered the doors of the Secretariat of the United Nations in New York through solid walls of jeering demonstrators shortly before noon, “is there no perspective left anywhere in this crazy land?”
And “My God,” Bob Munson remarked to Warren Strickland as they prepared to go in and meet the press on the floor of the Senate just prior to the opening bell, “doesn’t anyone try to be fair to anyone anymore?”