by James Philip
Romney was a man of many parts: a captain of industry totally at home in the glare of media publicity, the head of Detroit’s ‘Stake’ of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and politically, solidly left of centre of GOP thinking.
For example, he was a voluble supporter of the Civil Rights Movement, and an unapologetic desegregationist. He told anybody who would listen that segregation was ungodly and Doctor Martin Luther King was a great man.
Originally, he had been a Nixon man who had campaigned against Barry Goldwater in 1964, and despite the intervening Civil War in the Midwest which had caused untold damage to parts of his state, nothing had deflected him from changing the way things had ‘always been done’ in Ohio, which he planned, and expected to emerge from the aftermath of the war, stronger, better and wealthier than before. He had never forgotten his humble upbringing, or the difference that Government relief had made to his, and the lives of other Mormons exiled from Mexico living just across the border in El Paso when he was a boy. In his book, not all Federal largesse was, de facto, a waste of money; and there was nothing shameful about accepting charity if one kept the faith and did one’s best to make good in life.
George Romney had nothing but contempt for what Richard Nixon and his gang of crooks had done to the Republican Party – the party of Abraham Lincoln, for goodness sake! – and the reputation of America in the eyes of the world.
Fifty-seven-year-old Ronald Wilson Reagan, whom, having been born in Illinois, was actually qualified to be Vice President. He had got into politics via the Screen Actors Guild and come to prominence rooting out Communists in Hollywood in the 1950s. Hardly a man given to investing in ideology, he had been a Democrat until 1962 before finding a home on the conservative limb of the GOP after the October War. Since then, his career had started, stopped, faltered and lately, galloped ahead, like the former college athlete, who had been saved from overseas service during the Second War by ‘poor eyesight’, had in countless B movie westerns. Insofar as he understood Ronald Reagan’s ambitions, Nelson Rockefeller assumed like most, that Reagan’s aim was to be the next Governor of the nation’s most populous state, California, presumably as a springboard for a shot at the Presidency in 1972, or 1976.
“I won’t beat about the bush, gentlemen,” the President prefaced, with patrician certitude.
A small part of him honestly believed that he had been born for this moment, that it was in some way, rightfully his, and yet, in his heart he understood himself better than that. The man who would be king – or president – ought to be a man who wanted it badly enough to fight for it tooth and nail. He sensed that Walter Brenckmann, beneath the aura of the officer and gentleman stepping up to the plate because it was his duty, much in the reluctant fashion of the boy Arthur drawing Excalibur out of the stone, really, really wanted to be President. If only because one day he had turned around and said: “No more, somebody must do something…”
“The Democrats are going to spend the next four years holding our feet to the fire,” he put to his guests. “I think the people were prepared to give us a pass over the War in the Midwest; but not when we handed Eastern Europe back to the Soviets and frankly, screwed up in the Western Pacific. If the economy hadn’t turned around in the last year, things would be even worse. If we’re lucky, we’ll only lose Congress…”
“And the White House,” Ronald Reagan added, to Rockefeller’s irritation, as if he was reciting words of profound wisdom and insight rather than simply opining upon what was patently obvious to anybody who watched the TV or read the papers.
Having a rare talent for repeatedly stating the patently obvious might go down well on the West Coast but this was Camp David, less than an hour’s helicopter ‘hop’ from DC.
“You ought to do that face-to-face debate with Ambassador Brenckmann,” the other man continued.
“No, that would be a bad idea.”
“Why?”
Nelson Rockefeller had been about to bat this aside. You could do that sort of thing when you were President and you had no intention of running for office, any office, ever again. But he was, at least until around noon on Monday 20th January next year and that behoved him to act, not like the godfather of an organised crime family – The Washington Post’s description of the way the White House had behaved towards Miranda Sullivan, and anybody else who had challenged it in the last four years – but more like the father of the nation.
“I will not be campaigning,” he explained, “or seeking to defend any of the actions, or the crimes committed, by the Administration I was a member of from the bully pulpit of the Presidency. Inevitably, Ambassador Brenckmann will attack President Nixon using me as his proxy, and frankly, even if I was willing to do it, I will not defend the indefensible. The Grand Old Party of Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, needs to take its medicine on the nose; we must admit our errors. We must throw ourselves on the mercy of the people otherwise, the next time the election bandwagon comes around again, what’s left of our great party might not be recognisable, even to we, in this room today.” Rockefeller sighed. “And inevitably, the issue of pardons – which I have no intention to publicly discuss with anybody at this time - for person guilty or charged with high crimes and misdemeanours would surely be raised in any debate with the Ambassador.”
Reagan and Romney flicked looks to each other.
“Gentlemen, I would be lying if I told you I was not still wrestling with the question of the appropriateness of granting pardons at this time,” the President confessed. “I have received advice from the Department of Justice, Congressional and Senate colleagues, and the attorneys of several former White House staffers, concerning those currently in prison, under indictment or awaiting trial, and those who expect to be indicted in due course by the Office of the Special Prosecutor. I have also consulted Judge Earl Burger,” he continued, drawing winces from his guests – mention of the Special Prosecutor’s name usually had that effect in GOP circles – “seeking his views on whether the issuance of pardons, to any of the persons of interest in his investigation, would, at this time, obstruct his work. It was his view that public speculation on the subject of possible pardons was already, seriously hampering his work because likely witnesses were now more likely to claim the 5th, or to refuse point blank to cooperate because they – for reasons best known to themselves – confidently anticipate being the recipient of a presidential pardon. I was able to assure him that although representations have been made to me, and named persons discussed, I have made, and will make no decision prior to Election Day, where I stand on these questions.”
George Romney’s lip curled.
“Is it true that Hoover threatened to spill the beans on the Administration if he doesn’t get a pardon?”
“Director Hoover attended the Oval Office last week to bring me up to date with ongoing high-profile FBI operations,” Nelson Rockefeller confirmed coolly.
Ann Whitman snorted softly and shook her head as her pencil continued to scratch.
The fact that the meeting was ‘on the record’ seemed to bother Ronald Reagan more than Romney. Both men had come to Washington to find out who was going to be pardoned, and when. Presently, DC and the whole of the GOP was in a ferment, not about the election in three weeks but about who was going to get the early morning knock on the door next, the prelude to police searches and arrests. Now that ‘executive privilege’ did not wash, nobody was safe. In both the Senate and Congress Republicans were complaining about ‘the police state’ they were now living in; particularly, the ones in unforeseen neck-and-neck races with the guiltiest consciences.
Although, thinking about it, in Nelson Rockefeller’s experience of the Hill, few of the real crooks had ever been overly troubled by their consciences in the past.
That said, it would not have been so easy for him to take the high moral ground, had not Earl Burger gone out of his way to reassure him, that he at least, was not ‘currently a person of interest’ in his Office’s proceed
ings. This was in no small measure because Rockefeller and his lawyers had freely, cordially in fact, deposed testimony to the Special prosecutor only a month into his initial investigation, and thereafter, cooperated fully – albeit confidentially – with him.
‘I have nothing to hide,’ had been his position all along, although there had been moments when he had had qualms about his prior association with John Mitchell – whom he still regarded as a bizarre pick for US Attorney General – and the man’s activities as a bond lawyer back in his days as Governor of New York. However, Earl Burger had not been interested in any of that ‘legacy stuff’, he had been too busy fighting off FBI and other Administration obstruction, and heavy-handed GOP Congressional interference at the time.
Undeniably, one of the advantages of being one of the richest men in the country was that Nelson Rockefeller’s attorneys were way better than the ones available to the United States Government, or to the President.
“George,” he decided, looking Romney in the eye. “I want you to be the new chair of the Republican National Committee.” Another glance to Reagan. “Ron, I want you to be my Vice President. This Administration remains in power until the third week of January; the American people need to know that we are taking all necessary steps to ensure the line of succession in the meantime, in the event something untoward happens to me.”
Reagan and Romney had assumed that the Speaker of the House would be next in line.
There was an awkward silence.
“Let us be clear on one thing. Only the President has the authority to grant Federal pardons, gentlemen,” Rockefeller reminded the two men. “Only the President. Whatever I decide, your hands will be clean. On that, you have my word. The word of the President of the United States.”
Ann Whitman nodded.
“That is so noted, sir,” she confirmed.
Chapter 65
Thursday 17th October, 1968
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Joanne Brenckmann had left her grandchildren upstairs with Sherry – her son-and daughter-in-law’s larger than life, maid, nanny and housekeeper – and made her way downstairs to the garage-utility room where she and her husband had come on the night of the October War. They had sat together on the old, threadbare sofa in the then, cold, unheated room beneath the clapboard house above them they had expected, at any moment, to be vaporised, held hands and waited for the end of the world. In ten days, that would have been six years ago. Six years in which everything had changed, and yet, oddly, remained the same; although, without Tabatha.
Her daughter would be twenty-four now; she would have finished college three years ago, started teaching, she might even have been married and a mother herself…
But all those possible futures had been extinguished in a ball of fire many times hotter than the heart of the Sun over Buffalo. Tabatha might not even have known that there was a war, might have been peacefully asleep in her bed when that bomb went off. Ground zero was only about half-a-mile away from Joanne’s sister’s house; everything within three miles had been obliterated in milliseconds, swept from the face of the earth as if it had never existed.
Joanne’s sister, Pat, was five years her senior, a little old and crotchety but she had always doted on Tabatha. Pat had once been married to a quartermaster on a Great Lakes iron boat, she had no children of her own and had eventually settled down with Jack Benning, a Professor of English, of all things, a man who had been a confirmed bachelor in his early fifties when the couple had met, and to the family’s surprise, wed without telling anybody. That had been in 1951 and from what Joanne had gathered – she and Pat had never been close and irrationally, and perhaps unfairly, Joanne had got the impression she resented her self-evidently happy, rock solid marriage – that she and Jack were a devoted couple. Anyways, it had been Tabatha who had thawed the cool, distant sisterly relationship that spring and summer before the October War. It had been Tabatha who had written to Pat, explaining she planned to attend college in Buffalo and the offer of her aunt and uncle’s spare, ‘back room’, had been instantly accepted by all concerned.
Joanne and Walter had planned to fly up to Buffalo for Thanksgiving, take a chilly break at Niagara (when there were less people about), and stay on in Buffalo a few days to catch up with Pat and Jack, before bringing their little girl back to Boston for the holiday season. Dan, who had moved up to Connecticut by then, knuckling down to work his way through law school – once they had decided he was serious this time, she and Walter had given him the funds he was going to need to make a success of it – had promised to get home for Christmas, passing on Thanksgiving. As for Walter junior, he would always try to get home if he could but he was in the Submarine Service and for all they, or he knew, he could be anywhere in the world on Christmas Day, even under the North Pole! And Sam, well, he had not been home in three years and she and Walter agonised over his every request, or plea to be baled-out of this, or that scrape, which they received, before always, always, caving in; that said, Sam seemed to have sorted himself out that fateful Fall, or at least decided he needed to be more independent of the family financial teat – it was hard to know which clause applied – presumably, helped by the regular Western Union transfers Joanne sent to California.
She and Walter had never talked about that; it had just seemed the right thing to do because otherwise every few months they had to have another one of those horrible conversations about ‘what to do about the boy’, and they both hated that.
Joanne was fiercely proud of her boys.
Walter junior was about to take command of his first boat. Yes, he had been joint commander of one of the Polaris submarines assigned to the Nuclear Strike Force based in Scotland but this was different, the independent command of an SSN, a nuclear-powered hunter killer. At just thirty-three years old, Junior’s Navy career was back on track.
Unlike his oldest brother, outside of, and probably inside parts of, the Communist world, Sam was one of the most recognisable men on the planet. His father might catch up with him in that regard in a few weeks; until then when people in Australia or England or across North America heard the name ‘Brenckmann’ they were as likely to picture Joanne’s rangy, shaggy-haired, seemingly always smiling youngest son, rather than his father.
Sam’s wife, Judy, had apparently, determined that three children was quite sufficient, thank you very much! She was five, nearly six years older than Sam, who would be thirty-one a week or so after the forthcoming election. She was also a profoundly sensible woman and if Sam played around, like ‘rock stars’ were supposed to do, apparently, he did it very, very discreetly much to the gossip columnists’ frustration.
We Won’t get Fooled Again was at the top of the Billboard Charts again this week. Gretchen said it had sold over four million copies already; with every cent of Sam, Bob Dylan’s and their band’s royalties set to be paid directly into Veterans Association nominated trusts.
‘We hate the war in the Pacific; not the brave men in uniform!’
That was Sam’s valedictory every time he performed the song which, late in the campaign had become his father’s rallying cry to the American people, who were, if the polls were to be believed, lining up behind him in an unstoppable avalanche set to carry Mister and Misses Brenckmann all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
It was more than a little surreal.
And that was before Joanne dwelt on Gretchen’s situation.
Her daughter-in-law was a billionaire!
Obviously, they had all known that Gretchen was never going to be anything other than rich, well-off, whatever that meant and probably very well connected; but that she now had the resources of the whole Betancourt empire at her finger tips was well…
Surreal was the only word for it!
That Gretchen had comprehensively fallen out with her brothers, her mother and one of her step mothers – Celeste, anyway – over her father’s will was inevitable. Predictably, her eldest brother, Jay, was being a complete pi
g; despite his father’s Will leaving contestants in no doubt that they would be wholly excluded from the money train if they made waves, his legal team was attacking the family settlement on multiple fronts, not to mention conducting a campaign to blacken his half-sister’s name in the press.
Where Jay led, the other brothers, elder sisters and the two senior ex-wives followed.
Joanne had been appalled, although not surprised by the vitriol being poured upon her daughter-in-law’s head. She was well aware that if Gretchen wanted, she could cut Jay, and the others off at the knees. Jay was not the most vulnerable of her siblings but she had it in her power to strip him of his directorships and turn him out of both of his mansions, any time she wanted. Joanne was proud of Gretchen for not going down that road, or rather, not quite yet. Privately, Gretchen had begun to get very, very testy with the attacks on Dan, Junior and other members of the Brenckmann family.