Advise and Consent Read online

  Table of Contents

  Democracy

  Original Preface to Advise and Consent

  Major Characters

  The Vice President

  Book One: Bob Munson's BookChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Book Two: Seab Cooley's BookChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Book Three: Brigham Anderson's BookChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Book Four: Orrin Knox's BookChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Book Five: Advise and ConsentChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Memories of Al

  AppendicesAcknowledgments

  Memorandum on Advise and Consent

  ALLEN DRURY

  ADVISE & CONSENT

  The Landmark Masterpiece of Political Fiction

  Allen Drury

  The landmark masterpiece of political fiction, back in print! Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent is one of the high points of 20th Century literature, a seminal work of political fiction—as relevant today as when it was first published. A sweeping tale of corruption and ambition cut across the landscape of Washington, DC with the breadth and realism that only an astute observer and insider can convey.

  Allen Drury has penetrated the world’s stormiest political battleground—the smoke-filled committee rooms of the United States Senate—to reveal the bitter conflicts set in motion when the President calls upon the Senate to confirm his controversial choice for Secretary of State. This novel is a true epic showing in fascinating detail the minds and motives of the statesmen, the opportunists, the idealists.

  From a Senate old-timer’s wily maneuvers, a vicious demagogue’s blistering smear campaign, the ugly personal jealousies that turn a highly qualified candidate into a public spectacle, to the tragic martyrdom of a presidential aspirant who refuses to sacrifice his principles for his career—never has there been a more revealing picture of Washington’s intricate political, diplomatic, and social worlds. Advise and Consent is a timeless story with clear echoes of today’s headlines

  Includes Allen Drury’s never-before-published original preface to Advise and Consent, his essay for the Hoover Institution on the writing of the book, as well as poignant personal memoirs from Drury’s heirs.

  ***

  Smashwords Edition - 2014

  WordFire Press

  www.wordfirepress.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61475-079-6

  Advise and Consent, Copyright 1959, 1987, Allen Drury.

  Originally published by Doubleday & Co.

  Copyright © 2014, Kevin D. Killiany and Kenneth A. Killiany

  “Original Preface” and “Memorandum,” previously unpublished,

  Copyright © 2014, Kevin D. Killiany and Kenneth A. Killiany

  Memories of Al (1) Copyright © 2014, Kevin D. Killiany

  Memories of Al (2) Copyright © 2014, Kenneth A. Killiany

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by Janet MacDonald

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  ***

  Dedication

  For my Parents

  and Anne

  and dedicated to

  the distinguished and able gentlemen

  without whose existence,

  example and eccentricities

  this book could have been neither

  conceived nor written: The Senate of the United States

  ***

  Democracy

  “Democracy is the most fragile thing on earth, for what does it rest upon? You and me, and the fact that we agree to maintain it. The moment either of us says we will not, that’s the end of it. It doesn’t rest on anything but us; it doesn’t rest on armed force, the moment it does it isn’t democracy. It isn’t something to kick around or experiment with.”

  —Allen Drury, Stanford University (age 19)

  ***

  Original Preface to

  Advise and Consent

  (Previously Unpublished)

  This preface, which I still consider an honest statement that should have been in Advise and Consent, got as far as the galley proofs. At that point, Doubleday’s lawyer said in great alarm, “You can’t say that. If you even admit in the slightest that some of the characters might have been suggested by actual people, you’ll have given away your case before you ever get to court”—assuming libel. “Of course,” he added, “the standard statement about ‘Any resemblance being strictly coincidental’ doesn’t mean anything, either, legally.” The upshot was that I finally yielded to these fear-filled counsels and left out the Preface. And when the book came out, it did not even bear the standard “Any resemblance, etc.,” so I really don’t quite know where that left us. But fortunately no one sued.

  To the Reader:

  It would be an insult to the mentality, though perhaps a sop to the legal profession, to make here the standard disclaimer that any resemblance to any actual person living or dead of any of the people you are about to meet herein is entirely coincidental. It would not only be an insult to your mentality, it would be an insult to mine.

  Still and all, I would not want you to think that just because there is an obvious parallel to Orrin Knox, for instance, or because there is within the recent memory of the Senate a situation somewhat analogous to Brigham Anderson’s, or because there can be found one who did in some ways resemble Seab Cooley, that the people and the episodes in this book are based in major part upon reality, for they are not.

  This is difficult for a non-writer to understand, but you will have to take a writer’s word for it, because it is true. There are people and events in this book as in any that are akin to people and events in reality, but they are not the people and events of reality. Such resemblances as they do bear are transmuted through the observations and perceptions and understandings of the author into something far beyond, and basically far different from the originals in those cases where originals can be argued to exist.

  Thus if you spend all your time reading Orrin Knox to find the Senator you think Orrin Knox is, you are quite likely going to miss Orrin Knox, because he isn’t that Senator at all; and if you keep comparing notes on Seab and his analogue you will miss the real reality of the senior Senator from South Caro
lina. Seab and Orrin are the Senators some of you may think they are, plus a lot of other people, plus some very definite and individual characteristics of their own, all boiled down into amalgams upon which there has been imposed, I hope, the calculated imprint of conscious narrative.

  So, while I cannot always claim that resemblances herein are entirely coincidental, neither can anyone else claim that they are deliberate. It goes beyond that, into an area where the cautious hedgings of the law no longer apply.

  “Are they real people?” readers are apt to ask about a book. Well, yes and no—they aren’t. The important thing, and the only thing that really matters, is whether they are real for this book and for this story. If they are, then the writer knows he is quite safe, because their reality here has taken them many, many miles away from the reality they may once have had somewhere sometime, in some other existence, far from the purview and the purpose of his book.

  —Allen Drury

  ***

  Major Characters

  Principal Members of the Senate

  Robert Durham Munson of Michigan, Majority Leader of the Senate

  Seabright B. Cooley of South Carolina, President Pro Tempore of the Senate

  Brigham M. Anderson, senior Senator from Utah

  Mabel Anderson, his wife

  Pidge, his daughter

  Orrin Knox, senior Senator from Illinois

  Beth Knox, his wife

  Hal Knox, his son

  Stanley Danta of Connecticut, Majority Whip of the Senate

  Crystal Danta, his daughter

  Warren Strickland of Idaho, Minority Leader of the Senate

  Members of the Foreign Relations Committee

  Thomas August of Minnesota, Chairman

  Lafe Smith, junior Senator from Iowa

  Arly Richardson, senior Senator from Arkansas

  John Winthrop, senior Senator from Massachusetts

  John DeWilton, senior Senator from Vermont

  Harold Fry, senior Senator from West Virginia

  Powell Hanson, junior Senator from North Dakota

  Fred Van Ackerman, junior Senator from Wyoming

  Principal Members of the Executive Branch

  The President

  Harley M. Hudson of Michigan, the Vice President

  Howard Sheppard, the Secretary of State

  Robert A. Leffingwell, Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization, nominee for Secretary of State

  Member of the Judiciary

  Mr. Justice Thomas Buckmaster Davis of the Supreme Court

  Members of the Diplomatic Corps

  Lord Claude Maudulayne, the British Ambassador

  Lady Kitty Maudulayne, his wife

  Raoul Barre, the French Ambassador

  Celestine Barre, his wife

  Krishna Khaleel, the Ambassador of India

  Vasily Tashikov, the Ambassador of the U.S.S.R.

  Others

  Mrs. Phelps Harrison, “Dolly,” a hostess

  The Speaker of the House

  The Rev. Carney Birch, Chaplain of the Senate

  The Chairman of the National Committee

  The President of General Motors

  The President of the United Auto Workers

  An Adviser to Presidents

  A Cardinal

  The Press

  ***

  The Vice President

  THE VICE PRESIDENT. A quorum is present. The pending business is the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to this nomination? The Yeas and Nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.

  —Congressional Record

  ***

  Book One

  Bob Munson’s Book

  ***

  Chapter 1

  When Bob Munson awoke in his apartment at the Sheraton-Park Hotel at seven thirty-one in the morning he had the feeling it would be a bad day. The impression was confirmed as soon as he got out of bed and brought in The Washington Post and Times Herald.

  PRESIDENT NAMES LEFFINGWELL SECRETARY OF STATE, the headline said. What Bob Munson said, in a tired tone of voice, was, “Oh, God damn.”

  “As if I didn’t have enough troubles,” he added with growing vehemence to himself as he went in the bathroom and started getting dressed. “As if I didn’t have enough to do, running his errands and steering his program. And he didn’t even tell me.” That was what hurt. “He didn’t even tell me.”

  Thinking back to the White House conference of legislative leaders yesterday morning, Robert Durham Munson, who was senior United States Senator from the state of Michigan and Majority Leader of the United States Senate, couldn’t remember so much as a single hint about Bob Leffingwell. In fact, hadn’t there even been a denial that any appointment would be made just yet? Not a flat denial, of course, not an open denial, but an impression left, an idea conveyed, laced with smiles and ribboned with wisecracks. Something about, “We’ll have to see about that, Bob. What’s your hurry?” followed by a hearty reference to losing money at the races and a joke about Seab Cooley, who often did.

  Seab Cooley. That old coot. The senior Senator from Michigan thought, and his thoughts were not loving, of the senior Senator from South Carolina. Seab Cooley was going to raise hell about Bob Leffingwell. Because of Seab Cooley, the Administration was going to have a hard time. Because of Bob Leffingwell, the Administration was going to have a hard time. Why couldn’t he have picked any one of ten thousand other outstanding Americans? Why the one most likely to cause trouble?

  Pondering the mysterious ways of Presidents, with which he had had considerable contact in twenty-three years in the Senate, Bob Munson completed dressing and went to the telephone. In a moment the confident voice came over.

  “He—llo, Bob! You got me out of bed, you son of a gun!”

  “Mmmhmm,” Bob Munson said. “That’s a hell of an appointment.”

  “What’s that?” the voice asked, losing a trace of its good cheer.

  “You know what I mean. Bob Leffingwell.”

  “Oh, Leffingwell,” the voice said.

  “Yes,” said Bob Munson, “Leffingwell. Mr. President, why in hell—”

  “Now, wait,” the voice said. “Now, wait, Bob. Take it easy. You don’t deny he’s the best administrator we’ve got in government, do you?”

  “No, but—”

  “And you don’t deny his general brains, character, and ability?”

  “Oh, he’s perfect,” Senator Munson said. “But he isn’t going to get through without a fight.”

  The voice dismissed that. “Oh well.”

  “Oh well, nothing,” Bob Munson said. “You don’t have to worry. You won’t be up there on the Hill sweating it out.”

  “I’ll be down here sweating it out,” the voice retorted with some vigor. “It’s my appointment. I’ll take the rap for it.”

  “You take your rap when you announce the appointment. You don’t have to take the day-by-day rap the way I do.”

  “You know, Bob,” the voice said, “you sound awfully sorry for yourself. You break my heart, Senator. Please stop it.”

  “Just the same, I think you ought to give these things more thought.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Bob Leffingwell for that job for six months,” the voice said.

  “Oh, have you? It might have helped me lay a little groundwork if you’d told me about it.”

  “What do you need groundwork for? You know your opposition. Seab Cooley. We’ve had that problem before, haven’t we?”

  “Yes,” Bob Munson said, “and it’s licked us oftener than we’ve licked it.”

  The voice got its happy lilt, the one that went with the toss of the head. “I’d say honors are about even.”

  “Not this time. A lot of people don’t like Leffingwell.”

  The voice chuckled. “A lot of people don’t like me, either, and look where I am.”

  In spite of himself Bob Munson laughed.
br />   “Damn it,” he said, “you could charm the rattles off a snake. But you can’t charm them off Seab Cooley.”

  The voice became slightly rueful.

  “No,” it admitted. “I found that out a long time ago. But I’m not worried as long as the matter is in your competent hands.”

  “Yeah,” Senator Munson said.

  “Now look, Bob,” the voice said, getting the hard-boiled tone it acquired when the talk got down to the business of practical politics, “what’s the situation up there, seriously?”

  “The situation is,” Bob Munson said, “that I’d never have let you make the appointment if you’d asked me first. I’d have raised hell.”

  The voice gave a triumphant little laugh.

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you, Bob,” it said. “I knew you’d object; I knew you’d have a dozen excellent reasons why I shouldn’t do it. I knew I’d better get myself committed first and ask questions afterwards. But seriously, in addition to Seab, who else have we got to worry about? What will they do on the other side of the aisle?”

  A series of names and faces flashed across Bob Munson’s mind—the Minority, good men and true, good friends and good enemies, and brothers in the bond.

  “Well,” he said, “they’re split ten ways from Sunday, just like us.”