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

  “Now the war in Panama, launched by the last two administrations to prevent the Panama Canal from being returned to the hands of its rightful owners, the Panamanian people, can also be speedily wound down on a similarly just and honorable basis. This would, of course, mean recognition by the United States of the legitimate claims of the Panamanian People’s Liberation Movement led by Felix Labaiya-Sofra. It would mean the establishment of the PLM as the ruling force in the nation, with Señor Labaiya as President. It would mean a speedy end to the present Administration’s imposition of a unilateral blockade on such friends of America as Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union, who are shipping supplies to the PLM. It would mean that democracy, for the first time in many decades, would once more control the Isthmus.

  “It is true, of course, that Governor Jason has not yet been elected President, and that if he is, there will still ensue a transition period of more than two months before he can be inaugurated. But every indication now is that he will win triumphantly, and that his very presence at the head of the ticket will have an immediate and enormous influence on President Abbott and the remaining five months of the present Administration.

  “And if Governor Jason has a Vice-Presidential running mate who agrees with him 100 per cent, of course, his influence will be even greater. The party will speak with one leadership and one voice and after the election the nation will do the same. There will be no divided counsels, no hesitations, no holding back from the great goal of peace.

  “That is why Washington waits tonight, tense and anxious, for the outcome of the fateful discussions with the Governor. Will he yield to those who may propose a running mate from the party’s war camp, on the spurious argument that this would somehow bring about ‘party harmony’ and ‘national unity?’ Or will he decide, with the courage and integrity that have always characterized his public career, that he must have beside him as second-in-command and political heir a man as firmly and selflessly dedicated to genuine world peace as he?

  “Washington waits—the nation waits—the world waits.

  “None of the three really expects to be disappointed in Edward Montoya Jason.”

  For a few moments as he reached the bottom of the stairs, she was all he could see. All the rest were a blur, no other face came into focus. Their eyes met, hers filled with tears, his responded. Spontaneously she held out her arms and he came forward. For a brief and fleeting moment they were united in grief, before politics, ambition, philosophical divergence and the crowding world rushed in again.

  “Ted,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I hope—I hope—”

  “Yes,” he replied, equally low. “I’m managing. And you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so. I think so.”

  “Good,” he said, and before he could say more,

  “WELL!” Patsy exclaimed brightly. “Here’s everybody, so I guess we can get to work!”

  For a second longer they remained staring into each other’s eyes. Then he shook his head, a quick, regretful movement as if to say, You see? I have no choice.

  And from somewhere in the accumulated depths of character Beth was able to nod quite matter-of-factly and say calmly, “Why, of course, Patsy. So we should.”

  At this, seeming to gain strength from her example, he was able to move forward, hand outstretched, and begin the ritual of greeting. Blurs became faces, faces became collections of ideas, beliefs, principles, prejudices, personal and political ambitions and associations: the living, powerful people with whom he must organize the future.

  “Mr. President,” he said gravely, and Bill Abbott shook his hand with all the dignity of Mr. Speaker and Mr. President combined. Senators Bob Munson, Stanley Danta and Lafe Smith came next, standing together in a concerned yet friendly grouping; Tom August, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with his usual awkward, shy and nervous manner, almost shuffling forward; Bob Leffingwell, focus of so many bitter emotions from one side during the time when the Senate defeated his nomination for Secretary of State—focus of bitter emotions still from the other side, now that he had swung over to support of the Administration and its war policies; Walter Dobius, stocky and stern and, as always, pompous and faintly, yet inescapably, smug; George Harrison Wattersill, that glamorous and well-publicized young attorney, defender of the sick, the misfit, the lost and the headline favored; Cullee Hamilton, California’s powerful young Negro Congressman, his handsome face and thoughtful dark eyes troubled and unhappy; J. B. “Jawbone” Swarthman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, his usual ebullience momentarily suppressed but likely to break out again at any moment; Roger P. Croy, ex-governor of Oregon, smooth and bland and confident in his power with words and crowds; LeGage Shelby, chairman of Defenders of Equality for You (DEFY), dark and scowling, particularly when his eyes met those of his onetime friend and college roommate, Cullee Hamilton; Rufus Kleinfert, pasty-faced and dumpy, head of the Konference on Efforts to Encourage Patriotism (KEEP); and Senator Fred Van Ackerman of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT), carefully standing apart from his fellow legislators, insolent and unyielding.

  This was the oddly assorted aggregation that would help him select a Vice President. There shot across his mind the thought: God help me, I don’t believe it. But the old habit of command was beginning, though still somewhat raggedly, to return. It was with a passable authority that he said politely, “Mr. President, Mrs. Knox, gentlemen, if you will come into the ballroom and be seated, please, we can begin.”

  There would come a time when he would look back and decide that to accept this strange hodgepodge of people and not demand the removal of some of its more extreme members such as LeGage Shelby and Fred Van Ackerman might very well have been his first decision of all, and perhaps his most serious and fateful one, considering all that was to flow from it. But he was in no mood or condition to understand this now, and it did not occur to him until much later, when it was too late.

  When they were seated around the long conference table that Patsy had directed the servants to put together from two dining tables and a green baize cloth, himself at one end, the President at the other, a silence fell and he realized that they were all staring at him intently. The President broke the silence to ask the question they all wanted to ask.

  “How are you feeling, Governor?”

  He managed a small smile, for their interest was genuine enough and, for the moment, quite removed from politics.

  “Not—too bad,” he said and added slowly, “under all the circumstances.” Then he seemed to draw himself together, took a deep breath and leaned forward to speak as he knew they wanted him to speak.

  “I want to thank you all,” he said gravely, “for your concern for me at this time, which I believe far transcends any political situation in which we find ourselves. I know how you must be feeling about my—my bereavement—and I want you to know that I am deeply grateful for your sentiments. I thank you and I know that—” for just a second his voice broke, but he recovered and went on firmly—“she is grateful to you too.…

  “I know also,” he added, and for a moment his eyes met Beth’s and she was able to murmur her thanks, “that I speak for Mrs. Knox as well in expressing our gratitude to you. It is a great help to us both.…

  “Well, then—” his tone deliberately stronger and more impersonal—“so you are here, I take it, to give me advice on the Vice-Presidential nomination. I don’t know who invited you—” Patsy shifted slightly in her chair, halfway down the table, and he smiled slightly—“but it was a good move, Pat. I have to make a decision and I know it can’t be delayed, and so I think it is just as well you are all here to help me. I had always thought,” he added, a certain dryness entering his tone, “that this sort of thing was done in a series of small conferences instead of one large one, but maybe these are unusual times and we should use an unusual method. Anyway, you are here and I am happy to have your ideas.”

  He stoppe
d and again there was a silence as they all watched him intently. Again it was the President who broke it with his customary directness.

  “You have no one to suggest yourself, then.”

  He shook his head and began to make some frivolous rejoinder—“If you only knew—” perhaps, or, “I can’t even think straight yet”—or something of that nature. But he knew this revelation of the chaos that lay behind his outward calm would only shock and dismay them. And they wouldn’t believe it anyway. He suppressed the impulse and continued to perform as he knew they wanted him to.

  “Not at the moment, no. I had rather get your thinking first. Possibly, if I might suggest, Mr. President: there seems to be a pretty clearly defined division here, just as there was in the convention and the Committee and, indeed, in the country. So why don’t you act as spokesman for the one group, if you like, and someone else—Governor Croy, possibly, or Senator August, or whoever is agreeable—might speak for the others. With everyone, of course, having the right to state divergent views if he so desires. Is that agreeable?”

  He looked around the table, took silence for consent.

  “Very well then, Mr. President. You have the floor.”

  For a moment the President did not reply, staring thoughtfully at Ted Jason as he leaned back, appearing tired but effective: handsome, dignified and in command. He looks the part, anyway, the President thought dryly. Maybe I can wake him up. Maybe I can wake them all up.

  “I think,” he said slowly, and to him, too, they gave their intently watchful attention, “that the most logical candidate for Vice President, the one who would be the most popular choice and would do most to unify the party and the country, would be the one who best exemplifies the philosophy and the character of the late candidate for President. I think you’d be making a mighty smart move if you took Mrs. Knox.”

  There was a complete, stunned silence as he sat back and stared impassively around the table at expressions, which ranged from Lafe Smith’s sudden grin to LeGage Shelby’s scowling dismay to Patsy’s scornful disbelief. He had invited an explosion and knew it was coming. Its source did not surprise him.

  “What kind of crap,” asked Fred Van Ackerman with a deliberate insolence, “is that?”

  “Spoken like the boor you are,” the President said coldly, and whatever fragile peace had existed in the room was abruptly ended.

  “Now, Mr. Chairman,” Senator Van Ackerman said, and his voice suddenly sailed up in the sharp psychotic whine his colleagues in the Senate knew all too well, “now, Governor, I don’t think you should permit that kind of language. I don’t think you should permit this used-up old man who temporarily fills, and yes, unworthily fills, the office of President, to talk like that. He is unworthy, Mr. Chairman, and he is politically passé. He is on his way out and the sooner the better. I suggest, yes, I suggest, that he be asked to leave this conference, Governor, Mr. Chairman, unless he can offer something that makes some sense and has some bearing on what we’re trying to do here. I so move, Mr. Chairman!”

  “Now, Mr. Chairman—” Senator Munson began angrily through the babble that began all around the table. But the President’s calm voice got through before Ted could act; if he had been going to act.

  “Let him talk, Governor. Let him rave on. This is what we are confronted with in this party and we had all better have it spelled out clearly for us once again before you make your decision. I offer you a true lady, one of the great ladies in American public life, and back comes this rude, crude, intolerant, boorish behavior. That summarizes the issue for you, right there. We might as well realize it right now.”

  “Governor,” Senator August said from down the table in his hesitant way. “Mr. Chairman, if I might say something—?”

  “Yes, Senator,” Ted Jason said, and added in what seemed, curiously, almost an afterthought, “the meeting will be in order, please. Proceed, Senator.”

  “Well, Mr. Chairman,” Tom August said, “I don’t want to inflame the discussion any further, but I do think, if the President will forgive me, that there is much more to the issue than the unfortunate remarks of the Senator from Wyoming. I do regard them as unfortunate, Mr. Chairman,” he added stoutly as Fred gave him a black look, “and I agree with the President that they probably deserved the epithet ‘boorish.’ But, Mr. Chairman—I don’t think we should permit our discussion here to be influenced too much by unfortunate turns of phrase or ways of speaking, for no doubt we will all be guilty of some exaggerations as we go along. I think we must stick close to what the real issue is, and on that I offer you what may be a simplification, but which I nonetheless believe to be a sound one. The issue is peace or war, Mr. Chairman. It is as simple as that.

  “What has confronted us all along?” he asked, as all down the table his listeners either nodded agreement or looked stubborn and uneasy, according to their philosophies. “In the whole long-running argument over this party’s leadership? That argument really began, you will remember, with the nomination—and rejection—of Mr. Leffingwell, here, to be Secretary of State. It appeared to go in one direction when President Hudson succeeded to office and began the actions in Gorotoland and Panama. It appeared to go even further that way when you, Mr. President, moved into the White House and increased and made more emphatic both those involvements. And it appeared to go entirely in your direction when the recent convention nominated President Hudson for re-election and then, after his tragic death, nominated Secretary Knox for President.

  “But you will remember, Mr. Chairman,” he said quietly, “that each of these steps along the way was violently and bitterly opposed by almost a majority of the party and of the population; and you will remember that their opinion was so strong and so inescapable that the late Secretary was virtually forced to accept as his running mate Governor Jason, the man who now, through yet more tragic fate, carries our party’s standard as Presidential nominee.

  “There was nothing open and shut about it at any point along the way. The ‘war party’—if I may use that invidious term for convenience only—was opposed every foot of the road. Its control was marginal at best—tenuous, fragile and uncertain. At each turning point it could have reversed itself and changed the pattern of events; and great numbers of the citizenry wanted it to turn back. Now we have come to one more turning point, tragic and unexpected but nonetheless here before us—a fact. And we have what may be the last, the only, the ultimate chance to turn back. I think,” he said softly, peering about the table in his gentle, almost wistful fashion, “that is the real issue, Mr. Chairman and Mr. President. It is war or peace, and the choice of Vice-Presidential candidate will indicate to the country and the world more surely than anything else which it is going to be.”

  He paused and looked about vaguely for water. Patsy rang a bell, there was a brief pause while two maids hurried in, distributed pitchers and glasses along the table, withdrew. Tom August drank slowly; wiped his lips carefully on a handkerchief; went on, his audience silent and intent.

  “It seems to me, Mr. President, that if a so-called ‘war party’ candidate agreeable to you and some others in this room were to be chosen, a great feeling of dismay and disaster would sweep over the country. Not all the country,” he said hastily as the President gave him a sudden frown in which skepticism and annoyance were equally mixed, “but a very substantial portion of it. Indeed, I think it may safely be said, a majority of it. Whereas a so-called ‘peace party’ candidate—”

  “Ah,” said Lafe Smith with a knowing intonation, and for a second Senator August looked quite offended.

  “You can say, ‘Ah,’” he retorted with a rare asperity, “but the fact remains that a Vice-Presidential candidate leaning generally in that direction is obviously what the country desires. At least,” he added with a defensive irony, “in my humble estimation.”

  “Mine, too,” Fred Van Ackerman said with a harsh contempt. “It’s so obvious I don’t see why we have to waste time on a lot of pious crap about it.”
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  “I beg your pardon—” Tom August began, his face flushing. But Bob Munson forestalled him.

  “You people fascinate me,” he said. “You cannibalize each other, don’t you? You can’t even be decent with each other long enough to achieve what you all want. It’s amazing. And very revealing.”

  “We’ll achieve what we want,” LeGage Shelby said with an ominous scowl. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “Yess,” Rufus Kleinfert agreed in his peculiar accent. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “I’m worried as hell about that, if you want to know,” Senator Munson said bluntly. “I can’t imagine anything worse for the country than to have this ticket beholden from top to bottom to people like you and what you represent.”

  “And what’s that, Senator?” Fred Van Ackerman inquired coldly. “It’s only common sense, isn’t it? It’s only what’s best for the country, isn’t it? It’s only peace, which is what this country wants, from top to bottom and from one end to the other. That’s all it is, Senator. Peace, if you aren’t too stupid to know it.”

  “This is one of your principal sources of strength, Governor,” Bob Munson said, and his reference called their attention suddenly to how silent Ted Jason was being through all this. “I hope it pleases you.”

  For a moment Ted did not answer, seeming far away and abstracted. Then he shook his head as if to clear it and spoke with a calmness that reassured them all, even those who were greatly fearful of what he might decide this day. The man who would be President had to be calm: how else could they?

  “I think I can assess my support for what it is, Senator. Insofar as it sincerely represents the desire of all patriotic Americans for peace, I am not worried about it. I am, in fact, proud to have it. Senator August, are you through?”