Advise and Consent (3 page)

In Albuquerque at this moment the first Senator to give a comment to the press has been waylaid by reporters on his way to the plane for Washington. Hugh B. Root of New Mexico, chewing his cellophane-wrapped cigar and giving the whistling, wheezing, mushlike wail that passes for his particular version of the English language, is blurting something that the wire-service reporters hear as, “—mushn’t shpend our time on sucsh shtupid—sucsh shtupid—mushn’t—I’m opposhed—opposhed—we shimply mushn’t—” which they agree among them must mean, “The Senate must not spend its time and energies on such stupid nominations. I am unalterably opposed to the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State.” When they read this back to Hugh Root for confirmation he gestures with his dripping cigar, looks at them with sudden sharpness like an old badger unearthed in the sunlight, nods, waves, and clambers aboard, shaking his head indignantly. Then he takes the wings of the morning and is gone into the cold bright wind of the desert dawn.

In something of the same vein, though more quietly and cogently, the senior Senator from New Jersey, James H. La Rue, bravely fighting the palsy which always afflicts him, says in his quavering voice in St. Louis that “the Senate must and will reject the nomination of Mr. Leffingwell. Mr. Leffingwell’s views on world affairs do not agree with those of many patriotic and intelligent Americans. It would not be safe to have him in the office of Secretary of State.” It is not an opinion Bob Munson will like to hear about, but Jim La Rue, a good weather vane, has indicated the ground on which the nomination battle will really be fought. It is ground to which Seab Cooley will presently repair along with the rest, and it will make of the matter something much more serious than a thirteen-year grudge. It is ground which is already concerning not only the capital of the United States and its Senate but London, Paris, Moscow, and the whole wide world, which is now beginning to get the news. The fight to confirm Bob Leffingwell is not going to be a simple thing, as Jim La Rue, with customary prescience, foresees.

For seven Senators this fact is brought home with an extra impact, for they are dealing, or have just dealt, with areas where the Leffingwell nomination will create the most lively interest.

High above the Atlantic in a plane bringing home the American delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Stockholm, the news coming smoothly over the radio brings much the same dismay to John DeWilton of Vermont as it has to Bob Munson and Royce Blair. Turning slowly about in the stately way which is his custom—“Johnny DeWilton,” as Stanley Danta once put it, “doesn’t bend, he sways”—the silver-topped human edifice which is the senior Senator from the Green Mountain State clears its throat and demands sharply of Alec Chabot, “Now, why in the hell do you suppose—”

The junior Senator from Louisiana shrugs and looks down at his impeccably kept hands and expensive suit, then darts a quick sidelong glance at Leo P. Richardson of Florida.

“Leo probably knows,” he says, a trifle spitefully. “Leo knows everything about this Administration.”

At this jibe Leo’s round and earnest face squinches up in its usual preoccupied expression of intent concentration and he blurts out a short Anglo-Saxon word he does not customarily use. This indication of feeling is not lost on his seatmate, Marshall Seymour, the acerbic old hell raiser from Nebraska, who gives his dry chuckle and asks of nobody in particular, “Did somebody say there’s going to be a hell of a fight? Because if nobody did, I will.”

The junior Senator from Missouri, Henry H. Lytle, leans forward from the seat in back with the dutifully worried expression he always wears when he is considering matters affecting the fate of mankind and with one of his usual complete
non sequiturs
blurts out, “But what will the Israelis do?”

“Who gives a good God damn about the Israelis?” Johnny DeWilton snorts brusquely. “What will I do is what I’m worrying about.”

In somewhat the same fashion, in the suite they are sharing at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, the two Senate members of the American delegation to the United Nations, Harold Fry of West Virginia and Clarence Wannamaker of Montana, are also getting the news. They are being apprised of it by the wife of the British Ambassador, who is in the hotel on a brief shopping visit to the city with the wife of the French Ambassador. Kitty Maudulayne and Celestine Barre, up bright and early to ready themselves for a descent on Fifth Avenue, have received the news on a daybreak telecast and Kitty has wasted no time in calling Senator Fry.

“Hal,” she says excitedly as the sleepy Senator takes up the phone, “do you know what the President has done? He’s appointed Bob Leffingwell Secretary of State! Aren’t you excited?”

Hal Fry gives the slow and delightful grin that splits his fascinatingly ugly face, and chuckles into the receiver.

“Kitty dear,” he says kindly, “I’m not excited, but just listen to Clarence.”

He reaches out a foot to the other bed and kicks Senator Wannamaker, who rolls over and grunts.

“It’s Kitty Maudulayne,” Hal Fry says, “and she says the Old Man has appointed Bob Leffingwell Secretary of State.”

There is a moment of silence, violently broken.

“
What?
” roars Clarence Wannamaker. “What the hell did you say?”

“Did you hear that, Kitty?” Hal Fry asks happily. “I told you he’d be excited.”

“I do think it’s thrilling,” Lady Maudulayne says.

“What does Celestine think?” Senator Fry asks.

“She just smiles,” Kitty replies.

“She would,” says Senator Fry.

“Yes,” says Lady Maudulayne.

At this point Clarence Wannamaker rears to a sitting position and begins some really scientific cursing. Hal Fry hangs up with best wishes to Lord Maudulayne and Raoul Barre, after briefly considering and then rejecting as useless the idea of probing to find out what those two astute and self-possessed allies think about the Leffingwell nomination. They will all be at the party at Dolly’s in Rock Creek Park tonight, he reflects, and perhaps there will be some inkling there. More than one crisis has been solved at Vagaries, that great white house amid the dark green trees, and possibly this one will be too, although he rather doubts it. He remembers as he pushes away the phone and lapses back for another half hour’s sleep that the Indian Ambassador, Krishna Khaleel, will be there, too. Much more to the point than Henry Lytle with his querulous wonder about “What will the Isaraelis do?” the senior Senator from West Virginia wonders what “K.K.” and the Asians will do. Given the state of the world, the answer to that may really be of some consequence.

Also in the fabled city with the topless towers as it roars awake with an animal vigor Washington will never know are its senior Senator, Irving Steinman, quietly breakfasting in his apartment on East Eighty-second Street, and the junior Senator from Wyoming, Fred Van Ackerman, sleeping peacefully at the Roosevelt in the rosy afterglow of a mammoth rally of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT) in Madison Square Garden.

Farther north, in Franconia, the news comes to Courtney Robinson, symbol of that smaller but bothersome Senate group the Majority Leader privately classifies as Problems, as he stands before the mirror in the downstairs hall knotting his string tie around his high, old-fashioned collar. “Courtney isn’t much,” Blair Sykes of Texas is fond of pointing out about the senior Senator from New Hampshire, “but by God, he sure does look like a Senator!” This fact, Courtney’s major contribution to his times, is the result of care, not accident; and now as he knots the tie just so, settles the collar just so, puts on the long gray swallow-tailed coat, shrugs into the sealskin overcoat with the velvet lapels, takes the big outsize hat and cane from the table, gives a pat to the dirty-yellow-gray locks at the nape of his neck, and carefully puts a hothouse rose in his buttonhole, there is no doubt that the day is going to see one more smashing production of Courtney Robinson, U.S.S. Across his mind there passes a momentary genuine annoyance with the President for having created such a mess as naming Bob Leffingwell to State is almost certainly going to be, but the thought is presently dismissed as he gives himself a last approving inspection and prepares to go in town for a little politickin’. He’s speakin’ to Rotary at noon, and mebbe they’ll want to know what he thinks of the Leffin’well nomination. Doesn’t think much of it, does Courtney Robinson; doesn’t think much, period.

There are those who do, however, and in the Washington suburb of Spring Valley, in the comfortable home where the telephone has been ringing incessantly for the past half hour, the senior Senator from Illinois lifts the receiver once more and prepares to give the same answer he has already given to four other newsmen:

“I haven’t reached a final decision on this matter and don’t expect to until all the facts are in. At the moment, however, I am inclined to oppose the nomination.”

But it is not another reporter who is calling Orrin Knox this time, it is the senior Senator from Utah. Brigham Anderson’s voice, courteous and kind as always, is troubled and concerned, and Senator Knox can visualize exactly the worried look on his handsome young face.

“Orrin,” Brig says in his direct way, “what do you plan to do about Bob Leffingwell?”

“I think I’ll oppose him,” says Orrin Knox, equally direct, his gray eyes getting their stubborn look and his gray head its argumentative angle. “How about you?”

“I don’t know,” Brigham Anderson replies, and there is real doubt in his voice. “I just don’t know. In some ways I can be for him, but in other ways—well, you know the man.”

“Yes,” says Orrin Knox, and a tart asperity enters his tone. “I know the man, and I don’t like him.”

“You and Seab,” Brigham Anderson says with a laugh.

“I trust my reasons are more fundamental than that,” Orrin replies flatly. “I’m not at all sure he could be as firm as he ought to be in that job. I’m not sure he wants to be as firm as he ought to be—not that I’m prepared to say that to everybody yet, but you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Senator Anderson says. “And there’s more to it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve had reason to deal with him pretty closely on the Power Commission, you know, and I’ve never been convinced he’s the great public servant the press says he is. I’ve got plenty of doubts.”

“Of course you know what the press is going to do to us if we oppose him,” Orrin Knox says.

“I guess we can stand it,” Brigham Anderson says calmly, “if we know we’re right.”

“Which we’re not entirely sure we are, at this moment,” the Senator from Illinois retorts.

The Senator from Utah chuckles.

“I’ll see you on the Hill,” he says. “I wonder what Tom August is thinking right now?”

Orrin Knox snorts.

“Does he think?” he asks. “Good-bye, Brig.”

“Good-bye, Orrin,” Brigham Anderson says, and hangs up with a laugh, noting as he does so that the paper boy, a good-looking kid of fifteen, is only just now delivering the
Post
out front. For a moment the Senator considers a reprimand for this increasing tardiness; but the dark head turns suddenly toward the window, there is a wave and a smile, and Brig forgets the reprimand as he watches the straight back ride on down the block. At the corner the head turns again, there is a final smile and wave and the boy disappears. Brig starts out to get the paper just as Mabel Anderson comes from the kitchen on her way to do the same; they meet at the door and in the small domestic laughter of their near-collision the ghost of a wartime summer goes back-to rest, until the next time, in the Senator’s heart.

As of that moment similar telephone conversations on the nomination are passing between many other friends in the Senate, and from none of them, Bob Munson would be interested to know, is anything very constructive coming. Right now it is not entirely clear, even to those most astute in judging such things, just how far the fight over Bob Leffingwell is going to extend.

The President; the Senate; some labor and business leaders; the Barres and the Maudulaynes, K.K. and the Indians, Vasily Tashikov in his closely guarded embassy on Sixteenth Street, and all their respective governments; the chairman of the National Committee; the Speaker of the House; that lively, cocktail-partying Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Thomas Buckmaster Davis; Dolly Harrison with her incessant parties at Vagaries in Rock Creek Park; even a lonely young man nobody but one in the Senate has ever heard of, far away in the Midwest—all will be swept up and drawn into the endless ramifications of the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State.

But mostly, as they well know, it will be the ninety-nine men and one woman who compose the United States Senate who will bear the burden; and to each of them on this morning when a Presidential decision becomes a world reality the news has come, is coming, or soon will come, with exactly the same impact. For a brief moment amid the hubbub of morning they are losing their identities to become imperceptibly, inexorably, for a subtle second, institutions instead of people: the Senators of the United States, each with a vote that will be recorded, when the day arrives, to decide the fate of Robert A. Leffingwell and through him, to whatever degree his activities may affect it, the destiny of their land and of the world.

The split-second feeling of overwhelming responsibility strikes them all, then is instantly superseded by thoughts and speculation about “the situation”—how many votes Bob Leffingwell has, how many Seab Cooley can muster, what Orrin Knox thinks, what Bob Munson is planning, who will do what and why, all the web of interlocking interests and desires and ambitions and arrangements that always lies behind the simple, ultimate, final statement, “The Senate voted today—”

Underneath, the feeling of responsibility is still there. It will come back overwhelmingly for them all on the afternoon or evening some weeks hence—will it be two, or four, or twelve, or twenty? None knows; all speculate—when a hush falls on the crowded chamber and the Chair announces that the time has come for the Senate to decide whether it will advise and consent to the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell.