Advise and Consent (43 page)

Across the room Bessie Adams arose, looking neat, trim, and kindly in her usual black dress, her gray hair swept off face and up, her expression pleasant and alert; the sharpest grandmother in the country, they said about Bessie, and right now she looked it.

“Will the Senator yield to me?” she asked. “I have been reading the press stories most avidly, and following as much as possible of this on television, as I think most of us have, and the impression that has come through to me is one of most eminent fairness on the part of all members of the subcommittee; even from the senior Senator from South Carolina—most of the time. I am curious to know on what it is that the Senator from Wyoming bases his criticism. Possibly things were apparent to him, seated in the Caucus Room, which did not come over television; although I find,” she added gently, “that this is usually not the case. Could the Senator enlighten me?”

“I will say to the distinguished Senator from Kansas,” Senator Van Ackerman said sharply, “that I am sorry if she was not perceptive enough to grasp what was obvious to every intelligent observer in the room. I am telling the Senate what happened.”

“Mr. President,” Johnny DeWilton began indignantly, but Bessie, as always, was quite able to take care of herself.

“The Senator from Wyoming,” she observed at her most grandmotherly, “has proven to us before that he possesses depths of perception and intuition which have not been conferred on those of us who are less fortunate. I for one, however, am constrained to tell the able Senator that much as I appreciate hearing about his particular view of the world, I shall have to have proof more substantial than his unsupported personal word to convince me that Mr. Leffingwell was not treated fairly.”

“Is the Senator saying I am a liar?” Fred Van Ackerman demanded ominously, and Senator Adams smiled sweetly.

“I am afraid the Record will just have to stand the way it is, Mr. President,” she said. “The Senator’s interpretations of it this afternoon are his problems, not mine. Of course,” she added innocently, “if the Senator cares to make a point of order I can appeal it and the Senate can then have a vote on his veracity
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I will say seriously,” she went on placidly as Fred Van Ackerman looked furious but found no words for reply, “that I have had more than a few doubts about this nomination, Mr. President. However, on the basis of the hearings a good many of them have been set to rest, and it seems to me now that possibly Mr. Leffingwell’s greatest handicap, if he has any, is the type of support he is getting from his friends.” And with another kindly smile at Senator Van Ackerman she sat down while someone on the majority side murmured, “Good work, Bess!” quite audibly and the galleries snickered.

“Well, Mr. President,” Fred Van Ackerman said angrily, “this is all very entertaining and amusing, I’m sure, and the Senator is welcome to take advantage of her sex if she wishes to do so to make attacks on other Senators—”

“Oh, come on!” Lafe Smith said disgustedly, and suddenly Fred Van Ackerman was transported out of himself into one of those frenzies his colleagues were coming to expect and be wary of.

“Yes!” he cried furiously, his face contorted, his voice suddenly getting its strange, unwholesome snarl, “Senators think this is a mighty clever, funny business here, don’t they? They think it’s all just ha-ha-ha and all so very jolly, don’t they? Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. President, the honor of the United States is involved here, yes, the future of the United States itself, may be, that’s what’s involved in the nomination of this great man to be Secretary of State, and what are Senators doing, Mr. President? What are they doing? They’re sneering and making fun and joining in this attempt to smear and destroy him, and perhaps with him our best hope of peace, Mr. President. Of peace! That’s what they’re doing!”

He paused as suddenly as he had begun, while the Senate and the galleries waited silent and attentive. Some sort of internal struggle, very sharp, very short, very intense, seemed to take place; and when he resumed it was in a perfectly normal tone.

“Now, Mr. President,” he said as reasonably as though he had never been disturbed at all, as though, curiously, he had already forgotten it and had no memory of it, “I ask Senators to consider what has happened so far on this nomination. Mr. Leffingwell was first subjected to a most severe and unrelenting cross-examination on his views by members of the subcommittee, and after it was finished the senior Senator from South Carolina was allowed to place on the stand a man who, it turned out, was a mental case, and he was allowed to fill the record and the newspapers and television and radio all over the globe, Mr. President, not just in America, with the most fantastic story. He said that at the University of Chicago he had been a student of Mr. Leffingwell’s, which he was, and that Mr. Leffingwell had asked him to take a seminar with him, which Mr. Leffingwell did not, and that Mr. Leffingwell then invited him to attend a Communist cell meeting, which Mr. Leffingwell said he did not do, and the witness has no proof of it at all. Supposedly he attended these meetings with Mr. Leffingwell and some boy who is dead now and somebody else named James Morton, whom this witness says he couldn’t identify if he saw him now because he wore a beard and he didn’t see him very often. All of this Mr. Leffingwell denies, and the witness has no proof of it at all except his own word.”

He paused and snapped his fingers impatiently for a glass of water, and a pageboy darted up to place one on his desk. He took a swallow and resumed in the same reasonable tone; Fred’s spasm, his colleagues saw, was finished for the afternoon, though it’s strange unpleasant memory remained with them uneasily as he spoke. Even so, as Bob Munson could sense, he was beginning to make a little headway; toward what purpose, though, the Majority Leader as yet was unable to say.

“And what is his word worth, Mr. President?” Senator Van Ackerman went on. “Well, Mr. Leffingwell proved what it’s worth. The man had a mental breakdown in college; he had another two years ago, at which time Mr. Leffingwell out of the kindness of his heart permitted him to resign without prejudice from the Federal Power Commission, where he was a minor clerk. Mr. Leffingwell later on, also as an act of kindness, steered him toward a job with his present employer, the Bureau of International Economic Affairs in the Department of Commerce. And in return for these kindnesses, this man has apparently become obsessed with the idea of getting revenge on Mr. Leffingwell, because he brought about his resignation from the FPC after his second mental breakdown. That’s all there seems to be to it.”

“Mr. President, will the Senator yield?” Powell Hanson asked, and Bob Munson began to get a little more actively worried about the trend of things.

“Isn’t it true,” the Senator from South Dakota asked, “that Mr. Leffingwell has categorically and completely denied any knowledge of, or connection with, or participation in, in any way whatsoever, any so-called Communist cell?”

“Why, of course,” Fred Van Ackerman said shortly. “It’s absolute nonsense.”

“And all this man Gelman can offer is some tall tale about somebody who very conveniently happens to be dead, and somebody else named James Morton whom he very conveniently has lost track of and couldn’t identify if he did see him?” Powell Hanson went on.

“That’s right,” Senator Van Ackerman said, and suddenly his voice filled with anger again, not wild this time, but righteous. “For this, Mr. President,” he said, “for things as flimsy as this, our next Secretary of State is being crucified in the eyes of the world! I ask you, Mr. President, consider the effect this kind of thing must inevitably have upon him in the countries of the world where he must travel as our principal envoy. Shame on us, Senators, for permitting such goings on. Shame on us!”

“Mr. President,” Orrin Knox said tartly, “if the Senator will yield, what would the Senator suggest we do about it?” But this proved to be the wrong question, for Fred Van Ackerman seized upon it instantly.

“I’ll tell you, Senator,” he said quickly, “what we can do about it. I’ll tell you how we can make amends to him and at the same time wipe out the stigma of these shabby proceedings and prove to the world at one stroke that we’re standing behind him one hundred per cent. We can discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from further consideration of his nomination and vote upon him right here and now. That’s what we can do, right here and now. And,” he concluded in a tone from which he made no attempt to exclude the triumph, for he knew he had caught them all flat-footed, “I do now so move.”

At this suggestion, unorthodox, dramatic, and, as the older and more experienced heads could instantly see, exactly the sort of arbitrary move of which ideal headlines and ideal demagoguery are made, there was a stir all across the Senate and a number of Senators jumped up and began demanding recognition. Of these, Harley selected the Majority Leader, whose job it was to handle just such little problems as this, and Bob Munson prepared to speak with a certain grim humor about him. Even as he did so he had time to reflect how little opportunity one had to ever really delve very far beneath the surfaces of these 99 utterly independent and crotchety prima donnas, to find out, for instance, what kind of a family Fred Van Ackerman had come from, to find out how his mother could have loved him and how society had managed to restrain itself sufficiently to let him live long enough to attain the high estate and eminence of United States Senator.

“Mr. President,” he said with the deliberate slowness that any good strategist uses when things have rushed to a peak of tension and time-gaining is the principal objective, “if I may be permitted first, before commenting directly on the motion of the Senator from Wyoming, to review briefly what happened in the subcommittee and place it, perhaps, in a little less heated perspective than he has done.

“It is true, to begin with, that members of the subcommittee subjected the nominee to a thorough and exhaustive examination of his personal views. Is it the function of a Senator to do less? Wouldn’t you have subjected him to a searching cross-examination if you had been on the subcommittee? Of course you would, and who can sensibly criticize those who did, since they were acting not only as the instrument of the Foreign
Relations Committee but as your agents as well in the attempt to ascertain the truth?

“It is true that the senior Senator from South Carolina was allowed to cross-examine the nominee, and to bring before the subcommittee a witness against the nominee. Had your personal feelings and convictions been involved in this matter as his have been for so many years, would you not have requested the same privilege? And have expected the subcommittee to grant it to you, and made use of it in any way you deemed best in the pursuit of your objectives? Of course you would, and since the action of the senior Senator from South Carolina in this instance opened up a field of inquiry which inevitably had to be pursued in some form in view of many questions in the country concerning the nominee, who can justifiably criticize him for what he did? Whatever his motives, it served to explode a number of hints and rumors and allegations in a way that no other procedure, perhaps, could have exploded them.

“Which brings me to the treatment of the nominee. He was asked many sharp and pointed questions, yes, and members of the subcommittee rightly, in view of the enormous importance of the office for which he has been nominated, pulled no punches. But when the man Gelman had made his statements under examination by Senator Cooley, the subcommittee immediately asked Mr. Leffingwell to cross-examine, and the fact that the proceedings went over for twenty-four hours was his own decision, not the subcommittee’s. And when he returned to the stand, the subcommittee granted him full rights to cross-examine without interference, and the chairman, the distinguished and able and most fair senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Anderson, even went so far as to offer him the use of the subcommittee’s right of subpoena if he wished to use it to call further witnesses to the stand in his defense.

“So I do not think, Mr. President, that any fair review of the facts in the matter can come up with any honest conclusion except that the proceedings were fairly conducted, that the nominee was given every assistance in defending himself, and that the hearings marked a high point in the history of this Senate of which we can all be proud.”

“Mr. President,” Senator Van Ackerman demanded sharply, “will the Majority Leader yield?”

“I prefer not to until I am finished, Mr. President,” Senator Munson said calmly. “The Senator has said quite a few things and made quite a few headlines here this afternoon, and I think it is time the rest of us had a chance to do some talking without interruption
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Now as to the Senator’s motion to discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from further consideration of this nomination and bring it immediately to the floor for a vote. It is of course his privilege to make such a motion—”

“Mr. President,” Powell Hanson said, “will the Senator yield?”

“I shall be happy to,” Bob Munson said graciously, and there was a little ripple of amusement.

“Will the Senator ask for the Yeas and Nays on that,” Powell asked, “so that we may have a clear demonstration of the sentiments of the Senate at this time?”

At this standard form of request for a roll-call vote, which had to be supported by a show of hands from at least one-fifth of the Senators present, the Majority Leader hesitated. He was aware of a slight, a very slight movement of warning from the Senator from South Carolina beside him, so bidden that only years of friendship and familiarity permitted him to perceive it; and instinct told him that Seab was entirely right and it was an unwise thing to accede to. But he was aware also that Fred Van Ackerman had done some astute planning on this, underneath his flamboyant and inflammatory approach. An alliance with the much-respected Powell Hanson was a shrewd move; and since it was Powell who asked for the roll-call vote, Bob Munson knew that he was almost inevitably going to be forced to agree. So with only the slightest of split-second hesitation while all this went through his mind, he did.