Advise and Consent (94 page)

“You sound delighted,” Senator Knox said, and the National Chairman had the grace to laugh.

“Well, we are,” he said. “I’m just a little surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know you two were that close.”

Senator Knox laughed too.

“You’ve no idea,” he said.

“Will you do it?” the National Chairman asked. “We’d really be very glad to have you. It’s a good opportunity, as you know.”

“Yes, Jim,” Orrin said dryly, “I know. Did he say anything to you about Leffingwell?”

The National Chairman smiled knowingly.

“Oh, no,” he said. “He wouldn’t.”

“That’s right,” Senator Knox agreed. “He wouldn’t. Well, I tell you what, Jim. Suppose we wait until this thing is finished and then I’ll call you on Friday and let you know what I decide. That would still be time for you to get somebody else if I should bow out, wouldn’t it?”

“It would,” the National Chairman agreed, “but I don’t think I’d pass it up if I were you, Orrin, and had any—any plans. He was quite emphatic about wishing you to do it, and that might indicate—something—quite-interesting, don’t you think?”

“Who knows?” Senator Knox said. “Who knows? Thanks for coming up, Jim. I’ll let you know Friday.”

“Right, Orrin,” the National Chairman said. “We’ll be hoping you can make it. I know it would please him, too.”

“And that’s important,” Orrin Knox said in a tone the National Chairman couldn’t interpret.

“Oh, it is, Orrin,” he said heartily. “Yes, it is.”

At five-thirty, Senator Richardson having completed his speech after three sharp brushes with Lafe Smith, two with Seab, and one with Bessie Adams, the Majority Leader obtained the floor briefly.

“Mr. President,” he said, “if Senators will give me their attention, it is my purpose to hold the Senate in session rather late tonight in order that we may dispose of as many speeches as possible in the hope that we can get a final vote on this nomination by sometime tomorrow night. I want to put Senators on notice that we will probably run as late as eleven or eleven-thirty tonight, so I hope they will adjust their programs for the evening accordingly.”

“Mr. President,” Powell Hanson said, “if I might address a question to the distinguished senior Senator from Illinois, does he plan to make an address tonight?”

There was a sudden attentiveness to hear the answer as Orrin stood up slowly and looked about the chamber. The question was forcing him toward a decision, and he welcomed it for that.

“I will say to the Senator that it is my intention,” he said, although it really hadn’t been until he said it. “I expect to state my position in this matter briefly sometime shortly before we adjourn tonight. I would expect this would be sometime around ten o’clock according to the Majority Leader’s tentative schedule.”

“I thank the Senator,” Powell Hanson said. “Then we can plan to be here, for I know many Senators are very anxious to hear what the Senator has to say.”

So am I, thought Orrin dryly, though he didn’t say it aloud. Instead he nodded, said, “I thank the Senator,” and sat down.

And thus he had committed himself to a deadline in making up his mind, and that, he knew, was a good thing. It would serve to clear away a lot of wasted thoughts and wasted time and force him to reach a decision in reasonable order. He could see as he looked about the floor that Lafe and Seab were watching him questioningly, and he shook his head in a way that baffled them both. It must have baffled the Majority Leader too, for in a moment he came casually over.

“I think I’ll have the restaurant send dinner to my office upstairs,” he said. “Why don’t you and Lafe and Seab join me?”

“Yes,” he said gratefully, for this too was forcing his hand, and he understood what the invitation conveyed, that Bob understood, possibly half guessed, the exact problem confronting him and thought a quiet dinner with old friends might help. And so it would, for he honestly wanted their views.

“Ask Stanley and Warren, too, will you?” he said, and the Majority Leader nodded.

“About six-fifteen,” he said.

“Right,” Senator Knox said, and went to make the telephone call he had been putting off until the pattern of events shaped itself a little more clearly for him. It was clear now, and he said, “I suppose you’ve been wondering why I didn’t call earlier.”

“I wondered,” she said, “but I thought you’d probably let me know when you got around to it. What did he offer you?”

“The White House,” he said. She gave a startled little laugh.

“He
is
desperate, isn’t he?” she said. “Are you going to take it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m having dinner with Bob and the others up here in Bob’s office and I suppose we’ll talk it over. I was thinking after that maybe you’d like to come up and get me and we’ll take a drive for a little while and think about it.”

“Where shall I meet you?” she asked.

“I’ll try to slip away and get over to the House side,” he said. “Pick me up in the archway under the main steps over there about eight-thirty.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“You always are,” he said. “See you later.”

In the broadcasting booth of the Senate radio-television gallery the practiced and experienced commentator who a few nights before had illuminated the complexities of Brigham Anderson for a puzzled nation briskly shook off the effects of three martinis at the nearby Carroll Arms Hotel and prepared to illuminate those of Orrin Knox. The signal came and with accustomed ease he rolled it out and laid it on the line.

“Here in this historic old Capitol building,” he began, “where so many great men have served and so many great causes have been decided, an exciting drama of personalities and power is being played out on this clear spring evening. Here the fate of Robert A. Leffingwell, nominee for Secretary of State, is being decided; here too, perhaps, the future of Orrin Knox, United States Senator from Illinois.

“Certain it is that all thoughts here are centered, just as all eyes are focused every time he enters the Senate chamber, upon this vigorous, volatile, commanding lawmaker who twice has unsuccessfully sought the presidency and is considered by Washington observers to be the strongest potential candidate for the office again next year. This afternoon the Senator, a bitter opponent of Mr. Leffingwell, met in secret conclave with the President in the White House; this evening the Senator, a strangely-not-so-bitter opponent of Mr. Leffingwell, has the capital guessing as to his true intentions.

“Does he mean to reverse his field, after working so hard and so diligently to defeat the President’s chosen nominee—now that this nominee in the wake of sensational charges by Senator Cooley” (which the commentator smoothly did not enumerate) “is perhaps seriously vulnerable? Does he plan to abandon his crusade—nay, almost vendetta—against Mr. Leffingwell and turn surprisingly to his support? There are rumors, and his actions in these past few hours have lent them weight.

“Not so bitter is the Senator now; not so violent is his rage against the nominee. Not yet has he given the firm, unshakeable, affirmative statement of opposition that all his friends and supporters have been waiting for. There has been occasion; he has let the occasion slip. Doubt and puzzlement and in some cases dismay among the enemies of Mr. Leffingwell have been the consequence.

“Thus as the first day of debate moves toward its close, with a final vote promised for tomorrow night, Washington wonders what it was that the President-who-is said to the President-who-would-be. Was there some offer of special assistance for Illinois conveyed in that secret talk at the White House? Was there, even, some offer of assistance to Orrin Knox in his ambition to enter the White House, not as the invited guest of another but as the guest of the American people, President in his own right?

“These are the things Washington asks tonight. It is the first time in memory that the capital has ever known the Senator to be less than positive, forthright, and unequivocal. Those who favor Mr. Leffingwell are delighted; for the event could augur much for them. Those who oppose Mr. Leffingwell are disturbed, though their ranks have not yet broken. More fundamentally than all of these, perhaps, those who have long believed in Orrin Knox are asking in puzzled dismay whether their hero has at long last shown himself to be as wavering, as uncertain, and as subject to ambition as other men.”

Senator Munson snorted and snapped off the radio.

“You see you can’t win, Orrin,” he said dryly. “If you oppose him you’re a son of a bitch, if you’re against him, well, we’re glad to have you aboard, but we just want the country to know what a son of a bitch you are for abandoning the people who believe in you. It’s a tough life.”

“It’s tough on us, too,” Lafe said frankly. “He’s right in one sense, you’ve got us all baffled. We hope you’re going to e-lu-ci-date,” he added with a grin at Seab, who permitted himself a sleepy wink in reply.

“Well,” Orrin said, and he pushed back from the table with its litter of finished meal and looked from face to face as they watched him intently, “I guess there’s no point in beating around the bush. He made me an offer, all right. You think of the most fantastic offer you can think of, and that’s it.”

Senator Munson smiled ironically.

“I wouldn’t believe him if you didn’t get it in writing,” he said. Senator Knox reached in his pocket for a piece of paper and passed it over without comment.

There followed a period of thoughtful silence while it went from hand to hand. Finally Seab, the last recipient, passed it back.

“Well, sir,” he said softly, “well, now, sir, I think that’s a right historic document. I really do. I think that’s something I wouldn’t believe if I didn’t see it.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” Orrin said. “That’s why I showed it to you. Do you think it’s negotiable?”

“In gold,” Stanley Danta said, and they all nodded.

“That’s what he told me,” Orrin said. “I just wanted to know if you concurred.”

“A great opportunity for a red-blooded American boy,” Senator Danta said. “All you have to do is give up your principles and back Bob Leffingwell.”

“Shall I?” Orrin asked simply, and there was silence again.

“Can you?” Warren Strickland inquired quietly, and the senior Senator from Illinois, for the first time any of them could remember in all their years of public life together, looked puzzled and driven and unhappy.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “That’s what scares me. I don’t know.” And again he glanced around the circle.

“Should I?” he said.

“Well, sir,” Seab said finally, “Lafe and Warren and I, now, of course our judgment is colored by our feelings about Mr. Leffingwell. And Bob and Stanley, they feel the other way and that affects their judgment, too. But leaving aside all of that and speaking just for myself, Orrin, it has been my observation that when a man deserts something he basically and fundamentally believes in, he loses something inside. Yes, sir, he loses something inside. Not,” he added ironically, “that I haven’t seen it happen many a time in this old Senate. No, sir, not that I haven’t seen it happen. But a man pays for it. Yes, sir, he pays. And sometimes,” he said softly, “sometimes what he gets for it doesn’t quite make up for what he pays for it. Sometimes it truly doesn’t.”

“Maybe I should ask you this,” Senator Knox said. “Have I got any right to want to be President? Isn’t it terribly presumptuous of me to even think about it at all? Have I got any right to bargain on that basis to begin with? Maybe you should tell me that first.”

Senator Cooley smiled a little in his heavy-lidded way.

“Now you are seeking the easy way out, Orrin,” he said. “That’s what you are doing, you are seeking the easy way out. I don’t think,” he said, and he too looked slowly from face to face, “that there is any man here, or any man out there on the floor—including your dear friend from Arkansas—who doesn’t think that you’re fully qualified to be President of the United States, or wouldn’t feel perfectly comfortable to have the government in your hands. Am I correct in that, Senators?”

“You’re correct in that, Seab,” the Majority Leader said. “You have to match yourself against what’s available now and what’s been available in the past. After all, Presidents are only men. Some of them weren’t much when they were trying to get it and some of them weren’t much after they got it. Surveying the lot, I wouldn’t say you had anything to worry about on that score.”

“In other words,” Orrin said with a sudden smile, “I’m no worse than the worst of them.”

“Let’s say you’re as good as the best of them,” Bob Munson said with an answering smile. “I agree with Seab, false modesty doesn’t enter into the problem right now.”

“I think it comes back,” Senator Danta said thoughtfully, “to the kind of man Orrin Knox has been and the kind of man you want him to be from now on.”

“Spoken like the father of my daughter-in-law,” Senator Knox said, again with a smile.

“And to be solved, I have no doubt, like the father of my son-in-law,” Stanley said. “I’m not worried about that. I don’t think, really, that it has any bearing on Bob Leffingwell, or that Bob Leffingwell, actually, really has much to do with it. He’s the issue on which it turns, but the fundamental decision is something involving your own being, and it goes far deeper than this nomination.”

“Yes,” Senator Knox said, “and that’s what I’m not yet sure of. You all know,” he went on quietly, looking down at the paper lying open before him on the table, “that I have wanted for a long time to be President. I’ve failed twice. I want to try again. With this piece of paper and the support it represents and guarantees, there is very little doubt in my mind that I can have the nomination and, in all probability, the election. This piece of paper represents the Presidency of the United States...” He sighed and looked up with a strangely beseeching smile. “It isn’t easy,” he said.

“Of course it isn’t,” Lafe said sympathetically. “And,” he added, “it isn’t really something that we can help you on, either, is it? It’s something that only one man can decide, really, and that’s you. I don’t know about the rest of the fellows, but I wouldn’t presume to try to advise you.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t want the responsibility, frankly.”