Alternate Gerrolds (3 page)

WASHINGTON D.C. IN AUGUST smells bad even when Congress
isn’t
in session. The days are humid, the nights are oppressive and the whole city swelters under a soggy blanket of dead air. When Congress is in session, it’s even worse. Then the air is filled with lies and whispers. I wished I could line the whole pack of them up against a wall—

The Philco in my office was tuned to CBS. That nasty little creep, Walter Cronkite was going to host a news special on “The Unravelling Presidency.” I didn’t want to watch it, I’d had my fill of bad news this summer, but I didn’t have the courage to turn it off either. I felt like a relative of the guest of honor at a hanging.

As if things weren’t bad enough, the air conditioning still wasn’t working. Even this late in the evening, it was so muggy in my office that finally, in desperation, I had shrugged out of my jacket and tie and rolled up my shirt sleeves. I was staring at the umpteenth draft of the speech, and I hated it. This was not a speech I wanted to write, and I was having a tough time of it. The president wanted to see a final draft by midnight; I didn’t think I was going to make it, but a White House
press conference had been called for ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so I’d be here until the speech was finished.

Some of the others on the White House staff hoped that Cronkite’s broadcast would be a call for sanity—that maybe when the American people truly confronted the enormity of the moment, they would back away for a second thought. My own feeling was a lot less optimistic. I always assumed the worst.

Television had abruptly become our nemesis. It was an unleashed monster, even more powerful as an enemy than as a friend. Ed Murrow, for instance—there was a case; all he did was sit in his goddamn chair smoking his goddamn cigarettes and talking to people. Yet, somehow, he still came across like God sitting in judgment on everything that passed before him. More than once this month, I’d prayed that he’d choke to death on one of those goddamn smokes. Over on NBC, those smiling cretins, Huntley and Brinkley, weren’t much better, dispassionately reading through the news as if the country weren’t being hurt by the torrent of words. They were like a hundred thousand tiny knives, each one taking another slash at the authority of the president.

There was blood in the water, and the sharks were gathering.
Hmm
. Blood in the water? I wondered if I could use that image in the speech. I started to write it down on my notepad, then abruptly crossed it out. No, I wanted to avoid calling attention to the president’s injuries. I didn’t want to do anything that acknowledged his weakness. But how could you write a resignation speech without acknowledging why?

I felt frustrated.

This should have been one of the high points in my career—speechwriter for the president of the United States. Instead, I was one of the last rats left on a sinking ship. The half-empty bottle of Coke on my desk was warm and flat. I pushed the cap back on the bottle and dropped it into the waste basket by the side of my desk, where it resounded with a loud metal clunk. Those little green fluted bottles were probably the only thing in this world that would never change. I thought about going down the hall for another one, but I didn’t even have the energy for that. The wet August night had drained it out of me. Besides, the broadcast was starting. I leaned back in my chair and watched; the chair creaked alarmingly, but it held.

Cronkite began with the 1952 election campaign. That had been a good time. The Republicans had marched out of the convention hall
happily singing “I like Ike,” and Harry Truman had promptly remarked, “I like Mickey Mouse, but I ain’t going to vote for him either.” Two days later, Herblock published that famous political cartoon in the
Post
, showing Eisenhower with a pair of big black Mickey Mouse ears framing that sappy smile of his and suddenly the campaign had a theme. Was there anybody home behind that vacuous grin? That, plus the insinuation that Walt Disney had personally put a lot of money into the Republican campaign, was the first crack in the Republican armor.

Nevertheless, according to Cronkite, Eisenhower could have won the election. After all, it had been twenty years since there had been a Republican in the White House; many felt that the country was overdue for a change; and he was popular and well known. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong man for the office of vice president—that’s what doomed the ticket.

John Nance Garner was right. The vice-presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. The evidence of past elections suggested that even if the American voters had their doubts about the fellow on the bottom half of the ticket, that wouldn’t stop them from voting for the guy on the top half if he was their first choice. But in this case, Eisenhower’s vice-presidential nominee clearly cost the Republicans the election.

First, there was that business about Korea. Cronkite had most of it right. When Ike said, “I will go to Korea,” he took a three-point jump in the polls. The American public automatically assumed that the general who had won World War II would bring a quick end to the growing mess in Asia. I remembered the agonized meetings we’d had about an appropriate response. It was obvious to us that candidate Stevenson could not say the same thing without inspiring laughter. What could an egghead do? But then, before we’d even had a chance to react, Ike’s vice-presidential candidate had added, “And if we have to use the atomic bomb and vaporize a few cities to bring those little yellow monkees to their senses, then that’s exactly what we’ll do.” That had been the first appalling mistake—and we had capitalized on it immediately. From that moment on, we treated the Republican vice-presidential candidate’s outrageous remarks as if they represented Eisenhower’s opinions, the party platform and the political ideology of every Republican from William Howard Taft to Harold Stassen. We hoped enough people would be terrified by the specter of a war with Red China that they would be scared into voting Democratic. “The Republicans want to send your son
overseas again!” That one was my line. We talked about their greed and their desire to return to a wartime economy; but we knew who would really foot the bill. Wasn’t inflation bad enough already? Gasoline was nearly a dime a gallon!

We hit Ike pretty hard on that issue; we milked it for nearly a month; but Ike was enormously popular and he was a good campaigner. Our best hope was for the vice-presidential candidate to put his other foot in his mouth—and then shoot himself in it. We crossed our fingers and waited.

And sure enough, in the last week of September, the idiot was filmed at a private fund-raiser, waving around a sheaf of papers and claiming that the state department was full of Communists, homosexuals and Jews. He had the list right there in his hand, and what was the Democratically-controlled government doing about it? Nothing. Somebody slipped Ed Murrow a copy of the film and the firestorm that followed was wonderful to watch. We didn’t have to say a word. And in fact, we didn’t. The Grand Old Party did our work for us.

Half the Republican party was appalled and the other half kept trying to defend the candidate by explaining what he really meant. It took Eisenhower over a week to disavow his vice-presidential candidate’s remarks, but that only made it worse. The VP candidate promptly snapped back that the country didn’t need “another lace-pantied imitation Democrat, but a red-blooded Republican who isn’t afraid to call a spade a spade.” It would have been hysterical if it hadn’t been so tragic; the Republican ticket was tearing itself in half. The vice-presidential candidate was acting like he was the voice of the ticket. Eventually, they managed to muzzle him, but everybody knew he was muzzled, and the press were playing a great game with “Tail-Gunner Joe,” trying to bait him into saying something else he shouldn’t.

Before October was half over, Ike’s well-orchestrated campaign had become a discordant cacophony. We weren’t just running against Mickey Mouse. We were running against Mickey Mouse and Goofy. If ever there was a loose cannon in American politics, the senator from Wisconsin was certainly it. Why Eisenhower ever chose Joe McCarthy for his vice president is a mystery that none of us on this side of the aisle were ever likely to understand.

Cronkite’s broadcast was focusing almost completely on Eisenhower’s campaign, and abruptly, I realized what he was doing. He was showing
us that Stevenson hadn’t won the election as much as Eisenhower had lost it. By implication, Stevenson shouldn’t have been elected. Eisenhower should be president now, and also by implication, he would have been a much better one. Cronkite barely even mentioned our October offensive. I had written what many people felt was the single best speech of the entire campaign:

“They’ve been calling me ‘the egghead.’ They’ve been saying that I’m too intelligent to be president. Can you imagine that? Too intelligent? Well, if stupidity is the qualifier, then by that standard, Eisenhower’s vice-presidential nominee is the most qualified man for the office! And Eisenhower is the second-most qualified man, because he chose him! What the Republicans are offering you is a witch hunt at home and a land war in Asia. And frankly, I don’t think it takes too much intelligence to recognize that both of those options would be a big mistake for the United States of America.

“But enough of the jokes. The Republicans have given us the best jokes of the campaign; I’m not going to try to top them. I’m going to talk seriously about the future of this country. An election isn’t a popularity contest. It isn’t about who you like the most. What’s at stake is too important to be decided so casually. An election has to be about two things: first, who’s most qualified to run the country? And second, where is he going to take America?

“Let me tell you what the fifties are going to be about if a Democrat is elected president: they’re going to be about peace and prosperity. We’re going to create jobs, we’re going to build houses, we’re going to build shiny new cars and great interstate highways to drive them on. We’re going to build radios and television sets so that Americans can be informed and entertained. We’re going to build hospitals to take care of our sick and schools to educate our children. And most of all, we’re going to build a strong economy, an economy based on freedom and prosperity for all. We’re going to demonstrate to the entire world how democracy really works.

“This is a nation of courageous men and women who have demonstrated over and over again that Americans are not afraid of hard work. We have worked our way out of a terrible depression, we have fought and won the most terrible war in the world’s history and we stand second to no one in our commitment to the rebuilding of war-torn Europe and Asia. Our children are going to know a world of shining cities, a
world that is clean and safe and bright. Our children are going to know a world that is free from war and sickness and hunger. Our children—”

It was the “Our Children” speech, and that became the theme of the campaign for the last three weeks. It crystallized the entire election, and Eisenhower slid disastrously in the polls. We put up posters with pictures of Joe McCarthy, and the caption read, “What is this man going to do to your children?” With Eisenhower, we were a little more respectful. We went back to the earlier theme, “General Eisenhower wants to send your son to Korea.” It was enough.

We had dictated the theme of the campaign and we had defined the choices. The Republican campaign never found itself, and by the time the first Tuesday of November rolled around, 51% of the American people voted for the Democratic candidate, 49% voted for the Republican. Not a landslide, but not an embarrassment either. The people chose fairly.

During the commercial I went to pee. I passed one of the Negro custodians in the hall, and he nodded to me sadly. “You watchin’ the broadcast? Mr. Cronkite sure ain’t being nice to the boss.”

I shook my head. “I don’t trust Walter Cronkite. I wouldn’t buy a used car from him.”

“Wouldn’t buy a used car from him!” The old Negro cackled at the joke. “Hee hee hee. That’s a good one, all right.”

I continued on down the hall. With a little luck, by morning that remark would be all over Washington. It wouldn’t help the boss any, but it sure would make me feel better.

When I got back to my office, there was a note on my desk.
The president would like to see you after the broadcast.
I crumpled it up and tossed it into the waste can after the Coke. He was going to ask me how the speech was going. And I was going to have to tell him that I couldn’t write it. “Sir, you’re a statesman,” I wanted to say. “A statesman doesn’t make speeches like this.”

But I knew what he’d reply. “No, I’m not a statesman. I won’t be a statesman until I leave office. Until then, I’m the man who has to make difficult decisions.”

“But not this one, sir!”

“Yes, even this one.”

We’d had the argument a dozen times. And each time, there were a few less voices saying that the president should resist the cries for his resignation.

Cronkite came back on the air then. Now, he began chronicling the unraveling presidency of Adlai Stevenson. He worked his way steadily through all six years of it. The endorsement of Oppenheimer, even though J. Edgar Hoover said he was a known Communist. The commutation of the death sentence of convicted atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The president’s public opposition to the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Berlin wall embarrassment. The Soviets’ growing atomic stockpile. The continuing failures of the Vanguard missile system. The Northrop vs. Symington Flying Wing scandal. The attempt on Khrushchev’s life at Disneyland. The Soviet demonstration of a 100-megaton nuclear weapon. The breakdown of relations with France because of the president’s refusal to back them in Indo-China. The public break with J. Edgar Hoover, resulting in the firing of the director of the F.B.I.—and didn’t that one set off the howls from the right! Simultaneous inflation
and
recession. The civil war in Cuba—and the very unpopular decision to send in troops to support the Batista government. And then—goddammit!—
Sputnik,
the Russian satellite. It seemed that nothing that Adlai Stevenson did was the
right
thing to do.