Advise and Consent (100 page)

“No one,” Jack McLaughlin of Georgia murmured to Bob Johnson of Connecticut with a chuckle, “could ever accuse Orrin of that.”

“—draw our strength directly from the basic mood and the basic spirit of the American people. This book, and this man, do not.

“Accommodation here is projected to the point where it would come, I think it is fair to state, dangerously close to surrender. Compromise is carried to the point of capitulation. He does not say where he would stop this process. It can be argued, with ample evidence which he himself has provided, that he would not attempt to stop it, or would attempt to stop it so late that it very likely could not be stopped. This is a blueprint for adjustment which verges directly upon appeasement.

“I submit to you, Mr. President,” he said, “that America cannot afford it. Only firmness will save us now. Only a steadfast adherence to principles we know to be sound, and an absolute and unhesitating willingness to die for them if need be, will rescue America from the plight which confronts her.

“Senators will say,” he said, and his voice grew sarcastic, “as the press says and as the nominee himself said, ‘Oh, then you want a war, Senator!’ By God,” he said, “I do not! But I know something that too many Americans, including this nominee, forget, and that is that unless we are prepared to accept the possibility of war and act fearlessly in defense of our principles in spite of it, then war will come as certainly as that clock above the Chair will presently strike the hour of twelve midnight.

“Either we are fearless and firm, or we will be nibbled away, paralyzed by our own fears which this man so suavely and smoothly reflects and expresses.

“Mr. President,” he said quietly, “I am done. There are many reasons of my own why I oppose this nominee, and many of them are known to you. The overriding reasons, and the one I think the Senate should endorse, is the one I have just discussed. He is weak in a time when we need strength. We simply cannot afford him.”

There was a burst of applause from the galleries as he sat down, instantly met by a wave of hisses, and the Vice President used the gavel vigorously.

“The Chair will advise visitors,” he said sharply, “that they are here as guests of the Senate. They will be silent, or they will be removed.”

“What’s with Harley?” the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
whispered to the
Chicago Tribune
. “He sounds almost presidential.” “Maybe he’s heard the word,” the
Chicago Tribune
said with a rather grim chuckle. “Lord, I hope not!” the
Post-Dispatch
exclaimed.

“Mr. President,” Arly Richardson said thoughtfully, “I shall not consume much time in stating the case for those who favor this nominee. And I shall begin by conceding one of the Senator’s main points.

“It is hard to condone, and I do not condone, Mr. Leffingwell’s handling of this episode in his past. But I think that without condoning it, and without in any way defending his decision to resort to evasion before the subcommittee, that it is possible to find in it certain strengths of character that are far from the weakling the Senator from Illinois would have you see.

“Who but a strong man, Mr. President, would defend himself so vigorously? Who but a man of positive and unyielding personality would be so adamant and so serene in his own protection? I ask you if this is the act of a weakling?”

“Mr. President,” Senator Knox said quickly, “will the Senator yield?”

“The Senator would not yield to me,” Senator Richardson said. “I will not yield to the Senator.”

“It was the act of a moral weakling, anyway!” Senator Knox shot out angrily, and the Senator from Arkansas said furiously, “Now, Mr. President, I have refused to yield!”

“The Senator is entirely correct,” the Vice President said firmly. “The Senator from Illinois will be still. Proceed, Senator.”

“I repeat, Mr. President,” Arly said, breathing hard and looking flushed, “that this is not the act of a weakling. It is the act of a strong man. It is the act of a man who can be expected to bring to the defense of his country’s interests the same unyielding firmness that he has brought to the defense of himself. It is the act of a man we can trust with the protection of the foreign policy of America.”

“It won’t wash,” Rob Cunningham of Arizona murmured to Rowlett Clark of Alabama, and Rowlett, who up to that very moment hadn’t known what he was going to do, nodded suddenly and agreed, “You’re right, it won’t wash.”

“Furthermore, Mr. President,” Senator Richardson said, “it seems to me we have rather lost sight of this man’s long record of public service and his many fine qualifications for this job. I hope this will not be wiped out entirely in the minds of Senators by one unfortunate foible of his youth. This, after all, is a great public servant, one of the greatest the American system has produced; and that I think is recognized even by his most hostile critics. Let us not forget that.

“Finally,” he said, “let us turn to one other basic fact that the Senator from Illinois has overlooked, and that is that this man has been chosen by the President of the United States because he feels he needs his assistance in these parlous times. This is not some junior clerk we are discussing here. This is the man the President has chosen to be his principal assistant in foreign affairs.

“Is it the purpose, is it the duty, is it even, really, the right, of the Senate to set itself up to pass judgment upon the President’s choice of this principal assistant? Mr. President,” he said hastily, for Senator Cooley was on his feet, holding aloft a copy of the Constitution to which he pointed elaborately as he turned slowly about to all points of the chamber before grinning sleepily and sitting down, “of course we have a constitutional right to advise and consent to this nomination. But I mean, do we have a personal right, so to speak, to interpose ourselves between the President and a man he wants to sit beside him and work with him in these matters of such fearful import to our country? This,” he said rather lamely, “is something I think Senators should consider.

“A final word,” he said, “as to the personal views of the nominee, of which the Senator from Illinois makes such a point. I too heard his testimony. I too have read his book. The record of the hearing will show that I was as sharp in my arguments with his philosophy as any other Senator on the subcommittee. I cannot conceive, however, that he would carry this philosophy so far as to endanger the country. I simply do not believe it, for I do not believe any patriotic American would do so, and I believe he is a very patriotic American.

“And so, Mr. President,” he said, “I urge the Senate to confirm this nomination. We are in an extraordinarily dangerous hour for America. The President wants him, the President needs him, the President is asking us to give him this man’s help. I believe it is our patriotic duty to do it.”

“Mr. President,” Orrin Knox said, “is the Senator finished with the main burden of his remarks, and will he yield to me now?”

“Briefly,” Arly Richardson said.

“I’ll be brief,” Orrin promised grimly. “Mr. President,” he said angrily, “I will simply not stand for this to be put on a sentimental, emotional basis of helping the President! He has conducted a cold-blooded, calculated, unprincipled campaign to confirm this man, a campaign which has brought many evils in its train including a death in this Senate. I will not permit the Senate to be confused with this touching picture of the President in need. The President has brought this on himself. He has his responsibility, and he has chosen to exercise it in a way that has defeated his purpose and caused much controversy and unhappiness. We have our responsibility, and it is time we exercised it and put an end to this shabby, unfortunate business. I ask for the Yeas and Nays, Mr. President!”

“Mr. President,” Senator Richardson said calmly, for there was no point in further talk, he might lose such votes as he had if the debate continued, “I join the Senator in that request.”

Hands went up all across the chamber, and the Vice President said, “Evidently a sufficient number.”

“I suggest the absence of a quorum, Mr. President,” the Majority Leader said, and while the clerk droned once again through the roster the tension rose rapidly in the big brown room. Suddenly this was it, at last, after almost two weeks of bitterness and trouble and tragedy and strain, and the excitement suddenly flared as it always does before a final roll call. Members of the House, Senate staff members, and aides came in and crowded six and seven deep along the back wall; every seat in the public galleries was filled; in the diplomatic gallery the Barres and the Maudulaynes, sitting together, leaned forward intently while near them Vasily Tashikov looked impassive and K.K. looked nervous; out in the hall a line of waiting visitors who had no chance of getting in wound four abreast along the corridor, down the stairs, and along the hall below; the press gallery buzzed with reporters sitting, standing, filling every seat, and crowding in the aisles. With the exception of Fred Van Ackerman, absent in Arizona, and Reverdy Johnson of Alabama, lying in his living death at the Mayflower, every Senator was present. Ninety-seven men and one woman were about to pass judgment upon Robert A. Leffingwell, and even though it was a foregone conclusion now what that judgment was going to be, the moment could not be robbed of its fearful tension and high, paralyzing excitement.

“A quorum is present,” the Vice President announced to a chamber that was suddenly absolutely silent “The pending business is the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell to be Secretary of State. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to this nomination? The Yeas and Nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.”

“Mr. Abbott!” the clerk said solemnly, and the junior Senator from New Hampshire, who had not gotten his hoped-for aid for the Portland Navy Yard, shot the Majority Leader a spiteful look and said:

“No!”

“Mrs. Adams!” the clerk said, and the senior Senator from Kansas, not looking up from her desk, spoke quietly.

“No,” she said.

“Mr. Andrews!” the clerk said, Murfee Andrews hesitated a moment and said, “Yes!” in a firm voice, and there was an excited intake of breath across the galleries.

“Mr. Albertson!” the clerk said, and the junior Senator from West Virginia said in a loud voice, “No!”

“Mr. Allen!” the clerk said, the bustling little professor from South Dakota said, “Yes!” in a chirpy voice, and again there was the sudden tense inhalation.

But as the Clerk moved slowly and deliberately on, through the rest of the A’s, John Baker of Kentucky and the B’s, on through the C’s and the two D’s
—“
Yes,” said Stanley Danta quietly, and, “No,” said John DeWilton loudly after—the E’s and the lone F, Hal Fry, who said, “No!” emphatically, on down the alphabet to the M’s and O’s and P’s and Arly Richardson, whose “Yes!” came with a certain spiteful air, it was obvious that nothing could stem the tide. The press gallery began to stir with a great restlessness, and long before the clerk came at last to “Mr. Wilson!” and the tension suddenly burst in a roar of excitement, the wire-service reporters were already long gone with their

FLASH. SENATE DEFEATS LEFFINGWELL.

There remained then only the quick tally by the clerk, the whispered consultation with the Vice President, the bang of his gavel, and in Harley’s voice, trembling just a little with excitement, the official result:

“On this vote the Yeas are twenty-four, the Nays are seventy-four, and the Senate does
not
advise and consent to the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell.”

After that for a while order was unknown in the Senate as the tension exploded, voices rose, and in a sort of restless migration many Senators got up and moved about the floor talking to one another while in the galleries prolonged applause met boos and hisses and there was actually one brief fist fight, hastily quelled by the guards, between a triumphant opponent of the nominee and one of his frustrated adherents.

Five minutes later, a reasonable semblance of decorum restored, the Majority Leader, thinking again how simple and yet how marvelous the free deciding of free men was, said quietly,

“Mr. President, I move that the Senate stand in adjournment until noon on Monday.”

“Without objection,” the Vice President said with equal quietness, “it is so ordered.”

And so, thus peaceably and in the traditional, continuing way, at eleven o’clock and twenty-four minutes p.m., the process was completed and the deed was done.

But if the Senate and the press and the diplomatic corps and the whole wide world thought that this was the last FLASH out of Washington that night, they were most profoundly mistaken and it was not very long before they knew it.

It was only a very little while after the story of the vote had gone out upon the wire and begun its repeated circlings and recirclings of the troubled globe that there occurred within the heart and mind and body of a certain famous man in a certain famous house a most sudden and surprising—at least that was his expression, surprise, in the brief second he had in which to feel it—and fearful spasm of his system. He had no time to even make a sound as it hit him. One hand flew to his chest, the other struck some books spread open upon the counterpane of the Lincoln bed; a piece of wire-service copy with NEW LEAD LEFFINGWELL on it, disturbed by his final convulsive movements, fell off upon the floor; and he slumped over and lay still.

Very shortly thereafter his secretary, entering at his orders but against his doctors’ advice to take some late dictation, ran screaming from the room, and within twenty minutes after that his press secretary was announcing the news in a shaking voice to reporters hastily summoned.

Within minutes after that men all around the globe were stopping thunderstruck, sobered and shaken and knowing that in that fateful moment the world had changed forever, so great is the power that resides in that one heart in that one house.

***