Capable of Honor (76 page)

Chapter 8

So it had come at last, his moment of triumph—and what a triumph! The commanded choice of a convention in dissolution—the dictated darling of harassed and embittered delegates—probably the genuine choice of well over half of them, but far from the happily near-unanimous selection he had once imagined in his fonder hopes.

The practical politician’s creed—Don’t look back now, you’ve got it—was not quite enough as he walked slowly to the rostrum, Beth and Hal close behind, in the midst of a rising roar of welcome.

It was not until they reached the lectern and a sudden note of genuine warmth surged into the greeting that he began to relax a little; and it was only after the demonstration had lasted for twenty minutes, the delegates finding somewhere some last unexpended ounce of energy to help them dance and rollick along the aisles, the galleries applauding and shouting, that he was ready to say the things he felt must be said on this occasion of such importance to him, the party, the country, and perhaps the world.

But first he had to acknowledge something to his family and he did so as a thousand lights beat down and a thousand cameras clicked.

“I’m beginning to think they mean it,” he shouted to Beth after they had stepped forward and waved for the fiftieth time.

She smiled.

“I’ve always told you, Senator, that things work out.”

“So have I,” Hal said sternly, leaning forward to speak past his mother.

The Secretary laughed.

“All right,” he said as he turned back to wave again, “so have you both. Can I help it if I’m a natural-born disbeliever?”

The sound renewed itself, grew, subsided. He leaned back a little, rested his left arm on the lectern, gripped its front edge with his left hand.

“Mr. Chairman,” he began gravely as the hall became abruptly still, “I could wish—we all could wish—that events in San Francisco had been conducted in a different atmosphere and their conclusion reached in a different mood.

“I regret that the speaker preceding me chose to take the position he did and conclude it with the action he did. I hope that sober reflection will in due time persuade him to come again to stand beside us.”

There was a roar of approval, and in the booth above Frankly Unctuous remarked blandly, “While one of course understands the perhaps rather desperate mood in which Secretary Knox indulges these last-minute afterthoughts for Governor Jason’s feelings, one wonders whether his appeals for help will have much effect.”

“I am afraid,” Walter agreed with a certain spiteful righteousness, “that the split is too fundamental to be healed at this late moment. And in any event, this is rather contrary to the President’s own bitterly expressed feelings, is it not?”

“Orrin the Peacemaker?” Frankly inquired dryly.

“Politics makes strange apostles,” Walter observed, “But this time I am afraid it is much, much too late.”

“Little I can say,” the Secretary went on, “can change the difficult and frequently embittered things that have occurred at this convention. Yet perhaps there are one or two things to be said that can, to some extent, moderate and soften their memories.

“When men contend, as men have here contended, for great ideas and great prizes, they sometimes have a tendency to move beyond the bounds of decent argument and decent treatment of one another. We expect this in other lands, but although we know it has happened many times here, we still, each time, I think, retain the hope that it will not happen in ours.

“At least I do not think,” he said, and his tone was grave and thoughtful and they were listening to him intently, “that many of us consciously start out upon a contest of ideas or ambitions with the deliberate intent to be unfair. At least I think we retain some memory of tradition, some respect for principle, that persuades us that we must, if we can, be decent and just. The hope is there, and I think by far the greater number of us consciously and deliberately try to do the best we can to see that it does not die.

“Yet there are some”—his expression darkened and his voice became sad—“there have been some in this convention—who believe that this is not the way to conduct arguments in America.

“There are some who believe that every means of attack must be used, that every weapon of destruction must be employed, that if you cannot defeat a man on the fair ground of argument, then you must defeat him by assaults upon his character, and by imputing to him beliefs and impulses and actions against which the decencies of mankind cry out.

“Thus it has been said of me that I have deliberately condoned violence in this convention. I did not, but that is no matter: it has been said, and said deliberately, and no doubt some have been convinced by it, and will remain convinced. For this is the kind of lie that feeds on denial and no man, thus impugned, can ever entirely cleanse himself in the eyes of those who would rather believe evil about someone they disagree with than give him the benefit of the actual facts about him.

“It has been said that the President and I have deliberately plunged America into war, that we have deliberately done things in foreign policy that are hurtful to the United States and to the cause of world peace.

“You would get the idea, to listen to some people tell it, that we actually enjoy sending American boys to die; that we actually revel in spending the national treasure upon wars abroad; that we actually sit around in the White House and the State Department clasping our hands with relish at the thought of how much misery and unhappiness we can create.

“What sort of monstrous madness,” he demanded, and his voice filled with a sudden flash of real indignation, “is this?
What kind of insanity are some Americans trying to say about other Americans? What kind of nonsense are they trying to persuade themselves to believe?”

His voice became stern.

“I will tell you that not many of them believe it. Just a few, deluded by those who would use their gullibility for their own dark purposes, into believing what a moment’s mature reflection should convince them could not possibly be true.

“Deluded by deluders deliberate and cold-blooded, who know exactly what they are doing. And what they are doing holds no good for America.

“My countrymen,” he said, “the hour is very late and we have been here very long; yet I think we might perhaps take one more moment to consider the principles by which we like to think we live in this country—the principles by which, if this country is to come safely through the situation that confronts her in the world, we have
got
to live.

“I grant you that all of us would like to forget about the world’s troubles and concentrate on what we have: our fantastic wealth, our fantastic standard of living, our fantastic level of general well-being.

“I doubt if there is an American in the land who does not, in his inmost heart, wish that we could wash our hands of the world and let it go hang while we enjoy ourselves over here.

“We are basically, still, a very isolationist people—and why shouldn’t we be? No people ever had greater reason to be, or more to gain, if they could just forget the world and let it go to hell. We are strong enough so that we could do it, probably, if we really set our minds to it.

“But history does not permit this luxury to those who have power and also have some amount of conscience to go with it. History does not permit us to withdraw and go our own way.

“History has vacuums and it says, You fill them.

“History has needs and it says, You answer.

“History has problems and it says, Get cracking, they can’t be solved without you.

“And so we face the world and we do not have the luxury of running away from it.

“And by the same token, we do not have the luxury of pretending that its problems can be settled by turning and looking the other way. Or by deluding ourselves into thinking that we have a right to intervene when the world’s would-be murderer is named Hitler but have no right to intervene when he changes his name to Tashikov or Mao Tse-tung.

“We aren’t permitted the luxury of being either/or as the moment suits us. We have to be in the world or out of it, all the way. And history made the decision for us long ago, and we are in.

“Now I say to you, my countrymen, that conscience and honor have been discussed at some length here in San Francisco. But conscience and honor are only the way you do things, they are not the things themselves. The things themselves are what history has placed upon us. Conscience and honor are only the style in which we meet them. Conscience and honor dictate only how we handle them. They do not permit us to escape from them, or to pretend that they are not there.

“Conscience does not decide the issue: the issue has long been decided. It is only how we meet it that matters. It is only from our courage and integrity, our fortitude and grace, that honor springs and conscience is upheld.

“I do not believe,” he said gravely, “that we can do other than we are doing in the world: be steady, be patient, be firm, be willing to talk—but also be ready and calling to act if we must—and then do it, when the challenge comes.

“I cannot, in good faith—or good conscience—persuade you to any other policy. I cannot in decency—or in honor—advocate any other course.

“I call you to a campaign,” he said quietly, “which will determine whether America is to be a sometime-fighter for the right when it suits her, as some would like her to be—or a consistent and steady advocate of mankind’s hopes and decencies whenever and wherever they are challenged, whatever the difficult cost and bitter price of defending them.

“This is what the President and I offer you, I think, this choice, made clear-cut now as it has rarely been by our recent decisions in Gorotoland, the UN, and Panama.

“We hope you will be with us. We hope a majority of the American people will be with us. But regardless, I suspect”—and a wry and almost wistful little smile touched his face for a moment—“neither of us, in all probability, could do any differently, or be any other, than he is.”

And he bowed gravely and waved and turned away, shepherding his family before him; and after a moment, a little puzzled at this rather abrupt and subdued conclusion, this final, personal peroration which raised few flags but touched instead on inner things that they would have to think about a while, the delegates and galleries broke into a generous but somewhat baffled applause.

The Speaker stepped forward, pounded the gavel sharply once, and declared,

“This convention now stands adjourned
sine die.
”

And thus on Orrin’s introspective note it ended, and in all the bright city, great nation, great world, men approved or disapproved as it suited them and made of it what they would according to their lights.

To the dean and leader of Walter’s world the issues still were clear-cut as he began his column in the press room at the Hilton shortly before 5 A.M. There was no Helen-Anne to bother him tonight—she was off with the Knoxes somewhere, plotting strategy, as he had heard, with a bitter, ironic smile, from
Newsweek
as he entered the hotel. Nor was there anyone else to interfere as he sat in a corner of the room, stolid and alone, carefully ignored by his colleagues, pecking out the words on the battered portable that had accompanied him on so many journeys to so many famous people in his endless search for Right. He was through with being part of a two-man show, he had bade Frankly Unctuous farewell with considerable relief, he really quite regretted, now, that he had accepted the television assignment.

It was good to be just himself again, Walter Wonderful, for whose wisdom the nations waited and the world bowed down:

“SAN FRANCISCO—Thus in disgruntlement and dismay ends this convention of errors: on a pure note of power politics, struck by a candidate for Vice President whose use of power politics has brought America to the edge of disaster.

“America must act, he has told us: America has a duty to do what she thinks best: America is so perfect and so arrogant that she cannot refrain from intervening, but must force other nations to her will.

“If Americans object to this, they are deluded. If they don’t accept it, they are fools.

“One wonders how this policy will suit the rest of the world, which now confronts the possibility that Orrin Knox will be Vice President, perhaps President himself, some day.

“One wonders how it will suit the American people, whose sons are being called, whose treasure is being used, to follow this policy wherever it may lead, even to national destruction and history’s eternal condemnation.

“For the President, this marks the low point of a career which, while not notably distinguished, had not been notably harmful until these recent months. Now he has chosen to cap it with one of the most brutal public attacks upon a fellow American that the nation has ever witnessed. His excoriation of Governor Jason before the eyes of watching mankind must always remain as one of the most extraordinary and inexcusable episodes in American history.

“For this merciless public humiliation of a man whose only crime is the desire to bring about world peace, Mr. Hudson deserves, as he will receive, the condemnation and contempt of decent men.

“For Governor Jason, the almost-candidate and undoubtedly the real choice of the convention had the delegates been free to express their true feelings, several courses are open.

“He can, as Secretary Knox suggested in his rambling acceptance speech, forget his principles, his conscience, and his honor, and come to stand beside the President and Mr. Knox in support of a policy his whole life condemns. Others, such as Robert A. Leffingwell, have followed such a cynical course already, and more, perhaps, may do so.

“Or he can stand aside, an independent, critical voice in the midst of the campaign, pointing out errors, urging reforms: a course that can reduce a man to the status of common scold in a very short time, or, if it leave him respected, leave him isolated and impotent as well.

“Or the Governor can remain true to his principles and his convictions, stand firm on the policy of true negotiation and opposition to war which so many concerned and dedicated Americans believe in along with him, and let himself become what they see in him: the guardian of their hopes, the protector of their future, the leader of their cause.