Capable of Honor (57 page)

“Campaign chairmen!” Mary Baffleburg cried scornfully. “That’s the trouble with these conventions, Mr. Chairman! We’re always being told what somebody higher up wants! We’re always being pushed around! What do the delegates want, that’s what I want to know? You feel the same way, Mr. Chairman, you know you do, we all do! What do
we
want, for a change? That’s what I’d like to know!”

And with this there did seem to be general agreement, for from all along the table and throughout the room, regardless of favorite candidate, there came sounds of approval and endorsement. Apparently Mary Baffleburg was speaking the popular voice. Lafe realized suddenly that this was not going to be so easy.

“The suggestion has been made,” he said carefully, as even Old Joe Smitters stared at him with a hostile gaze, “that rather than have a bitter fight on the convention floor this afternoon, which we all know would have very serious effects upon the party, the committee should agree on a compromise that would be fair to all sides. After rather lengthy consultations—”

“A phone call from the White House!” Mary Baffleburg shot out, and Lizzie Hanson McWharter said solemnly, “You are so right. You—are—so—right.”

“—after lengthy consultations,” Lafe went on with dignity, “the suggestion has been made that the Mississippi delegation pledged to Secretary Knox be seated.”

“No!” somebody shouted, but he went on, as calmly as possible.

“In return for that concession by the Jason forces, it is proposed that the competing delegations from Ohio be equally divided, with half of each delegation being seated and with the other half of each delegation being declared alternates; the present alternates for each competing delegation to be declared special guests of the convention and given special seats in the official galleries.”

“No” somebody shouted again, and this time the voice was joined by many others, exclaiming, protesting, indignantly arguing. Out of them the voice of Old Joe Smitters could be heard rising in what was, for several minutes, a futile demand for order.

“Now,” he said, breathing heavily when it was finally honored, “the committee will be in order. Does somebody wish to put that in the form of a motion?”

“I want to speak to it first, Mr. Chairman!” Mary Buttner Baffleburg cried.

“It has to be a motion first, as you know perfectly well, and then you can speak to it,” Old Joe Smitters said angrily. “Will somebody make a motion?”

“Yes, Mr. Chairman,” Lafe said. “I’m sitting in for our delegate to this committee. State Senator Wood, who is unavoidably absent this morning—”

“Oh,
I’ll
bet!” Lizzie Hanson McWharter said with a raucous chuckle.

“—and I do so move.”

“Second!” said Homer Amos Stanhope of Massachusetts.

“Mr. Chairman,” Mary Baffleburg said, “Pennsylvania does not, and it will not, accept this compromise, whose net result will be to lose Secretary Knox at least fifteen votes, no matter how you slice it. I say to all on this committee who favor justice and decency that we should reject this so-called compromise and stand by our candidate!”

“But this has the approval of your candi—” Lafe Smith began, but his protest was drowned in the general uproar.

“Question!” somebody called frantically. “Question!”

“All those in favor—” Joe Smitters began, but before he could complete the sentence, Mary Buttner Baffleburg, Lizzie McWharter, and at least twenty other committee members were on their feet.

“Mr. Chairman!” Mary Baffleburg shouted, while the press and the audience craned to see and the television cameras had a field day, “Pennsylvania refuses to vote on this so-called compromise! Pennsylvania is leaving this committee! Pennsylvania urges all who believe in fair play and decency and Orrin Knox to join her in this move. Pennsylvania has had enough of this farce! Pennsylvania—”

“Take it to the floor, Mr. Chairman!” Lizzie Hanson McWharter barked sternly as the press counted at least thirty delegates from twelve states moving toward the door. “Take it to the floor!”

“Damn it,” Old Joe Smitters cried, trying to wave his arms and pound his gavel on the table at the same time, “oh, God damn it, sit down! If you
ladies
and the rest of you will sit down, I’ll entertain a motion to take it to the floor. I can’t do it just because a pack of—a pack of—just because the distinguished National Committeewoman from Kansas says I have to. I have to have a motion, damn it!”

“I move, Mr. Chairman,” Lafe Smith said, shaking his head with a tired expression, “that the committee report to the convention that it has been unable to reach agreement on the seating of the delegations from Ohio and Mississippi, and that it asks the convention to dispose of the matter when the committee files its report this afternoon.”

“I second!” Mary Baffleburg and Lizzie McWharter shouted together.

“All in favor—” said Old Joe Smitters.

“AYE!” roared the committee.

“That tears it,” said the Senator from Iowa, leaving the room in undisguised disgust to find a phone and call Bob Munson.

At the same moment, in Union Square, a fistfight was breaking out between a Knox supporter and a Jason supporter. By the time police converged upon the square the fight had turned into a riot in which several hundred persons were battling wildly in the bright sunny day. Again the grim-faced minions of COMFORT, DEFY, and KEEP showed no emotion, displayed no anger, went about their business with an impassive efficiency that sent a genuine thrill of fear through many delegates on the spot and many watchers around the nation. A total of thirty people were injured this time, two of them so seriously that first reports raised the possibility they might not live. Frankly Unctuous’ plum-pudding voice was stern and harsh as he set the tone for his fellows:

“It is clear at this moment that an angry spirit of violence unusual in an American political convention is beginning to play an increasing part here. Whoever started this latest clash between Jason and Knox forces—and it seems a fair presumption that some Knox supporters, angered by this morning’s earlier episode in which a backer of the Secretary was roughed up a bit at the Palace Hotel, sought to retaliate and thus touched off this newest bloody business—the time has obviously come to put a stop to it. Governor Jason scarcely two hours ago demanded a ‘fair-play’ convention. It is time for his opponent and all associated with him to heed this call.”

KNOX FORCES START UGLY RIOT IN UNION SQUARE, the next batch of headlines said; IGNORE JASON CALL FOR FAIR PLAY.

On five hundred newscasts across the country five hundred newscasters began their reports: “A bloody riot which observers believe was started by supporters of Secretary of State Orrin Knox today turned San Francisco’s Union Square into a shambles.”

And at five hundred typewriters five hundred editorialists and columnists began to write, in words that were synthesized, as so often happened, by The Greatest Publication: “Extremism of any kind is deplorable in American politics. When it is extremism in the form of physical violence, apparently condoned by a major contender for public office, it is doubly deplorable. While Secretary of State Orrin Knox may not be personally responsible for the ugly riot that has just besmirched a great convention, nonetheless—”

“To refresh your memories,” Cullee said—and he and his audience were just as straight-faced as though the full text hadn’t been leaked to the
New York Times
and already appeared in today’s edition—“the President’s foreign policy plank reads as follows:

“‘Believing that the interests of world peace can best be served by opposing Communist aggression and infiltration, armed or otherwise, wherever they may exist, we applaud the action of the President in opposing such Communist aggression and infiltration in the nations of Gorotoland and Panama. We wholeheartedly support his determination to bring peace and stability to those troubled nations through the medium of peaceful and honest negotiations as soon as the Communist threat has been removed.’

“I assume most of you have had time to consider that language overnight, and therefore I wouldn’t think we would need much more discussion before bringing it to a vote, Mr. Chairman—”

“Now, Mr. Chairman,” Roger P. Croy said testily, “again the Congressman acts as though he were a committee member, or maybe even the chairman himself, or something. He’s trying to tell us what to do. In fact, he’s trying to railroad this right through the committee. I think he ought to be told right now that a good many of us aren’t going to stand for it, Mr. Chairman. So he can stop it right now and we’ll all save time.”

“If the distinguished delegate from Oregon wishes to lead a revolt against the President of the United States, Mr. Chairman,” Cullee snapped, “let him start—right now—and we can all save time on that, too. How about it. Governor? You going to lead the troops?”

“The Congressman doesn’t have to get insolent, Mr. Chairman,” Roger P. Croy snapped in his turn. “We have a perfect right in this committee to study this language very thoroughly and even oppose it, if we like. I’m going to. I don’t know whether others are going to tuck their tails between their legs because the President sends a messenger boy, but I’m not.” And he glared at Cullee, who had tensed at the term “messenger boy” and glared right back.

“Well, now,” Bill Smatters from Atlanta said soothingly, “it seems to me like you people are getting a little too hot about it. We’re just starting to discuss it and already you-all are practically banging each other’s heads on the floor. The Congressman’s a nice fellow, we all know that, and he isn’t insisting on anything. I’m sure he understands that this is a pretty serious matter here and some of us want to consider it pretty carefully before we vote. Isn’t that right. Congressman?”

“That’s right, Mr. Chairman,” Cullee agreed, more calmly, “insofar as discussion isn’t used for delay, or just to oppose. I do think, though, that it’s quite clear what the issue is: you’re for the President or you’re against him. The whole world is watching. I grant it would be great if we could all pretend Gorotoland and Panama don’t exist, but how can we? I think there’s some danger of making ourselves look ridiculous if we try.”

“Mr. Chairman,” Esmé Harbellow Stryke said with a disapproving sniff, “I do hope my distinguished fellow Californian isn’t saying that this committee is ridiculous when it tries to suggest language that will produce harmony among the very sharply conflicting opinions represented in the convention. The committee language may not satisfy everyone, but it represents many long hours of trying to work out a compromise. I can only repeat what has been said here before, that to mention the two nations in which American aggression has occurred would only—”

“Now, just a minute, Esmé!” Cullee exclaimed. “Just you wait one minute! What was that term you used? ‘American aggression,’ was it? That’s what the Communists call it but I didn’t expect to hear the National Committeewoman from California call it that. Is that what you really think it is?”

“I have my opinions,” Esmé Stryke said darkly, “and so do a good many people in this state, I say to the Congressman. He’s found that out already in one campaign. I hope he isn’t going to have to find it out in another.”

“You really believe,” Cullee said in a wondering tone, “that the United States began all this. You really honestly believe …” He shook his head and said, “Whew!” in a quiet voice. Then his head came up in a challenging fashion and he looked up and down the table. “Isn’t there anyone here who believes in the honor and integrity of this Administration?”

“Well, now, Congressman,” Bill Smatters said in a comfortably patronizing tone before anyone could reply, “I don’t think it’s necessary to put anybody on the spot here, I really don’t. I think, as you said earlier, that we could just go ahead and vote, now, and see what happens. I think this committee pretty well knows where it stands on these issues and I think most of us are ready to make our positions clear. So why don’t we have a vote now?”

“On which proposition, Mr. Chairman?” Roger P. Croy asked quickly.

“Parliamentary procedure would indicate, would it not,” Bill Smatters said smoothly, “that the first vote should come on the committee language—unless,” he added slowly, “it’s amended.”

“I so move,” Senator August said suddenly. “That it be amended, I mean, by substituting the language just read by the distinguished Congressman from California.”

“But—” Roger P. Croy protested with an almost comical dismay.

Tom August looked upset but stubborn.

“The distinguished delegate of Oregon knows how I feel about this,” he said in his soft, precise voice, “and he knows how long and hard I have worked in the past week to find reasonable language. But I am not going to have it said, when this leaks to the press as of course it will, that this committee refused to give its own President a fair hearing. Now,” he demanded with what was, for him, a startling show of anger, “is the great former Governor of Oregon going to tell me that he wants that? Go ahead and tell me!”

Roger P. Croy, for once, looked nonplused. Both his homespun logic and the enormous egotistical arrogance beneath it were suddenly stripped bare. There was a long silence while Tom August stared at him.

“Of course,” he said at last, “we must give every point of view a fair hearing. But we have already given that point of view a fair hearing, for a week, and we haven’t been able to come up with anything else. So I don’t see the point. But … Mr. Chairman, I will put the motion that the language just read by the Congressman from California be substituted for the committee language.”

“I second the motion,” said Esmé Stryke promptly.

“All right, then,” Bill Smatters said swiftly. “Do I hear the question?”

“Question!” someone said as the room grew very still.

“Will the distinguished National Committeewoman from California serve as secretary for this vote? Very well, Mrs. Stryke, call the roll.”

“Harry Bill Johnson of Alabama!” Esmé Stryke said, and Harry Bill Johnson of Alabama said, “Aye!”

Ten minutes later, in a voice that shook a little with nervous strain, Esmé Stryke said: