Capable of Honor (65 page)

“This would seem to give the Governor of California a most dramatic boost in his drive to capture that nomination from the Secretary of State, then,” Frankly said, “and also would seem to give him some kind of mandate to work within the Administration to moderate the President’s policies. Is that how you see it, Walter?”

Walter Dobius gave a smug little smile.

“That is one way to see it, yes.”

“If there are other ways,” Frankly Unctuous said with a sudden gleam of comprehension and the start of a glorious smile, “then it should be a most dramatic convention, indeed!”

“Madam Chairman,” Jawbone was saying as the camera cut abruptly away from Frankly and his smile, back to the rostrum, “now, Madam Chairman, what does the Platform Committee propose here? Why, it just proposes that we affirm our belief in stopping aggression and we applaud our President’s actions in attempting to do so. That’s what we’ve just almost voted on. Madam Chairman, it only lost by seven votes, and—”

SEVEN VOTES, the claque said solemnly.

“Yes, I said it, seven votes,” Jawbone cried hastily. “You’all up there don’t have to parrot everything, I’ll say to you, I can do my own speechifyin’. Seven votes is right, Madam Chairman, and that shows one thing. It shows—”

JA-SON MEANS PEACE, the claque observed.

“It
shows,”
Jawbone repeated angrily, “that there’s a big sentiment in this convention and in this country against what’s going on in Gorotoland and Panama, Madam Chairman, that’s what it shows. We oppose aggression, yes: we hail our great President in his attempts to fight it and negotiate peaceable settlements, yes; but we are
against
the way he’s gone about it and the
places
he’s chosen to do it. We see what he’s tryin’ to do. Madam Chairman—why, I sat in those White House conferences myself, I know what he was thinking, but when my famous friend from the Senate, the chairman of the great Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Tom August of Minnesota—when he and I, Madam Chairman, speaking in our respective capacities as chairmen, as well as delegates to this great convention, send up a signal and say. Go slow, Watch out. Rest easy there, boy, why, you—all know there must be some sense behind it, now! Don’t you, now?”

There was an upsurge of sound, but so evenly divided between applause and protest that no one could be quite sure which predominated.

“Yes, sir!” Jawbone cried. “That’s what we say. Madam Chairman, and that’s what this vote of this great convention just now has said! We applaud our great President, we
love
him—”

SEVEN VOTES, the claque reminded, and there was a scattering of boos, applause, and some laughter from the delegates, “—but we just think we’ve got to go a little bit easy here, that’s all. Folks around the country are mighty upset about this drag-on in Gorotoland, my fellow delegates, you know they are, and they don’t like what’s going on in Panama, either. The President says he wants negotiations, and we want negotiations, but nobody’s negotiating yet. They’re still shooting, Madam Chairman, yes, ma’am, they’re still shooting, and our boys are dying and our money’s going down the drain, and my fellow delegates, it just isn’t the right time and the right place! We want to stop ’em, yes, but six thousand miles away in Gorotoland? In Panama, where our rights are shaky at best and where those people ought to be our friends and want us there instead of us having to always be forcing ourselves on them? And it’s dragging, my fellow delegates. It’s dragging. We aren’t getting anywhere. We just aren’t getting anywhere!

“So, Madam Chairman, I move, now that this matter is again before the convention in this little old parliamentary rigamarole, I move the committee language be adopted and again I quote: ‘Believing that the interests of world peace can best be served by halting armed aggression wherever it may exist, we applaud the declared intention of the President of the United States to conciliate and settle world differences in such areas of conflict on a basis of peaceful negotiation.’

“I submit that says it all, my fellow delegates and Madam Chairman. I say to you, let’s pass it now and stop holding everything up, here!”

“With which sentiment,” Frankly Unctuous said with a wry smile to Walter Dobius as the camera returned to them, “I think we must all agree. It is well past midnight, now, and all of us are growing a little weary. But what’s this—?” And over his shoulder little figures could be seen moving on the rostrum, down below—“I believe it’s Congressman Hamilton of California, one of the few California political figures, and one of the few Negroes, who is apparently not enthusiastically behind Governor Jason. He is evidently going to restate the Administration arguments for stronger language in the platform. While he repeats them, Walter, perhaps you and I might take over the cameras for a few minutes and review just what has gone on here so far. It began, you will remember—” and the convention faded away, and it was guaranteed by two intelligent, earnest, sage, and thoughtful faces agreeing with each other diligently for the next fifteen minutes, that on one network, at least, the sentiments of one of the few Negro leaders not backing Governor Jason would be very smoothly, logically, and skillfully withheld from the country.

Inside the Cow Palace, of course, no such convenient method of obliterating the opposition existed, and so Cullee came to the lectern sure of the attention of the only people who mattered at that moment, 1293 nervous, skittish, tense, upset, unpredictable, and—at this point—quite probably unmanageable delegates. Their little round faces looked up at him from the floor like a basketful of pink pennies; the balloons drifted among the rafters, the banners hung limply, the standards and placards sagged in weary hands. But the explosive potentials were there, even if it was past midnight. The late hour, the increasing exhaustion after more than ten hours of session, made an explosion even more likely. He glanced across at the box where Sarah Johnson was sitting, nodded though he could not see her through the drifting blue haze and the lights slamming straight into his eyes, and spoke briefly and to the point.

“Madam Chairman,” he said—the Speaker had left the floor entirely, now, following a phone call whose import—“He’s here”—he had just had time to confide tersely to Cullee as they passed on the ramp. Where, Cullee had no idea; possibly right here in a back room somewhere, waiting to state his case, if need be. But he did not think it was time for that yet, and he assumed the Speaker agreed and would tell Harley so, if Harley needed to be told. For the moment, the job was his:

“Madam Chairman, my good old friend from the House has, as usual, confused the issue. This so-called committee language is an insult to the President of the United States. We are here to support the President of the United States, not to insult him.

“‘Believing that the interests of world peace can best be served by halting armed aggression wherever it may exist—Well, where does it exist, and who began it? And what kind is it? I’ll tell you. It’s Communist, and it exists in Gorotoland and Panama because the Communists began it there.

“This language is an open, deliberate, and direct insult to the President of the United States, since its clear implication is that there is no distinction to be drawn between kinds of armed action—that they are all ‘aggressive,’ in the most invidious sense of the word, whatever their motivation and uses, and that the United States is equally guilty in these two situations with the mortal enemies of mankind, the Communist imperialists.

“Let me read on: ‘… we applaud the declared intention of the President of the United States to conciliate and settle world differences in such areas of conflict on a basis of peaceful negotiation.’

The ‘declared intention,’ if you please; the
declared
intention. Is the committee implying here—do
you
want to imply—that your President is telling a lie?
Is
it his intention or is it not? I suggest you stop and think about this for a minute.

“And let me comment briefly on the remarks of my good friend from South Carolina. Gorotoland and Panama aren’t the right time and the right places, he says. Is any sane person in this world so naïve as to think that the Communists are going to force an issue with us at times and places that are
convenient
for us? Is anyone so foolish as to think they’re going to tailor their subversion of peace to what is best for
us?
Unless we strike first, we are never going to fight at the best time and the best place for us; and I assume that neither my friend from South Carolina or his friends are going to be so awful as to suggest or even contemplate that we strike first. Heaven,” he said dryly, “forbid.

“So what makes him think it’s ever going to be easy, or quick, or comfortable? It never is. It’s always going to be, just as it has been for decades now, awkward and difficult and unsatisfactory and frustrating. But I would suggest to him—and to his friends—and to you—that if we all just hang on a while, it will work out all right.

“Not neatly.

“Not smoothly.

“Not painlessly.

“But all right.…

“My fellow delegates,” and the hall was very silent, he had them listening with a genuine respect, “the hour is late and we have had enough contention on this issue. You have a man with guts at the head of your party and at the head of your country. For God’s sake, stand by him and show a few guts yourselves. It’s time.

“Madam Chairman, I move to amend the motion of the delegate from South Carolina by striking all after the words ‘Believing that the interests of world peace can best be served by’ and substituting after the word ‘by’ the words ‘opposing Communist aggression and infiltration, armed or otherwise, wherever they may exist, we applaud the actions of the President in opposing such Communist aggression and infiltration in Gorotoland and Panama. We wholeheartedly applaud his determination to bring peace and stability to those troubled areas through the medium of peaceful and honest negotiation as soon as the Communist threat has been removed.’

“I ask for a roll-call vote on my amendment.”

“Madam Chairman,” Jawbone Swarthman said, returning hastily to the rostrum, and grabbing the microphone, “I think I speak for my friends on my side of this issue when I say we join in that request.”

“In the absence of the Speaker, and in my absence,” Anna Hooper Bigelow said hastily, and couldn’t understand why there was a sudden delighted roar of laughter, “I ask the parliamentarian to call the roll of the States.”

“He states it very effectively,” Beth said.

“He has the ability,” Dolly Munson agreed. “It needed to be put in perspective.”

“Yes,” Beth said thoughtfully. She smiled with a certain wry grimness. “For the moment, at least, they seem to have forgotten Murderer Knox. I think Bob helped a lot on that.”

“Somebody had to,” Crystal said with a sudden deep yawn. “It was way out of hand.”

Beth studied her for a moment.

“How are you feeling? Shouldn’t I take you back to the hotel to bed?”

“I’m going to fold pretty soon,” Crystal agreed with a sleepy smile. “But you don’t have to take me back. I know you want to stay for the voting. The car’s waiting, it won’t be any problem. I’ll go along pretty soon.”

“I think we’d at least better see you to it,” Dolly remarked. “I’d feel better.”

“And I,” Beth agreed.

“Oh, poof!” Crystal said, as a wandering UPI photographer stuck his camera over the edge of the box and took a couple of quick shots of her, just to have something to turn in to the office when he went off duty at 2 A.M. “Don’t overdramatize.…Isn’t that my battered and bewildered husband down there near Ohio? It is! He’s waving! He’s smiling! He’s still alive! Well, bless his heart. I thought he’d be the one in collapse by this time.”

“I think he’s coming over,” Beth said in a pleased voice, and in another couple of moments he did, looking drawn and exhausted, but obviously determined to keep going.

“Hi, Dolly,” he said with a tired smile, standing just below them in the press section. “Hi, Mom. How are you?” he asked his wife seriously. She covered his hand on the railing with hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“Thumper and I are tired,” she admitted, “but still kicking. What do you hear?”

“Well!” he said. His voice dropped to a confidential murmur, he stood on tiptoes to raise himself toward them, and they leaned down to hear. “I just ran into Cullee a minute ago, and the God-damndest rumor is going around the California delegation.”

“Alaska requests a poll of the delegation, Madam Chairman.”

“The parliamentarian will poll the delegation.”

“Is that your intention?” Bob Leffingwell demanded at the Mark.

Ted Jason smiled.

“Let’s see how the vote goes,” he said, as five telephones began to ring almost simultaneously. “Then we’ll argue. Help me with these, will you?”

“I think you must,” the Speaker said flatly at a secluded mansion in Burlingame, just down the Peninsula from the Cow Palace. “It may be the only thing that will—”

“Not yet,” the President said calmly.

“But you don’t know the feeling—”

“I know it as well as though I’d been here,” the President told him. “My only psychological and emotional advantage is that I haven’t been here—and now I am. But when to make it known, and what to do with it after that, I have to decide.”

“But—” the Speaker said angrily.

“Let’s listen to the vote,” the President suggested. “I’ll know better after that.”

“This one’s going to be too close, too, Stanley.”

“Let’s listen to the vote and see,” Senator Danta suggested, though he was too honest to say it with much conviction.

“Right at this moment,” the Secretary said soberly, “I’d say this was anybody’s convention.”

“At this moment, Walter,” Frankly Unctuous said thoughtfully, as behind him on the screen the convention could be seen squirming and stirring like some great basket of eels, “I’d say this was anybody’s convention, wouldn’t you? The surprises of this night may not yet be over.”

“There may,” Walter Dobius agreed with a little smile of such savage contempt for a second that it quite puzzled and disturbed millions of viewers, “be more to come.”