Overdrive (18 page)

And so it goes. Mr. Sedler wishes to make the point that if equality is written into the Fourteenth Amendment, then you have got to effect equality, and one way is to require integrated schooling. Mr. Hawley is happiest talking about the sociological advantages—empirically demonstrated, he insists—of integrated schooling. I am left arguing that the sociological proofs are at least ambiguous, and that to read equality into the Constitution via the Fourteenth Amendment as authorizing compulsion is an invitation to the ideologization of an instrument that was devised as a compact between
free
people. The program is pretty good. Everyone gets a chance to say what he wishes, and there is a sense of consummation after the hour is over.

Warren (who is a massive physical figure) beckons to me imperiously from the door of the studio and such a signal from him, so unusual, signifies a crisis of sorts
(The governor's secretary called! The governor has been impeached! Can't possibly make it!)
and so I go directly to him, forswearing the conventional little disengaging chatter with my guests. He has a piece of paper in hand, and tells me that the President is trying to reach me on the telephone. The floor manager ushers me into his office. I dial the White House. The operators there are renowned for their general knowledge and tact, but I announce myself in the obvious way: "This is ... I am returning the President's call." They then ask what number you are calling from, and one must suppose this is to guard from someone at Elaine's restaurant going to a pay phone and hiccoughing that he/she is Henry Kissinger/Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I reply that the call was placed to my office, giving that number, but that I am in Louisville, Kentucky, giving this number. In a few seconds the operator advises that the President is tied up, but could he reach me in about a half hour? I say that unhappily he can't, forswear saying that the President will understand that the show must go on, and say simply that an hour-long television program will begin in about five minutes, but that I can call back then. Another silence, and then I am told that an hour from now would be just fine.

This communication was hardly extraordinary, involving merely me, a phone operator, an assistant, and the President. But the resources of presidential communications systems are not to be underestimated. When President Nixon decided, ever so cautiously, to back the candidacy of my brother Jim for the Senate in 1970, Mr. Nixon disclosed his plans to me in the Oval Office, and in an extensive conversation advised me that he would have the Vice-President identify himself in some way with Jim, notwithstanding that the incumbent running against Jim, Charles Goodell, was the Republican nominee and Jim was running as a conservative, under the banner of New York's Conservative Party. Ten days later, the chairman of the luncheon in New York, at which Vice-President Agnew was to speak and my brother to be present in the audience, called to question me on whether the Vice-President was merely to be seen shaking Jim's hand (Version A), or whether the Vice-President in his speech was actually to say quote unquote how glad he was to see James Buckley in the audience (Version B). The chairman refused to go with Version B unless the White House explicitly cleared it.

So, I called Bob Haldeman at the White House—but learned that he was in Spain, with the President. I asked then for presidential assistant Peter Flanigan, who thinks on his feet as fast as any man alive, so that in ten seconds I was able to describe the problem. "Can you hang on a minute?" he asked. Certainly. Well, it took closer to two minutes. Flanigan was back on the line. "We'll go with Version A." "Great," I said. Wondering whom he had talked with, I remembered that, in addition to Haldeman, John Mitchell had been in the Oval Office when Mr. Nixon had disclosed his plans. "Who'd you check with— Mitchell?" I asked. "No. I checked with Haldeman. He wasn't sure, so he asked the President." It is well known that George Bernard Shaw, on being informed of the discovery that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, commented that this was the most obvious lie he had ever heard. GBS wouldn't have been so skeptical if he had listened in on that conversation.

It was time to go with John Y. Brown, Governor of Kentucky. A delicate matter in introducing him is how exactly to handle the presidential business. Some of my guests on "Firing Line" have been presidential nominees, some have been candidates for the presidency, some explicit contenders for the candidacy, some inexplicit contenders for the candidacy, some have simply been known to harbor a quiet conviction that all the reticulated factors argue their presumptive qualifications. It is in this last category that John Brown fits, and therefore in introducing him you do not wish to shove him farther up on the scale, as this might require him to make disavowals uncomfortable to him, and disrupting to the viewer, who may have tuned in to have a look at someone who might yet be President.

So, in my introduction, I handle this by saying, . . [Governor Brown] is most conspicuous for identifying himself with the need to bring to state government the approach of business. Moreover, he has taken this position while simultaneously serving as a) a Democrat and b) a Democrat who is widely interpreted as profoundly believing that his nostrums for the state of Kentucky ought not to have a mere one state as their beneficiary. He would, or so it is assumed, consent to serve as President of the United States."

So we go into the whole matter of the extent to which government is "business." I remind him that his own father once said that "government is not a business," and he replies that a
knowledge
of business is
always
relevant, and I counter that mental homes, for example, don't lend themselves to strict business accounting, and he says that really I've got to understand that
everything
lends itself to business analysis; for instance, he asked the head of the Kentucky Council on Higher Education a while ago how much does it cost per student per year in Kentucky colleges? And he
didn't know
—how do you like that? So I say the measurement of cost can't
always
be relevant, look at Karen Anne Quinlan, and he says it is
always
relevant, even if you aren't
guided
by it, and for instance Ronald Reagan's background had nothing to do with business, and that is one of the reasons why Reagan isn't really equipped to do everything he might do as a leader, and I say well, Pericles, Napoleon, Lincoln, and Churchill didn't have a business background, and they did all right, and he says wouldn't they have done
better
if they had had business experience?

And so on. He is an engaging man, and along the line it occurs to me that the effort to get him to intellectualize his point is a) not working; and b) that it's not working could well be testimony to the effectiveness of such a man, whose skills and concepts are in every sense practical. John Brown bought the Kentucky Fried Chicken business from the white-suited Colonel for peanuts years ago and built it into a national compulsion. He makes, and stresses, a further interesting distinction, namely that men engaged in businesses they do not own haven't anything like the kind of concern for economy exercised by men who do own their own business; and this I do believe, a point that did not escape James Burnham's notice when he wrote
The Managerial Revolution
.

It's over, and I go out dutifully to call the President. But he is still tied up, so I go and mix with the audience—alert, sophisticated folk, mostly middle-aged. A young woman accosts me as "Uncle Bill" and kisses me, and holds my hand, and I am garrulously dumbstruck until the lady with the station asks, amiably, "When did you last see your goddaughter?" Suddenly I recognize that it is Howard Hunt's daughter Lisa, and indeed I haven't seen her for several years. I get to meet her husband for the first time; and then Warren is there, telling me please to come quickly to the telephone, and for the third time I am back in the office, and the telephone operator says would I hang on for a minute, which I do, and presently my old friend the commander-in-chief is on the line.

He wanted, he begins, to thank me for my letter. That was not the letter I just finished writing, but one about a month old. I tell him I just finished writing him a fresh letter, and I mention, to be concrete, the Barbara Walters bit, and we discuss for a moment or two the appropriate answer if indeed she decides to ask him that question next week (she didn't). He tells me he has just come back from an exercise with George Bush, a war game in which the enemy launches from the Caribbean. That, he said, would give us three to eight minutes to launch back. I said the Founding Fathers could hardly have imagined a plebiscite on whether to do so in the time involved. I then told him Ron and Doria had enjoyed
Nicholas Nickleby
, and he said he knew that already, and thanks for asking them, and I told him Christopher, my son, had enjoyed the movie at the White House. I thanked him for calling, told him to give my love to his wife, while promising, at his request, to convey his to Pat, and I told him I knew how busy he was, and we said goodbye. A social call.

I have several times reflected on something my old friend Frank Shakespeare once told me. He was then the head of the United States Information Agency, and I had agreed to serve as a member of its Advisory Commission. Frank took me to the Oval Office (my first view of it). Henry Kissinger was the fourth person there, with Nixon, and the exchange went on for about fifteen minutes when Dwight Chapin (appointments secretary and dirty trickster) entered discreetly and handed the President a note. I instantly inferred that this was the procedure by which guests were signaled to leave, and was therefore surprised when Nixon said to Chapin, "Tell him to wait just a minute," after which he resumed his conversation with me. Upon the termination of the point he was making, I rose, said the usual thing about how busy the President was, we all shook hands, and I left.

Walking away from the White House, Frank told me that I had violated protocol. "The way it works is
you
never terminate a session with the President,
he
terminates it. As long as he says nothing abortive, it signifies that he wants things to continue as they are, and the tradition is that we are all there at the pleasure of the President." I can understand that. I mean, there are no intellectual difficulties here, are there? But I still think it makes it easier for a President, or for the King of Siam, if you initiate the motion to go. After all, there is nothing to stand in the way of his overruling you. Reagan, for example, could have said, "Hang on, there are a couple of other things I want to talk to you about. Do you think we should go to war against Libya?"

In any event, I returned to my goddaughter. Governor Brown, who has been mixing gladly with the little crowd, is saying good night. We shake hands, he invites me to be his guest at the Kentucky Derby, and the technician is telling me that they are ready to shoot the commercials. There are four of them, all to the effect that contributions to WKPC, or participation in its forthcoming auction, make possible such interesting programs as "Firing Line." One filler has to be read a second time, "because [the stage director shakes his finger] you said the auction lasted
six
days, but it lasts
eight
days." I look at the script that had been handed me, where indeed it says
six
days, but what the hell, I go again. I bound then from the chair, and Warren and George are waiting, as is the car, so we say hasty goodbyes to everyone, and I sink back in the seat. Warren says we're in plenty of time. George is in the front seat. We discuss the shows, lightly. Soon we're at the airport, and while Warren lines up to check in at the ticket counter, I go to the telephone to speak with Pat to tell her we're at the airport, that I'll eat something here, never mind holding anything for me at Stamford. She says she will record the seven o'clock news for me, but she has forgotten: Is the videocassette antenna switch supposed to be
off
or
on
when one records?

George and I sat in the little pizza-type restaurant and ordered for ourselves and for Warren, but before we were served a flustered Warren came with the news that our flight had been canceled. We held a quick summit, and the three of us separated, Warren to see whether there were means, via another city, to get another flight; George to make local overnight hotel reservations in case all else failed; I to go through the Yellow Pages and look into the possibility of a charter. Warren doesn't like little planes, and lately I've agreed with Pat not to fly in planes that don't at least have two engines and are pressurized. Sometimes (as in the Grumman) I waive the latter provision, but not the former. It takes me about twenty minutes to establish that it is not feasible, on such short notice, to arrange a charter at acceptable prices. It takes about the same time for Warren to establish that there is no acceptable way of traveling commercial so as to get to New York tonight, and to make fresh arrangements for the morning—and George has us booked at the Executive West Motor Hotel near the airport.