Preserve and Protect (38 page)

from

Lafe”

At “Salubria” in Leesburg another typewriter was busy, its version of events somewhat different from that of the junior Senator from Iowa. The time had come, on this eve of the National Committee’s fateful meeting, for someone to put events in perspective as they really were. For such a task there was no one, he knew, better equipped than America’s leading statesman-philosopher of the press. Walter Dobius frequently felt the heavy responsibility of guiding the nation as it should go, and never had he felt it more than he did tonight, in the long hot twilight of this long hot day.

Perhaps he felt it so deeply now because in some strange, unexpected way he was feeling the death of his ex-wife so deeply. Like most of the official Washington through which she had pushed, shoved and cussed her quirky way for so many years, he still could not really believe that Helen-Anne was gone, or gone in such a horrible, mysterious and ominous fashion.

It was not that he still loved her, for all that, if it ever really existed, had been destroyed by her obvious hostility and her raucous sarcasm about his own position in the world. He could see now that she had been always a competitor, never really a wife: she had always intended to have her own column, she had never been able to understand that one famous member was all a Washington marriage could stand. She had never realized that Walter Dobius’ wife must love, serve and respect Walter Dobius.

Particularly respect. That was what had finally driven Walter up the wall. She just had never realized how important he was to the country, how good he was in his own right, how necessary it was that Walter Dobius, of all people, not pick up the
Star
and see his wife’s picture grinning back at him over columns that quite frequently were as sharp, as astute and as well-informed as his own. Helen-Anne had always thought she had a perfect right to be as capable and as famous as he was.

How could you possibly have a loving and lasting partnership on that basis?

Furthermore, it would be a long time, perhaps never, before he could forget their dreadful last argument in the press room at the San Francisco Hilton after the attack on Crystal Knox. She had bitterly assailed every assumption on which his entire life had been built, and she had done it with such hysterical savagery and sarcasm that he knew some of her phrases would ring in his mind until the day he died. And yet the
Star’s
lawyer had called a little while ago and told him with a dryly disapproving economy that she had left him everything except her diary and private papers, which were to go to the Library of Congress. The estate was not very much, and he could not escape the quick, ironic little thought that of course she wasn’t going to take any chances that he might destroy her diary and papers, but nonetheless it did indicate something. It indicated that if she had only been a different and more understanding person—if only she had been less egotistical and less
competitive,
that was the main thing—their marriage might have held up very well.

Why weren’t you like that?
he thought with a sudden, agonized, bereft feeling that startled and amazed him with its intensity.
Why couldn’t you have been my nice wife instead of my competitor? Why did you have to be so unfair to me?

And why, more practically, did she have to go meddling into matters that had produced such a disastrous conclusion? He reflected now, his mind welcoming the diversion from a momentary sentimental weakness, that he himself had received from Ted Jason, prior to Patsy’s reception, some hint of a meeting to be held later. In fact, he had transmitted the knowledge to Tommy Davis, because even at that stage Ted was beginning to formulate some idea of using the little Justice in his plans. Walter had told him it was a beautifully shrewd strategy and had encouraged him to do it. But Helen-Anne had not been content to find out about the meeting and let it go at that. She had apparently kept digging and probing and worrying at it, in her haphazard but tenacious way, until she had stumbled onto something that had brought swift and terrible retribution.

What was it? He had already considered and rejected a number of possibilities. His own reportorial instinct, which was among the three or four best in the capital, had not told him yet that he had found the right one. He knew already that if it did—when it did—he would not pursue it further. For he knew that it must be something very dangerous, and he suspected it might lead into areas of the Jason campaign where he did not wish to go. To do so might be to throw into question his entire support for that campaign, and this would not be right. He considered Ted’s success absolutely imperative for the country. If there was some reason why the Governor should be defeated that even he could accept as valid, he did not want to know. It could mean political disaster for Ted; and the knowledge of it could even mean for Walter what it had meant for Helen-Anne.

No. Better to put Helen-Anne and her dark mystery with all its dark implications out of his mind now, because tomorrow’s newspapers were waiting and there was a column to write. Great events were marching, and all across the land many millions were waiting to know what Walter Dobius thought about them. His views, as always, might well have some direct effect. With an almost physical sensation, as though he had closed a door, or gone to a window to shut it against the cold winds of the world, he said goodbye to Helen-Anne and moved forward into that future for whose shape he bore such a responsibility:

“WASHINGTON—Today the nations stand hushed and expectant as the most powerful of all begins the dramatic and painful process of selecting the man who will guide its destinies for the next four years.

“To say that the American nation will select this man might seem to those beyond our borders an enormous oversimplification. Yet in some mysterious, ineffable way that defies analysis, it will be true that all the nation will participate in what will appear to be the deliberations of only fifty-three men and fifty-three women. For in the million subtle segments that go into the making-up of America’s mind, we will all be joining in the deliberations of the National Committee.

“Never, perhaps—even when the first small group met in Philadelphia more than two centuries ago to frame the Constitution—has such a handful of citizens of this Republic had such a heavy charge laid upon it. Never, perhaps, has a more awesome decision had to be made under such desperate conditions for us all.

“Here in this city, which has seen so many great crises and great men come and go, there is the hope—the hushed and fearful hope—that the Committee will select for us a candidate who will have the courage to break free of the futile policies and crippled thinking that have tied America down in these recent bloody years. Hushed and fearful hope, yet singing, too.

“Hidden beneath the sultry summer heat that has Washington under its iron fist, there is an almost springtime mood of freshness in the air.

“Great things are expected.

“Great things must be done.

“The choices which confront the Committee are simple: one who represents the new, one who represents the old. In Gorotoland and Panama, the United States is fighting two indefensible wars whose outcome can only be further failure and disgrace for outmoded, insupportable policies. How can these conflicts be ended? By more of the same? Or by a new approach that will find new solutions, new bases for negotiation, new humanities to replace the old inhumanities and the old futilities—the old gray commitment to more war, more death, more waste of national substance?

“True it is that the Committee meets in an atmosphere that can perhaps only be described by the word ‘ominous.’ There are reports of sinister doings here in Washington, fleeting rumors of dangerous events that could surround the deliberations of this fateful handful of Americans like you and me. Tragedy has struck in the streets. One of Washington’s”—here Walter paused and stared at the blank wall above his desk. How should he describe her, what would be fair? Suddenly as on a television screen her face leaped out at him, some japing disrespectful mockery on her grinning lips. He typed hurriedly on—“better-known correspondents has been killed, along with others who may or may not have been involved in some violent plot. What the plot may be, or even if there is one, no one of any substance seems to know. Yet the event, together with other pressures brought to bear upon Committee members, has served to increase the tensions under which the great decision must be reached.

“It is one of the unhappy ironies of an unhappy era that while both candidates deny all knowledge of the origins of violence, the responsibility for it must inevitably come back to the doorstep of the one whose policies have inflamed the country to the point where violence is becoming almost a political fact of life.

“It is not the Governor of California, history will submit, who has eagerly assisted two Presidents on their war-bent way. It is not the Governor of California who has dismayed a great many of his countrymen to the point where they feel their only recourse is to take to the streets in riotous fear and frustration. It is not the Governor of California whose solution to the world’s ills is the old stale recipe of war and more war.

“No: upon the Secretary of State there rests a heavy burden, and the National Committee has no choice but to take account of this. It is late—too late—to rehearse the rights and wrongs of policy. But the rights and wrongs of violence are everywhere to see. The Committee must ask itself whose nomination would reduce violence and restore decency—and whose would increase violence and send America hurtling still further away from her traditional decencies. The answer would not seem difficult to perceive.

“America, the world and history await the outcome. To lead the nation back to sanity and peace—or to light the way still further down to dusty death. No men and women ever carried a heavier charge than the men and women of the National Committee do today.”

He struck the final words with a satisfied
“thwack!”
that sounded startlingly loud in the silent old house; ripped the paper out of the typewriter; picked up the telephone and prepared to dictate to the copy boy who always transcribed his column at the
Post.

In Gorotoland and Panama as he did so, the belligerents were fighting on toward conclusions that events of the past few hours had made inevitable; in Moscow and Peking, Paris and London, everywhere around the globe, men in places of power and in the streets were discussing with curiosity, apprehension, wonderment or dread, what might be going to happen in the unpredictable republic beyond the seas; and at fifteen or twenty parties in Washington, in a last, almost hysterical, fling before their ordeal began, the members of the National Committee chattered and gossiped and tossed off tensely merry remarks in futile attempts to conceal their worry, their foreboding and their terrifying realization that they were about to stand exposed and vulnerable to the cold blast of history.

5

And now—finally, and yet with an astounding and awesomely sudden impact upon its members—the day of the National Committee has come.

That it is more likely to be “days” is of course apparent to them all, and it is with some sense of entering a state of siege that they are now proceeding, on the morning of this eleventh day since Air Force One precipitated them into history, toward the Studio Playhouse at the Kennedy Center. There on the banks of the Potomac they will make their decision; and as they come nearer to it from their various hotels and temporary domiciles, they begin to understand why it was chosen, and to realize that “state of siege” is perhaps not too dramatic a term to use.

For, as Senator Munson perceived immediately at Patsy’s reception when the President announced his choice of site, the Kennedy Center, and particularly its Playhouse, is defensible. Entered by three broad avenues that can be easily closed off, flanked on the land side by open park and on the other by Theodore Roosevelt Island and the sluggish moat of the lazy river as it bends along the city’s edge through Georgetown Channel, it is almost ideally suited for the purpose to which it is to be put, in an age in which that purpose could easily give rise to the most violent consequences.

Indeed it is precisely because of this that the President selected it; and now that NAWAC—the “National Antiwar Activities Congress”—has declared its intention to hold a mammoth around-the-clock rally for the duration of the Committee meeting, the choice appears even more astute. Already the Chief Executive has quietly arranged for 500 riot-trained soldiers to supplement the District of Columbia police in throwing a cordon around the entire land boundary of the Center. An inner ring of 500 riot-trained Marines has been assigned to guard the perimeter of the Playhouse. Theodore Roosevelt Island and Theodore Roosevelt Bridge have been closed. Across the river a strip a half mile long and three hundred yards deep has been sealed off to all traffic. In the channel two small armed Coast Guard cutters lie at anchor just off the esplanade. Overhead five helicopters are on regular patrol over the entire area, and at “Checkpoint Alpha,” sole entrance for Committee members, visiting dignitaries and the press, the most rigid security procedures have been established.

The Playhouse seats 500 people, and its selection has caused a world-wide outcry, fanned by press and television and joined by many who oppose Administration policies, on the ground that both coverage and attendance will be inadequate. “Where, in this miniscule meeting room,” the
New York Times
demanded only yesterday, “will there be accommodation, not only for sufficient press and television, but for those legitimate and reasonable petitioners who may be invited by the Committee to appear and tender their advice?”

It is exactly this that the President intends to avoid: a mammoth circus in which every agitator with the flimsiest of credentials can appear and broadcast his vitriol to the world. He is determined, if possible, that none shall be permitted to appear at all; though that is one of the points that may have to be conceded if a majority of the Committee decides to make it an issue. He has been arguing for a week with members that they should not do so, on the ground that the more people, the more confusion; but he is not confident what will happen should it be put to vote. At least he has made sure that it will be physically impossible to accommodate very many.

He has also made sure that the media will have to pool their coverage, which he also considers a gain. He has, in fact, reduced the seating capacity to about 400, for he has requested the Kennedy Center’s directors (who have complied with some grumbling) to remove several rows of seats so that each member of the Committee may have a desk. These have been placed in a half circle facing the stage. On the stage itself there is a lectern and desk for the chairman, a desk to the left for three official stenographers, a desk with microphones to the right in case the Committee decides to call witnesses.

Behind the Committee the remaining seats will accommodate 300 visitors. A day ago he called Ted and with an impersonal courtesy offered to let him name 150 of them, but the Governor declined as impersonally. “I wouldn’t want the responsibility if something went wrong. You have screening procedures I haven’t got. I’ll trust you not to stack the audience.” Then he had laughed, a humorless sound. “Wouldn’t do you any good, anyway.” “That’s right,” the President had agreed, sharp in spite of himself. “It isn’t going to be decided by applause meter.”

Partly his tight control over the size of the gathering is prompted by a desire for security, manageability and speed of decision, but partly also, as the media are well aware, it is a method of preventing Ted’s supporters from turning the Committee’s deliberations into a worldwide spectacle in which it would be quite impossible to arrive at a thoughtful and objective conclusion. Being the shrewd old veteran he is, he knows that such a circus would also, almost automatically, make it much more difficult for his candidate to win, but he doesn’t talk about that: any more than Ted’s supporters talk about the fact that such a circus would, almost automatically, make it much easier for Ted to win.

The President, in fact, doesn’t talk about the situation at all. All complaints to his press secretary, all global indignations, have been blandly turned aside with, “No comment.” He learned long ago in the House that nobody can make him open his mouth when he doesn’t want to. He is using silence now as effectively as he always has.

Not that this diminishes the clamor, of course. Preparations for the tight security around the Center have been conducted, on his strict orders, after midnight, yet it has of course been obvious to late-passing motorists that intensive preliminaries have been going on. The
Post,
the
Star
and the
New York Times
have all run pictures, taken from across the river, of the Center under floodlights, barricades being put in place. Editorial outrage has been increased by a White House announcement that Committee members, for the duration—“for their personal safety, and since they are, in effect, the jury of the nation at this moment”—will be housed in the visiting Officers’ Quarters at nearby Fort Myer, Virginia, and will be transported to and from their meetings in Army cars. And in Washington, which leaks like a sieve, the
Post
has just this morning published a copy of the Pentagon order posting the troops at the Center.

“What is this military spectacle?” the accompanying editorial has demanded in an anguished tone. “Is this how democracy chooses its candidates, or is this how dictatorship prepares to squash all opposition?” The President has been tempted to call the general director and say, “Oh, come on, now!” But a remark like that presupposes a sense of humor on both sides, so he abandons the idea.

He has not, however, abandoned the idea that his inspiration about the Playhouse, which occurred to him at breakfast the second morning at Tahoe, is a thoroughly sound and prudent one. NAWAC’s first statement, issued in the early morning hours after the Hilton meeting, promised a rally on the opening day of the Committee. At six p.m. last night a terse communique, militant and military, extended the program for the duration of the meeting. Immediately—so immediately that it was obvious the influx had actually been planned for several days—the advance thousands who had reached the city were increased with new multitudes who descended from every plane, train, bus and freeway. This morning they are still coming, and the President and Secretary of Defense have been advised just a few minutes ago that the crowds which press against the barricades on the land side of the Center and swarm in hastily erected tent-towns at the edge of the barred zone across the river now number close to 100,000.

At the moment their temper seems ostentatiously sullen but not actively disorderly. Obviously they are waiting, and it is clear from the walkie-talkie directions they are receiving—intercepted and reported by the shabbily dressed infiltrators sent in by military intelligence—that their leaders’ plan is to be tough enough to scare the country but not tough enough to bring reprisals. At this point they apparently feel that their candidate may need only the threat of violence to put him over. For that, at least, the President is thankful, though he has made up his mind that if they want martyrs, he will oblige.

So goes the morning and the mood in the command centers; what of the mood in the Committee? There is one sizable segment, perhaps best summed up by Mrs. Lathia Talbot Jennings, National Committeewoman from South Dakota, as she arrives at Checkpoint Alpha. “Good heavens!” she cries, her ample jowls aquiver with nervousness. “I wonder if any of us is going to get out of here alive!” But there is another segment whose attitude is epitomized by Pete Boissevain, National Committeeman from Vermont. Turning back to look for a moment at the encircling troops and the vast crowd beyond with its obscene banners and determined dirtiness, he snaps tartly, “Guess they don’t know Vermont if they think they can scare
me!”

Fortunately it appears at the moment that more members are inclined to be defiant with Pete Boissevain than tremble with Lathia Jennings; or so it seems to the news-pool representatives who greet each new arrival with microphones, cameras and pencils poised. “An awful lot of members seem to have chips on their shoulders,” the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
muses in a puzzled tone to CBS. “I can’t imagine why,” says the listening
Chicago Tribune
cheerfully, “but I think it’s just great.”

For the spokesmen of the opposing factions in the Committee, Checkpoint Alpha provides one final opportunity before the battle.

“It is obvious as we begin these historic deliberations,” says Roger P. Croy of Oregon, his stately white head erect and challenging in the already suffocating heat, his mellow voice confident and serene, “that Governor Edward M. Jason of California should and will be the nominee of this party for the office of President of the United States.”

“Will you be his running mate, Governor?” someone asks, as someone did at the convention when it appeared Ted was on the high road to victory; and now, as then, Roger P. Croy smiles a graceful deprecating smile and waves a graceful deprecating hand.

“One thing at a time, my friend,” he says with a comfortable smile that implies a rosy future. “One thing at a time, if you please.”

From Mary Buttner Baffleburg of Pennsylvania, who is singled out by the media as the Knox spokesman they want to feature, there comes, as expected, an indignant and nicely laughable blurt:

“Everything I’ve heard points to victory for the greatest Senator and Secretary of State this country has ever had, Orrin Knox of Illinois. And don’t think you people of the press and all your friends”—and she gestures wildly off in the general direction of the restless crowds—“can scare us out of it, either!”

“Mrs. Baffleburg, do you really think that the press—”

“Yes, I do!” she cries, her normally florid complexion turning even redder with indignation and heat. “You’ve been absolutely mean to Orrin!”

Too late, Lyle Strathmore of Michigan hurries up to Checkpoint Alpha and tries to interject a more calm and reasonable note for the Secretary of State, but of course the damage has been done. On television and radio the Croy-Baffleburg statements have been transmitted live, and one of the dominant public memories of the first session will be Roger Croy’s stately white-haired confidence and Mary Baffleburg’s red-faced, squawking indignation.

Very soon, however, the opportunity for such last-minute fun and games is over. It is now close to ten a.m., and over the Kennedy Center, the vast crowd around it, the city, the nation, and to a considerable degree the world, an almost palpable hush is beginning to fall.

Outside, the well-disciplined throngs are silent, listening attentively to the loud-speakers and television sets which have been set up by COMFORT, DEFY and KEEP to broadcast the proceedings. Inside, the members of the Committee—all 106 are now on hand, though Tobin Janson of Alaska, just out of Bethesda Naval Hospital after an emergency hernia operation a week ago, looks white and shaky—are settling at their desks with a subdued but nervous rustling that indicates how heavily the tensions of this moment are finally crushing in upon them. Behind them in the few rows of seats remaining, the 300 visitors, among them Bob and Dolly Munson, Beth Knox, Lafe Smith and Cullee Hamilton, Jawbone Swarthman and Senator Tom August of Minnesota, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; a handful from the diplomatic corps. Lord Maudulayne, Raoul Barre, Krishna Khaleel, (Vasily Tashikov, invited with a grave irony by the President, has declined), the Ambassadors of Guinea, Malawi and Tanzania, Patsy Labaiya and her aunt Valuela Jason Randall (Herbert and Selena are carrying banners outside). And behind them, and along the sides of the little room, little banked cameras and narrow, microphone-filled tables of the media, its members still grumbling and unhappy with their cramped and awkward working conditions, furious with the man who put them there but knowing they have met their match and cannot budge him.

Now it is two minutes to ten, then one minute; and suddenly they are aware that they have all stopped talking. The minute holds, seems to lengthen unbearably. The electric clock on the wall goes
“Click!”
distinctly into the silence: many jump. It is ten a.m.; and far off in the distance there begins the swelling chorus of sirens which this time herald, not disaster, but the heavily guarded approach, from the White House a mile away, of the President of the United States.

It is a swift approach, and the hostile crowds which stir and shake their angry banners—but, because they have been instructed not to, make no sound other than an instinctive, irrepressible murmur of hatred and hostility—do not even catch a glimpse of the old man they detest, sitting far back in the cushions of the armored limousine. Almost before they know he is upon them, he has passed, along the approach where armed servicemen stand side by side, facing out against their bitter countrymen. Then, abruptly, he is out of the limousine and quickly inside, and a great sigh of released tension seems to come from all over the watching world.

In the Playhouse, they turn and stare up the aisle, almost forgetting, in the impact of the moment, the courtesy due his office. Then Senator Munson rises and quickly they all follow suit as the President enters alone and comes with a steady stride, his face in sternly thoughtful lines, his eyes looking at the carpet before him, neither right nor left, down to the stage. He climbs the little access stair with the same deliberate gait, walks to the lectern, turns and faces them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, hardly raising his voice, for it is really a very small room, to hold such a weight of destiny, “please remain standing until the invocation has been delivered. It is my pleasure and privilege to request this kindness of our good friend and colleague, Luther W. Redfield, distinguished National Committeeman from the state of Washington.”

With a pleased if somewhat rusty air (for he has not been a practicing minister for twenty years, since he retired to become president of Walla Walla College) Luther Redfield says, “Let us pray …” and then delivers a wandering homily, filled with emotion and overlong, but concluding with an obvious, deep sincerity: “May You guide us, Your servants, dear Lord, to do the best we can for our beloved country.”

After he has concluded and they have resumed their seats, an intense silence falls. The President looks about him for a moment, studying the room, their waiting faces, the cameras, the microphones, the hot white lights. Then he lowers his gaze to some notes he has pulled from his pocket and placed upon the lectern, and begins to talk slowly and thoughtfully in a quiet, conversational voice.

“By virtue of the authority vested in me as chairman,” he says, raising a small ivory gavel without a handle and bringing it down with a sharp
crack!
upon the lectern, “I hereby declare this special emergency meeting of the National Committee to be now in session for the purpose of selecting a candidate for the office of President of the United States, and”—he uses again the phrase he used in his speech to the country after President Hudson’s funeral—“should events so develop, a candidate for the office of Vice President of the United States.”

(“And he’s going to make them develop that way if he can, all right,” the
Denver Post
whispers to the
Los Angeles Times.
“Reactionary old bastard,” the
L.A. Times
whispers back.)

“I came here just now, as did we all,” the President goes on, “through streets guarded by the armed forces of the United States whose mission, on my orders as Commander-in-Chief, is to restrain and, if necessary, shoot down, citizens of the United States of America.”

There is a gasp from somewhere in the room (and in the crowds outside, as he intended, a sudden hesitation). He lifts his head and stares at them.