Promise of Joy (20 page)

“Wasn’t that because they felt world peace would be better served if they moved swiftly to terminate our meddling in Gorotoland and Panama, before it did any more damage, Senator?” the Los Angeles
Times
inquired.

“So they say,” Bob Munson agreed. “So they say.” He looked at the clock over the Vice President’s desk with a sudden interest. “What else do you people have on your minds today?”

“Is there anything more important, Senator?” Walter Dobius snapped. The Majority Leader gave him a slow and thoughtful look.

“Why, Walter, whatever
you
say is important no doubt
is
important. But right now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to do a little politicking.”

And he gave them a cheerful smile and stepped across the aisle, shouldering them aside until they stepped back with annoyed looks and let him through. As he bent down to murmur in Warren’s ear he was aware that they were off up the center aisle to Arly Richardson’s seat. The stringy, acerbic old senior Senator from Arkansas had just come in. Around him the dutiful and the anticipatory were flocking.

“Am I going to make it?” he asked Warren quietly. The Minority Leader frowned and shook his head.

“I don’t know, Bobby. It’s going to be very close. I wish I could help you, but it’s the majority’s problem. And you know what your caucus did this morning. For the first time in a couple of decades—”

“Yes,” Bob Munson nodded glumly. “No endorsement of me
or
Arly—everybody for himself—‘an open vote on the floor according to each Senator’s conscience,’ as that new kid from Oregon put it. Which means not a vote on the leadership, but a vote on the war issue. And the same thing in the House caucus, so Bill tells me. It’s wide open. We aren’t the issue, the wars are the issue.”

“Senator,” the
Times
broke in with a certain relish, coming back down the aisle, “Senator Richardson says he has enough votes to beat you for the leadership.”

“Claiming isn’t winning,” Bob Munson said, returning to his desk as the rest swarmed back upon him too. “Why don’t you all go and talk to the Vice President? He looks new and lonely up there.”

But just at that moment, as he had known from the clock that it would, the buzzer sounded for the opening of the session and they hurried off the floor and back to the Press Gallery above the Vice President’s head, there to watch with shrewd, sophisticated (if not altogether unprejudiced) eyes the drama to be played out upon the floor below. Many had liked him over the years, their relations had been quite cordial most of the time, but they were after him now. Some few still remained friendly, but the most influential had chosen their side in the conflict with the Communists.

It wasn’t his.

Cullee rapped the gavel with a sudden force that disclosed his nervousness on his first day of presiding over the Senate, and said, “The Senate will be in order! The Clerk will call the roll for a quorum!” in a voice that he hoped was calmer than he felt.

Quorum completed, ninety-nine Senators, exclusive of Lafe, in their seats, an air of tense expectancy began to settle over the chamber. He called on the chaplain to deliver the prayer. Full of fervent appeals to duty in a troubled time, it ended on a note of ringing exhortation to save and preserve the Republic. Those who had a goodly share of the responsibility for doing so looked about them expectantly. Tension grew.

“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, rising slowly to his feet.

“The distinguished Majority Leader,” Cullee said, and somewhere among the newcomers somebody murmured audibly, “But not for long.”

“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, ignoring the little titter that swept the chamber, “before we get into the business which will occupy us principally today”—he turned and looked, slowly and with apparent complete composure, at his colleagues all around—“namely, the selection of a Majority Leader, and consideration of the President’s request for an additional ten billion dollars for the defense establishment, I would like to ask the indulgence of the Senate to take up one nomination, which I hope we can speedily pass upon.

“I would suggest,” he said calmly, as Arly Richardson rose to his feet with the obvious intention of challenging him, “that the nominations for the Cabinet be referred to the appropriate committees, for consideration and reporting back at the earliest possible opportunity, as the President needs his official family confirmed and fully operative just as soon as possible. Mr. President, I so move.”

“I second that motion,” Senator Richardson said with satisfaction.

“Without objection,” Cullee said, “it is so ordered.”

“The nomination I wish to call up,” Senator Munson said, “is that of a most distinguished American who is already at work on the difficult task assigned her by the President—Mrs. Edward M. Jason, Ambassador to the United Nations. I move the Senate approve this nomination, Mr. President.”

“Mr. President,” Arly Richardson said sharply. “Now, Mr. President, just—a—minute, if you please. The distinguished Senator from Michigan is very adept at sliding over things, but he cannot slide over the fact that all three—not two, but three—of the subjects requiring action today are inextricably tied together. The first is Mrs. Jason’s nomination. The second is the choice of a Majority Leader. The third is the request for a supplemental defense appropriation. All three go to the fundamental issue that faces this Senate and this country today: are we for war or are we for peace? They cannot be separated from that issue, Mr. President, and I for one am not going to let the Senator from Michigan separate them. What we vote on one we should vote on the others. Up or down, we should decide, insofar as our responsibility lies in this Senate, the war issue. It is the thread that ties them together.

“Basing my judgment on that proposition, Mr. President, I want my colleagues to know that I shall vote against the nomination of Mrs. Jason, as I shall vote against a war candidate for Majority Leader, and as I shall vote against a supplemental appropriation for defense which can only be used to encourage the President in further military adventurism.

“I say this should be stopped.

“I shall cast my votes to stop it.

“I urge my colleagues, particularly my new colleagues, to do likewise.”

“Mr. President,” Bob Munson said, allowing a little calculated asperity to creep into his tone, “the Senator from Arkansas in his usual kindly fashion has laid about him with a truncheon, or possibly a trowel, and managed to damage a fine lady and a great American in the process. The appointment of Mrs. Jason has nothing to do with any so-called ‘war issue.’ It is simply a recognition by the President of her own great abilities—and of the fact, I will remind the Senator, that she is the widow of one whose policies the Senator and many others in this Senate professed to think very highly of, not so long ago.”

“She has not espoused those policies for months,” Arly Richardson reminded him sharply, “if she ever did. After her husband’s death she devoted herself wholeheartedly to the pro-war campaign of the President. At this moment she is in New York advocating the pro-war policies of the President. She has permitted herself to become the handmaiden of Orrin Knox’s ill-advised ventures. She is now a strictly partisan person. He means war, she means war. I will vote accordingly.”

“Mr. President,” Tom August of Minnesota said in his hesitant, almost timorous way, “will the distinguished Majority Leader yield to me?”

“I am always glad to yield to the distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,” Bob Munson said amiably, “if he will be brief.”

“Oh, I shall,” Senator August said hastily. “I simply want to assure the Majority Leader that I fully support his endorsement of Mrs. Jason, and while this procedure of calling up her nomination without referral to committee is unusual, still I think the circumstances and her own fine character warrant it. I shall vote for her because I think it important for the President to have the person he wants as Ambassador to the United Nations. I do not say this as any endorsement of his policies in the present crisis, which perturb me very much, I will say frankly to the Majority Leader, but because he naturally wants someone in that post who will support him. If not Mrs. Jason, then it would be someone else equally devoted to his program. So I really think this nomination stands quite apart from any war or anti-war issue. I believe we are lucky to have someone as fine as Mrs. Jason to represent the United States in the UN. I urge my colleagues to approve her speedily and without further debate.”

“Oh, no, Mr. President!” Arly Richardson cried, and from many places around the floor and in the packed galleries (where a sizable scattering of NAWAC’s black-jacketed hearties could be seen) there came murmurs of dismay and discontent. “Not so fast, now! I am amazed, I will say to my dear old colleague from Minnesota, absolutely amazed that he would capitulate so fast and so completely to the further step toward foreign entanglement which this nomination represents. We must stop it, Senators! We must stop it at once! The peace of the world hangs in the balance this day, and we must not let Orrin Knox move further down the road toward its destruction. He means war: Mrs. Jason means war. It is as simple as that.

“Mr. President, I move we vote on this nomination without further ado, overwhelmingly defeat it, and place the Senate on record irrevocably on the side of peace!”

A dozen Senators were on their feet demanding recognition, the galleries burst into an excited gabble, the chamber filled with sound chaotic, argumentative, angry, hostile. For a split second the Vice President hesitated. Then he said to himself,
Come on now, old Cullee, you’re it!
and banged down the gavel as hard as he could.

“The Senate and the galleries,” he said in a voice so loud and emphatic that it startled the room momentarily into silence, “will be in order! This is not a mob scene here!”

(“Well, get
him”
the
St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
murmured with a startled irony to the
Boston
Globe.
“Little Cullee’s in the big league now,” the
Globe
agreed: “Massah, lif’ dat bale!”)

“The Majority Leader still has the floor,” the Vice President said, more calmly. “What is his pleasure?”

“Mr. President—” Bob Munson began thoughtfully. Then he stopped, cast a quick glance across his restless colleagues and changed tactics without losing a beat. “Why,” he said reasonably, “I think the Senator from Arkansas is entirely right. In ten minutes here we have had presented the basic arguments for and against this nomination. You either think the President and Mrs. Jason are working for peace or you don’t. You either think the President has a right to choose his official family or you don’t. I’m sure most minds are made up. Sure: why don’t we vote?”

“Mr. President,” Arly Richardson demanded, clearly upset by what appeared to be an abrupt capitulation. “Is this some sort of trick?”

“The Senator is ridiculous,” Bob Munson said, turning his back upon him and facing the chair. “One minute ago he was demanding a vote. Now I agree and he gets suspicious.
This
is leadership material? Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I shall then renew my request for a vote.”

And presently, after ninety-nine Senators had again been found to be present, and after the chamber had quieted down to a tense silence, he renewed the motion and the vote came: an extremely clear indication, he knew with an inward sigh when it was over, of exactly what Orrin faced on the Hill this day.

“I have been informed by the Secretary-General,” said Australia, this month’s president of the Security Council, as the session finally, after usual delays, came to order at 12:45 p.m., “that our charming new colleague from the United States has just been confirmed by the Senate. Congratulations, Madam Ambassador.”

And he applauded vigorously, beaming across the circular table in a kindly way, while at his side the Secretary-General, that stately, tired old man from Nigeria, and a few others of their colleagues, did the same. Nikolai Zworkyan of Russia, Sun Kwon-yu of the People’s Republic of China and the ambassadors of Cuba, Egypt, Ghana and Zambia ostentatiously refrained.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” she said pleasantly, “I hope I may be worthy of the honor.”

“If there is honor to be found,” the Soviet Ambassador remarked, not looking up from the papers he appeared to be reading on the desk before him, his level words like a deliberate physical slap in the face, “in representing a dishonorable cause.”

“Mr. President!” Lord Maudulayne and Krishna Khaleel said together in shocked tones, and from his chair, slightly behind and to the right of Ceil’s, Lafe said, with no attempt at muffling it, “Son of a
bitch!”
An excited thrill ran through the crowded press seats and the overflowing public galleries. Everyone expected blood on this afternoon when the arrogant United States would surely be humbled, but no one had expected it quite so soon. It promised to be, as the
Guardian
murmured cheerfully to
Paris-Soir,
a real fun time at the good old
Nations-Unis.

“The Ambassador of the Soviet Union,” Australia said severely, “if he cannot behave like a gentleman, might at least behave like a diplomat.”

“Mr. President,” Nikolai Zworkyan said in a blandly impervious tone that would have done credit to all the shrewd mechanical men who had spouted their rigid ideology from that chair before him, “the Ambassador of the Soviet Union sits here as the enthusiastic choice of his government. He does not sit here as the 51-to-48 choice of the United States Senate, an Ambassador by only three votes. Possibly,” he said with an unctuous little bow in Ceil’s general direction, “that gives him a somewhat greater reason for being listened to in this chamber.”

For a moment Ceil gave him a thoughtful glance. Her color was high but her voice when she spoke was fully under control.

“Mr. President,” she said in a clear, steady tone, “I was told when I took this job that there might be tigers in the path. I was not told that there would be vermin.”