The Golden Age (17 page)

Peter tried not to imagine bombs filled with shrapnel going off in the convention hall and, of course, could think of nothing else but flying nails and bits of metal spraying into a screaming audience.

Dewey was nominated by a New York politician who vowed that this “lifelong Republican will keep us out of war.” It was curious, thought Peter, for a moment forgetting the rain of shrapnel hurtling toward him, that everyone really knew everything. Roosevelt did intend to get the United States into war, and despite his ever more solemn public denials, no one for a moment believed him. All in all, an odd sort of nation whose true history might prove to be uncommonly interesting if one were ever able to excavate it from under so many other long-lost nations. Troy upon Troy upon Troy, some with, some without Helen, but all once afire with wrath.

The demonstration for Dewey—delegates marching about holding high various state standards—all cheering but none ecstatic, none really passionate, like the little man himself, who was, no doubt, listening to the radio in his suite at the Walton.

A vain publisher named Gannett had spent a fortune to get himself nominated and seconded. Next, Senator Robert Alphonso Taft was nominated while his mother, the widow of the largest president in American history, William Howard Taft, took a decorous bow from a balcony. Taft was also certified by his nominator to be a “lifelong Republican”; also, there would be no war if he were president, and everyone believed him. Peter suspected that, barring tricks, Taft would be the nominee, with Dewey as his vice presidential candidate. Of course, one major trick had already been played the previous month. The late Ralph E. Williams was to have served the Taftites well until his … How did one get a look at an autopsy report? The movies always made it look so simple. Perhaps if he got to know a son or daughter of Williams he might discover something after all. If Williams had been murdered, the family would be the first to want the story known and Sam Pryor—it had to be he—brought to justice.

Then Congressman Halleck, mildly drunk, came forward to the microphones, all in perfect working order now. Breaking with precedent, he mentioned the candidate’s name in his first sentence. Peter duly wrote in his notebook, “I nominate Wendell Willkie because, better than any man I know, he can build this country back to prosperity!”

There was a howl from the delegates beneath the gallery. Then much booing. Willkie would lead them into war. Willkie was a Democrat. Willkie was Roosevelt’s Trojan horse.

Then there was nothing but noise in the galleries. Peter thought he would go deaf as the roaring became a rhythmic shout: “We want Willkie!” Several thousand voices chanted in unison.

Cuneo shouted into Peter’s ear: “Standing-room passes. Just people in off the street. A miracle!” He laughed but Peter only saw his shoulders heaving; he could hear nothing until the chanting stopped and Halleck got on with his speech, which was mercifully short.

The chanting began, even louder than before; then a demonstration began on the floor. Several state standards were uprooted and marched about. The New York delegation was the scene of a fight between the Deweyites and the Willkieites, who won as their floor leader was, by far, the largest man of all. The New York standard then dominated the demonstration.

Peter looked at Tim Farrell, who was directing reaction shots, particularly of the famous “passersby” from the street who were standing in the aisles of the gallery, shouting “We want Willkie.”

At breakfast on Thursday in the dining room of the Benjamin Franklin, Peter found Ernest Cuneo with a stack of newspapers beside his plate. “I hope you’re enjoying democracy in action.” He held up the New York
Herald Tribune
. On its front page, presumably for the first time ever, there was an editorial endorsing the candidacy of Wendell Willkie.

“I don’t think Father is going to go so far overboard.” Peter had already seen the Washington
Tribune;
there was a mild pro-Willkie piece on the editorial page and a prediction that he would be the nominee.

Mrs. Reid, the principal force behind the New York
Herald Tribune
, did not, obviously, believe in understatement. Peter read aloud: “ ‘Extraordinary times call for extraordinary abilities. By great good fortune Mr. Willkie comes before the convention uniquely suited for the hour and for the responsibility.’ ” Peter put down the paper. “A very balanced assessment,” he said.

“I like the part where the
Trib
calls him ‘heaven’s gift to the nation in its time of crisis.’ I detect Irita’s hand in that phrase. Certainly he’s been heaven’s gift to her.”

“If everyone knows he has a mistress is that as good as no one knowing?”

“A metaphysical point to which there is no answer but wait and see. As a rule this sort of thing doesn’t get into the papers because everyone is vulnerable, with the possible exception of solemn Senator Taft, whose day is done. Read our friend Joe Alsop.”

As promised, Joe had penetrated the Gallup Poll. Although Dr. Gallup had said that he would not publish his latest findings until after the candidate had been chosen, Joe had published the “latest” Gallup poll: Willkie led the poll with forty-four percent of Republican voters, followed by Dewey with twenty-nine percent and Taft with thirteen percent.

“Beautiful timing,” said Cuneo. “Just beautiful. Every delegate will see this. Willkie’s going to stampede the convention. Could you give me the funny papers? I’ve got to see ‘Joe Palooka.’ ”

Mystified, Peter gave him the comics section from a Hearst newspaper. Cuneo immediately found “Joe Palooka,” skimmed the dialogue in the balloons; and laughed out loud. “Good old Ham!”

“Ham who?”

“Ham Fisher. He draws Joe Palooka. I got to him a few months ago and told him that he’d been drawing a lot of stuffy Englishmen with monocles and as they are now our allies maybe he should start showing them as regular fellows. So he’s got an RAF fighter pilot in this strip. Top hole! Though Ham doesn’t have him talk like Bertie Wooster. You see, the comics are how we get to the lower orders, the average Joe, who will never read the
Trib
, or Joe Alsop.”

“
You
do all this?” Peter never ceased to be amazed at the number of bases Cuneo managed to touch.

“All in the day’s work.”

“And what is the day’s work?”

“Making sure that the light of freedom never ceases to shine from the torch of the iron lady in New York Harbor to the distant towers of Ulan Bator, if they have towers there, which I doubt.”

It was after four-thirty p.m. when the convention was called to order. Peter had waved to Sam Pryor at Gate 23, where a large crowd had gathered to receive the “standing room only” passes. It was a pity that what was really happening—and had happened, perhaps, to poor Ralph E. Williams—could never be written about, at least in a newspaper.

Peter took his place with the press at the back of the stage. Of the famous journalists only Mencken was in place. Lippmann and Alsop, as befitted statesmen, were elsewhere influencing and instructing the candidates while Pearson and Winchell, as radio stars, pulsated the airwaves, heard always but seen seldom by that vast public to whom they were giving guidance.

On the first ballot Dewey led, with 360 votes, a long way from victory. Then Taft with 189 votes and Willkie with 105 votes. But this was the moment—when Willkie’s name was mentioned—that the “standing room only” in the galleries boomed in unison, “We want Willkie!” The sound was deafening as it swept down from above upon the delegates and the stage. Peter saw them, all blurred in the powerful lights. He glanced at Mencken, who had dropped his cigar as his protuberant red-rimmed eyes were turned upward, as if in prayer, to the phenomenon that Sam Pryor had created. For the first time in history a convention was to be stampeded by the gallery, the audience, the extras.

Martin banged his gavel for order, which was slowly restored so that he could read out the numbers. The second roll call began. Dewey dropped to 338, which, according to an old hand in the chair next to Peter, meant “it’s all over for him. No winner ever got less on the second ballot than on the first.” Taft had picked up some Dewey votes: he
now had 203 votes while Willkie had risen to 171. Again, at the mention of his name, the thunderous chant began, “We want Willkie!” In frustration, Martin adjourned for dinner.

Peter found his father with Russell Davenport in the lobby of the Benjamin Franklin. Peter was invited to observe history on the sixteenth floor.

The candidate sat in an armchair beside the radio, eating a steak and a baked potato. A half-dozen reporters kept him company, among them Joe Alsop. In the bedroom Peter could see the Cowles brothers, manning two telephones. On the radio, Drew Pearson was predicting that Dewey would settle for second place on the ticket with Taft.

“Not very likely,” said Willkie, shaking Peter’s hand with a hand that held the latest of a long series of Camel cigarettes that he had been smoking, according to the overfilled ashtray, since the balloting had begun.

Peter congratulated Alsop on his Gallup story. Joe’s smile was razor-thin. “Things do fall in place, don’t they.”

Blaise was now talking into Willkie’s ear. Peter indicated the bedroom. “What’s going on in there?”

“Sam Pryor’s installed a special line to the convention floor. The brothers are keeping track of our floor managers. My guess is the fifth ballot is the one when we go over the top.”

But it was during the fifth ballot that Taft began to surge ahead of Willkie, who was now in second place. The Cowles were looking alarmed as they listened to their informants in the hall. Willkie was now on his feet; tie undone; waistcoat unbuttoned. He began to prowl the suite. The friends and reporters had stopped all conversation. They had also, as if obeying an unseen signal, ceased to look at the edgy candidate as he made his marches back and forth between bedroom and living room, stopping occasionally to whisper something to the brothers, who, in turn, whispered news to him. From the radio the chant “We want Willkie!” never ceased.

Joe Alsop was uneasy. “Wendell’s said no to Pew. Tempting, of course. Satisfying, certainly. But if Pew gives Taft Pennsylvania he’s almost certain to make it.”

On the radio, the familiar flat voice of Alfred M. Landon declared that Kansas’s eighteen votes were all for Willkie.

In the bedroom doorway, Willkie swung around, sweat streaming down his face. “Well, it’s going to be one or the other of us.” The living room applauded.

Willkie was now talking into the special line to the convention floor. “Sam, to hell with the judges. Tell him he can have them. Just get me those votes.”

“This, dear boy,” said Joe, again smiling, “is known as compromise.”

“I felt, somehow, dirty,” said Peter, in comic mood.

“So does the new earth when the first spring rain falls and the snowdrops lift their shy pale heads.”

Blaise was now seated on Willkie’s bed beside Davenport. Willkie was on the telephone. “Tell them no way. No adjournment now. The sixth ballot’s been announced. Get to Arthur Vandenberg. Tell him … you know what, Sam.” Willkie slammed down the receiver; his face was as pale as the cigarette ash on his suit. From the radio: “We want Willkie!”

When the roll call got to Michigan, a voice declaimed, “Senator Arthur A. Vandenberg now releases all of his delegates …” The rest of this sentence was drowned out by cheering.

“Here we go,” muttered Willkie.

“Michigan’s votes have been polled as follows. For Hoover, one. Taft, two. Willkie, thirty-five.”

More cheering in the bedroom until John Cowles said, “We’re still two votes short.”

As if he had been heard through the radio, a voice suddenly thundered, “Pennsylvania casts seventy-two votes for Wendell Willkie.”

There was silence in the suite; Willkie blinked away tears. “I’m very, very appreciative, very humble and very proud.”

The special phone rang; and a voice said, “This is Senator Taft. I want to congratulate you …” Peter and Joe withdrew to the living room. “Now all the enraged losers will be ringing their new leader.”

“Their? Or your?”

“Not mine, Peter. I shall be working for Cousin Franklin now that we have a safe Republican candidate.”

“I understand,” said Peter; and he did.

The next morning the miracle in Philadelphia had entered political history.

Peter joined Tim on the train to Washington. Along with news of the miracle, the newspapers reported that Churchill had been inspecting the antiaircraft batteries on the east coast of England, where the German invasion was due to begin.

“There won’t be an invasion now. Roosevelt’s spiked the Republican guns. We’re at war.”

“Will you say this in your film?”

“Never
say
anything. Just
show
.” Tim chuckled. “Did you see what Mencken wrote?” He took a clipping from his pocket and read, “ ‘I am thoroughly convinced that the nomination of Willkie was arranged by the Holy Ghost in person, wearing a Palm Beach suit and smoking a five-cent cigar.’ ”

“Sam Pryor,” said Peter.

“Sam Pryor,” said Tim.

Harry Hopkins had finally agreed to go “hiking,” as he put it, on the green wooded knoll where the Wardman Park Hotel towered above Wisconsin Avenue. There were tall trees back of the hotel, as well as tennis courts; Caroline assured him that if he simply looked at them, it would be the equivalent of playing six sets.

Also, midafternoon of a weekday in July, they had the grounds to themselves. Back of them, like a stale chocolate cake, was the huge ugly dark brick main building connected by an incongruously long glass-enclosed corridor to the smaller hotel annex where all sorts of dignitaries lived in quiet seclusion, starting with Cordell Hull, the noble-looking secretary of state, and Henry Wallace, the secretary of agriculture, whose mystical letters to his “guru” were certain to be published if he was nominated for vice-president at the Democratic convention, only five days away. Thus far, the White House had been unusually silent about the President’s plans. It was accepted by all—by some bitterly—that Roosevelt would be the first third-term candidate
in history, but on what, if any, conditions would he run and with whom?