It was an attitude not without some justice. President Howard Brewster was a man who specialized in answers, not questions; he had the kind of mind to which Why-not-victory? oversimplifications were very attractive. Brewster represented to uncanny perfection that large segment of the populace which still wistfully hoped to win a war that had been lost a long time ago. To quick-minded sophisticates he stood for Neanderthal politics and nineteenth-century simplemindedness. Brewster was a man of emotional outbursts and political solipsism; to all appearances his attitudes had ceased developing at about the time the Allies had won World War II; and in the age of celebrity, when candidates could get elected because they looked good on a horse, Brewster’s total lack of panache made him a genuine anachronism.
But that view of Howard Brewster was incomplete: it did not take into account the fact that Brewster was a man of politics in the same way that a tiger is a creature of the jungle. The pursuit of the Presidency had cost Brewster almost thirty years of party-climbing and fund-raising dinners and bloc-wooing within the Senate in which he had sat for four consecutive terms. Yet the unresponsive Administration of the unresponsive Government, which McNeely deplored with vigorous sarcasms, was not really of Brewster’s making. Howard Brewster was not so much its architect as its inevitable and typical product.
It was no good condemning Brewster out of hand. He had not been the worst President in American history, not by a wide margin, and the election results had shown it: Fairlie hadn’t so much won the election from Brewster as avoided defeat, and by an incredibly small margin: 35,129,484 to 35,088,756. There had been a madness of recounts; Brewster supporters were still crying foul, claiming the Los Angeles machine had delivered to Fairlie the bloc votes of Forest Lawn Cemetery and the Pacific Ocean, but neither election officials nor Brewster’s campaigners had been able to furnish proof of their allegations and as far as Fairlie knew they weren’t true anyhow—the Mayor of Los Angeles wasn’t that fond of him, not by any means.
In the end Fairlie had eked out 296 votes in the Electoral College to Brewster’s 242, carrying the big states by small margins and losing the small states by large margins. Brewster’s support was in the South and in rural America and the confusion of party allegiances had probably cost him the election because he was nominally and loyally a Democrat while his Republican opponent was in fact somewhere to the left of him.
“Deep thoughts, Mr. President?”
McNeely’s voice lifted him from reverie. “God. I simply haven’t had enough sleep. What have we got laid on for tomorrow morning?”
“Admiral James and General Tesworth. From NATO in Naples.”
“Can you move it back to the afternoon somewhere?”
“Hard to do.”
“I’ve got to get some rest.”
“Just hold out a week, Mr. President. You can collapse in the Pyrenees.”
“Liam, I’ve been talked to by too many admirals and generals as it is. I’m not doing a big-stick tour of American military bases.”
“You could afford to touch a few. The right-wing press likes the idea that you’re doing a world tour of leftist capitals to cement relations with Commies and pinkos.”
London. Bonn. Paris. Rome. Madrid. Commies and pinkos? But Fairlie did not laugh. America’s cross to bear was its simple minds: the ones who saw no distinction between England’s socialism and Albania’s Communism.
McNeely said, “Now the L.A. papers are speculating you’re on your way to Madrid to give away the Spanish bases.”
“That’s a pretty good one.” Fairlie made a crooked smile.
“Uh-huh. We could have cleared some of it up, you know. But you’ve insisted we’re not to comment on that to the press.”
“It’s not my place to comment. Not yet. I’m here unofficially.”
“As Hollerin’ Brewster’s goodwill ambassador. Which is really, you know, quite rich.”
There was a point to it. Europe had taken on the aspect of an American sandbox and United States presidential elections had become quadrennial paroxysms of anxiety throughout the Continent. A shift in stance which Washington regarded as minor might well upset the entire equilibrium of Common Market affairs or NATO’s economy or the status of the Russian Mediterranean Fleet vis-à-vis the American Sixth. The idea had come up three weeks ago during the White House state briefings through which Howard Brewster had conducted Fairlie: to reassure “our valiant allies”—it was a Brewster phrase, typically irrelevant and typically outdated—of the continuity and goodwill of the American Government, wouldn’t it be a good idea for Republican President-elect Fairlie to call informally on half a dozen heads of state as the personal representative of Democrat President Brewster?
The idea had the kind of grandiose theatricality one had learned to expect of Howard Brewster. But Fairlie had agreed for his own reasons: he wanted to meet Europe’s heads of state face to face and an informal pre-inaugural series of meetings might find them more relaxed and natural than had some of the hurried Presidential visits to the same capitals earlier. Unburdened by administrative chores Fairlie would have time to get to know them.
But the Spanish upset had exploded against them all. The bloodless pre-Christmas takeover: Perez-Blasco had wrested Spain from Franco’s indecisive successors and Howard Brewster had growled to Fairlie, “God damn, we got a whole new ball game.” Even now the ink was hardly dry on the junta’s proclamations. Perez-Blasco was feeling his way, trying to shore up the first populist government in forty years. Spain was still the key to the Mediterranean, launch pad for the American nuclear structure in Europe—and Perez-Blasco’s spokesmen had sent up trial balloons in the Spanish press: should Madrid nationalize the nuclear bases and evict the Americans? Nothing was settled: no one knew which way Perez-Blasco would jump.
“You can charm the big bastard, Cliff.” Brewster had rolled the cigar in his mouth. “Use all the rational arguments, but lean on the son of a bitch too. Tell him you’re just as liberal as he is but God damn it Moscow’s got all those boats out in the Med and ask him if he really wants to see them turn the thing into a Russian lake.”
It was a good thing Brewster was going out. His brand of gunboat diplomacy would lose the Spanish bases. Brewster’s premise was right: you were in competition with Moscow, that was no myth. But it wasn’t the kind of competition you won by frightening the customers. Perez-Blasco had to be shopping around for aid; he had already confirmed diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union and even McNeely had pointed out that where Egypt had gone Spain could easily follow. Perez-Blasco was by no means a far-leftist; nevertheless he was markedly to the left of the old Franco regime. He was a proud man who had come up from poverty, and you did not wave guns under a dignified man’s nose. Intimidation was not a very useful tool in modern international relations—not when the customer could get miffed, turn his back on you, and go to the competition.
You had to be cool. You had to go to him, but not in a hurry and not as a beggar.
Clifford Fairlie stood up, a Lincolnesque figure with a tall man’s stoop. Thirty-one years ago he had won a seat on the Media town council. In less than three weeks he would be President of the United States.
7:00 A.M. EST At his desk in the Executive Office Building David Lime was half through his second breakfast of the morning. His eyes were focused wearily on the Barbara Norris file.
The documents and photographs were scattered over the desk. Chad Hill, on his feet at the corner of the desk, was running his finger across them: an unassailably pleasant-faced young man packaged in a blue suit and striped shirt. “This one. Stratten. He seemed to be running the show, from her reports.”