One of the prospects of the Presidency that horrified Ethridge was that every time he turned around in office he was going to have to deal with the chairman of Senate Appropriations. How did you deal at all with a man who was still capable of phrases like “cryptopinkos” and “the international Commie conspiracy”? Hollander was a rigid fundamentalist conservative, albeit a Democrat; he saw the world’s conflicts as a cut-and-dried dispute on the level of a cowboys-and-Indians game and anyone who denied this simple truth was a Commie trying to lull the Good People into a feeling of false security.
Hollander chastised his farm constituents who received enormous government subsidies but he himself clung to the huge income from crops he didn’t grow on his Kentucky farm. Larcenous, almost senile, he had pared his political philosophy down to simpleminded slogans: exterminate the Commie enemy; let the poor dig out of poverty with their bare hands if they’ve got the gumption; restore the Constitution to virginity; return to law and order.
The seniority system was rotten with Hollanders. It was what Cliff Fairlie was pledged to reform. Without Fairlie the impetus for reformation would dwindle because Ethridge couldn’t carry it: he knew that and it filled him with depression.
Yet in six days’ time he might be taking the oath of office.
An ordinary man forced by circumstances to meet an extraordinary challenge. That was how Ethridge had described himself in yesterday’s off-the-record background briefing to the press; it was in fact what he believed.
He had spoken with quiet candor. He liked reporters as a group—that was inevitable; a man who enjoyed talking always liked those whose job was to listen. For an hour he had chatted with the White House press corps. And at the end of it, saving it for last because he wanted it to have appropriate impact, he had said with slow and carefully chosen words, “Now this is on the record—for immediate release. As you know, governments all over the world are working together to do everything possible to secure Clifford Fairlie’s immediate release. But we must all face the possibility that the President-elect will not be recovered in time for his inauguration. In that case of course I will be sworn in as interim President until such time as Clifford Fairlie returns. At that time I will be required to take certain steps in order to comply with the Constitution. Section Two of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution specifies that the President must nominate someone to fill any vacancy that may exist in the office of the Vice-Presidency. The nomination must then be confirmed by both houses of Congress.”
He had their attention; they saw what was coming. He let the silence hang a moment before he went on.
“We all hope this won’t be necessary—we all hope Clifford Fairlie will be installed as President at the appointed time. But if our hopes aren’t realized, I’ve asked a fine American to accept the Vice-Presidential nomination. He has agreed, and I will ask the Congress to confirm this nomination as its first matter of business following my inauguration. The nominee, as I’m sure most of you already know, is Congressman Andrew Bee of California.”
It wasn’t news to the reporters but it was official confirmation. Ethridge had already informed the leaders of both houses; inevitably the word had begun to circulate but Ethridge’s public announcement would forestall any opposition claims that he was trying to railroad the nomination through in secret, behind closed doors.
The key was the support of the majority leaders in both houses. Both were Democrats; Ethridge and Bee were Republicans. But no one could expect a Republican President to pick a Democratic Vice-President. Still, if Ethridge took office with an opposition Congress he had to start off on the right foot. He was playing the Bee nomination strictly by the rules.
The public might resent it: the announcement, with its appearance of prematurity, appeared to imply disrespect for Cliff Fairlie. But Congress needed time to consider the proposed nomination—and, more important, Congress could not afford the appearance of having been bulldozed into compliance by the hasty arrogance of a last-minute President-designate.
When Bee agreed to accept, Ethridge’s first move had been to consult with President Brewster. It was more than courtesy; if Brewster approved the nomination he would grease it. Speaker of the House Milton Luke was in Brewster’s pocket; the majority leaders were Democrats; they could be expected to follow the Brewster lead. And Brewster seemed willing to support Ethridge’s choice.
Ethridge’s announcement last night had received ample coverage but it hadn’t stirred up any wave of public response; the public was preoccupied with Fairlie’s kidnapping as it should be. The telegrams that poured into Washington were the most numerous in history and they were divided starkly on the question whether the United States should accede to the kidnappers’ demands. The left wanted Fairlie back safe; the right wanted a once-and-for-all extermination of radical terrorists.
Fitzroy Grant, leader of the Senate Republicans, had proclaimed that the nation could never allow itself to give in to extortion and the threat of terrorist violence. Grant implored the Administration to make the kidnappers understand that all the vast resources of the world’s most powerful police and military establishment would be used to track the kidnappers down—therefore the kidnappers should release Fairlie immediately and unconditionally as the only means of mitigating their guilt, forestalling execution, and preventing the world from discrediting leftist movements totally.
Wendy Hollander, a Democrat but representing the yahoo wing on the far right, had been making an almost continuous series of inflammatory appeals: Washington should round up every suspected revolutionary-radical in the country and start executing them daily by platoons until Fairlie was released.
The Hollander proposals had a simpleminded practicality which appealed to the Birchite fringe: Orange County was solidly behind Hollander, but his native Kentucky was not.
Andrew Bee and the moderate-liberal alliances within both parties were publicly alarmed by the saber rattling of the Hollander wing. The Hollander proposals brought to mind the specter of Nazi reprisals. Even responsible conservatives like Fitz Grant were disavowing Hollander’s bloodthirsty cries for action, but Hollander had a frightening amount of support from men like House Armed Services Chairman Webb Breckenyear and FBI Director Clyde Shankland, who had been a Hoover protégé.
Bee and the liberals had reminded the public that the office of the Presidency was more important than considerations of revenge or reprisal. The life of the President-elect was the issue. When all factors were weighed the balance had to come down in favor of saving Clifford Fairlie’s life; what happened afterward—to the seven fanatics on trial in Washington, and to the kidnappers, and to the radical revolutionary movement as a whole—was a matter for later decision.
Both the left and the right employed the powers of reason and logic to support emotional conclusions. Compassion was the guiding factor for the liberals and rage was the guiding factor for the rightists. As usual Ethridge saw both sides: he had the compassion and the anger together in his own guts. In the end what decided him was the same vision that had guided him earlier: the feeling that if Fairlie could be recovered alive it would give Washington an unprecedented chance to institute reforms that could restore a stable democracy and discourage this kind of thing from happening again.
But the hard-line opposition made it tough. The voice of reprisal was loud; it was forcing Howard Brewster to listen. The Pentagon, most of the members of the National Security Council, the law enforcement chiefs and the entire right wing were calling for a preemptive crackdown on all radical activists. The national uproar was tumultuous. Not many supported Hollander’s call for reprisive executions but millions wanted the radicals jailed.