There was a kind of do-or-die melodrama to the President’s manner; for all his deserved reputation as a wheeler-dealer he was curiously old-fashioned in his beliefs. His concepts of honor and gallantry were those of the Victorians. Brewster was a gentleman and that was odd in a world that regarded those values as pointless and often suspect.
The President leaned back in the big chair. “Here it is, then. I don’t need to give you my ten-minute number on why we don’t want Wendy Hollander coming up the White House doorstep Thursday afternoon with all his suitcases. We’re agreed on that, aren’t we?”
“Completely.”
“Now I might mention also that there’s no time left to brief a new man on the complexities of running this here office. I had my hands full trying to fill Dexter Ethridge in. Dex is gone now and we’re stuck with Wendy Hollander. Andy, you’ve been on the Hill a few years, do you remember the debate over the Succession Bill back in Nineteen and Sixty-six?”
“Vaguely.”
“There, was talk about how maybe we ought to specify that if there was a national emergency that wiped out the whole line of succession—say a full-scale military attack that destroyed Warshington completely—that we ought to make some provision for the military to take over the Government on a temporary basis in order to meet the emergency. You remember that?”
“Yes. The proposal was turned down because nobody was willing to pass any law that could authorize the generals to take over.”
“Yes exactly. Congress was scared to put that in writing no matter how it was worded. Rightly so, too, I believe. The argument that tabled it was that if we ever had an emergency of that magnitude the generals would just naturally step in and take over without needing any paper authorization. That satisfied everybody and the idea was dropped.
“But the thinking behind it did make a kind of sense, Andy. Any time you lose both your President and your Vice-President you’ve got a kind of emergency, because the rest of the people on the line of succession aren’t really qualified for the office in the sense of being briefed on all the administration’s inside operations and foreign negotiations and whatnot. Let me put it to you this way. Suppose a vacancy occurs in the office, and the office is filled by somebody like Wendy Hollander—forget his politics for a minute—and suppose five hours later, say, Egypt decides to take advantage of the confusion by jumping all over Israel. Now Hollander not only doesn’t know what kind of secret meetings may have been going on between us and the Middle East, he doesn’t even know how to operate the machinery of diplomacy and military countermoves. You see what I’m getting at?”
“Yes sir. But that would apply to anybody in the line of succession.”
“Except for somebody who’s held the office of the Presidency before,” Brewster said. “Somebody who already knows all the means and methods.”
Bee listened, intent and rapt.
“The most recently retired former President—that’s the way I’ve been putting it. Of course it refers to me since I retire at noon Thursday. It wouldn’t conflict with the Constitutional two-term limit on the Presidency, since I’ve only served one term in office. I have to grant it’s a special-interest proposal caused specifically by the threat Wendy Hollander presents, but I maintain it makes a good deal of generic sense too—it could apply as a general rule, although I’m not ruling out the likelihood Congress will want to change it back after we’ve shunted Wendy aside.”
The room was sealed against the winter cold and the smell of Brewster’s cigars was heavy. The President had the balls of a brass gorilla, Andrew Bee thought, but he continued to listen, uncommitted.
“I’m asking Congress to amend the Act of Succession in a way that’ll allow me to continue as interim President until Cliff Fairlie is recovered. The alternative, I have to keep repeating, is Wendell Hollander—and to the bottom of my soul I don’t believe the country can survive that.”
“Do you honestly think you can persuade Congress to go for this, Mr. President?”
“I’ve talked to leaders on both sides of both aisles and the majority appears to be with me. I remind you virtually every Congressman and every Senator stands at least slightly to Wendy’s left. And most of them stand far to his left.”
“I’d be interested to know who refused to go along with you—and what reasons they gave.”
“I’ll give you their names. All of them, the ones who agreed and the ones who didn’t. Before you leave the office this afternoon. But I’ve got too much to do spending an hour with you running down the roll call. You can understand that, Andy.”
Suspicion nibbled at a corner of his mind—that the President would make the same statement whether or not it was true. Like a cop telling a suspect his partner had confessed. It was one of the things he wouldn’t put past Howard Brewster.
“Mr. President, suppose Congress supports you. Suppose you don’t get shot down by the Supreme Court, suppose everybody goes along with it—everybody except Wendy Hollander and the other yahoos, naturally. Then what happens? What do you propose to do?”
“Conduct this office as I’ve been conducting it for the past four years.”
“That’s not what I mean and I think you know it, Mr. President.”
“You mean what do I intend to do about these radicals. The polarization in the country.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a quick answer for you, Andy. It’s something we’re all going to have to get together and thrash out. I can guarantee you one thing—I won’t do what Hollander would do.”
“Just what do you think he would do, when it came right down to it?”
“You’re suggesting maybe the weight of responsibility would gentle him down, are you?”
“I don’t know. It’s happened.”
“Andy, if you could put that in writing with Wendy’s signature under it I might buy it. Otherwise how can we take the chance?”
The cigar had grown two inches of ash. The President tipped it off carefully into the ashtray, using his little fingernail. “Don’t let me down, Andy. You’re crucial.”
“I’m only a Congressman, Mr. President.”
“You’re probably the most widely respected Representative in the House. I want you to be the Republican floor leader in this fight. I want you to steer our supporters, get the best speakers to fight down the opposition, keep track of the votes.”
“You intend to make an open floor fight of it?”
“Once it comes out in the open we’ve got to. I may be a rigid old mossyhorn but I do recognize it when times change. The House don’t tolerate the kind of backroom juggling there used to be. Things have got to be out in the open nowadays—I’ve heard a lot of them talking about letting it all hang out. Well, when it comes to that kind of fighting you’re the best scrapper I know, Andy. Will you do this?”
Bee looked at his watch. Just past five-thirty. Clearly the circumstances, if not the President, demanded an immediate decision: it wasn’t possible to go away and think about it.
“It’s very bad odds, Mr. President. We’ve only got two days. If Hollander starts a filibuster it’s dead.”
“I need you to corral enough votes for a cloture. I think we’ve got to assume he’ll filibuster.”
“You really believe we can get two-thirds behind this in two days?”
“I believe we’ve got to.”
“And you’re not taking the wraps off until tomorrow morning.”
“At nine we’ll caucus in the Executive Office Building. I’d like you to get up and make a little speech supporting me. The meeting will be attended only by those who’ve agreed to support me, so you won’t be debated, but I want everybody in that room to recognize everybody else—I want them to see how broad the support really is. It’s the best way to convince them it can work. I’m hoping you can get it onto the floor by the middle of the afternoon. There’ll have to be an extraordinary session—it’ll have to run right through tomorrow night. Hopefully we can bring it to a vote by then, or by early Wednesday morning at the latest. By that time you should have been able to get together with Philip Krayle and Winston Dierks and drawn up companion bills for both houses so we don’t have to waste time in House-Senate conferences afterwards.