Irving Wallace - The Man

On the fourth day after his departure from Washington, President Douglass Dilman stood hatless and coatless in the wind and the sun of Cape Kennedy, near Cocoa Beach on the east coast of Florida. He stood flanked by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the nation’s most famous astronaut, by several members of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, posing for pictures being taken by the dense swarm of press photographers around him.

Following the wintry weather (and receptions) endured elsewhere on the trip, the Florida sun now baking down on his bare head and the Atlantic breeze now gently nipping at his brown suit represented an agreeable change. Yet Douglass Dilman was uncomfortable.

Staring back at the clicking shutters being manipulated by the crouching, kneeling, shouting photographers, Dilman experienced the sinking sensation of one who suddenly realizes that he is having his picture taken for some nefarious purpose. Under different circumstances, the excessive photography might have been innocent and natural: news shots heralding the Commander in Chief on his first inspection of his country’s foremost missile test center. Under today’s circumstances, the excessive photography was suspicious: news shots recording for posterity and editorial morgues the nation’s leader on his last outing as President of the United States.

The darker side of Dilman’s mind wondered what the caption would be on each still shot, as it was transmitted to New York and from there around the world. Then he knew that there would not be one caption to every photograph, but two, and with cynical amusement he wrote the alternate captions in his head: (A) “The grim and embittered President, shown minutes before learning he was impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors by a majority of the House”; (B) “The determined and courageous Chief Executive at Cape Kennedy minutes before hearing of his vindication by a majority of the House, who voted down the charges against him.”

In an effort to supply appropriate art for the happier caption, Dilman tried to reset his face, tried to look determined and courageous, but he knew that he was not succeeding. He still looked grim, because his innards were poisoned with disappointment and bitterness.

The swing around the country had been an unremitting disaster. Everywhere, he had been preceded by the one-sided, unrefuted charges introduced into the House of Representatives, the charges of his treasonable conduct, his immorality, his intemperance, his contempt of the people’s own elected Congress, all trumpeted into every municipality and hamlet, into every ear, via newspapers, radio, and television. Everywhere, the seeds of hatred had been sown, and everywhere, he had reaped the harvest of malice and malevolence.

There seemed no color line that divided the nation in its united aversion to his presence. The white folks screamed at him as if he were a dangerous orangutan on the loose. The colored folks condemned him as if he were a black Quisling who had sold his people back into slavery. If the demonstration against him in Cleveland had been a horror, his violent reception in the Shrine Auditorium of Los Angeles (where his life had been briefly imperiled by young hotheads who rushed the stage) had been worse, equaled only by his reception in Seattle, where not one word of his fifteen-minute talk had been heard.

The hurried visits to widespread military installations, under the reluctant guidance of General Pitt Fortney, had been no less distressing. At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at general headquarters of the Strategic Air Command outside Omaha, Nebraska, at the ICBM site near Cheyenne, Wyoming, at Fort Bliss, Texas, Dilman had been maddened by an entirely different kind of contempt.

At the military installations, the Commander in Chief could not be met by placards and fists and curses. Instead, disdain and low opinion were implied subtly, through mock formality, extravagant courtesy, lack of social warmth. On every inspection and tour, he had found his hosts, his guides, his companions, his servants, to be low-ranking Negro officers or Negro enlisted men. Wherever he had appeared, television sets and radios had been flicked off, newspapers had been hidden, and nowhere had mention been made, reasonably or unreasonably, encouragingly or discouragingly, of his impeachment being debated in the House of Representatives-and throughout the nation. From the seething rage and turmoil of the big cities, he had been dropped by jet airplane into the chilly, soundless atmosphere of ostracism by silence. He had been kept at arm’s length (and a salute), as if he were a leper forced in among them, a leper who would soon, by the vote of his betters, be removed to some political Molokai.

When his jet aircraft had put him down at Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cape Kennedy, this morning, he had known what to expect. With dread he had entered the motorcade, expecting vocal censure from the citizenry and silent rejection from the military once more, and in both instances he had been surprised. While there had often been a hundred thousand persons lining the route to cheer every successful astronaut from John H. Glenn to Leo Jaskawich, and, by Flannery’s estimate, there had been no more than ten thousand along the route to receive him, Dilman had been anything but dismayed. If there had been no cheers, there had also been, for the first time, no catcalls, no shouts of disapprobation, no visible hatred. The onlookers watching him ride past had proved orderly, and their sunburned faces had reflected only interest and curiosity.

Even after his entry through the main gate of Cape Kennedy, acknowledging the saluting security guards and uniformed staff and workers, he had found the atmosphere more courteous than hostile. His short speech to the assembled personnel and the press, promising full support of the administration to the Apollo program, to its forthcoming three-man reconnaissance of the moon, had been received without snickers or protest, with full attention and respect.

Yet, after visiting the sprawling Central Control Building, with its four intricate IBM electronic computers, after arriving at the Gemini launching pad to pose for the photographers, Dilman’s sense of anxiety had been revived. The session of picture taking, much of it by cameramen who had trailed him constantly from the White House to this site, had reminded him of the whole disastrous trip and of what was taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives this moment.

Leaving the Control Building, Tim Flannery had whispered to him that the members of the House had reconvened, and that the summations had been concluded, and that there had been heartening support of Dilman from several Western representatives, notably Collins of Montana, who had warned his colleagues that their evidence for impeachment was “built on quicksand” and “if they indicted a President for his personal habits and his friends and his opinions,” they were opening the way for future Congresses to control the executive branch completely, and “punish Presidents for the cut of their clothes or the behavior of their wives or the score of their intelligence quotients.”

Nevertheless, the knowledge that the debate had come to an end, and that the final vote on impeachment was about to begin, had filled Dilman with oppressive concern. If the House, which more closely reflected the feelings of the voters than did the Senate, felt the same hatred for him that he had recently witnessed around the nation, he was doomed.

Still he could not believe it would happen. His firm belief was that the House members, having enjoyed the catharsis of vituperation, would now realize the historic gravity of the decision they faced. They would realize that an impeachment in modern times was unthinkable, that the legal instrument of reproof and discipline in the Constitution had become obsolete. In fact, just the other night, unable to sleep, Dilman had come across the words of an eminent political scientist who had once characterized impeachment as a “rusted blunderbuss, that will probably never be taken in hand again.” Surely, the more judicious of the House members would see that, would think twice before signifying aye or nay. In the end, these members would not give their vote to Zeke Miller, whose own political motives were more questionable than those he had attributed to Dilman. There could be no question about it. When the vote came shortly, cooler heads would prevail.