Irving Wallace - The Man

Now, like it or not, he had Senator Hankins’ New Succession Bill, with language that retroactively froze him into the position of succeeding Dilman as President, no matter whom the House and Senate selected for chairmen, no matter whom Dilman might prefer in his Cabinet. It was an embarrassment in many ways, the kind of act Eaton ordinarily deplored, for it was so nakedly political and unreasonable. If it passed, it told Dilman that the Congress did not trust him as a person (and a Negro), that the Senate was stripping him of his inherent removal powers, that the Senate was taking over as his guardian. Furthermore, no matter how ambiguously written, it told the country to shut one eye to the Constitution, for while the Constitution gave the Senate the right to approve of a Presidential appointment, it did not give that body the right to control a Presidential removal. In short, one paragraph of the language of the act was clouded over by doubtful legality, yet it was skillfully hidden behind the verbiage of an otherwise valid New Succession Bill. The political cynicism and rationalization that wrote the bill, put it in the hopper, had it introduced on the floor, had it powerhoused through the subcommittee, the full committee, and to a roll call, was appalling to Arthur Eaton.

Moreover, Eaton hated himself for being thrown into the Hankins and Miller camp. They were not his kind of people. He despised their talk. Publicly, they were pleading that an unusual situation in government had called for an unusual measure to meet it and to secure the continuity of government. Privately, secretly, these same men were agreeing that even if the doubtful paragraph made the bill unconstitutional, it would take so long a time to reach a test before the Supreme Court, take so long a time to be thrown out, that by then President Dilman would have served his one year and five months under Senate restraint, and what happened after that did not matter. All that mattered was that the nation would have been protected from its own current President.

Eaton wanted no part of those politicians and their bill, and he promised himself that he would stay aloof, as far above and beyond the questionable intrigue as possible. He had one task, and it was enough for one human being-to see that the United States was steered in the direction that his friend T. C. had set for it.

He opened his eyes to find Wayne Talley before him once more.

“Arthur,” Talley said, “Dilman mention anything to you about the Hankins bill?”

“Not to me, no.”

“What if it’s brought up at the Cabinet meeting?”

“I doubt that it will be brought up,” said Eaton. “Since it concerns each of the Cabinet members, protecting them against their President, why should any one of them bring it up? Certainly I would not have the nerve to speak of it myself.”

“What if Dilman himself brings it up?”

Eaton thought about this. “No, he won’t bring it up either,” he said with confidence. “You’ve seen him in action throughout the week. He’s afraid to open his mouth. He listens. He worries. He retreats. He has no strong or definite opinions about anything in government, except that he doesn’t want trouble. I think he wants to remain unobtrusive and accepted. If he can get through T. C.’s term without rocking the boat, I believe he will feel that he has accomplished all he wished to accomplish.”

“Which is?”

“To prove a Negro can be President and leave the nation no worse off.”

Talley did not seem convinced. “I hope so. Let’s see how he reacts to that first television speech we hammered out for him. If he goes for it verbatim, every point we made, promising the country he will serve merely as a caretaker for T. C.’s program, then I think you’re right.”

“When did you give him the draft of the speech?”

“When he was leaving here last night.”

Eaton nodded. “Then we should know today. After all, if he is going on the networks with it tomorrow-late tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it?-he should-”

Eaton left the sentence unfinished, as he cocked his head to listen to the approaching clack of footsteps on the cement walk outside. He came to his feet, and he and Talley stood respectfully attentive as the Secret Service agent near the garden greeted Dilman and the White House policeman opened the screen and turned the latch of the French door.

Dilman was inside the Oval Office, nodding his head. “Mr. Secretary-Governor-”

“Mr. President,” said Arthur Eaton.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” said Wayne Talley.

Dilman remained uncertainly before them, revealing a troubled smile. “I know I’m late. I apologize. I was trying to supervise the moving, and trying to find where everything was, when I ran into the-the First Lady-you know-”

“Oh, Hesper, you mean,” said Eaton. “I thought she’d moved out yesterday.”

“Well, there were a few bits of unfinished business, I guess,” said Dilman. “Anyway, we got to talking-a lovely lady-and that’s why I’m late. Do we still have a little time before the Cabinet meeting?”

“Only fifteen minutes now,” said Talley. “We can cover the ground, if we go right at it.”

“I’m ready,” said Dilman. He started for the desk, and with obvious reluctance sat down behind it in the straight-backed, light green leather swivel chair that had been substituted for T. C.’s widely photographed ebony chair with the electrically controlled lifting and reclining device built into its massive frame.

Eaton settled back into the seat he had been using beside the President’s desk, and Talley pulled up a cane-bottomed chair.

As Talley took the memorandum from the Secretary of State, Dilman held up one hand. “Before you start,” he said, “I-I’ve got to remind you I’ve never attended a real Cabinet meeting, let alone chaired one. I assume our gathering last week was merely a brief prayer get-together. As to a full-dress meeting-” He shrugged helplessly.

Talley glanced at Eaton, and then addressed Dilman. “While there are no set rules as to procedure, Mr. President, there are a few certain practices that are traditional. As you know, you are the presiding officer, and, as you know, the ten Cabinet members are seated in their order of succession. Generally, you meet with the Cabinet twice a week, usually Tuesday and Friday, but that is highly flexible. Truman and Eisenhower believed in these regular Cabinet meetings. Lincoln, Wilson, Kennedy did not, preferring to work out problems in individual conferences with Cabinet members or advisers. Other members of the government that you feel can be helpful can also be invited to attend. F. D. R. usually had Harry Hopkins in the room-”

“I’d expect you to be present, too, Governor Talley,” Dilman said.

“Thank you, Mr. President. Now, the meeting is nothing more than a sort of clearing house-you know, clearing house for ideas, opinions, exchanges of specialized information, and so on. It gives you a chance to get a diversity of advice, reactions to your own notions, and to pick up some expert knowledge. The whole thing is informal, and because no official records of the conversation are kept, it can be pretty freewheeling. Truman had a private secretary take rough notes. Eisenhower appointed a special Secretary of the Cabinet to prepare the agenda and keep minutes of what went on, but that hasn’t been done much since. You are expected to open the meeting by presenting any problems you have on your mind. Or you can simply ask the members, from Secretary Eaton here down to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, what they have to report or discuss.”

Listening, Eaton pushed forward. “Excuse me, Governor… Mr. President, I want to interject one observation I have made while attending so many of T. C.’s Cabinet meetings. Don’t be disappointed if not too much is accomplished. Your Cabinet members are specialists in different fields. T. C. found that the Secretary of the Interior had neither interest in nor knowledge of our problems in-well, say my Department of State. And the Postmaster General is apt to be more concerned about the design of a new stamp issue or political patronage in the Post Office Department than the Attorney General, who is full of facts and figures and concern about Negro voting. I think it was to avoid this bureaucratic self-interest, as much as for any other reason, that President Kennedy chose to depend on small task forces to dig up facts for him, so that he could thrash them out beforehand with a handful of intelligent advisers. Certainly he had no fixed schedule of Cabinet or National Security Council meetings. Neither did T. C. He liked to get his facts from any one of the ten government Departments, from experts among the more than two million civil servants in the executive branch, and then sit down with Governor Talley and myself, maybe one or two others, and debate the specific problem and arrive at a conclusion.” Eaton paused. “I think, Mr. President, you will be able to determine, shortly, if you prefer to lean on the Cabinet as a whole or on advisers you find intelligent and sympathetic.”