Robert Coover - Public Burning

On the way in, I saw Bob Taft. The poor bastard, he looked like hell. Mr. Republican. Fighting Bob. The Go-It-Alone Man. He was going it alone now, all right: he was dying, hip cancer apparently, probably wouldn’t last the year out. On the side of the angels now. There were some reporters hovering around him, looking very sympathetic, and since sympathy from those sonsabitches was something I rarely enjoyed, I decided Fighting Bob could share a little of it with me, he wasn’t going to need it much longer anyway. “Say, Bob,” I called out, moving in, “I have news for you!” Taft knew where I’d been that morning, knew about the Korean and German and Rosenberg crises — the whole Capitol was obviously ass-deep in the usual rumors, prophecies, and panic — and so of course he was all ears. He was on crutches and appeared to have lost a lot of weight (which was maybe why he seemed to be “all ears”), but he stretched forward eagerly as though reaching for a cure. The newsguys all turned to me, grabbing for the pencils tucked behind their ears, and photographers snatched up their cameras — I quickly lifted my chin and raised my eyebrows, conscious that my stern Quaker eyes and heavy cheeks often gave me an unfortunate scowly sinister look, putting a whole different slant on what I was saying (isn’t that a hell of a thing — that the fate of a great country can depend on camera angles?), and said: “I broke a hundred at Burning Tree Sunday, Bob!”

The Senator shrank back as though suddenly aged, but he smiled and congratulated me. I bowed acknowledgments, smiling generously, trying to make the best of it, but I was suddenly sorry for him, felt suddenly like a brother, regretted my little joke — hadn’t he said when he fell ill that the first thing he’d noticed was a great weariness when he started “whaling golf balls” early last spring? Shit, I was just rubbing it in. I wanted to reach out and embrace him, give him my shoulder to lean on instead of those damned crutches, make him well again, make him President or something.

We went on talking about golf, he seemed cheerful enough, but I felt like hell. I saw that the news reporters had stopped grinning, too, most of them had turned away, I’d been misunderstood again. I’d only wanted to give Taft something to laugh about in these troubled times, I’d meant no harm. He was one of the few guys, after all, who’d stood by me through the Fund Crisis last fall — even if the reason was that he was afraid Bill Knowland would be the guy to take my place. Taft had made a lot of mistakes, but he still might have gone to the White House if he hadn’t opposed NATO and collective security in Europe — what the hell, let’s face it, he would have gotten there anyway if a few of us hadn’t axed him, he could have won last year, that was clear now. And but a few short weeks ago, he was the most powerful man outside the White House in all America — maybe the most powerful Senator in history. Cut down. Last summer he’d been my enemy. It was I who’d busted up the unity of the California delegation and so assured Eisenhower of the Party’s nomination, had beat him out myself for the vice-presidential nomination — but now, looking at him there, shrunken, held up by those crutches, smiling gamely, his belly hanging low in his pants, I thought: Jesus, he’s a goddamn saint! I wanted to tell him everything, about the National Security Council meeting, about my talks with Uncle Sam, about the moves soon to be made, about the Rosenberg letters strewn around my office, about my hopes, my fears, the whole works.

I remembered the time he came to my office and asked for my support for the Party’s presidential nomination — me, just a green junior Senator from California — and I’d had to put him off. I think in part I objected to the fact he’d asked me. As though he’d demeaned himself. It was too personal, coming to my office like that. It embarrassed me — it flattered me, too, but mostly it made me uneasy, and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. Besides, with him I had no shot at something bigger myself. It must have been a terribly difficult thing for him to do, I could never do it, I could never walk into some other guy’s office and ask him to help make me President, any more than I could fly. I could send somebody else, but I could never do it myself. But now, if he’d come today, I thought, I’d have said yes. Now that it was too late. He smiled feebly but kindly, adjusted his clear horn-rimmed spectacles, said we’d have to get up a game soon, shifted his weight, and hobbled away on his crutches, showing me his bald spot like a kind of halo. Was he needling me now? I wanted to call out to him, but I didn’t.

This often happened to me, this sudden flush of warmth, even love, toward the people I defeat. It worried me, worries me still. It could backfire someday. Back when I was in the Navy, I wrote a note to myself on the subject, I have it still, taped inside my desk drawer: DON’T BECOME OVERGENEROUS ON THE SPUR OF THE MOMENT! But I kept forgetting. It was a weakness. Already some people were complaining I’d made too much of the tragic side of the Alger Hiss case, been too insistent in pointing out his intelligence, sensitivity, idealism, should never have said that I thought he was sincerely dedicated to the concepts of peace and of bettering the lot of the common man, of people generally — I might as well say as much for the goddamn Phantom. But once it was over, once I’d nailed the lying supercilious bastard for good, I couldn’t help myself. There’s something that makes me want the happy ending. Most conflicts are irresolvable, I know that, someone wins and someone loses, someone’s on the right side, someone’s on the other side, and what resolutions are possible are got afterwards by way of the emotions. I learned that way back in the seventh grade, first time I beat those girls in the now-famous Insect Debate. I’m no believer in dialectics, material or otherwise, let me be absolutely clear about that, I wouldn’t be Vice President of the United States of America if I was, it’s either/or as far as I’m concerned and let the best man win so long as it’s me. But I want these emotional resolutions when the fights are over.

People misunderstand me. They think it’s all vindictiveness. It isn’t. Personal hatred is a big waste, it’s as simple as that. Issues are everything, even when they’re meaningless — these other things like emotions and personalities just blur the picture and make it difficult to operate. But it feels good to indulge in them when it no longer matters. I’ve often said that the only time to lose your temper in politics is when it’s deliberate and useful. I don’t always live up to that, I’m human, but I still believe it. I’m a tough sonuvabitch to run against in an election, everyone knows that by now, they say I’m a buzzsaw opponent, ruthless and even unscrupulous, they say I go for the jugular, no holds barred, or as Stevenson put it, “Nixonland is the land of smash and grab and anything to win,” and discounting the partisan hyperbole, that’s largely true, I guess. You’ve got to win, or the rest doesn’t matter. I believe in fighting it out, in hitting back, giving as good as you get, you’ve got to be a politician before you can be a statesman, I’ve said that and it’s so. No ruffed-shirt, kid-glove, peanut politics for me. As Uncle Sam once told me: “Politics is the only game played with real blood.” I didn’t want to believe him at the time, I wanted it to be played with rhetoric and industry, yet down deep I knew that even at its most trivial, politics flirted with murder and mayhem, theft and cannibalism.

But — maybe because I do know that — I’ve always thought of myself as a healer as well. I was always breaking up fights between my brothers, saving them from Dad’s whippings, calming tempers at school, it was I who stopped that ugly brawl between Joe McCarthy and Drew Pearson in the Sulgrave Club washroom two and a half years ago (people thought I was siding with Joe, but actually I was saving Pearson’s life: Joe had heard from some Indian that if you kneed a guy hard enough in the nuts, blood would come out of his eyes, and he was eager to test this out), and it was I who bridged the generations in the Republican Party and brought its warring sides together for victory at last this past fall, I who now kept the peace between the President and a truculent Congress. I was Eisenhower’s salesman in the Cloakrooms, that was my job, I was the political broker between the patsies and the neanderthals, I had to cool the barnburners, soften up the hardshells, keep the hunkers and cowboys in line, mollify the soreheads and baby tinhorn egos, I was the flak runner, the wheelhorse, I had to mend the fences and bind up the wounds. Yes, bind up the wounds: I’m a lot like Lincoln, I guess, who was kind and compassionate on the one hand, and strong and competitive on the other. I gave Voorhis no quarter, for example, when I beat him for his seat in Congress in 1946; I called him a puppet of the Communists, hit him with dirty broadsides, anonymous phone calls, the whole lot, and if I hadn’t played it that way I wouldn’t be where I was now, America’s history and that of the entire world would have run a different course, the Phantom might well have had his way with us, maybe none of us would even be here now. But afterwards I went to the bastard’s office and smiled and shook his hand, spent nearly an hour with him, and I meant it when I said there was scarcely ever a man with higher ideals than old Jerry Voorhis, even if, like Alger Hiss and a lot of other insolent bums I’ve run into out here, he did come from Yale.