Gore Vidal - Empire

Theodore was ominously still as Hay entered the presidential office, unwelcome documents in hand. The vast Secretary of War started to go, but Theodore motioned for him to stay. “You have the telegram ready, John?”

“No, Mr. President.” Hay was formal in address but not in action: he sat down, unbidden, suddenly weary.

“You realize that as we sit here, the convention is going on?” The famous teeth began to snap, nervously. “We’re following it all on the telephone, in the Cabinet room. There’s apt to be real trouble over this Moroccan business. We look weak, indecisive…”

“Mr. President, Perdicaris is not an American citizen. He is a Greek subject. He’s no concern of ours.”

Taft beamed; and chuckled, just the way fat jovial men were supposed to. Actually, whatever Taft was, jovial he was not. He was ambitious, petulant, suspicious. But his glorious fatness made him adorable in the eyes of the nation. “We’re off the hook,” he said. “Tell the press to go after the Greek government, and leave us alone.”

As the President studied the documents that Hunt had assembled, he looked, to Hay’s amazement, furious. “This ruins everything,” he said at last. “ Everything! I had counted on a powerful telegram to wake up the convention, the country, the world to the fact that no American citizen anywhere on earth can be harmed without a bloody reprisal, and now some fool clerk in your office comes up with this… this nonsense! No!” The high voice rose to a shriek. “He was born in America. His parents were American. Those are facts. How do we know any of this is true?” The President shoved the papers at Hay. “We don’t. We’ll have to verify. That means our legation in Athens will have to go through the records to see if he really gave up his nationality. That will take time. Too much time. I want a telegram sent today, to the American consul general at Tangier. Is that understood?”

“It’s understood, of course.” Hay got to his feet.

“Legally…” Taft began.

“I’m not a lawyer, Judge Taft. I’m a man of action, and this calls for action. Make it good, John-the telegram.”

“I shall be classically brief, as befits a director of Western Union.”

Hay was at the door when Theodore called out. “Put that whole file under lock and key, while we investigate the truth of the matter.”

“But…” Taft began.

“Take care of yourself, John,” shrieked the President from behind his desk.

“I think I’ve already done that, Theodore,” said Hay; and left the presence. He had already thought up a message which would fit, neatly, into even a Hearst headline.

At the State Department, Hay himself dictated his instructions to the consul general at Tangier: “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.” The telegrapher beamed: “Good for you, sir! That’s telling those niggers where to head in.”

“Yes,” said Hay. “It has a nice lilt to it. I can’t think why I gave up poetry.” Then he returned to his office, and locked the Perdicaris file in his desk. From Lincoln to Roosevelt had not been, exactly, an ever-upward spiral.

THE JEFFERSON HOTEL IN ST. LOUIS was the headquarters of “The William Randolph Hearst for President Committee.” Hearst himself had a suite on the floor directly above the humble, single room of William Jennings Bryan, a lowly delegate-at-large from Nebraska.

Blaise pushed his way through the crowded anterooms to Hearst’s command post, a large salesman’s sample room, with a view of the river in the distance. The heat was terrible; the odor of sweat and tobacco and whiskey oppressive. Blaise tried not to breathe as he plunged through the crowd of delegates and hangers-on, all enjoying Hearst’s hospitality.

Blaise knocked on the ultimate door, which was opened a crack. Brisbane’s suspicious face appeared; then, appeased no doubt by the definite manly blueness of Blaise’s eyes, he admitted him to the presence.

Despite the heat, Hearst was dressed in a black unwrinkled frock-coat, unlike his brow, which was very wrinkled indeed as he spoke into a telephone. “But my Illinois delegates are the legitimate ones,” he said, acknowledging Blaise’s arrival with a wave of his hand. A dozen political types, in shirt-sleeves, sat about the room, reading newspapers, making calculations of delegate strength. A New York City appellate court judge named Alton B. Parker was the candidate of the party’s conservative wing, headed by August Belmont now that Whitney was dead.

Even Blaise had been impressed by the efficiency of Hearst’s political operators. Although the Eastern leadership of the party found Hearst intolerable, he had managed to collect so much support in the South and West that he had an excellent chance of winning the nomination if Parker failed to be nominated on the first ballot. At the moment, the Credentials Committee was faced with the problem of two delegations from Illinois. One had been put together by the Chicago boss, Sullivan; the other was committed to Hearst. “Then get Bryan. He hates Sullivan. He’ll stop this.” Hearst hung up. He looked at Blaise. “I can’t get through to Bryan. He’s staying right here in the hotel. But he won’t support me…”

“He won’t support Parker either,” said Brisbane, soothingly.

“He’s waiting for a miracle.” Hearst sat on top of a long display table. “There won’t be a miracle. For him, anyway.”

“What are your chances, on the first ballot?” Blaise had already made his own estimate.

“With Illinois, I’ve got two hundred sixty-nine votes, and Parker’s got two hundred forty-eight, without Illinois.”

James Burden Day, in shirt-sleeves, entered the suite. “I’ve just been with Bryan. He’s on his way to the convention hall. He’s going to fight for the seating of your delegates.”

The men in the room applauded; and Brisbane danced a small jig. “But,” asked Hearst, unimpressed, “will he support me?”

Day shrugged. “He’s not supporting anybody, so far. He wants to stop Parker, that’s all.”

“I’m the only one who can do that.” Hearst’s eyes seemed to have been electrified; they shone, balefully, at Day. “Doesn’t he know that? Doesn’t he know there’s only me now?”

Brisbane answered for Day. “He still thinks that when he gets up in front of that audience, all will be forgiven.”

Hearst turned to Day. “Make him any offer.”

“I’ll try. But he’s in a bad mood.” Jim left. He had not even noticed Blaise. Politics had that effect on everyone involved. Blaise had seen the same sort of total absorption only at gambling casinos, where men were so absorbed in the turn of a card or the throw of a pair of dice that not even the end of the world could distract them.

A number of delegates were then admitted, and the Chief received them with magisterial calm. Would he bolt the party if he failed to get the nomination? Of course he would not, he said: this was the party of the people, and he would never turn his back on what after all was the nation itself. Also, only the Democratic Party could keep peace in a world made more dangerous by the bellicosity of Theodore Roosevelt. But hadn’t he been impressed by the swift assurance of the President when, with a single telegram, he had freed an American citizen from his Barbary Coast kidnapper? Hearst shrugged this off as “mere sensationalism.” For Blaise, the Chief’s new respectability was as irresistibly comic as any Weber and Fields sketch.

Brisbane drew Blaise aside. “He’s got the nomination if only Bryan…”

“What’s wrong with Bryan?” Blaise was genuinely curious; but then he had no political sense, the turn of a card meant nothing to him.