“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.
“As soon as you’ve got things moving I’ll have Perry Hearn call a background press conference for an off-the-record briefing. But we’ll want the announcement held up until Congress has voted—otherwise it’ll give the right-wing hoi polloi time to break out their Goddamned arsenals, and we don’t want that. It’s going to hit the people like cold water but it can’t be helped. I think if we take the press into our confidence a few hours in advance it’ll soften the blow.”
Bee sat weak; he felt debilitated. “Mr. President, I’ve got no choice but to agree with you in principle. But what happens if we try this and it fails? The cost could be a divided country—far more divided than it is now.”
“What difference is there between that and what’11 happen if we don’t try? A Pyrrhic victory for last-ditch defenders of the Constitution?”
“But we’re going to have to fight the most powerful vested interest of all—inertia.”
“I’m glad you said ‘we,’ Andy.”
“And what about the Supreme Court? Suppose they strike it down?”
“On what grounds? Congress has every right to amend its own laws.”
“But the Constitution goes to considerable lengths to put rigid limits on the term of office of a President. Essentially you’re asking the Congress to allow you to perpetuate yourself in office beyond your elected term. The Court would have to look at it that way.”
“I don’t think so. I’m only asking to be held over as interim executive until the elected President shows up to qualify. The judges on the Court understand reality when they see it.”
“There’s another reality, Mr. President. Suppose we never get Cliff back. Suppose he’s killed.”
“Then I expect I’d have another four years in office, Andy. I think that’s clear to everybody I’ve talked to. Naturally you’ve got to weigh that. But it’s still a choice between that and Hollander. Everything comes right back down to that.”
The President sat forward and put both elbows on the desk. “I wouldn’t worry about the Court if I were you. I’ve already consulted with the Chief Justice. I know that’s considered bad form but I had to cover that flank. The legal position the Court will probably take is simple enough. Congress has the power to provide for a vacancy in the Presidency by any method it chooses, so long as the candidate qualifies according to Constitutional basics—age, place of birth, that kind of thing. If Congress wanted to it could appoint the third assistant postmaster of Bend, Oregon to head up the line of succession. I can see how there might be a constitutional argument if I’d completed two terms in office, but I haven’t. And I’m not proposing that my present term of office be extended. The new law won’t take effect until one minute past noon on the twentieth day of January, and at that time I’ll have retired. It’ll be a new administration. I’ll simply be walking out the back door and back in through the front door, but it satisfies the legal requirements.”
“Will it satisfy the people’s requirements, Mr. President? Will the people accept it?”
“I hope they will if it’s explained to them by men like you, Andy.”
A beat of silence, and Bee dragged himself out of his fatigue. “I’d like to be very blunt for a minute.”
“Please do.”
“If the law can be changed to allow anybody to become the next President, why does it have to be you?”
“Because I expect I’m the only one who can rally enough support. Do you think if you went to the Congress and asked them to elect you to the Presidency they’d do it in forty-eight hours?”
“No,” Bee admitted. “I’m sure they wouldn’t. It would be far too raw. But it’s pretty raw to do it your way too.”
“But my way is the only way that has a chance of succeeding. I’m the only man alive who’s got the power to lead this fight—to swing the support of both parties in both houses. And the only one who knows what’s going on in the Executive branch. Now I’m being just as blunt with you. It’s a question of practicalities, Andy. You can’t afford to give consideration to my ambitions or your misgivings. The only thing you can do is decide whether you’d rather have me or Wendy Hollander sitting in this chair come Thursday afternoon.”