The Golden Age (11 page)

Beside Tim, Willkie took a deep breath; then, on exhalation, he whispered, “Oh, shit,” again, and as the applause began and Stassen stood back from the lectern, the bearlike Wendell Willkie lumbered firmly into Stassen’s place. He was not, Tim noted, in the least nervous. Even Roosevelt’s hands sometimes shook but the smiling Willkie, as he now sailed into American history, seemed quite aware of an audience that plainly liked what they saw. But they did not like what they then heard. Willkie read as badly as he had predicted. The agreeable croak of his voice, so unlike the usual politician’s mellow sales pitch, started early to go wrong as he missed words, split sentences in two, stumbled from line to line.

Tim wondered how anyone could have thought that this blunderer might begin to compete with the master in the White House whose vast depths of benign insincerity could never be entirely plumbed by any mere mortal.

Willkie’s glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose by the time the CBS director made the throat-cutting gesture that signaled the end of the torture. “I thank you,” snarled Willkie.

“We’re off the air,” said the CBS director, his back to the stage. The soundmen gathered up their equipment. The audience applauded perfunctorily while rising to escape the overheated hall not to mention the dire speaker. In the wings opposite, the Cowles brothers were talking intently to Stassen, who was shaking his thick pink boyish head.

But Willkie, instead of leaving the stage, removed his glasses, took off his jacket, and draped it over the lectern. Then he picked up his speech and hurled it out over the audience. As the offending pages floated in the air, he stretched his arms wide like a bear coming out of hibernation. “Well, that’s that, ladies and gentlemen. As you could hear, that was all spinach. Now that we’re off the air we can really talk.” He stepped back from the lectern while the astonished audience sat down.

Tim waved to his cameraman to keep recording.

“So I can talk straight to you without all that damn fine language I have to use for radio.”

“Thanks, Wendell,” said Davenport, sourly.

“
Your
language?” Tim was amused.

“Yes. So, now what is he going to do? He has no text and the wire services are all out there.”

They didn’t have long to wait. Willkie began to prowl the stage from left to right and back again, keeping sharp eye contact with section after section of the audience.

“Now you know and I know that we’ve got to get rid of that bunch in Washington—and we’ve got to do it soon. This November, in fact.” There was a sharp round of applause.

As Willkie paced up and down the stage, he attacked the New Deal; the President’s Machiavelli, Harry Hopkins; the arrogance of bureaucrats. One by one he struck at everyone and everything that this audience most hated. But on the one great issue, war or peace, he was both blunt and sly.

“Every time Mr. Roosevelt damns Hitler and says we ought to help the democracies in every way we can short of war, we ought to say: ‘Mr. Roosevelt, we
double-damn
Hitler and we are all for helping
the Allies, but what about the sixty billion dollars you’ve spent and the ten million persons that are still unemployed?’ ”

The hall erupted. Shouts. Rebel yells. Cheering. Even Tim felt the force of the man’s … character? Or was it art?

Willkie had now pulled the unreluctant Boy Governor from the wings. He thanked him for his introduction. Congratulated him on his potential greatness, so plain to all. He laid it on. Then, sweat streaming into his eyes, the deceptive lock of hair plastered to his right eyebrow, he declared in a voice that needed no amplifier: “I can think of no one better than you for the job you’ve just been given, which is to make the keynote address at our convention in Philadelphia next month. You speak for our country’s youth, which means you speak for tomorrow as well as for today. But I warn you, if you attempt to put the party on record as saying that what is going on in Europe is none of our business, then we might as well fold up!”

A huge breaking sound wave from the applause caused both men to step backward. Then Willkie, with a wave to the crowd, marched offstage, hands upheld, like a winning boxer after a knockout. Safe in the wings, he croaked to Davenport, “Bottle of whiskey.”

In Willkie’s suite a contented postmortem was taking place. The hero was reducing his adrenaline level with alcohol while the Cowles brothers, Lamont, and Davenport discussed the coming schedule, which, Tim could see, was being expanded to take in the whole country “with,” as Mike Cowles said, “no written speeches.”

“Swell.” Willkie’s voice was coming back. He drank bourbon neat.

Davenport reminded the brains trust that there would have to be written speeches to give to the press, otherwise the candidate’s progress would go unnoticed by the public.

Willkie agreed. “You write them and you hand them out to everyone except me. All I need to know is the general drift of what you’ll be handing out.”

Davenport was clearly not happy but he was outvoted.

Lamont turned to Tim. “You …?

“I plan to intercut him with FDR.”

Lamont smiled a very thin smile. “Why not? The new champ and the old. Would the studio … is it MGM?”

Tim nodded.

“… Object if I got Harry Luce to use some of this film from tonight in his newsreels? You know, those
March of Time
things that he does?”

Tim told Lamont to whom he must apply for footage. Lamont made a note.

Willkie waved to Tim. “We can do an interview now,” he said.

“No.” Davenport was abrupt. “It’s too late.”

“I’m afraid my crew’s gone,” said Tim. “Union hours.” He had now remembered where he had seen Willkie before. At Laurel House on the Potomac River, somewhat the worse for what he had drunk, while a woman—his wife?—tended to him.

“You said I could get nominated if I got out and fought for it.” Willkie addressed the brothers. “Well, this is the first round.”

“You won it,” said John Cowles.

“But it’s a big country,” said Mike. “A lot more rounds.”

“Roosevelt’s too nervous.” Willkie was still caught up in his recent performance. “That Minnesota crowd tonight is about as isolationist as you can get, but they’re scared of Hitler now. They’re ready to go arm real fast. I could hear them. Feel them.”

“But they aren’t ready to go fight in France like last time.” Davenport was there to dash cold water on the newborn overheated demagogue.

“What will happen will happen. For now we’ve got to help England hold off Hitler and FDR is just dithering. Wish he’d been out here tonight. He’s out of touch.” Tim was amazed at how quickly a Wall Street public utilities lawyer could become an entire nation personified. But then, perhaps, something in him had connected with something in the audience. After all, he was closer than FDR to the average Midwesterner because he was born one while the President was always the Hudson Valley lord of the manor, speaking kindly, even wisely, but always speaking down to an electorate that needed his guidance as he, apparently, needed theirs, which he demonstrated by his reliance on polls rather more than on their official representatives in the Congress.

“They know out there. They
know
that France and England are our first line of defense. If Hitler beats them, we’re next. We’ve got to
shore up the Allies, every possible way.” He drank from the bottle; seemed to get more rather than less sober. “Short of declaring war on Germany, that is.” Davenport sighed his relief.

Lamont gave Tim his card. “Let’s meet in New York.” The others rose respectfully.

“What … uh, do you do, sir?” Tim saw that the card merely read “Thomas W. Lamont” with a Manhattan home address.

“I’m just another Wall Street banker.” He bade them all good night; was gone.

Tim asked Willkie what primaries he planned to enter.

Willkie laughed. “None. Isn’t that right, boys?”

Davenport managed his first smile of the evening. “That’s right. But that’s only because we have President Hoover working for us.”

Plainly, this was a joke, whose point Tim was not supposed to get until Davenport explained. “Hoover’s encouraging every state to nominate a favorite son who after a ballot or two will shift, he thinks, over to him.”

“Only they will be coming to me now.” Willkie shut his eyes; smiled pleasantly. “Did you hear the applause I got when I said …”

An actor, Tim decided, an actor already rather too much at home in his part. “But what about Dewey? He’s beaten Vandenberg in Wisconsin and Nebraska.”

Mike Cowles answered. “Those delegations don’t really have to stick if they don’t want to. Taft isn’t going into the primaries either. He deals with the power brokers in the states, the cities.” Mike gazed thoughtfully at Willkie, who appeared to be asleep, still smiling. “That’s what we’ll do
after
our man has had a chance to see the country and the country’s had a chance to see him.”

“So why not just vote for Roosevelt?” Tim asked the question that the more they talked seemed the only essential one.

Willkie’s eyes opened. The mind was sharply focused. “I was a Democrat in 1932. Voted for FDR. But the New Deal wasn’t on any ballot that I ever marked. Well, Mr. Farrell, I’m a businessman. Proud of it. But the New Deal has no reference or relationship to democracy. I want to drive a stake through its heart. But I will tell you one thing, I tremble for the safety of this country if Dewey or Taft or Vandenberg
is nominated and elected. I’d go and vote for FDR first. I don’t want a Nazi Europe. I don’t want us attacked when Hitler’s good and ready. The only thing he respects is strength. Well, I want us strong. Militarily. That’s where a businessman is a lot more use than a Harvard man who grows Christmas trees on his Hudson River estate. I’m going to bed.” He stood up; gave Tim a bone-crushing handshake, then, shedding his clothes, he moved into the bedroom and shut the door.

“Can he be nominated?” Tim asked the three advisers.

“Yes,” said Davenport. “We’re playing the Taft game. We’re acquiring the power brokers. We’ve been at it since January.”

Mike Cowles was on his feet. “He’s got most of the press by now. He’s got Harry Luce, who is shameless, if you’ll forgive me, Russell, when it comes to biased reporting in favor of—or against—politicians.”

“I guess your
Look
magazine must have learned all that from us.” Davenport already looked like a somewhat sleepy secretary of state.

The four men parted in the lobby, now forlorn and empty.

Tim turned to Mike Cowles. “Who is this guy Lamont? He says he’s a banker. What bank?”

The three men laughed. Davenport said, “Well, he told you the absolute truth. He is a banker. In fact, he is
the
banker.”

“Which bank?” asked Tim.

Mike Cowles answered for his co-conspirators: “He’s the head of the House of Morgan.”

So, Tim duly noted to himself, it was going to be that kind of election.

“This was a mistake,” said Harry Hopkins as Caroline and the chauffeur helped him out of her hired car.

“Your proposal of marriage to me? Or my acceptance?”

“Neither. Our coming here to Cissy Patterson’s. She’s a madwoman.”

“But she’s the only pro-Roosevelt publisher in Washington except for me, and I’m only a half, no, not even a quarter, publisher.”

More or less seriously, Hopkins had proposed marriage in the car and, not seriously at all, she had promptly accepted him. “We have known each other so long,” she had said, patting his hand. “At least a month.”

“I think my lack of a stomach is putting you off.”

They stood before Cissy’s Italianate marble Stanford White palace dominating its curve of Dupont Circle. Then two footmen in livery flung open the doors and Caroline, with the fragile Harry clinging to her arm, made an entrance duly noted by those in the marble hall with
its elaborate plasterwork and shining dark mahogany doors whose knobs were made of semiprecious stones. Cissy had inherited all this grandeur from her mother, whose taste she affected to deplore; yet there was no doubt that she very much enjoyed what was, after all, a proper setting for Washington’s Sun Queen.

Cissy herself was still a handsome woman with hair that could well have been red in daylight but now, in the refracted crystallized light from chandeliers, seemed to be so many subtly shaded pelts of mouse intricately arranged around a dead-white face.

“Caroline!” She embraced the “pioneer” woman publisher, as the
Times-Herald
always referred to Caroline Sanford Sanford, delicately emphasizing that their own non-pioneer woman publisher was a slip of a thing by comparison.

But all eyes, including Cissy’s, were on Harry Hopkins, man of mystery, the President’s alter ego, seldom seen at Washington parties as opposed to those of Astors on the Hudson, Whitneys on Long Island.

“Harry! Why do you avoid me?” Cissy kissed his cheek.

“My illnesses always come first. Then you.”

“Isn’t he a bastard?” Cissy, well pleased with her trophies, led them into the main drawing room, where she abandoned Caroline to show off Harry, who wearily smiled at friends, acknowledged acquaintances, his sharp glittering eyes half shut as if to disguise how much he was actually taking in. Caroline had never met anyone quite so … sharp. Yes, “sharp” was the word. He was hardly brilliant but he was preternaturally attentive, as he watched faces, listened to the inflection of voices, arranged and rearranged data in his mind with astonishing speed as well as, according to the President in a rare non-self-referential mood, acuity—like the perfect barometer on a sunny day at sea which surprises you with the news that there’s a storm up ahead.

Since the evening that Churchill had become prime minister, Hopkins had been living at the White House in Abraham Lincoln’s office–Cabinet room, now a bedroom which Eleanor, with characteristic goodwill, had made not only depressing but uncomfortable. “Really just like home,” she would say contentedly, looking at the heavy dark furniture and dull wallpaper.

Cissy’s onetime son-in-law, Drew Pearson, a tall humorless
Quaker, reminded Caroline that they had met before. “Years ago I tried to get a job on your brother’s paper.” Caroline still disliked hearing the
Tribune, her
invention, referred to as Blaise’s creation. As always, when annoyed, she gave a radiant smile whose effect she could no longer gauge without, at the very least, a looking glass that magnified. “I am sure he regrets not taking you on.”