The 45th, page 39
“Compromise? Compromise on what?” demanded Murray, shaking her head.
“Compromise on the number, and the qualifications, of those who are allowed to enter the program,” he replied, in a cold, emphatic voice. “It isn’t a bad idea to give those who can’t afford it a chance at a better opportunity. The president isn’t asking that anyone be given anything for nothing; he’s asking that we make some decent return for the service of our veterans.”
A scornful smile slipped across her closed tight-lipped mouth. She turned back to Julian.
“Is that all you’re asking - a ‘decent return’?”
Julian ignored her and responded to Chambers instead.
“On a great many things, I would agree with what you just said. Without compromise we couldn’t exist as a free people.” He pulled his head sharply to the side, the way he often did when something he had not thought of for a long time suddenly entered his mind. “Someone told me, when I was in my first term in the House, that it is always a mistake to think something is a question of principle, because, he explained, there are always two principles involved - ‘yours and the other fellow’s’, was how he put it. I accept that. It is necessary to compromise, to take account of the legitimate concerns of those with whom you have differences. But there are times when it is necessary to do something of such importance to the country that it simply cannot be subject to compromise. This isn’t a question of how large our military establishment should be. If it were, it wouldn’t matter if you wanted a higher or a lower number, we could reach an agreement somewhere between what each of us had initially proposed. The question we now have to ask, isn’t how big or small we want the military to be, but what should be the nature of citizenship in the greatest democracy the world has known. Should it be the freedom - some would say the license - to do whatever anyone likes, except the right to serve their country? It is the question whether everyone, or only those who can afford it, has the right to the education they need and of which they are fully capable.”
“A ‘decent return!’” muttered Angela Murray angrily. “Everyone can join the armed forces, everyone can have four years of college paid for by the government - And you don’t think this will …! We’ve been summoned here because you think you can win a debate, show everyone you’re quicker on your feet. It’s the only hope you have left. But you will never get the votes you need,” she insisted, speaking slower and more emphatically with every word. “You’ll never get them because everyone here know the price they’ll have to pay next election if they let themselves be tricked - seduced - into something that will bankrupt the country!”
Julian laughed, looked at her as if to make certain she was really serious, shook his head, incredulous at what he had heard, and then shook his head again.
“Bankrupt the country! That’s what you keep saying. All those mindless commercials of yours: families worried how they’re going to pay their bills, worried that - how did those paid for actors put it? - ‘bankrupt our children’s future with his…’ That’s me, of course - ‘crazy schemes.’ Bankruptcy means the inability to pay, Ms. Murray. But I notice that when your company is trying to attract investors you talk about America as the wealthiest country the world has ever seen. The question a lot of people are asking is, wealthiest for whom? - Not for that supposedly typical family of four in that commercial of yours. Worried about bankruptcy? Run an ad with the family of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company worried about how they’re going to pay their bills. You really expect me to take you seriously? Are you going to tell the people in this room - are you going to tell the people who are going to read what Rachel Good will be writing in the New York Times - that unlike other countries, unlike France and Israel, that have some form of mandatory service, the United States alone can’t afford it, that we’ll go bankrupt if we try? You’re not worried about bankruptcy; you’re worried about taxes. You’re not worried about whether we can pay for what we need; you’re worried about what it might cost you. Why you - and those who think like you - call yourselves conservatives defies explanation. You don’t have any serious interest in conserving anything except what you have. Do you really believe it is better to let the rich own as many homes, as many private palaces, monuments to their own bad taste, than to share in the building of a better, a great, country?”
The face of Angela Murray had gone three shades of red, her stare so intense it might, if fixed on dry paper, have started a fire.
“This country is only great when it allows private enterprise to flourish. Without that, there is no freedom. What you’re trying to do - everyone gets a free education, gets one if they join up. And then, on top of it, we’re going to forget out obligations here on earth and start this endless exploration of the universe! It’s all about what government is going to do! Government, that’s all you talk about, what government is going to do. We all know what that means. More taxes, more regulation. You’re going to make it impossible for business to succeed.”
“You don’t want government involved; you don’t want anyone telling you how to run your business. Is that correct?” asked Julian, sharply.
“No, I don’t want government involved at all; government doesn’t know what it is doing.”
“You don’t want government involved in your business, but not the other way round?”
“What do you mean - ‘not the other way round’?”
“You don’t want anyone in government telling you what to do , but you have no hesitation telling people in government what they should do.”
“That’s different; that’s to keep government out of things it should not be involved in.”
“Has anyone in government ever threatened you?” he asked, his voice calm, precise, and ominous. Angela Murray blinked twice in rapid succession as she tried to calculate how far he might go. “Anyone ever threatened to use the powers of government to destroy your business, your career? Because that is exactly what you have been doing.”
She stalled, playing for time, afraid whatever she said might be a tripwire that would lead to disclosure of the private conversations with which, through Ismael Cooper by way of Conrad Wilson, she had already been threatened. She looked at the president as if she had no idea what he was talking about.
“It’s what you have been doing, isn’t it? It is what you’re doing now. What else would you call it, the millions, the tens of millions, you and your friends have been spending threatening members of the House and Senate if they refuse to do what you want, if they refuse to oppose what I’m trying to do. How many of those sitting here in the room would still be undecided if you - or your various agents - had not let them know they might be facing an opponent, a well-funded opponents, in their primaries next year if they vote the wrong way. What is that, Ms. Murray, if it isn’t threatening them with the destruction of their career?”
“Are you saying that we don’t have the right to express our opinion on an issue we think vital to the country?” cried Chambers, eager to divert the president’s attention from what was becoming a potentially dangerous confrontation with Angela. “Are you suggesting we don’t have the right to support whatever candidates we wish?” he asked, careful to speak in a polite, completely civil, manner.
Julian’s gaze remained fastened on Angela Murray.
“You can support anyone you like, Mr. Chambers,” he replied, cool and detached. “But you can’t threaten someone with a promise to do this against a public official unless he votes the way you want.”
“But that’s done all the time!” laughed a congressman.
Acknowledging with a nod that this was true, Julian bent forward on his elbows, pressing his left hand against the side of his head.
“If someone offered you money for your vote, Congressman Baker, you wouldn’t take it, would you? It’s bribery, and you would go to jail. If giving someone money is a crime, it isn’t clear to me why a threat to take away someone of value should not be a crime as well. We’ll give you money if you vote our way, we’ll give it to someone else if you don’t. What is that but politics as extortion?”
“I might agree with you in principle,” replied the third term congressman, a Republican from Tennessee who knew he was vulnerable to a challenge from the right. “But the possibility - the threat, if you want to call it that - is always there; it’s implicit in every request that you vote in favor, or against, a bill.”
“Which is a very good reason to take private money out of politics, but that is another issue,” said Julian, turning away from the congressman to look again at Angela Murray, sitting stiff and outraged at the other end of the table. He leaned back and, dropping his head to the side seemed to study her, slowly calculating what he was going to say.
“You have threatened these men and women; threatened them with the end of their careers. I would like you to stop; I would like you to announce, here, now, that everyone is free to vote according to their own best judgment and that nothing will be done to try to influence the next election. I’m willing to have this decided on the merits, and so should you. Don’t hesitate. It is really quite simple. Should Congress represent the people who elected them, or should they allow you to buy them?”
Everyone was watching, tense and expectant, wondering how Angela Murray would respond. No one liked her very much, but they feared her and what she and the money she represented could do. No one leaped to her defense, but neither did anything take the president’s side. They waited, silent witnesses to a battle of wits, their only serious interest the effect it might have on themselves.
“You don’t think these undecided members of Congress should decide on the merits a bill of this importance? You think they should instead be subject to your threats of reprisal.” Before she could reply, he turned to Rachel Good, sitting just a few feet away. “I think we’ll all be interested to read what you write tomorrow, whether Congress or a few - what did Teddy Roosevelt call them? - ‘Malefactors of great wealth’ - are in charge of this nation’s future.”
Julian said this with such buoyancy, such astonishing eagerness and energy, that it was almost as if he knew in advance everything that was going to happen. It seemed in that moment to Rachel Good, and not just to her, that he could not be beaten and that everyone knew it. The story, the one she was going to write, had already been written. She wondered how many of the undecided senators and congressmen knew that their decision had already been made, and how many would have to wait until tomorrow to realize that their choice was now between being seen as acting for the public good or voting the way they had been told. Angela Murray was too angry, too frustrated, to think even that far ahead, or to think at all.
“A question of the merits!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands, impatient of all the stupidity she had been forced to endure. “If it weren’t for you and your rhetorical gifts, making promises that will do nothing but harm sound like the greatest things that could ever happen; if it weren’t for this reckless self-indulgence in make-believe grandeur; if it weren’t….On the merits? If it were on the merits, you would withdraw the bill!”
“I asked you here to help clarify the issue,” replied Julian, ignoring her outburst. “I understand that you, and a great many others in the business community, think it is too expensive; you understand that I don’t. The difference between us on that point is clear. What other reasons - if any - can you give these undecided members of the House and Senate to vote against the bill?”
“Mr. President,” interjected the Senate Minority Leader, Mary Ellen Overland of California who was leading the opposition in the Senate. “As you may imagine, I haven’t the same objections as Ms. Murray, or any of the other conservative Republicans who think lower taxes - at least on the rich - is the only answer to every problem we have. We’re opposed to the bill because we think college should be free for everyone. Requiring military service as a condition for the kind of education everyone needs now to have any chance at a decent job, a decent life….This will only add yet another burden on the poor.”
The tension began to dissipate. Senator Overland was a colleague, and one of the more likable ones, not just willing to listen to an opposing point of view but known, on occasion, to change her mind as a result of what she had heard. She had the additional advantage that, a woman in her early fifties, the men in the senate, most of whom were in their sixties or seventies, found her rather more fascinating than their wives.
“I certainly have no objection to anything that would make college more affordable,” said Julian. Overland was sitting half way down the left side of the table. “There was a time in California when a student could go from kindergarten to a ph.d. at Berkeley free. No one had to pay for an education. Nothing was more important than a well-educated citizenry. We should get back to that. The bill I’ve put forward is a different matter. It is only indirectly concerned with the cost of higher education. I tried to explain this. It isn’t enough to adopt policies - tax policies, spending policies - that attempt to improve the condition of the poor; it isn’t enough to reduce the existing disparity of wealth. Why do we have this disparity, why do the rich keep getting richer, and everyone else has to work harder and harder not to fall back? There is only one reason: somehow we have convinced ourselves that private wealth - how much money someone has - is the only real measure of success. We thank ours soldiers, we thank our police, our firefighters - we thank our teachers - for ‘their service,’ and , because we would never think of doing anything like that ourselves if we had a better chance to make money - never think of them again, unless to complain about the cost. What has gone missing is a sense of responsibility, the belief that our first thought should be not for ourselves, but for those around us, for our country. this bill - think it through. Four years of college, not just tuition - which is what I think you are proposing - but board and room. You may, if you wish, think of it as a reward, the payoff, for four years of military service. You could also think of it the other way round: four years of college as an incentive, as a reason, to join. It is an interesting question, which some of you may wish to consider: which is the most important objective, four years of college to learn what they think they need to know, or four years of service in which they will learn what those who would guard this country should be taught.”
There were other questions, some of them quite specific. Julian did his best to answer them all. The meeting had been scheduled for an hour and a half; three hours after it started it was still going on. Others might get tired or hungry, they might have things scheduled, people waiting for them, but no one makes excuses when you are the guest of the president, and Julian Drake, whatever else anyone thought of him, seemed to live for this, an endless argument over what should be done. Members of congress who were only undecided because they had not yet been offered something tangible for their districts, sank low in their chairs, wondering if they could bring things to a close by announcing that they had heard enough and were now willing to throw their support behind the president. The rest of them seemed actually to become more energized, more interested and alert, the more they listened and, listening, were swept along by the debate.
“I used to read a lot of British history. The House of Commons met at night and on an important issue, someone like Disraeli or Gladstone might speak for three or four hours; speak, by the way, without so much as a note to remind them what they wanted to say; speak for three or four hours and never lose their audience. But then, they did not have our advantages; they did not have television or any of the other electronic devices by which we have made ourselves incapable of attention for anything that lasts more than a few seconds. They would debate - trade speeches - sometimes all night long; stay there until break of day. We should do that here,” he added, as if he thought that now would be a good time to start.
“That might be a good idea,” said Angela Murray, who had been sitting in agitated silence for the last half hour. “Perhaps we would be better off following the British. With a parliamentary system only someone who led his party could become prime minister. Isn’t that correct, Mr. President? You couldn’t do it with just one speech; you would have to work your way up, become the leader of your party before you ever became leader of the nation. We might then become a real conservative party and a real conservative - someone like a Margaret Thatcher or a Winston Churchill - could get elected.
To her astonishment, Julian seemed to agree.
“I didn’t used to think so,” he began, weighing his words with unusual care. “But now, with the way money and celebrity, have come to dominate everything, I wonder if that might not be a solution. As you say, it requires years of involvement in the work of government, and, in addition, the ability to speak, not just a few incoherent sentences, but speak in whole paragraphs on a subject on which you are completely versed. It doesn’t allow, the way our system does, any room for those who have spent their lives in business or certain of the other professions. Thatcher, Churchill? - I’m not sure I would put them in the same category; I’m not sure I would put anyone in the same category with the greatest statesman, and the greatest historian, of the 20th century.”
Thatcher, Churchill - any famous name from recent history - that was all she, and others like her, knew: the names, and what those names had come to symbolize for those whose knowledge was limited to what they had heard. It was hard not to laugh. Churchill had been a conservative and so was she, and what could that mean except that Churchill was everything she could have wanted in a politician.
“You would like someone like Churchill to lead the country?” asked Julian, with what seemed innocent curiosity.
