as a favor to me.” This was Seab’s favorite gambit, and they sometimes met in battle array over the prostrate form of some poor wee, sleek, timorous, cowerin’ beastie like Nelson Lloyd of Illinois or Henry Lytle of Missouri, desperately anxious to be friends with everybody and not offend either the powerful Majority Leader or his almost equally powerful opponent. Then it all had its humorous moments.
In the main, however, it was a serious business for the most part, and to a considerable degree a labor of love that had its own compensating satisfactions. He sometimes wondered, when he was arguing earnestly with someone as vapid as Walter Calloway of Utah or bargaining with someone as crafty as George Hines of Oregon, whether those who began it all had foreseen the down-to-earth applications of their monumental idea. Sometimes he would come out of the chamber and walk past the statue of Benjamin Franklin, who stood just off the floor at the foot of the stairs to the gallery, fingering his chin with a quizzical smile, and wonder if old Ben and the rest of them had ever had any idea, that steamy summer in Philadelphia, that their brain child would develop into as practical and bedrock a human process as it had. But then he would remember some of their discussions and decide that he probably knew why Ben was smiling. Dealing with prickly John Adams was probably no different from reasoning with prickly Orrin Knox, and certainly Arly Richardson in a pet could be no more difficult than Edmund Randolph.
Thus comforted by his wry imaginings of the past, he would reflect that this, in essence, was the American government: an ever-shifting, ever-changing, ever-new and ever-the-same bargaining between men’s ideals and their ambitions; a very down-to-earth bargaining, in most cases, and yet a bargaining in which the ambitions, in ways that often seemed surprising and frequently were quite inadvertent, more often than not wound up serving the purposes of the ideals.
In this eternal bargaining there were five principal middlemen: the President of the United States, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the House Minority Leader. Through these five changing-houses flowed the passions, the prejudices, and the purposes of the land, and on their particular skills in leading men depended that delicate balancing of dream and desire which moved the nation forward. At a time such as the present when all five were for all practical purposes equally adept, this made for a good deal of genuine progress in many matters. There had been times, as under the Roosevelts or Eisenhower, when one of the middlemen had either been strong beyond proportion or weak beyond proportion, when the balance was knocked out of kilter and the government either raced forward at a speed too fast to be comfortable or stalled at dead center and drifted helplessly through desperate crises without purpose, plan, or conviction at the heart of it. This was a penalty, and one that Ben and Company perhaps had not foreseen; but it was a penalty inseparable from freedom, and so far, despite great risks and perils, the country had survived them all. Whether it would under present circumstances was of course the question; and on that, it was too early to tell. All we can do, he told himself as he unlocked the door giving into his private office, took off his coat and hat, and prepared to buzz Mary to bring him the mail and start the day, is the best we can; aware that he was not alone in this, and that already, on the Hill, around town, and out in the country, others were already at work on the complex situation created by the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell; some to help, some to hinder, but all, according to their lights, to do the best they could.
It wasn’t that you objected to these little duties you had to perform, Lafe Smith told himself as he paid his cabbie, ran up the steps into the Senate side of the Capitol, and
In the main, however, it was a serious business for the most part, and to a considerable degree a labor of love that had its own compensating satisfactions. He sometimes wondered, when he was arguing earnestly with someone as vapid as Walter Calloway of Utah or bargaining with someone as crafty as George Hines of Oregon, whether those who began it all had foreseen the down-to-earth applications of their monumental idea. Sometimes he would come out of the chamber and walk past the statue of Benjamin Franklin, who stood just off the floor at the foot of the stairs to the gallery, fingering his chin with a quizzical smile, and wonder if old Ben and the rest of them had ever had any idea, that steamy summer in Philadelphia, that their brain child would develop into as practical and bedrock a human process as it had. But then he would remember some of their discussions and decide that he probably knew why Ben was smiling. Dealing with prickly John Adams was probably no different from reasoning with prickly Orrin Knox, and certainly Arly Richardson in a pet could be no more difficult than Edmund Randolph.
Thus comforted by his wry imaginings of the past, he would reflect that this, in essence, was the American government: an ever-shifting, ever-changing, ever-new and ever-the-same bargaining between men’s ideals and their ambitions; a very down-to-earth bargaining, in most cases, and yet a bargaining in which the ambitions, in ways that often seemed surprising and frequently were quite inadvertent, more often than not wound up serving the purposes of the ideals.
In this eternal bargaining there were five principal middlemen: the President of the United States, the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, and the House Minority Leader. Through these five changing-houses flowed the passions, the prejudices, and the purposes of the land, and on their particular skills in leading men depended that delicate balancing of dream and desire which moved the nation forward. At a time such as the present when all five were for all practical purposes equally adept, this made for a good deal of genuine progress in many matters. There had been times, as under the Roosevelts or Eisenhower, when one of the middlemen had either been strong beyond proportion or weak beyond proportion, when the balance was knocked out of kilter and the government either raced forward at a speed too fast to be comfortable or stalled at dead center and drifted helplessly through desperate crises without purpose, plan, or conviction at the heart of it. This was a penalty, and one that Ben and Company perhaps had not foreseen; but it was a penalty inseparable from freedom, and so far, despite great risks and perils, the country had survived them all. Whether it would under present circumstances was of course the question; and on that, it was too early to tell. All we can do, he told himself as he unlocked the door giving into his private office, took off his coat and hat, and prepared to buzz Mary to bring him the mail and start the day, is the best we can; aware that he was not alone in this, and that already, on the Hill, around town, and out in the country, others were already at work on the complex situation created by the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell; some to help, some to hinder, but all, according to their lights, to do the best they could.
It wasn’t that you objected to these little duties you had to perform, Lafe Smith told himself as he paid his cabbie, ran up the steps into the Senate side of the Capitol, and
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