Read Online Advise and Consent by Allen Drury - Free Book Online Page A

hurried down the poorly lighted hallway toward the Senate restaurant. You liked people, usually, or you weren’t in this business. But the juxtaposition of breakfast with his upright constituents from Council Bluffs and a night with Little Miss Roll-me-over-and-do-it-again was one of those little ironies they didn’t tell you about in the civics books. They told you about the machinery, but they never let on that human beings were what made it run; they talked grandly about a government of laws, not of men, concealing from the idealistic and the young the apparently too harsh fact that it is men who make and administer laws, and so in the last analysis it is the men who determine whether the laws shall function. They made it all so unreal, somehow; and it wasn’t unreal at all; at least he didn’t think it was. Certainly he didn’t feel unreal, hadn’t last night, and didn’t now. It all hung together candidly in his pragmatic mind: Senators like it just as much as anybody, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less Senators for that. It was the sort of insight into the world that not very many of his colleagues knew he had. They all knew he had enough experience to have insight, but few were aware he had developed any.
    However, he had, and those who realized it kept it in mind. That was why Bob Munson, for one, was so fond of him, totally unlike as their basic characters seemed to be; and that was why Lafe Smith was moving closer to the little group around Bob who generally called the tune for the Senate. And that was why, without even being asked, but just because he knew Bob would want to know, that he was about to make a quick, smooth, accurate, and reliable survey of what the Midwest thought about the nomination. Sometimes a single conversation could illuminate a whole region for you, if the people were representative and voluble enough; he knew his breakfast guests were. He had a good idea what their reaction would be: the Midwest wanted none of it. He wasn’t so sure he did himself, as a matter of fact, though that would depend on Bob and a lot of other things.
    Just ahead of him, white-haired, kindly, and a little nervous about this venture into the great world of government, he saw his company, and with the engaging, comfortable grin that put constituents and conquests equally at ease, he stepped forward, held out a hand to each of them, said, “I’m Lafe Smith, sorry to be late,” and led them on into the restaurant.

    At the press table in the restaurant as Lafe and his guests went by, Associated Press stopped in mid-coffee, looked up at United Press International and the New York Times and asked:
    “What do you think he’s going to do?”
    “Him?” UPI said. “Whatever Bob tells him to do.”
    “I’m not so sure,” the Times remarked. “I don’t think this one is going to be so easy for Remarkable Robert.”
    “A presidential nomination?” AP snorted. “Why shouldn’t it be?”
    “But Bob Leffingwell,” UPI said. “And the Russians. And Seab Cooley. And what have you.”
    “When Bob holds his press conference before the session we’ll have to ask him if this nomination is an example of that bipartisan unity we’ve been hearing about so much,” AP said. “I’ll bet it is.”
    “I’ll bet he won’t tell us,” UPI said. “He’ll consider it a secret.”
    “Oh, well,” AP said with a dry chuckle, “by noon he’ll have it all sewed up anyway.”
    “That I doubt,” said the Times .

    Dolly’s bedroom window, like most other windows in Vagaries, looked right out into the trees, and that was where Dolly was looking, too. The morning papers were spread across the bed and Dolly—Mrs. Phelps Harrison, generally described as “one of Washington’s most prominent hostesses”—was dreamily observing the first feathering green tips of spring along the branches. The sun was shining brightly, a crisp, fresh wind came in from the slightly opened window. It was a sparkling day out,