Authors: Gore Vidal
The convention hall was indeed transformed once all the lights were blazing. The noise of people talking was a constant roar as the delegates took their seats alongside their state standards.
Peter had found a corner of a press table beneath the front of the stage. Although he was not able to see what was going on above him, he had a clear view of the state delegations and of the overhanging tier at the back of the hall, where people were streaming down the aisles as they searched for their seats. Flustered attendants were having difficulty finding seats even for the irritably ticketed. Had Sam Pryor issued too many or too few tickets?
The Philadelphia Orchestra was off to one side, and the musicians were tuning their instruments loudly. In the New York delegation Peter recognized Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who stood next to the state standard, talking to Joe Alsop, who was making the rounds. The Colonel was for Dewey.
Peter moved out from under the stage to study the rest of the press corps, all seated in a sort of pen at the back of the stage. Needless to say, the grandees of the New York
Herald Tribune
like Walter Lippmann were not to be seen rubbing shoulders with their sweaty brethren, but he did recognize, with pleased awe, H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, wearing a straw hat, no jacket, red suspenders. He chewed a cigar and pounded a typewriter as if it were a candidate, while from time to time he snapped his suspenders, rather as if he felt himself in need of spurring, like a horse.
Joe hailed Peter in front of the California delegation, all gloomily pledged to their favorite son, Herbert Hoover. “Out of the West, yet again,” intoned Joe, “strides a giant, a leader, a man.”
“Hubert Hoofer?” Peter supplied the latest line. A few days earlier, on radio, an announcer had said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, I have the honor to introduce to you the former president of the United States, Mr. Heebert Hoobert … I mean Mr. Hoobert Hover … uh, Mr. Hubbard …” Mercifully, the now deranged announcer was dragged off-microphone in a swirl of static and the unlovely voice of the former president was heard in the land.
On the stage the handsome Republican national chairman, John D. M. Hamilton, was conferring with a number of henchmen. “Hamilton told us he’d like to second the nomination of Willkie but as party chairman he shouldn’t take sides.” Joe Alsop had an odd whinnying chuckle when he wished to express disapproval. He did so now. “He’s afraid his days are numbered now.”
“Why are you so certain it’s going to be Willkie?”
“The polls …” Joe was now looking up at a balcony to which had been attached the state seal of Maine. In the balcony several important-looking personages were taking their seats. “Isn’t that Rudy Vallee?”
Peter recognized the singer-bandleader who originally came from Yale and who sang nasally, but thinly, through a megaphone.
“I guess he’d have to be a Republican.” Peter was actively neutral on the subject. But Joe was whinnying again, this time with pleasure. “He’s priceless. He asked to have lunch with me last winter. He said that he was seriously thinking about entering the Maine primary.”
“For president?”
“For president. I said that he must. The country needs him. I told Cousin Eleanor, who said she couldn’t wait to tell Franklin. I hope she did. He loves that sort of thing.”
Joe took a seat in the Connecticut delegation as if he belonged there, which in a sense he did; certainly, all the state’s delegates greeted him. “Our secret weapon,” he said to Peter, who remained standing beside the railing that contained the delegation, “is Hadley Cantrill. He works for Dr. Gallup. He helps the good doctor formulate his questions and pick his interviewees. Very important that. No Yale accents, no Rudy Vallee types to be allowed within earshot of a blue-collar worker in Berwyn, Illinois. Class speaks best to class. Hadley is a master of getting us the results we want.”
What Peter had always suspected was true was true if Joe could be believed; the polls were rigged. But Joe anticipated him. “We get more or less what we want but we can’t just make up majorities—so far. Cantrill’s working for British intelligence and for the White House. Our current problem—other than nominating Willkie—is getting fifty elderly destroyers to England before the English starve to death. But the American people don’t want Franklin to just give away any part of our fleet. So you start, unknown to Dr. Gallup, to rearrange his questions. You ask the Average American, our crafty master, ‘Which of these two things do you think is more important for the United States to try to do—to keep out of war ourselves, or to help England win, even at the risk of getting into war?’ Straightforward stuff, you’d think, if you’re not used to thinking. Last week when the questions were asked like that, sixty percent said, in answer to question two, that they’d want to help England win, which is what we wanted to hear. On the other hand, the true isolationist will seize on question number one, which means, finally, that only forty-four percent are willing to risk war by helping England, and that isn’t enough, is it?”
“The possibilities are endless?”
“For the unscrupulous, too,” Joe spoke with mock piety just as the Philadelphia Orchestra began a triumphant rendering of a recent patriotic hymn, “Ballad for Americans,” by what was rumored to be a young communist. The thundering music and proletarian words had taken the country by storm. Now, in a full orchestral version, it had all the emotional effect of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The last word was “America,” and ended on a sigh like an echo.
Next a prayer from the archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Dougherty. He requested divine guidance for the delegates in their selection of a candidate. Then the Boy Governor of Minnesota gave the keynote speech. He spoke for an hour, to the consternation of the delegates. His message was indomitable: “Americans must keep burning the light of liberty.”
By the time he finished, Peter had found Tim and his crew at the front of the upper tier. Tim was amused. “Same speech as St. Paul. But lots more adjectives.”
“Bigger audience, too.”
When Stassen finally stopped talking, there was mild applause and then a group to the right of Tim’s camera shouted, in unison, “We want Willkie!” This was repeated several times; and that was that.
The next days were a blur for Peter. He sat in a streetcar with a former vice president of the United States but could not recall his name. He went from hotel suite to hotel suite. Open house was the order of the day. Strangers came and went. Twice he visited Willkie’s two-room suite down the hall from Tim’s bedroom. Willkie was losing what voice he had. There was a living room off the corridor; back of this front room, double doors opened into a bedroom where two large windows were constantly open. Air conditioning had not yet come to Philadelphia.
Willkie himself stood at the center of the front room, gazing with pale blind eyes upon the parade of handshakers who came and went, each ritually grabbing the offered paw. Willkie’s face was unhealthily pale; he was sweating heavily; waistcoat unbuttoned. He pretended to listen to those who wanted to tell him something. All the while, he kept repeating over and over again, “Ah’d be a lahr if ah said ah didden won be prez You Nigh Stays.” Peter, after the second visit to the candidate’s suite, quite believed him. How anyone could want something so badly was beyond him. But then Peter had never not known more than he had ever wanted to know about the various residents of the house on Pennsylvania Avenue; yet the city that he knew spoke rarely of that house and its occupants—the plural in Peter’s case was not the long parade of presidents but, for most of his conscious life, the Roosevelt family. He just barely recalled Herbert Hoover, who, suddenly, on Tuesday evening had appeared in the convention hall as the orchestra played “California, Here I Come.”
Peter had stationed himself next to Tim’s crew, for whom the police had cordoned off a small section of the gallery, which had filled
up the moment the doors were opened. There was again confusion over seating. Ernest Cuneo was seated within Tim’s magic circle.
Peter, opera glasses in hand, looked down on the floor as the round-faced Hoover with his Humpty Dumpty starched collar marched down the center aisle, accompanied by the governor of Pennsylvania. There was genuine enthusiasm for this least charming of presidents. Every delegate was now on his feet, applauding, while a number seized their standards in order to make a ritual parade about the floor, hailing the once and future chief.
“Poor old thing,” said Ernest Cuneo. “He’s the only one here who doesn’t know that he hasn’t a chance.”
“He’s still popular.” Peter indicated the cheering crowd of delegates below them.
“Right now. But watch what happens at the end of his speech.” The mischievous face of Cuneo had a jack-o’-lantern look to it so unlike the uncarved full pale pumpkin of Herbert Hoover who was now on the stage, waving jerkily to the newsreel cameras.
Although Cuneo maintained a quiet roar in Peter’s ear, he was barely audible through the shouts and screams inside the auditorium. “The isolationists are making their last stand. Hoover’s their voice. He’s been working on this speech since …” Cuneo’s voice was drowned out by cheering and by the banging gavel of the minority leader of the House of Representatives, Joe Martin, permanent chairman of the convention.
Finally there was silence; and Hoover spoke. The themes were familiar. The United States was safe from any attack in any foreseeable future no matter how many countries Hitler conquered. More to the point, the militarizing of the state—the current drafting of nearly a million men—endangered the republic, whose economy had been successfully turned around in 1933, only to be undone by the New Deal of Roosevelt, which had renewed the Depression. This, Peter could tell, was the reddest of red meat for a hungry crowd of conservatives whose true majority was always for Hoover.
But the audience was not responding. Hoover’s message was not getting through: literally, not getting through. Although Peter in the front row of the gallery could hear Hoover’s voice, he was aware that
there were dead patches all around him. People were straining to hear, hands cupped to ears.
“It’s the very latest sound equipment,” said Cuneo, looking more than ever like a Halloween surprise. “I can’t think what’s gone wrong.”
Tim was only aware of his own soundman as he continued to film what was plainly an ineffective speech. The audience was now shouting, “Louder, louder!” as the droning presidential voice came to them between bursts of static. “Tragic,” said Cuneo. “Hoover’s last chance to be nominated. And no one can hear him.”
Peter knew exactly what had happened. “I hadn’t realized that Sam Pryor was also in charge of acoustics.”
Cuneo gave him a sharp look. “What makes you think of him?”
“Because the mike was perfect for Stassen yesterday.”
“Machinery.” Cuneo was vague. “Anyway there’s something a lot more serious going on than a bad mike.”
Wednesday afternoon Cuneo invited Peter to join him and a special police squad. “I’ve known the mayor for years.”
“How?”
“How does anyone know anyone?” Cuneo grinned. “I like to know things that connect with my business …”
“Which is?”
“Knowing things that connect.” They were outside the convention hall. A hot intensely blue evening. A popcorn vendor was doing good business in front of Gate 23, guarded now by Philadelphia police. Cuneo said something to one of them: he and Peter were admitted. Just inside the hall there was what looked to be some sort of utilities room; and more police.
Cuneo was greeted as an old friend by a police captain in a windowless room. On a trestle table, two large metal containers had been taken apart and their contents—nails, nuts, bolts—were strewn across the table.
“We think—we pray we’ve got all of them.
No press!
” The captain had spotted Peter’s badge, which he had, at Cuneo’s insistence, slipped inside his breast pocket, but enough of it was visible to alarm the police.
Cuneo soothed the captain. Son of Blaise Sanford. Friend of Mayor. Of Cuneo. “We don’t want any panic here, and if this story gets out …”
“It won’t. Not from us. But who is Adolph Heller? Who is Bernard Rush?”
The captain was grim. “We hope to find out. Soon. One of our men got lucky. They hired him. He’s a demolition expert. They—whoever they are—were planning to set off these bombs tonight. In the hall. To kill off the top Republicans. They also installed one at the Dewey headquarters. Anyway, this morning our man pretended he was sick. Got back to base. We arrested Heller and Rush. They showed us these two bombs already under the stage. We’ve defused everything.”
“But who are they?”
“Ask FBI. We’ve done our job. It’s their business now. Anyway, no word to anyone until after tomorrow.”
“Does the President know?” Cuneo asked.
“That’s why you’re here, Ernie. Isn’t it?” The chief then turned a cold eye upon Peter. “I hope you realize …”
“Yes. I do.” What Peter had taken to be inadvertent national comedy had become very dark indeed. For the first time Peter believed that whatever malignancy had created Hitler and Stalin was now loose everywhere in the world, including, of all places, dowdy dull Philadelphia. The idea of anyone wanting to blow up Herbert Hoover was so bizarre that he wondered if, perhaps, this was actually a comic scenario awaiting its punch line so that the stately Margaret Dumont could, once again, faint dead away into the arms of the leering Groucho Marx.
Cuneo and Peter returned to Tim’s high perch in the gallery.
“Why?” asked Peter.
“Why is easy.” Cuneo was for once not mocking. “
Who
is the question.”
“Germans? British?”
“What would either get out of something like this? Crackpots is our usual story.”
“Our?”
Cuneo repeated, “Our. Yes. Remember McKinley?”
“Before my time.”
“Shot and killed by an anarchist. Crazy, of course. But he’d been reading poor Emma Goldman and so she got deported to Russia, which she hated because she was an anarchist and not a communist, but our government can never tell the difference.”