One of the bleachers, the one right behind the podium with the microphones, was full of Congressmen and Cabinet members and Supreme Court justices and other movers and shakers. The one next closest was for reporters and photographers. Mike piled out of the Model A as unceremoniously as he’d got in. He grabbed himself a pretty good seat.
On the podium, awaiting Joe Steele’s arrival, stood Charles Evans Hughes. The Chief Justice seemed from even further back in time than President Hoover. Partly, that sprang from his flowing black judicial robes. And it was partly because of his neatly groomed but still luxuriant white beard. Most men who’d worn beards before the Great War were dead, and the fashion had died with them. Hughes and his whiskers lingered still.
Mike rubbed his own clean-shaven chin. He had a nick on the side of his jaw. Even when you didn’t slice yourself, shaving every day was a time-wasting pain in the neck. He wondered why beards had ever gone out of style.
More to the point, he wondered what Charles Evans Hughes was thinking as he waited on the podium. Chief Justice was a pinnacle of sorts. But Hughes had almost-almost! — taken the Presidential oath instead of giving it. He’d gone to sleep on election night in 1916 positive he’d licked Woodrow Wilson. Only when California’s disappointing returns came in the next day did he find out he’d lost.
Nimbly, his cap under his arm now, Joe Steele hopped up onto the podium with the Chief Justice. “Are you ready to take the oath, Mr. President?” Hughes asked.
“Yes, sir. I am.” Steele’s baritone had the flat lack of regional accent so common in California, the lack of accent that was a kind of accent in itself. Underneath that plain, plain General American lay a hint-no, a ghost-of something harsh and guttural, something that didn’t belong to English at all.
“All right, then. We shall proceed. Repeat after me: “‘I’-state your full legal name.”
“I, Joseph Vissarion Steele-”
“‘-do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’”
Hughes broke the oath down into chunks a few words long. Phrase by phrase, Joe Steele echoed it. When they’d both finished, Hughes held out his hand. “Congratulations, President Steele!”
“Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.” Joe Steele held on to Hughes’ hand for a few extra seconds so the photographers could immortalize the moment. Applause from the bleachers washed over the two of them. There sat Herbert Hoover politely clapping for his successor when he could have wanted nothing more than to take the oath of office again himself. Democracy was a strange and sometimes wondrous thing.
Chief Justice Hughes descended from the podium and took his place next to the now ex-President. Joe Steele put the cloth cap back on his head and stuck reading glasses on his nose before he fiddled with his mike for a moment, positioning it just the way he wanted it. He held his notes on cards in his left hand, and glanced down at them every once in a while. For the most part, though, he knew what he intended to say.
“This country is in trouble,” he began bluntly. “You know that. I know that. We all know that. If everything was great in the United States, you wouldn’t have elected me. You do not elect people like me when everything is great. You elect important people, fine-talking people, people like President Hoover or Governor Roosevelt, God have mercy on his soul.”
Mike looked over at Herbert Hoover. He was scowling, but he’d been scowling all day long. It wasn’t as if Joe Steele were wrong. It was more that he was saying what someone with better manners wouldn’t have mentioned.
“I grew up on a farm outside of Fresno,” the new President went on. “I worked with my hands in the fields. My father and mother came to America because they wanted a better life for themselves and their children than they could hope for where they used to live. Millions of people listening to me today can say the same thing.”
He paused. Applause came from the bleachers full of ordinary people-and, Mike noticed, from the one full of reporters and photographers. It also came from the bleachers full of government officials, but more slowly and grudgingly.
Joe Steele nodded to himself, as if that didn’t surprise him one bit. “And I had a better life,” he said. “I managed to study law, and to start my own practice. I said what I thought needed saying about how things were in my home town. Some people there thought the things I was saying deserved to be said. They talked me into running for the city council, and then for Congress, and Fresno sent me-me, a son of immigrants! — to Washington.”
More applause. Some Representatives and Senators were self-made men, but there as anywhere old family and old money didn’t hurt.
“When I look at the country now, I see it is not the way it was when I grew up,” Steele said. “We are in trouble. We do not have a better life than we did before. Things are bad now, and they are getting worse day by day, month by month, year by year. When I saw that, and when I was sure I saw it, that is when I decided to run for President. The way it looked to me was, I could not do anything else. Someone has to set things right, here in the United States. The people who were in power were not doing it. I decided I had to be the one who did.”
He wasn’t a great speaker. He didn’t make Mike want to charge out and do whatever he said. Hitler had basically talked his way to power in Germany a couple of months earlier. But Joe Steele did show a confidence not so very different from the German dictator’s.
And, like Hitler, he was taking charge in a country that had just got knocked through the ropes. People would give him the benefit of the doubt for a while because of that.
“So we will have jobs in my administration,” Joe Steele said. “Labor is a matter of honor, a matter of fame, a matter of valor and heroism. Without jobs, all else fails. People of America, I tell you-we will have jobs!”
Surely not all the people in the bleachers who cheered themselves hoarse had no job right now. Just as surely, a lot of them were out of work. Again, the stands full of government functionaries cheered more slowly and less enthusiastically than ones full of ordinary folks.
“I can be rough. I can be harsh. But I am only rough and harsh toward those who harm the people of this great country,” Joe Steele said. “What is my duty? To do my job and to fight for the people. Quitting is not in my character. Whatever I have to do, I will do it.”
How did Franklin D. Roosevelt feel about that? He knew Joe Steele wasn’t kidding, anyhow. And a whole fat lot of good knowing did him. Mike shivered, though the day wasn’t cold.
“We will do whatever we have to do to get the United States on its feet again. You cannot set things to rights while you have silk gloves on.” The President held up his hairy hands. He wasn’t wearing gloves of any kind. He went on, “The ones who wear silk gloves, they use them to take from ordinary people without leaving any fingerprints. When banks fail, they steal the people’s money. Have you ever seen a hungry banker? Has anyone in the history of the world ever seen a hungry banker? If I have to choose between the people and the bankers, I will choose the people. We will nationalize the banks and save the people’s money.”
This time, the applause nearly blasted him off the podium. Ever since the big stock crash, banks had failed by the hundreds-no, by the thousands. And every time a bank went under, the depositors who’d put money into it and couldn’t pull the cash out fast enough went down the drain with it. Everybody who was listening to him had either lost money that way him- or herself or knew someone else who had. Bankers were some of the most hated people in the whole country these days.
Mike looked over to the stands full of officials. Herbert Hoover was shaking his head, and he wasn’t the only one. He didn’t understand the nerve Joe Steele had struck. That he didn’t understand was one big reason he hadn’t won his second term.