President Hoover had tried to ignore the building whirlwind-and it had swept him away. President Steele would try to ride it. He’d have trouble doing worse. Mike feared he’d also have trouble doing better.
IV
Charlie Sullivan and a couple of other reporters watched Senator Carter Glass walk into the White House to confer with Joe Steele. Joe Steele had summoned Congress to a special session. Winning the kind of majority he had in the House made getting what he wanted easier.
President Steele didn’t have that kind of majority in the Senate. And a lot of Southern Democrats were more conservative than Republicans from the rest of the country. Carter Glass, a Virginian, was a case in point. He’d been born before the Civil War started, and apparently hadn’t changed his views a great deal since. He loudly opposed nationalizing the banking system. Since he’d been Secretary of the Treasury in the Wilson administration, his views counted.
One of the other newsmen, a skinny cub with the impressive handle of Virginius Dabney, was from the Richmond Times. “I’ve got a dollar that says Joe Steele won’t make him change his mind,” he said, lighting a Camel.
“You’re on,” Charlie said at once. They shook hands to make things official.
The kid from Virginia was in a gloating mood. “I’m gonna buy myself a nice dinner with your dollar,” he said. “You’ve got no idea what a pigheaded old coot Carter Glass has turned into. Neither does the President, or he would’ve picked somebody else to try to get around the logjam in the Senate.”
“Well, you could be right,” Charlie said.
“Damn right, I’m right,” Dabney broke in.
“Hang on. I wasn’t done yet.” Charlie held up his right hand, palm out, like a cop stopping traffic. “You could be right, but don’t get too sure yet. Carter Glass never had to deal with anybody like Joe Steele before, either.”
Virginius Dabney blew out a stream of smoke. “It won’t matter. Glass’ll just keep saying no. He’ll get as loud as he reckons he needs to. He’ll go on about Trotsky and the Reds, and maybe about Hitler and the Nazis, too. Then he’ll say no some more. He doesn’t reckon the Federal government’s got the right to do this.”
“One of the guys who doesn’t reckon Washington has the right to shake it after a leak, huh?” Charlie said with a sour chuckle.
“That’s him,” Dabney said, not without pride. “States’ rights all the way.” By the way he answered, he was a states’ rights man himself. He was a white Southerner. Not all of them filled that bill, but most of them did.
You couldn’t argue with them. Oh, you could, but you’d only waste your time. Charlie didn’t waste any of his. Instead, he said, “Let me scrounge one of your cigarettes, okay?”
“Sure.” Dabney handed him the pack and even gave him a match. Camels were stronger than Charlie’s usual Chesterfields, but he didn’t complain. He’d gone to France in 1918, though too late to see combat. With what they smoked over there, he was amazed that German poison gas had bothered them.
After about an hour and fifteen minutes, Carter Glass came out of the White House. He always looked kind of weathered. He was in his mid-seventies; he’d come by it honestly. Now. . Now Charlie wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Unless he was imagining things, Glass looked as if he’d just walked into a haymaker from Primo Carnera. The giant Italian wasn’t heavyweight champ just yet, but he had a fight with Jack Sharkey set for the end of June.
“Senator Glass!” Charlie called. “Did the President bring you around to his way of thinking, Senator?”
Glass flinched at the question, as if he were afraid Primo Carnera would belt him again. He took a deep breath, like a man coming off the canvas and trying to stay upright. “After some discussion with President Steele, I have decided that the nationalization bill is, ah, a worthy piece of legislation. I intend to vote for it, and I will work with the President to persuade my colleagues to support it as well. Right now, that’s all I have to say. Excuse me.”
He scuttled away. Up till that moment, Charlie had always thought T. S. Eliot stretched language past the breaking point when he compared a man to a pair of ragged claws. If ever a man walked like a dejected crab, it was Carter Glass.
Charlie held out his hand. “Pay up.”
Virginius Dabney was still gaping after the Senator from his home state. “Dog my cats,” he said softly, more to himself than to Charlie. He took out his billfold, fumbled, and pulled out an engraved portrait of George Washington. “Here y’are. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. The President, he’s got some big mojo working.”
After pocketing the dollar, Charlie said, “Some big what?”
“Mojo,” Dabney repeated. “It’s nigger slang. Means something like magic power. I can’t think of anything else that would make Carter Glass turn on a dime like that.”
“Mojo, huh? Have to remember that,” Charlie said. “But didn’t I tell you Joe Steele had a way of getting what he wanted?”
“You told me. I didn’t believe you. Nobody who knows anything about Glass would’ve believed you.”
A couple of other recalcitrant Senators went to confer with the President. When they came out of the White House, they were all for nationalization, too. Charlie didn’t see them emerge, so he didn’t know whether they looked as steamrollered as Carter Glass had. He figured it was likely, though. Joe Steele could be mighty persuasive. Look how well he’d persuaded Franklin Roosevelt, after all.
The Senators remained among the living. Like Carter Glass, though, they had their change of heart. With their loud new support, the nationalization bill passed the Senate by almost as big a margin as it had in the House.
Joe Steele went on the radio to talk to the American people. “We are heading in the right direction at last,” he said. “Some folks make money when others are miserable. A few want to wreck all the progress the rest support. We almost had that kind of trouble over this bill. But I talked sense to a few men who didn’t see things quite the right way at first. Most of them took another look and decided going along would be a better idea. I’m glad they did. We need to get behind the country and push so we can start it going. If some push at the wrong end, that won’t work so well. We’re all together on this one, though. We are now.”
Since he was speaking from the White House, no one on the program tried to tell him he was wrong. Hardly anyone anywhere tried to tell Joe Steele he was wrong at first. He was doing something, or trying to do something, about the mess. Herbert Hoover had treated the Depression the way the Victorians treated sex-he didn’t look at it, and he hoped it would just go away.
That hadn’t worked for the Victorians, and it hadn’t worked for him, either. They were mostly dead, and he’d lost the election. For a politician, that was the fate worse than death.
* * *
Even a reporter who came into Washington only every so often knew where the people who worked in the White House ate and drank. Charlie went to half a dozen of those places. He talked to more than half a dozen people who typed things and filed things and answered wires and telephone calls. And they all told him they didn’t know how Joe Steele got Carter Glass and the other Senators who’d opposed the bill that nationalized the banks to turn around and vote for it.
He plied them with liquor. Even more to the point, he plied them with money. It was the Associated Press’ money, so he didn’t have to be chintzy with it. It didn’t help. They went right on telling him they didn’t know. Frustrated, he yelped, “Well, who the hell does, then?”
Most of them didn’t even know who knew. Charlie knew what that meant: Joe Steele wasn’t just good at holding his cards close to his chest. He was terrific at it. One or two people suggested that Charlie might talk to Kagan or to Mikoian or to Scriabin.