The Great American Saloon Series/Charlie Halleck's Capitol Clinic
Carroll, James Peter
THE GREAT AMERICAN SALOON SERIES CHARLIE HALLECK'S CAPITOL CLINIC A long a drab basement corridor in the U.S. Capitol, near the foot of the stone stairway used as a fire escape by the Brits who...
...Clinic was a locker room where team players were rewarded and errant freelancers allowed to repent and pledge renewed allegiance to Charlie's sacred Republican playbook...
...Allett would use the telephone to call in reinforcements, which would arrive in a few minutes, concealed in accordion-style manila folders...
...When the Grant's bottle was close to empty and no replacement could be located in the government-issue file cabinets that lined the Clinic's walls, Charlie would demand action from his legislative assistant Bob Allett...
...On another occasion, Charlie had Bob Allett call the Interior Department to make sure a suitable elk would be available when Charlie went hunting on public lands in Wyoming...
...He kept his promises to Republicans and Democrats—including those promises made in the amnesia-inducing atmosphere of the Clinic...
...I do remember that Charlie never restricted the Clinic's discussion to legislative matters...
...Capitol, near the foot of the stone stairway used as a fire escape by the Brits who torched the place in 1814, is an unmarked door that for years opened into the Clinic, an establishment devoted to maintaining the blood alcohol level of carefully selected members of the House of Representatives...
...Such behavior would be unthinkable because, as Albert put it, Charlie "is not only one of the most distinguished members of the House, he is a gentleman of the first order and one of the most honorable men I have ever known...
...In the fall of 1962, doves replaced elk on the Clinic's discussion menu...
...He numbered dozens of Democrats among his dear friends but wouldn't have wanted his daughter, or anyone else's daughter, to marry one...
...During one of my Clinic visits, the delivery was made by the chauffeur who normally piloted Charlie's long black Cadillac, a vehicle that went with his job as House minority leader...
...Both the Board of Education and the Clinic have gone out of business...
...The Clinic's proprietor was Charles Abraham Halleck, the combative Indiana congressman who, during a thirty-four-year House career that ended with retirement in 1968, never succumbed to the modernist heresy that booze interferes with brain function...
...Bob hung up only after he was convinced that a bull elk with suicidal tendencies would appear in front of Charlie's hunting party on the scheduled date...
...A friend of Charlie's had been killed in an automobile accident back home in Rensselaer and Charlie felt attending the funeral was an obligation far more important than playing a round with the Supreme-Commanderturned-President...
...He claimed to delight in "twisting the bastard's arm...
...Charlie had a W. C. Fields nose, a voice you could use to grate nutmeg, and a memory that kept a detailed record of every vote cast on every issue by every House member...
...Flashing a smile and brandishing the bulging folder like a trophy of war, the chauffeur declared, "Dispatch for you, Mr...
...Call 'em back," he said, "and see if they can find an orphanage where we can donate the meat...
...Unlike the Kens and Barbies of today's Congress, Charlie Halleck never tried to conceal his wrinkles, his convictions, or his party identification...
...Sometimes Charlie himself was the bartender, pouring healthy quantities of bourbon or sharing his personal favorite, Grant's Stand Fast Scotch...
...But Charlie wasn't satisfied...
...Charlie had twisted a lot of bastards' arms to get Dewey nominated, but, when the time came to pick a running mate, Dewey broke his promise to Charlie, in favor of Earl Warren...
...Once I listened over my Scotch-with-a-splash as Charlie called the White House to apologize for having to cancel a golf date with Ike at Burning Tree...
...He was far more interested in winning legislative and electoral battles than in the fmer nuances of ideology...
...But if Charlie knew in advance that you were a beer drinker or if—like Jerry Ford, who in 1965 defeated Charlie for minority leader—you preferred a gin by James Peter Carroll martini straight up, Charlie would see to it that your favorite form of liver punishment was available...
...But in truth, Charlie was more Toots Shor than Torquemada, a generous host who was never comfortable when a guest's glass was empty...
...said, "All members of the House concur that the distinguished Minority Leader did not intentionally violate the law...
...If you didn't drink Scotch or bour- bon, you might be able to walk out of the Clinic in reasonably good health...
...The chauffeur knocked softly on the Clinic door, waited patiently while Allett opened the blackout curtains that kept the curious from peering into the room, and strode triumphantly up to Charlie...
...But even in this age of breast-thumping sobriety, puke-provoking hypocrisy, and media-enforced morality, similar sanctuaries of power and conviviality undoubtedly continue to flourish in the Capitol's hidden recesses...
...And Charlie Halleck, wherever he is, is drinking to their success...
...He believed winning depended on teamwork, and his James Peter Carroll is a writer based in South Bend Indiana...
...Their joint news conferences, known universally as "The Ev and Charlie Show," were wonderful blends of unalloyed partisanship, disarming candor, and shameless overstatement, all cheerfully dispensed...
...During many of his years in Congress, Charlie was one of the most powerful figures in Washington...
...He said he'd had no idea the doves had been lured into the range of his shotgun through the distribution of avian hors d'oeuvres, and the federal magistrate accepted Charlie's explanation...
...When a colleague recanted a vow of cooperation, Charlie was more sorrowful than irate...
...Until the day he died in 1986, he carried with him a bitterness at having been denied the 1948 Republican vice-presidential nomination by Thomas E. Dewey...
...To Charlie, Republican politics was an all-consuming contact sport with rules elastic enough to fit both the political requirements of the moment and the idiosyncratic preferences of a wide range of Republican officeholders and candidates...
...No one ever asked Charlie to lay in a case of chablis, which wasn't even trendy at the time and, besides, would have looked out of place in the ample highball glasses embossed "THE CLINIC...
...But considering the obvious genuineness of his hospitality, I have trouble believing that he did not serve an occasional bowl of Indiana-grown popcorn or a sack of Pennsylvania pretzels...
...In November, of course, the Dewey-Warren ticket was dumped by Harry Truman, a Missouri politician who had much in common with Charlie...
...Charlie's word was as good as hisScotch...
...Charlie was arrested in North Carolina by game wardens who charged that he had violated the law by hunting on a field baited with grain...
...The acquittal wasn't the least bit surprising because news of Charlie's arrest had provoked his colleagues, Repub36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 licans and Democrats alike, to circle their wagons...
...He was in the Democratic counterpart of the Clinic, House Speaker Sam Rayburn's Board of Education, sipping bourbon-and-branch, when he was summoned to the White House and told that Franklin Roosevelt was dead...
...Charlie liked to talk about the Clinic as a torture chamber straight out of fifteenth-century Toledo...
...Halleck," and, to Charlie's visible delight, pulled into view two full-quart bottles...
...Charlie pleaded innocent...
...My memory—perhaps a victim of post-Clinic stress syndrome—has no recollection of Charlie offering food of any kind...
...Majority leader Carl Albert (D-Okla...
...As a senator and as vice president, Truman knew his way around the Capitol's hideaways...
...But if he is remembered at all these days, it is for intoning a raspy counterpoint to the dark melodies that rolled past the tonsils of Senate Republican leader Everett McKinley Dirksen...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
