O Washington
Jones, Arthur
O WASHINGTON Arthur Jones A Few Words from the Sponsor There's scarcely a comfortable chair in the White House. President Reagan occasionally sits in one of the pink high-backed chairs by...
...President," the agent said...
...He quietly eased himself out of bed and stood by the bedroom door to listen...
...That sort of talk would have to be Twentieth Century, wouldn't it...
...But freedom requires and will require a far greater living space than tyranny...
...That's where Susan Ford had her parties and the Carters their hi-fi and bar...
...Living space . . . freedom and tyranny...
...Yup, it was some sort of political mentor from the past...
...Just stood there...
...That's just what I've been saying," he said to the corridor...
...He needed to sit, just to relax somewhere and it would come to him...
...He knew now that this was the voice that had led him on the journey into politics, away from the Democratic Party, into Republican politics and as a conservative into the White House...
...Reagan asked himself...
...There are stories of a spectral Confederate soldier—but neither the Library of Congress nor the White House Historical Association could say why...
...He reached over to the side table and picked up a magazine to occupy his mind...
...Let's learn to think that terrible thought...
...They were antiCatholic...
...But then he chided himself for his reverie...
...He knew it was a steady drumbeat he had absorbed week after week...
...Gee, that was a tragedy...
...But it wasn't the furnishings in the White House that were bothering Ronald Reagan recently, but rather a voice, as it were, from the past...
...The President slipped on his slippers and went to the bedroom door, then cocked his good ear into the corridor toward the staircase: "Nor need we assume war can be abolished...
...1860...
...he wondered: "The vision of America as the principal guarantor of the freedom of the seas, the vision of America as the dynamic leader of world trade, has within it the possibilities of such enormous human progression as to stagger the imagination...
...Anti-slavery...
...And thanks...
...I suggest that a general theory covering our activity contain these two propositions: First, that order must be established in the world, a global order, anew order...
...Too late, a knock on the door...
...Nope," said the President, "the low lights will do...
...1856...
...When he came to the bedroom door, he opened it, but turned back into the corridor and stood facing the way he had come...
...But one night, just after the Marcos visit, he clearly heard something...
...Wonder what they did...
...There were Know-Nothings...
...Reagan closed his eyes, then muttered a fervent, "Thank you...
...Maybe that's still around, he thought...
...Gee, the Republican Party was thought up in a church...
...Sounds like the Democrats trying to come up with an economic program, Reagan said to himself with a chuckle...
...Anyway, the White House is reputedly haunted...
...One thing for certain, he remembered some of it...
...Huh, they'd even written a funeral march for him...
...Flopped down in the overstuffed oatmeal lounger, he flipped through the pages...
...Could that be Ike...
...Wonder why he lost...
...Ronald dearest, they need you downstairs...
...Yup, on the right track now...
...Gee, didn't know that...
...That might have been before the Civil War...
...But it would give him an hour with his book...
...That's very good...
...I'll see all the lights are on, Mr...
...The corridor was quiet...
...He opened his eyes, adjusted to the dim light, and walked along the corridor down the stairs and to the Green Room...
...He wandered along the hallway, but the paintings were scenes, or Presidential wives of men he didn't even know were Presidents...
...He'd remember that for the next press conference...
...He could almost name the voice, it was on the edge of his mind...
...It didn't take but a minute, maybe two...
...But I believe the Church can go even further and lay down principles as to how we fight...
...Tyrannies may require a large amount of living space...
...He curled his lips in some wonder...
...And he closed the book and slid it under the oatmeal chair...
...And he went down to the office...
...it could happen...
...He was President, he'd better hurry up...
...And there's good looking Bill Clark on my National Security thing...
...It was coming clearer...
...Maybe an FDR radio broadcast...
...He smiled a bit more as he pulled the sheets up...
...He'd heard this one on radio...
...This is fundamental...
...He walked into the Green Room and switched on the reading light to the right of his favorite pink chair...
...The Service looks on the President kindly...
...He looked at the photograph of the Ripon Schoolhouse where the party was gavelled into life...
...Some of my best friends are Catholic, there's lots of them around, there's Tom Enders and Jim Buckley at State, and wasn't Al Haig one...
...The red border...
...Let us rise to its tremendous possibilities...
...Just a century ago the President, Garfield, had been shot...
...President Reagan occasionally sits in one of the pink high-backed chairs by the fireplace in the Green Room—the same ones the tourists see—when he wants to reread a speech or browse through a magazine...
...And the voice continued without paying attention...
...Indeed, if he served another two terms he'd be twice as old as the youngest President...
...Then, telling Ed and the Secret Service agent he was going for a "quiet relax," he went up to the Octagonal Room with The Pictorial History of the Republican Party...
...He waved away one of the staff members who approached him, was that Frank or Fred...
...And the mentor's voice came in loudest and clearest: "Nuclear war . . . nuclear war...
...Don't touch a thing...
...Very important and farsighted...
...He was relieved about that...
...He smiled a wrinkled smile...
...Yet Reagan already had been working on the last statement and realized that the reference to nuclear war ruled out Lincoln...
...He, too, was inclined to put it down to a trick of age, to the greater ease in remembering things from years ago than from yesterday...
...Now the voice really boomed: "I believe that once the Church has accepted its responsibility, it will be in a position to make its voice clear and strong so that the war-making power of our nation is put under Christian judgment, Christian restraint—and the courage of Christian conviction...
...Lincoln, first Republican President...
...But who...
...But this voice was tantalizing...
...Lincoln won...
...When he casually asked one of the Secret Service agents whether the White House was haunted, the fellow quietly put it down to an old man's fancy...
...If old Eleanor said she did, maybe I am...
...He couldn't ask Larry Speakes to check out the quote...
...But instead he just rang for the Secret Serviceman on the floor and said, "Don't mind me, I'm just going to walk the corridors a bit...
...The President nodded his head...
...My, my...
...Nice looking fellow, Army officer, too...
...It was a male voice, snatches of things from the past...
...He wondered if the First Congregational Church in Ripon, Wisconsin, was still in business...
...Coming, Mother," he said...
...It must be Ike, mustn't it...
...The trip to support Millicent Fenwick's New Jersey Senate bid kept him on the hop...
...It is furnished in something closer to layabout modern than the museum uprights seen in the public rooms...
...Probably never clean up here, he thought...
...He couldn't remember what Ike sounded like...
...John Fremont was the first Republican Presidential candidate...
...Amen, sir, whoever you are...
...Satisfied, he thought about bed...
...Eleanor Roosevelt said she occasionally sensed President Lincoln's presence...
...He kept his eyes closed...
...Then let's learn to think a novel thought—that civilization could survive such a war...
...Reagan bowed his head: "God Bless You, Henry Luce...
...Nancy was in Monaco for Grace's funeral...
...He wasn't that much older than some of those other Republican Presidents he'd glanced at...
...the President worried it might be something he'd said himself in a radio spot...
...Was it just in his head...
...Yes, he can't serve three terms, and no, I'm not saying who the youngest was...
...He was smiling broadly...
...He stood by the staircase and looked down the hallway toward the bedroom door...
...Donovan's Catholic too...
...But he caught the item in The Washington Post that some joker had waved a placard: Your Tax Dollars at Work—71 Year Old Actor Lunches With 72 Year Old Comic Strip Character...
...He picked up the Pictorial History where he'd left off...
...Reagan smiled to himself and made his way quietly back to bed...
...Time...
...No doubt about it, Reagan thought, turning to the beginning of the book, history is very interesting...
...Conceived in a church, that'd get 'em...
...Never can remember that fellow...
...Reagan looked at the next page and wondered why Chester Arthur didn't attempt a term in his own right in 1884 instead of allowing James G. Blaine to go for the Republican nomination...
...And he set off from the Octagonal Room down the stairs to the corridor where the voice was...
...The man nodded, respectfully...
...It would come...
...Maybe he's the one I'm hearing...
...And Regan...
...The President bowed his head...
...No, he'd have to try something else...
...Let us not be staggered by it...
...The mentor had anticipated him...
...Ronald Reagan knew it wasn't Eleanor Roosevelt's presence he sensed...
...Hey, there's an item on the KnowNothings...
...At least he was still smart enough not to let himself be caught out that way...
...Second, that the major responsibility for bringing about this order rests upon the United States...
...Nice to see good manners again, they were going out for a while...
...He waited for more, but nothing came...
...Be a great place for a campaign speech, standing there on the steps...
...I wonder why...
...could survive such a war provided we start now to do the necessary things...
...He is old enough to be father to all of the agents and grandfather to some...
...There is the Octagonal Room on the roof...
...The next morning he went to the bureau where he kept some of the books he and Nancy had brought from California...
...That's it then...
...In order to do this—is it hopelessly visionary?—I see the great leaders of our Church sitting down with our top military men and viewing them not as the enemies of society but as men who as much as any layman desire to do right as God gives them to see the right...
...They're all fine fellas...
...Everything flashed...
...And it wasn't himself...
...Peace cannot endure unless it prevails over a very large part of the world...
...Then there was nothing...
...That evening, however, he felt again drawn from his bed to the corridor...
...Then he sat down, contented...
...So back he went to bed...
...Was he...
Vol. 46 • November 1982 • No. 11
