Washington by Gore Vidal

Author:Gore Vidal [Vidal, Gore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9780676589610
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published: 1999-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

II

From far away, Burden heard his own amplified voice fill the room. He was making a speech to an audience which laughed at every joke. It was exactly his sort of group: prosperous farmers come to Washington for an annual lunch, held this year in the new Statler Hotel with himself as guest speaker. He told an old joke : loud laughter. He cast down his eyes, simulating modesty while trying to read the notes he had made on the menu. As the laughter continued, he took a quick sip of coffee and noticed that his slab of ice cream had not been taken away. It was now liquid. Disgusting.

Suddenly the laughter stopped. Burden tried to start again but all that he could think of was melted ice cream. He had gone blank. For an instant he did not know where he was or what he was doing in front of so many strangers. He had literally lost himself, as he had done from time to time in public over the years. Fortunately, his moments of aphasia were brief and seldom noticed.

Desperately Burden reached for the menu; read “Boeuf a la Washington.” That was no help. Panic increased; the audience was watching him curiously, wondering why he did not go on. He looked at the back of the menu, saw several scribbled words. One was “Luzon.” He was saved. With MacArthur’s recent landing on Luzon, the reconquest of the Philippines had begun. Restored in time, he made the eagle, if not scream, at least discreetly flap its wings, for flag-waving was out of fashion, which suited his temperament rather more than it had that of his opponent in the recent primary, a passionate New Dealer whose campaigning had been full of the “Remember Pearl Harbor!” sort of thing.

Burden had chosen quite a different tack. Low-keyed and sweetly reasonable, he had reminded the voters that in the thirty years he had been their Senator, the state had grown prosperous. But where another politician might have labored that essential point, Burden simply made it and moved on to describe how, during his lifetime, the United States had become a world power and (echoing Pericles) he told them what a marvelous yet dangerous thing it was to be great. To his surprise, this part of the speech invariably struck the collective nerve. As he came to it, he could see people lean forward, eyes suddenly wide, wanting to hear every word. At such moments, he knew a pleasure which made altogether bearable the harrowing process of election.

Burden had not planned to mention the danger of world power to the farmers, but since they had reacted so well to his tribute to MacArthur, he decided to continue. But he had not got two sentences into Power when he realized that he had spoken too long. He should have quit with Luzon. Drastically, he shortened Power; sadly, too, for he was grateful to it. Power had been particularly effective against his Republican opponent, a businessman of crude imperialist tendencies with twice Burden’s financial backing.

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