The 45th, page 38
“The place to start is with language itself, the way in which ancient words have become burdened with modern meanings. The Greek word ‘arete’ translated as ‘virtue’ does not mean what we mean by virtue: a woman’s virginity or the love, hope, and charity of the Christian gospels, but something that implies a different sense of man’s place in the world, man’s place in the natural order. Arete, or virtue, means the specific excellence of a thing. It means that everything, including especially the human being, has something toward which it is inclined by nature. It raises the question: what is the specific excellence of human beings; it raises the question whether there is a specific excellence of human beings. It remains for us to discover what it is. Thomas Jefferson understood that, but then Thomas Jefferson read Greek, even when, or perhaps especially when, he dined here alone.”
And then, without another word, without waiting for applause or any other sign of approval, Julian nodded twice for emphasis, flashed a modest smile, and left. There were other things he had to do.
“Do you think I went too far?” asked Julian, his eyes shining with the knowledge of what , as he well understood, no one else would consider a triumph. “I should have gone farther still, spent an hour and a half - I once heard Marcel DuBose lecture that long on the first words of Plato’s Republic: ‘I went down.’ They did not know what to make of it, did they?” He cast a sideways glance at Ismael who was trying to keep up as Julian bounded up the stairs to the residence. “That should teach them that they don’t know everything, teach them something of their own abysmal ignorance.” He stopped at the top of the stairs, and with a rueful look, shook his head and dismissed the possibility. “They’ll tell each other that it was ‘interesting,’ and that will be the end of all discussion. They’re always talking - God, how I hate the phrase - about the need to ‘think outside the box.’ They don’t know what the box is; they don’t know what thinking means.”
“Then why did you bother? What was the point, unless it was to convince them what most of them already suspect: that you’re the enemy of everything they believe?” asked Ismael, genuinely curious.
“Precisely! That’s exactly what I want. Because then, whether they are even aware of it, they’ll start moving toward me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t….”
“They’ll make what they think small concessions. What will they take away from tonight, what will they remember - that a case can be made for learning Greek. They won’t remember anything else. They’ll remember what I said about JFK and what he said about Thomas Jefferson. They will decide, because it will now seem like the only intelligent thing to do, that they should at least consider bringing back Greek and Latin - not as a requirement, but as something to made available to that no doubt small number of students who might have an interest in ancient things. They won’t think anything of it, and it will be the only thing they will ever do of any real importance.”
Grasping the railing behind him, Julian raised his chin. His face glowed with an inner certainty that has banished all doubt. There was no past to remember or regret, no future to look forward to or fear, only the present moment, a moment in which time did not exist.
“I did it - traced the movement of the thought that first defined, and then changed, what we are - because I could. It doesn’t matter whether anyone agrees, if I don’t say what I know to be important, if I don’t do what I can to tell the truth of things, to find the light, we will never leave the darkness that most of us do not even know we’re in. I know what will happen. We are not going to turn back and become that city on a hill; we’re not going to become again a small republic in which everyone knows everyone else. We’re too big, too dependent on the science, the technology, we invented. But we can change the way we spend our lives, give them the meaning that comes with involvement in a great project - the exploration of space, of our world, of the universe - that has the virtue of lasting as long as the human race itself. But that by itself won’t keep the most important thing alive: the ability of some small number to free themselves, to think through everything with their own, unassisted reason. That is why this seemingly small thing - teaching Greek for those who want to learn - is more important than anyone might care to believe. Come with me, I’ll show you something.”
He led Ismael to a private room just off his bedroom. On a shelf above his desk he pulled down in quick succession three slim volumes.
“This is a line from the final chorus of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex: ‘Where, where is the mortal who wins more of happiness than just the seeming, and, after the semblance, a falling away?’ That is one English translation, here is another: ‘man after man after man, O mortal generations, here once, almost not here, what are we, dust ghosts images a rustling of air, nothing nothing, we breathe on the abyss, we are the abyss, Our happiness no more than the traces of a dream.’
“You would be forgiven if you wondered whether these were translations of the same poem. The jacket on the second volume says that it goes ‘beyond the literal meaning of the Greek to evoke the sense of poetry evident in the original.’ In other words, it isn’t what you would be reading if you could read the original! And what might that be? The same line was translated by Martin Heidegger, translated into German. In English it reads - This is unbelievable! - ‘What man has in him controlled and ordered being-there than he requires to stand in appearance and then, having done so, to incline (namely from standing-straight-in-himself)?’
“If you assume that Heidegger had a much more profound understanding of Greek - of language altogether - than those who have attempted to translate Sophocles, or the other Greek classics, what hope do we have of recapturing what the world looked like through the eyes of those like Plato and Aristotle whose vision was not obstructed, distorted, by two thousand years of changing and therewith false interpretation and belief? If you think the translation of Sophocles, of the Greek poets, anything but a true reflection of what Sophocles, of what the poets, said, look at the various ways Plato’s dialogues have been translated. Until the translation by Alan Bloom, literal, like they should all be, you are more likely to read what the translator thought Plato should have said than what Plato meant.”
Julian put the three volumes back on the shelf and dropped into the chair behind the rosewood desk. There was a single window in the room, to the right of where he sat, and through it he could look out over the roof of the West Wing to the lights of the city beyond.
“Tomorrow the talk will be all about what the House and Senate are going to do this week, whether the votes will be there for what I’ve asked, or whether my entire presidency will come down in ruins.”
Far from worried, Julian seemed almost amused. This is not to say he was not intensely interested. It was a strange dichotomy, or it would have been had Ismael not become used to the way Julian could detach himself from everything that was going on around him. It sometimes seemed as if Julian was both the central character, and the main audience, for a play, a play that was at one and the same time a tragedy and a comedy. There were dozens of congressmen, and a fair number of senators, driving themselves crazy weighing in the balance the wishes of their constituents, the various private interests and contributors on whom they relied for support, and what, some of them at least, thought would be best for the country. Julian thought their distress nothing short of laughable.
“What are the numbers, the latest count? - The House first.”
Ismael had been on the telephone almost without interruption the last several days. He knew who was in favor and who opposed, and, more importantly at this stage, what it would take to convince those who had not made up their minds to vote with the president.
“Two hundred ten in favor; two hundred five against.”
“Twenty undecided - or rather twenty who say they are. We only need eight of them. What about the senate? I know Louis has been working. Does he have the votes we need?”
“Almost.”
“How short are we?”
“Forty-six to forty-four, ten undecideds or not willing to say.”
“All of them, or almost all of them, up for re-election next year. They know what will be done against them if they vote with us. They know they’ll probably have a primary fight, and against someone who may have more money than they can raise. The same thing with most of those in the House.”
Julian’s gaze drifted toward the window and the clear night sky. He tapped his fingers on his knee, thinking what he should do next.
“There isn’t a state, and only a handful of congressional districts, where there isn’t a sizeable majority in favor of this. They’re all afraid of the money, what could be spent against them. And we know where it comes from, don’t we. We have to show them they have nothing to fear. Invite them, all of them, everyone who has not yet come out in favor of the bill, members of the house and senate; tell them I want to meet with them, that I want to give them a chance to ask me anything they want about the bill and what it is intended to do. And tell them that it won’t be a one-sided conversation, that the leaders of the opposition, in both the House and Senate, have invited as well. Tell them I’m looking forward to the debate.”
Julian tapped his fingers the way he had before. His eyes narrowed as his concentration became more and more intense. Clenching his jaw, he pressed his lips tight together as he stared down at the floor. Then, suddenly, he raised his head and looked at Ismael as if he must know already what he was about to say.
“Invite Murray and Chambers. Tell all the others they’re coming too. Tell those two what we’re doing, that we are going to debate the bill in front of the undecideds, and that in the interest of a fair and open debate they are being asked to help make the case in opposition.”
Ismael looked doubtful.
“After what I told Conrad Wilson to tell them -”
“They’ll come. They did exactly what I said they would. They pulled everything they were running on television, but they certainly haven’t changed their position. They’ll come. Angela Murray will think it proves she was right, that it was all a bluff, that we don’t have any evidence, and that I’m now so desperate that I’ve been reduced to debating her as my last best chance to get a majority. She won’t be able to stop herself. Stand on an equal footing with the president, go head to head in front of an audience made up of the very people - the senators and congressmen - she thinks she has the power to control. For someone like her, someone who thinks she is smarter than anyone else - it is irresistible!”
Ismael was even less convinced than he was before that this was a wise thing to do.
“Even if you’re right, even if she thinks she can win, or even hold her own, in a debate with you, she -”
Julian held up his hand. He was already thinking ahead to what was going to happen.
“Everything she says will be accompanied by the silent threat of the money she and the others have at their disposal. You watch. She’ll tie it all together. She won’t just explain why she doesn’t like the bill, she’ll explain why they have spent millions - and will spend millions more - to make certain nothing like this ever gets passed.”
“Then why give her the chance, why invite her at all?”
“Because without her opposition I might lose.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Standing at the entrance to the East Room, Ismael greeted each arriving congressman and senator. He had become a keen observer of the idiosyncrasies, the strange manners, the sometimes peculiar speech or the off-key voice, that characterized so many members of both the House and the Senate. He took a particular interest in the small details that usually went unnoticed. There was the matter of how they dressed. Senators wore more expensive suits; congressmen almost never wore anything that had not been bought off the rack. The senate was made up of millionaires, some of whom owned more houses than they could count; the House was full of small town lawyers and big city politicians who could barely keep up with the mortgage payments on the only house they owned. Grasping the sleeve of everyone he greeted, Ismael let the feel of the fabric tell the story.
If his sense of touch allowed him to distinguish a congressman from a senator with his eyes closed, his memory for the words and phrases with which other, earlier, observers had described their own contemporaries, gave him a vocabulary which often came unbidden to his mind. Greeting a congressman who had for thirty years always avoided doing or saying anything unpopular, he almost laughed out loud, suddenly recalling what Teddy Roosevelt had once said about the average legislator with whom he had to work - “smooth oily, plausible and tricky.” Those two words - “smooth oily” - seemed to take him inside the machine, that marvelous assemblage of five hundred thirty five interchangeable parts in which money was energy and no one much cared for what purpose it was used, so long as the machine, the process, never stopped. The danger, as Ismael understood, was that the machine would become overloaded and come, finally, to a stop, no one any longer able to comprehend, much less solve, the problem of governing a nation of such increasingly divergent interests and such enormous size. Ismael decided he had read too much Henry Adams and, shaking hands with the last invited congressmen, touched the sleeve of his own, well-tailored, suit.
Everyone was there, everyone except Angela Murray and Rufus Chambers. Ismael wondered, not if they would come - he had caught the tone of vindication in Murray’s voice on the telephone - but how late they would be. It would not be more than a minute or two, just enough to make the point that no one, not even, or, in this instance, especially a president, could set their schedule. Three minutes late, Ismael pretended not to see them as they started down the hallway. He began to close the door.
“Did you think we weren’t coming?” asked Angela Murray, with a brittle smile that bragged insincerity. “Sorry we’re late,” she added, as she breezed past him.
Looking worried, Rufus Chambers stopped to say something, but changed his mind and reluctantly followed her inside.
The East Room had been turned into a conference room. There were two rows of chairs on each side of a long table for the members of Congress. Four chairs stood at the far end, two of which had already been taken by the House Minority Leader, who was opposed to the president’s proposal, and Senator Cruz of Texas, who had made it clear he would oppose anything proposed by the man who had stolen the presidency from him. Ismael waited until Murray and Chambers had taken the two remaining seats and then nodded toward the secret service agent at the other side of the room who immediately opened the door behind him.
Julian did not look to see who was there. He moved quickly to the head of the table. Following behind him, Rachel Good took a chair off to the side. As soon as he was settled in his chair, Julian cast a long measured glance down the table.
“You look concerned, Ms. Murray; even, perhaps, a little worried. Did you think this meeting was going to be strictly private, that something as serious as this would be kept from the public? After all the money you and your friends have spent on television, you surely can’t object to having this discussion in public.”
There was nothing in her demeanor, nothing in her reaction, to suggest that she was the least disturbed, nothing but a change in the intensity of her gaze so slight as to be imperceptible by anyone who had not himself been the unfortunate recipient of her wrath. It was deep inside her eyes, a speck of light which, like a solar flare, had to be looked for to be seen. But Julian noticed. She sat rigid and erect, leaning forward on her elbows, her chin resting on hands folded over one another, thin, tapered fingers interlaced.
“How can I help you, Mr. President?” I know you would like me to tell everyone here that I - and everyone I represent, which includes some of the most successful business people in the country - have changed our minds, that we have seen the light, that we now understand that what you are proposing won’t bankrupt the country, won’t require the kind of taxation that will not just threaten, but destroy, the country!”
Her head shot up, the corners of her small mouth curled down, she started to say something in anger, but caught herself in time. She drew back, pulled her hands off the table into her lap, rolled her tongue over her lips and gently shook her head, the way she might have done at an errant schoolboy for whom she had nothing but affection - if she were capable of that feeling.
“No, Mr. President; if anything we oppose the bill more than we did before. The more we study it, the more we see what is involved, the more we find wrong with it.”
“And the more the country learns about it, the more the country finds right with it,” Julian shot back. All his attention was on her; the others were an audience.
She could feel it, she was used to it, the center of attention, the focus of the conversation. She never felt more alive. She dismissed the president’s remark as simply irrelevant.
“The public thinks in generalities, in favor of anything that appeals to their imagination - the exploration of the universe, what they have seen in movie! - in opposition to whatever might cost them jobs or money. The public -”
“The public no doubt has good instincts,” interjected Rufus Chambers to her obvious displeasure. “The public no doubt wants to do the right thing. But their elected representatives, who have to decide what is best for the country - you haven’t convinced them that this is the right thing to do. Isn’t that the reason we’re here today? - because there isn’t enough support in Congress. And doesn’t that suggest that the better policy would be to offer some concession, reach some kind of compromise that -”
