Public Burning by Robert Coover

tuning in on each Senator as he spoke, working their fifteen-minute shifts before running back to the Reporters’ Office to feed their shorthand notes into a dictaphone. The pages were suddenly awake and dashing back and forth with chairs instead of idly goosing each other, the chairs mostly for staff members who now came bursting through the swinging doors at the back—and it was filling up now, the tide was rolling in.
    I waited for Purtell to order the reading of the conference report by the Chief Clerk, then, while it was being recited, bumped him from his seat as presiding officer. Nobody applauded my arrival. Not that I expected it, but I remembered how warmly old Alben Barkley was always received whenever he came over here while I was in the Senate. Why didn’t they greet me that way? I was an ex-colleague, too. Of course, I didn’t have Barkley’s length of service, nor did I share his fawning admiration for this bunch of rummies. I was always too independent for this place. I’d liked the House, I could operate there, but I could never get used to the Senate, and stayed away as much as possible. Coming here two years ago I had that same lost feeling I had in the war when I first went into the Navy and got shipped out to Ottumwa, Iowa. Since my school days, I’ve always been allergic to smart-ass private cliques and fraternities, avoiding the tuxedo snobs of the other outfits by forming my own. This place with its almost medieval exclusivity was even worse than most, because, in spite of the surface camaraderie, there was no real interaction here, just obedience to some primitive unchallenged customs and a blind loyalty based on the blood of Party. Each of these clowns lived in a world of his own, like a feudal baron, each one isolated from the other by his retinue of clerks and lawyers, trading favors, garnering wealth and power, loyal only to his own fiefdom. No wonder the Presidents always had trouble with the Senate: Enlightenment or no, we still had our roots in the Dark Ages.
    â€œMistah President…”
    â€œThe Senator from Texas is recognized for five, uh, minutes.”
    Johnson, I could see, for all his surface composure, was hopping mad. Knowland had really pulled a fast one on him today, and Lyndon didn’t like to get outdrawn by anybody. It tickled me to see the old operator so discomfited. He had been feeling pretty smug that T IME had been running about the world this week wearing his face, calling him everything from “Rope Dealer” and “Combination Man” to “The General Manager” and “Landslide Lyndon.” What T IME didn’t talk about was all the tills the General Manager had his hand in; the Depression had been a real goldmine for Lyndon, and he didn’t do bad during the war either. Well, hell, why not? he had the smell of magnolias about him, as they say, magnolias and cowshit, no chance ever to be President, he might as well get rich instead. Anyway, I’d had my day with the Poet Laureate as the “Fighting Quaker,” and deep in my heart I knew, unlike Johnson, that if I stayed clean and on my toes, I’d have more. I wondered what kind of mail Lyndon was getting. I thought of some other alliterations besides “Landslide” and a good play or two on “Rope Dealer.” You could do plenty with “Combination Man,” too. Maybe I ought to send him one, I thought. He’d never guess. Take him down a peg.
    â€œAh submit that if’n the muhjority of the Senate is gunna legislate in thet way,” he blustered, lifting one big hammy fist, “it is legislation bah suhprise! it is a patronage grab in the dark, without notice! it is legislation bah steamroller!”
    While he raged, spicing his argument with raunchy Texan broadsides, which his staff would later patiently excise from the record, the Chamber filled up behind him, the party Whips keeping tabs and waiting for the