Public Burning by Robert Coover Page A

right moment to call for a quorum. There was an increasing racket and both sides were trading a number of more or less friendly insults without first asking for the right to speak. Like a bunch of bored and drunken cowboys, aching for a little action to liven up the town saloon. I tried to maintain a semblance of order for the sake of the visitors up in the galleries, and watched the doorways (seven, like the holes in a man’s head) to see who was coming and going. Over each of the three principal doors there was a statue: “Patriotism,” “Wisdom,” and “Courage.” Perhaps, in time, there would be a statue of me in here, I thought. Not just a bust like the other Vice Presidents, but a real statue. “The Fighting Quaker.” It fit. The motto over the east entrance translated, “God Has Favored Our Undertakings,” and over the south door: “In God We Trust.” Tailor-made for me, just like the “E Pluribus Unum” over my head. But the slogan that excited the imagination was the one attached to “Courage” over the doorway to the West, my part of the country: Novus Ordo Seclorum . Yes, this was what America was all about, I thought, this was the true revolution of our era—Change Trains for the Future!—and I was lucky enough to be alive just at the moment we were, for the first time, really getting up steam. It was our job now—it would be my job—to bring this new order of the ages to the whole world. My boyhood engineering dreams were coming true! Naturally, it wasn’t in the bag, there was already a lot of talk about jettisoning the Vice President, I knew I’d have to fight to stay on the ticket in 1956. And friends were few: my legislative power base was gone and I was a lonely outsider in Eisenhower’s administration of hoary-headed millionaire amateurs—but then I’ve always been a lonely outsider, that was my power. Besides, Ike, disliking me, was in fact helping me, constantly labeling me the “politician,” the pro, the Party man, and so identifying me with the real power structure of the actual nominating conventions. Yes, in reality, the old General was only setting the scene for me, preparing the way for the New Order that it was my destiny, and through me the destiny of my generation, to bring to the world! Of course, you had to be careful—revolution, new order, it was the kind of language people like the Rosenbergs used, too—but in ignorance, in darkness: yes, the truth about the Phantom was that he was a reactionary , trying to derail the Train of Progress! I was enormously pleased with this insight. Maybe this was why Uncle Sam got me mixed up in the Rosenberg case, I thought. Another object lesson in American dynamics for the heir to the throttle. I took out an index card and made a note. On the bottom, I wrote: START THE 1954 CAMPAIGN NOW!
    â€œWhat? What?” I asked. Johnson had just addressed me. He’d been shouting something about “any gahdamn Senator” and “gunna ram it down yore throat!” The Parliamentarian whispered that he’d asked for a quorum call. “Oh…”
    â€œMr. President,” Knowland interrupted, “will the Senator withhold his suggestion of the absence of a quorum so as to permit the acting Majority Leader to make a statement?”
    â€œSuttinly, Bill…”
    Knowland launched a counterattack then, giving his reasons for pulling this surprise vote today, and making it clear he’d given Johnson fair warning, so I was able to settle back again. Knowland and I had known each other since my very first campaign in 1946. You could almost say we were friends, were there such a thing in politics. We’d fought a lot of political battles together, had both had our problems with Honeybear Warren back home, and we’d fought shoulder-to-shoulder out here against the Eastern Establishment. Bill had shown me the ropes