Free Public Burning by Robert Coover Page B

was a weakness. Already some people were complaining I’d made too much of the tragic side of the Alger Hiss case, been too insistent in pointing out his intelligence, sensitivity, idealism, should never have said that I thought he was sincerely dedicated to the concepts of peace and of bettering the lot of the common man, of people generally—I might as well say as much for the goddamn Phantom. But once it was over, once I’d nailed the lying supercilious bastard for good, I couldn’t help myself. There’s something that makes me want the happy ending. Most conflicts are irresolvable, I know that, someone wins and someone loses, someone’s on the right side, someone’s on the other side, and what resolutions are possible are got afterwards by way of the emotions. I learned that way back in the seventh grade, first time I beat those girls in the now-famous Insect Debate. I’m no believer in dialectics, material or otherwise, let me be absolutely clear about that, I wouldn’t be Vice President of the United States of America if I was, it’s either/or as far as I’m concerned and let the best man win so long as it’s me. But I want these emotional resolutions when the fights are over.
    People misunderstand me. They think it’s all vindictiveness. It isn’t. Personal hatred is a big waste, it’s as simple as that. Issues are everything, even when they’re meaningless—these other things like emotions and personalities just blur the picture and make it difficult to operate. But it feels good to indulge in them when it no longer matters. I’ve often said that the only time to lose your temper in politics is when it’s deliberate and useful. I don’t always live up to that, I’m human, but I still believe it. I’m a tough sonuvabitch to run against in an election, everyone knows that by now, they say I’m a buzzsaw opponent, ruthless and even unscrupulous, they say I go for the jugular, no holds barred, or as Stevenson put it, “Nixonland is the land of smash and grab and anything to win,” and discounting the partisan hyperbole, that’s largely true, I guess. You’ve got to win, or the rest doesn’t matter. I believe in fighting it out, in hitting back, giving as good as you get, you’ve got to be a politician before you can be a statesman, I’ve said that and it’s so. No ruffed-shirt, kid-glove, peanut politics for me. As Uncle Sam once told me: “Politics is the only game played with real blood.” I didn’t want to believe him at the time, I wanted it to be played with rhetoric and industry, yet down deep I knew that even at its most trivial, politics flirted with murder and mayhem, theft and cannibalism.
    But—maybe because I do know that—I’ve always thought of myself as a healer as well. I was always breaking up fights between my brothers, saving them from Dad’s whippings, calming tempers at school, it was I who stopped that ugly brawl between Joe McCarthy and Drew Pearson in the Sulgrave Club washroom two and a half years ago (people thought I was siding with Joe, but actually I was saving Pearson’s life: Joe had heard from some Indian that if you kneed a guy hard enough in the nuts, blood would come out of his eyes, and he was eager to test this out), and it was I who bridged the generations in the Republican Party and brought its warring sides together for victory at last this past fall, I who now kept the peace between the President and a truculent Congress. I was Eisenhower’s salesman in the Cloakrooms, that was my job, I was the political broker between the patsies and the neanderthals, I had to cool the barnburners, soften up the hardshells, keep the hunkers and cowboys in line, mollify the soreheads and baby tinhorn egos, I was the flak runner, the wheelhorse, I had to mend the fences and bind up the wounds. Yes, bind up the wounds: I’m a lot like