The Library Annex

‘What a strange life we all lead in this town,’ he said, ‘and all because we think we’re doing the right thing for the country.’

Drury’s story exhibits not only the process of confirming a presidential cabinet member, nor does it only describe the mechanics of the American government. Rather, it forces the reader to consider the contrusction of the American ideal, the scaffolding of her principles, the application of her spirit. With just enough romanticism, suspense and intrigue, Drury depicts a plausible portrait of the American government without sensationalism. One ought to explore, however, Drury’s reasoning for illustrating the daily efforts in perfecting the application of American idealism via a senatorial confirmation process for a Secretary of State nominee. Could he have expressed these ideals through a heroic president pitted against a foreign adversary? Could he have showcased the inner conflicts of a Supreme Court justice deciding on a landmark case?

He could have. However, Drury’s choice to explore a confirmation process showcases the wars within America itself. He does not shy away from the fact that American idealism is exercised rather than implemented and that, very often, it rears it’s ugly side. We can agree with Senator Munson, the president, Brig or Senator Knox and, simultaneously, glorify the beauty in the antagonistic processes. America, at its core, is conflict. Without it, we become stagnant; a bacteria-infested pool rather than a rushing river.

Love of country is the moral compass directing limited minds. It justifies every individual mean to a universally applied end. Rather than sanctioning the human frailties from our government, we demand their participation. Yes, this comes with devestating consequences; cunning, ruthless manipulations and conniving back-room deals. But it allows for freedom, even if that allowance leaves our democracy susceptible to deplorable and, in time, regrettable actions.

Thus comforted by his wry imaginings of the past, he would reflect that this, in essence, was the American government: an ever-shifting, ever-changing, ever-new and ever-the-same bargaining between men’s ideals and their ambitions; a very down-to-earth bargaining, in most cases, and yet a bargaining in which the ambitions, in ways that often seemed surprising and frequently were quite inadvertent, more often than not wound up serving the purposes of the ideals.

If our government depends on the frailties of men and women for her ideal, it also depends on certain universal moral integrity. Yet as we’ve established, we cannot dictate a protection of that integrity without losing the essence of our freedom. America’s design is perfect in that it allows for her people to continually design it. Utopia is experienced in the making, not the establishment. And people, with their strengths and weaknesses alike, create an America every day in the image of those strengths and weaknesses. Drury drafts this ebb and flow of strengths and weaknesses. And in any war, there are casualities and only history judge if the right side won.

In glorifying the process, executed by people with nobility and cunning, integrity and love-of-country, Drury describes America; a grand idea, like all grand ideas, best articulated through stories. We need to courageously continue creating these stories though we risk individual sacrifice and gains.

‘That is America’s problem right now, it seems to me: we aren’t committed, and we dn’t really care, about anything. Our enemies and our friends together have succeeded in paralyzing us with self-doubt, and under the tutelage of all of you we have become afraid to really care, because to really care has become unfashionable and rather laughable, and also, of course, because to really care would impose upon us the necessity of acting in support of the things we really care for; and nobody wants us to do that anymore. We don’t even want to do it ourselves.’

This is how America dies; not by cabinet confirmation decisions or passing legislative bills or signing executive orders, but by disengagement.