Promise of Joy by Allen Drury

Baffleburg snapped.
    “Well, when the candidate can get here,” Ewan MacDonald said. “When will that be?”
    “I don’t know,” Mary Baffleburg replied. “But I can tell you this, Ewan MacDonald, if there’s any attempt to railroad this or prevent him from speaking, or any attempt to put over somebody he doesn’t like on him, then you’re in for a fight, I can tell you that!”
    And she sat down, pugnacious little face red and puffing, while the cameras lingered upon it with an amused attention.
    “Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said quietly, “perhaps you can advise us when we may expect the nominee for President to appear. The distinguished committeeman from Wyoming does have a point, it seems to me, despite the rather violent response of the distinguished committeewoman from Pennsylvania. We can’t wait around forever, you know. We have to have a candidate for Vice President. Possibly, if the candidate for President does not show signs of sufficiently speedy recovery, we may even have to have—”
    “Now, Mr. President, just a minute!” Blair Hannah cried, jumping to his feet, while outside a sudden excited roar welled up from the thousands in the parks. “Just a minute, now! Just what does the committeeman from Oregon think he’s trying to do here, anyway?”
    “It’s obvious what he’s trying to do,” Asa B. Attwood of California shot out. “He’s trying to dump Orrin Knox, that’s what he’s trying to do, and I tell you, Mr. President, if there is any move to do that more than half this committee is going to walk out and you won’t have any committee to nominate a Vice President. So I’d suggest the great former Governor of Oregon had better not get too smart here!”
    “Dump Orrin Knox!” a sudden chant came on the wind. “Dump Orrin Knox!”
    “Yes, ‘dump Orrin Knox!’” Asa Attwood echoed angrily. “You just try it, you people. You just try it!”
    “Well, now, Mr. President,” Roger P. Croy said calmly, “I think the committeeman from California is making a great leap somewhere, I don’t know exactly where—certainly not in any sensible direction discernible to me. No one said anything about trying to ‘dump’ the nominee for President. I just said that unless his health recovers sufficiently and soon, we will be forced by the sheer logic of events to ask him to withdraw so we can nominate someone else. That’s simple fact. I don’t see how it warrants such hysteria.”
    “It isn’t hysteria,” Asa Attwood said, “it’s just a statement of fact: you try to dump him and more than half this committee will leave and you’ll be high and dry without a quorum.”
    “It depends on which states leave,” Ewan MacDonald MacDonald suggested calmly. “You can take bodies with you, Asa, but you can’t take delegate votes. And since we vote according to the number of votes allotted each state in the convention, I think you might find us able to nominate a candidate for Vice President and for President, without you and your friends. Maybe you’d better stick around.”
    “There will be no attempt to dump Orrin Knox!” Asa Attwood said flatly, and far in the distance echo came: “Dump Orrin Knox! Dump Orrin Knox!”
    “Mr. President,” Helen Rupert of Alabama said with a sudden impatient emphasis that brought quick attention, “can we stop this silly squabble and get on with it? I voted for Edward M. Jason for President in this committee four days ago, but I have no desire or intention to get rid of the man who is our nominee. We have a very distinguished nominee and I intend to support him wholeheartedly now the decision has been made—even more so, in view of recent tragic events. But we do need a candidate for Vice President, and we do need to hear from Secretary Knox. Do you, or does anyone, have any idea when he will come here, or whether he can come here?”
    “I was about to appoint a committee to escort him here,” the President remarked with some asperity,