Editing Advise and Consent (section)

== Plot summary ==
The U.S. president decides to replace his [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] to promote [[rapprochement]] with the [[Soviet Union]]. Nominee Robert Leffingwell, a darling of [[Liberalism in the United States|liberals]], is viewed by many [[Conservatism in the United States|conservative]] senators as an appeaser. Others, including the pivotal character of Senator Seabright (Seab) Cooley of [[South Carolina]], have serious doubts about Leffingwell's character. The book tells the story of an up-and-down nomination process that most people fully expect to result in a quick approval of the controversial nominee.

But Cooley is not so easily defeated. He uncovers a minor bureaucrat named Herbert Gelman who testifies that twenty years earlier then-[[University of Chicago]] instructor Leffingwell invited Gelman to join a small Communist cell that included a fellow traveler who went by the pseudonym James Morton. After outright lies under oath by the nominee and vigorous cross examination by Leffingwell, Gelman is thoroughly discredited and deemed an unfit witness by the subcommittee and its charismatic chairman [[Utah]] Senator Brigham (Brig) Anderson. The subcommittee is ready to approve the nominee.

At this crucial moment in the story, the tenacious Senator Cooley dissects Gelman's testimony and discovers a way to identify James Morton. Cooley maneuvers Morton into confessing the truth of Gelman's assertions to Senator Anderson who subsequently re-opens the subcommittee's hearings, thus enraging the President. When the President's attempts to buy Anderson's cooperation fail he places enormous pressure on [[Majority Leader of the House of Representatives|Majority Leader]] Robert Munson to entice Anderson into compliance. In a moment of great weakness that Munson will regret the rest of his life, Munson provides the President a photograph, acquired quite innocently by Munson, that betrays Anderson's brief wartime homosexual liaison.

Armed with the blackmail instrument he needs, the president ignores Anderson's proof of Leffingwell's treachery and plots to use the photo to gain Anderson's silence. The president plants the photo with leftist Senator Fred Van Ackerman, thinking he will never need to use it. But the President has underestimated Van Ackerman's treachery and misjudged Anderson's reaction should the truth come out. After a series of circumstances involving Anderson's secret being revealed to his wife, the Washington press corps, and several senators, Anderson kills himself. Anderson's death turns the majority of the Senate against the president and the majority leader. Anderson's suicide and the exposure of the truth about Leffingwell's lies regarding his communist past set in motion a chain reaction that ends several careers and ultimately rejects Leffingwell as a nominee to become Secretary of State.

The final one hundred pages of the book contain several "teases" by the author making it clear there is a sequel to come (Drury wrote five more books in his series), but ''Advise and Consent'' effectively ends with the overwhelming vote to reject Leffingwell. The segue to the next book in the series is the death of the president (heart attack) and the elevation of Vice President Harley Hudson.