The Summer Sound of Politics

Queued up six or eight abreast at entrances to the visitors' galleries, crowds jammed into the Capitol to witness U.S. history's first confrontation of two presidential nominees on the Senate floor.

Veteran Washington correspondents had never seen such throngs in the Capitol. Spectators came early and stayed late, squealed in the corridors at the sight of handsome Jack Kennedy, tittered in the galleries whenever Kennedy addressed Richard Nixon, in the presiding officer's chair, as "Mr. President."

"I Think It Is Tragic." The gallery crowds had come to see Kennedy and Nixon thrust and parry, but neither did much battling that eye or ear could detect from the galleries. Kennedy left it up to Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson--operating tirelessly in his familiar arena with his old verve--to lead the Democratic troops on the floor. Nixon, as Senate president, was barred by tradition from speaking out, or even moving onto the floor. The chief Republican battler was Dwight Eisenhower, showing a combativeness that he had rarely displayed during his long struggle with Democratic majorities in Congress. He got the session off to a fighting start with a first-blow message calling upon Congress to break the "legislative log jam" and enact 21 measures that he had been calling for since last spring (see box).

In rebuttal, Majority Leader Johnson, long accused of being too easy on the Eisenhower Administration, showed an unaccustomed, election-year militancy. "I think it is rather tragic," he said, "that in the twilight of his career, the President, upon his return from Newport, should set out all the items that are embraced within the Democratic platform. I wish he had exercised the same kind of leadership during the past seven years."

"I Freely Confess." Republicans got in the first telling thrust. After huddling with Nixon, Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen proposed a bill to restore what Ike's message had called the "two major deletions" in the civil rights bill that Congress passed last April: extra federal money for states, localities and school districts working toward desegregation, and a permanent commission to combat discrimination in hiring by Government contractors. When Democrats accusingly pointed out that Dirksen had voted against both proposals last spring, he oracularly confided: "I freely confess my sins of omission and commission."

Lyndon Johnson rumbled against Dirksen's "sneak play"--and pulled off one of his own. He got Pennsylvania's Joseph Clark, ardent champion of civil rights, to offer a motion to "table" the bill--a congressional euphemism for kill. Cried Clark: "I believe I can recognize the hand of politics ... I do not believe civil rights ought to stand in the way of the prompt enactment of proposed legislation which is on the calendar and ready for action." The vote was strictly party-line, and the Democratic majority tabled civil rights by a lopsided 54 to 28.

Then it was the Democrats' turn. Jack Kennedy, first presidential candidate to address the Senate since Henry Clay (1832), rose from his back row seat, submitted a bill to increase the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 in three stages (to $1.15 next January, $1.20 in 1962, $1.25 in 1963). Arizona's Barry Goldwater, enjoying his new reputation as semi-official spokesman for the right wing, spoke against the Kennedy bill for four hours. "This is a great bureaucratic plum," he intoned. "I can see them now. Thousands of bureaucrats down there licking their chops, ready to crack business over the head." Ohio Democrat Stephen M. Young got so carried away during the debate that he referred to the Democratic platform promise to "raise the minimum wage to $125 an hour." The Democratic whip, Mike Mansfield of Montana, interrupted to correct: "We Democrats are liberal, but not that liberal."

"The Leader's Leader." Too outnumbered in the Senate (by 34 to 66) to have much control over legislation, the Republicans concentrated their efforts on trying to score political points and to keep the Democrats from scoring any. Minority Leader Dirksen. huddling frequently with Nixon, laid plans to tack Republican riders onto Democratic bills and to keep harassing the Democrats with civil rights proposals. With Nixon's blessing, G.O.P. leaders rallied a "shock troop" of eight Senators, made sure that at least two of them were on the floor at all times to needle, stall and rebut the Democrats. "Our purpose is to implement the President's program and keep the Democrats' feet to the fire," said Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott, captain of the troop.* Scott, an acid sort of fellow, got to calling Kennedy "the majority leader's leader."

So far, the Republicans seemed to be ahead on points. The Democrats could table but they could not bury the civil rights issue, and the Republicans hoped thereby to cost them a significant segment of the Negro vote in November. The Democrats would have their chance on medical aid for the aged and on federal aid for schools and housing. A decent bill or two might get through, but winning votes in November was mainly what all the orating and scheming in Congress last week was about.

* The others: New York's Kenneth Keating, Hawaii's Hiram Fong, Nebraska's Roman Hruska, Delaware's John J. Williams, Connecticut's Prescott Bush, New Hampshire's Norris Cotton, South Dakota's Francis Case--none of them running for re-election in 1960.

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