The New Congress

...Because of the Senate-House rotation in the chairmanship of this committee, Anderson will replace the present chairman, Congressman Sterling Cole, who found even the Administration's proposals too liberal for his taste...

...This young-man-in-a-hurry may, however, have reached his zenith with the past campaign...

...The Democrats enjoyed their biggest successes in an area where the appeal to back Eisenhower could not be made??in the nation's state houses...

...His thunder was stolen by Nixon, and his one attempt at a purge??that of the unfortunate Clifford Case, whose troubles seemed at times to challenge Job's??was a resounding failure...

...In doing so, he took a calculated risk with his popularity, which is essentially of a nonpartisan, non-political character...

...The close division in Congress will result in all its work proceeding in the shadow of 1956, and all important decisions will be taken with a view to their impact on the contest for the Presidency...

...The liberal minority in the Senate has been reinforced by Joseph O'Mahoney...

...In spite of the Oregon upset, it seems to me that this campaign on the whole helped the Republican ticket...

...Richard Neuberger and Patrick McNamara, without losing any of its present members...

...Particularly in their New York - Pennsylvania - New Jersey - Connecticut bloc, they will enjoy a solid base for the Presidential campaign...

...The small role that foreign policy played in the campaign was in itself evidence of the degree to which the Administration had been withdrawing to established Truman-Acheson positions...

...He seems to have speedily recovered any lost ground with the non-partisan altitude he struck at his press conference the day after the election...

...But, by now, some Northern liberals have been around long enough to get to the top, and they are reinforced by Southerners who are liberal on most issues aside from civil rights...

...But the change in committee chairmanships will have more significance than is generally realized...

...Clardy lost to a member of the ADA national board...

...Nixon is also credited with putting the decisive pressure on Eisenhower to throw himself into the struggle...

...It is true that, in a few (but important) cases, the change will be somewhat for the worse??Harry Byrd for Eugene Millikin on the Senate Finance Committee, Allen Ellender for George Aiken on the Agriculture Committee, and (by a slight margin) Howard Smith of Virginia for Leo Allen of Illinois on the House Rules Committee...

...The President himself has rejected the earlier "tough'' attitude toward our allies in favor of "partnership," and has damped down talk of "preventive war" in favor of something very like "coexistence...

...The Democrats fell shorter of their hopes in the West??particularly in California, Colorado and Washington??than elsewhere...

...This is an issue on which all Democrats, from the Deep South to the most radical urban districts, feel deeply...

...A notable instance is the Administration's effort to achieve more international trade...

...Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay, who is a politician, proved to be such an ineffective one as to make his seat shaky from now on and (one hopes) to make him more cautious about his giveaways...

...In view of the scramble last year for places on the House Un-American Activities Committee, a special tribute should be paid to Congressman Francis Walter of Pennsylvania, who is entitled by seniority to its chairmanship...

...Indeed, it is at the top that the new line-up is weakest...

...The nominal Democratic control of Congress will not, of course, disturb the Republican-Dixiecrat coalition which has dominated that body since 1938...

...Of the Eisenhower Cabinet, Ezra Benson came off best, as the "farm revolt" failed to materialize except in mild and scattered form??although the impact of his policies is likely to be felt more two years from now than it was this month...

...In part, this was because the press in the West is more partisan than in the East and did less to put Nixon's charges in perspective...

...All these are on the basis of seniority, excluding trades which may take place between now and January...

...To gain this advantage, the President injected himself into the mid-term campaign more than most of his predecessors had done...

...His propeller-stop tour laid eggs in Wilmington, Detroit and Louisville, even if it did squeeze Bender through in Ohio...

...Otherwise, no dramatic changes are likely...

...See editorial, page 21??Ed.] A rough measure of the contrast between the present committee chairmen and those who are slated to take their places in November is provided by checking their voting records on the issues selected by ADA for the present Congress as distinguishing liberals from conservatives...

...Wilson, however, never claimed any political talents...

...he became identified far more as a partisan figure than he was two years ago...

...He remains the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination in 1956, but not with quite the aura of destiny that once surrounded him...

...The chain-telephoning he initiated probably did not result in much added business for the Bell combine...

...If Henry Cabot Lodge is replaced at the United Nations by the more mature and responsible John Sherman Cooper, and a prominent Democrat such as Thomas K. Finletter is brought into policy-making in the State Department at the level at which Dulles functioned under Truman, real evidence will have been given of the Administration's good intentions...

...Richard Nixon worked harder and more ruthlessly for a Republican victory than any other Administration figure...

...The Democrats will not be handicapped in 1956, as they were in 1952, by a deficit of Governors outside the South...

...By this standard, the new Senate Democratic chairmen voted 66 per cent liberal, compared with 26 per cent for the Republicans...

...He degraded his high office by the smear campaign he put on throughout the country, particularly in the West...

...In international affairs generally, the results of the election will continue the trend toward bipartisanship in foreign policy which has been evident for several months...

...By the accident of Pat McCarran's death, Harley Kilgore will be Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee...

...Walter's attitude on such issues as immigration has drawn liberal criticism in the past...

...When and if the President again summons the Governors as a sounding-board for his horse-and-buggy conception of states' rights, he will find the Democratic majority, 27 to 21, heavier than in Congress...

...Lister Hill replaces H. Alexander Smith of New Jersey as the head of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, J. William Fulbright ousts Homer Capehart at Banking and Currency, James Murray goes in for Guy Cordon at Interior and Insular Affairs, Warren Magnuson substitutes for John Bricker at Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Theodore Green for William Jenner at Rules and Administration, and John Sparkman for Edward Thye at Small Business...

...Senator Clinton Anderson, who fought the Administration's atomic-energy bill, replaces Bourke Hickenlooper as ranking Senator on the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy...

...While, for obvious reasons, the Southern Democratic preponderance is heavier in the House chairmanships, such prospective substitutions as Clarence Cannon for John Taber on Appropriations, Jere Cooper for Daniel Reed on Ways and Means, Emanuel Celler for Chauncey Reed on Judiciary, Brent Spence for Jesse Wolcott on Banking and Currency, William Dawson for Clare Hoffman on Government Operations, and Charles Buckley for George Dondero on Public Works are good, and in some cases spectacularly so...

...Although Senator Alexander Wiley as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee courageously supported the President, his occasional indiscretions will not be repeated by Senator Walter George...

...unless Lyndon Johnson develops a stiffer backbone, he will not be much of an improvement on Knowland as Majority Leader...

...In many cases, of course, the Republican chairmen represented the right wing of the Republican party and were almost as opposed to Eisenhower policies as they were to those favored by liberal Democrats...

...There is broad support in Congress for bringing the competitive headline-hunting of the various Communist investigating committees to an end, while maintaining the needed close watch on Communist activities...

...AS THE cigar butts were cleared away and a great variety of hangover remedies sampled, Washington began assessing the impact of the election on future events, both in terms of personalities and of the issues, foreign and domestic, before Congress...

...He became accepted, far more than he was in 1952, as "one of the boys...

...In the House, the margin is 65 to 20 per cent...

...Congressman Charles Kersten, an ardent McCarthyite, was defeated in Milwaukee...

...Even more amazing was the defeat of Michigan's Kit Clardy, who had delivered a violent attack on Americans for Democratic Action on the House floor with ammunition provided by GOP National Committee researchers...

...In doing so...

...But his first postelection suggestion??that his committee be abolished??deserves commendation...

...Paul H. Douglas is superbly qualified for the Joint Committee on the Economic Report, a field in which Ralph Flanders, in spite of his other merits, was weak...

...But both these shrewd publicity stunts kept one important message in the headlines through the crucial closing days of the campaign: "Ike wants you to vote??and vote Republican...

...The drive for tax reductions for the lower-income groups??again a topic on which the Democrats are substantially united??is likely to be postponed until 1956, unless economic trends require it earlier...

...Charles Wilson proved that he was neither a politician nor a dog-lover, as his indiscreet and inaccurate canine analogy helped Democrat Patrick McNamara achieve his upset win in Michigan...

...As to personalities: President Eisenhower was confirmed as still the GOP's major and perhaps decisive asset...

...At home, the first step taken by the Democrats will be, according to the warning which Sam Rayburn has already given, to make the Administration "put up or shut up" about the much-trumpeted ousting of "security risks...

...The concentration of this function in a joint Senate-House committee would be a constructive step...

...Moreover, there are a greatly increased number of Democrats who have marshal's batons in their knapsacks...

...Since the Indo-Chinese crisis this spring, less has been heard of the "new look," "massive retaliation" and the other slogans by which the Administration sought to distinguish its policies from those of President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson...

...Some of these are better qualified (and more inclined) to attack the Republicans as the party of Big Business, as Truman did in 1948 and as many Democratic candidates did this year, but as Stevenson deliberately declined to do in 1952...

...Adlai Stevenson earned the gratitude of many Democratic candidates by the strenuous campaign he waged on their behalf...

...It was steadfastly obstructed by Daniel Reed as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and will be just as enthusiastically forwarded by Jere Cooper of Tennessee when he takes over Reed's seat...

...The Democrats took not only the Senate seat at stake in Oregon but a Congressional seat in Portland, and made an impressive bid for the Eastern Oregon (or Hell's Canyon) seat...

...Unless the world situation turns worse, even the moderate success of his smear tactics cannot be repeated, and he has powerful enemies in his own California...

...He and his friends were banking on a smashing Democratic victory, which would have given them the chance to claim that he was "the indispensable man" of the GOP...

...Joseph McCarthy was a heavy loser...

...Nothing has irked them so much as the effort to pin the label of treason on their party, and they will take the first opportunity which their new strength has given them to set the record straight...