87th Congress at the Halfway Mark
HERMAN, GEORGE E.
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. By George E. Herman 87th Congress at the Halfway Mark President Kennedy gave a "farewell and thank you" breakfast for Congressional leaders of both parties on Friday,...
...he retains his willingness to "lean on them" a little from the White House whenever it becomes necessary...
...It quickly became apparent, however, that Robert Kennedy was only a faithful reflector of his brother's wishes and intentions...
...But this weakness was not enough...
...if he does, then this bundle of good gray legislation must be very much what he wanted...
...Arm-twisting from the White House is much overrated...
...Lean on them, Bobby," said the candidate during a political hassle with the party leaders in New York, "lean on them until we get it...
...John F. Kennedy has enormous charm and great personal magnetism when he chooses to turn it on...
...But devoted Kennedyites will look in vain for some sort of new direction in American affairs...
...they were not even on the list of 16 priority bills Kennedy handed to his legislative leaders on February 21...
...A single Republican vote in the Rules Committee might have given the nation some kind of school aid bill...
...Congressmen have long memories of who has done what to them...
...This year's session marked the first time since 1954 that Congress and the President belonged to the same party, and the legislative locks on many items clicked open as the political tumblers finally lined up...
...Even then it is not too bright...
...According to the Republican National Committee, which seems to have its facts straight, Ted Sorenson and Larry O'Brien accepted an invitation to meet privately with newsmen and brief them on how the White House thinks it made out with Congress...
...First came the anti-recession measures: extension of unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, area redevelopment...
...Under these circumstances the President, with the able counsel of Larry O'Brien, his Congressional go-between, decided on a policy of discretion...
...As a realist, the President put these issues aside for the current session, and after his defeat in the House he also postponed school aid until next year...
...Another remarked: "If the President can handle Khrushchev and the neutral nations the way he handles Congress, there shouldn't be any world crisis...
...Civil rights measures were quietly dropped...
...In the area of national security Congress gave Kennedy everything he has asked for, including a record $46.6 billion peacetime budget for defense...
...If, however, the President is disappointed by his failure to achieve the fresh new approach promised in the campaign, he may have instructed Sorenson to put the best possible face on it all, hoping the news reports would put Congress in a good mood for the renewed legislative battles of 1962...
...The 157 Northern and Western votes, plus the support of 43 Southerners, are still almost a score of votes short of a majority...
...Judging from past experience, Sorenson was either speaking the literal truth, or he was saying what he was instructed to say...
...A series of extremely ticklish measures were put off until 1962...
...It is undeniably his own brand, compounded of the flattering attention which Franklin D. Roosevelt used to turn on when he needed it, and detailed knowledge of the personal problems, political background and constituencies of every Congressman...
...George E. Herman, a new contributor to these pages, is White House correspondent for CBS News...
...For arrayed against Kennedy's extensive experience in the House and Senate, his charm and ability to use a wide variety of persuasions, are the cold hard numbers of Congressional politics: In the House of Representatives it takes 219 votes to make an absolute majority...
...the campaign proved him a dramatic and stirring speaker...
...By George E. Herman 87th Congress at the Halfway Mark President Kennedy gave a "farewell and thank you" breakfast for Congressional leaders of both parties on Friday, September 22...
...They will find no convincing list of new starts, no dramatic package of bills designed to "get this country moving again...
...But this tactic is often unwise...
...And the contrast between the solid undramatic Congressional achievements and the dramatic campaign promises prompted a recent Administration blunder...
...That 40 per cent defection showed weakness in the Southern bloc when the Democratic leadership really put on the pressure...
...Before the inauguration there was something of a misconception that his brother, Robert, was the family hatchetman, the political heavy, always ready to wield the whip or the knife...
...Newsmen called him Raoul in cruel reference to the unsavory younger brother of Fidel Castro...
...These included Medicare (Congressional shorthand for the President's program of medical care for the aged under Social Security), a major tax revision, reciprocal trade, and a department of urban affairs headed by a secretary of cabinet rank...
...Instead the combined votes of all Republicans and Southern Democrats, plus one pro-Administration Catholic, sufficed, in the heated atmosphere of religious controversy, to stop any action...
...White House aides say they hoped for only a three-year commitment and never really believed Congress would allow back-door financing over a five-year period—a means of short-cutting Congress's most jealously guarded power, control of the purse strings...
...But there are only 157 Northern and big city Democrats, while 106 "Southern Democrats" and 174 Republicans bring the potential strength of the conservative coalition to 280 votes...
...Perhaps Kennedy really feels that by strenuous use of his abilities he has achieved more in his first year than did Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...Two farm bills must also be counted as partial triumphs, as well as a measure for airport modernization and a highway bill...
...Thus, in the crucial test on expanding the Rules Committee of "Judge" Howard Smith of Virginia, the issue which brought the Administration forces out in a major campaign to line up the vote, 43 "Southerners" sided with Kennedy...
...Irritated reporters, some of whom were covering Washington news when Sorenson was born, refused to write it that way and eventually gave the story and Sorenson's mimeographed handout to the Republicans...
...YET, despite these failures, the new Administration and the hardworking 87th Congress did accomplish a great deal...
...There is strong temptation to assume that he will content himself with moderate and conservative legislation, and will tag it with dramatic and stirring labels...
...The GOP immediately published both in great glee...
...Clearly, both the Administration and Congress did a lot of work and passed a large stack of good workaday bills...
...When the leaders emerged, a Republican said bemusedly: "It was bi-partisanship at its best...
...It's not the overly obvious highpressure of a Lyndon Johnson...
...Neither is it the quiet intellectual grace of an Adlai Stevenson or a William Fulbright...
...He told the incredulous journalists that the Administration had done three times as well in its first session as Roosevelt had done in his...
...There was none...
...On the other hand, when the Republicans want to block a bill they can usually do so easily...
...The difference between the label and the package can do him more damage than either by itself...
...He succeeded where his predecessor had failed in gaining a foreign aid bill with a fiveyear long-term commitment, although he has to go back for most of the cash each year...
...In foreign policy the President got his Peace Corps and disarmament administration, the two most original concepts of his legislative program...
...In actual fact, of course, conservative strength fluctuates as widely as the definitions of what constitutes a "Southern Democrat...
...The record of past votes shows Kennedy as a moderate rather than conservative legislator...
...In the "packing" of the Rules Committee, for example, it took 22 Republicans to give the Administration a squeakthrough at 217-212...
...In addition Kennedy, unlike his predecessor, believes it his duty to the party, the voters and the country to use all his abilities to the fullest in moving Congress in the desired direction...
...In fact, the prospect for school aid is no action until 1963 and a new congress...
...Apparently the President spread the back pats and charm around liberally between the ave atque vales...
...Many of these measures were left over from previous years when either the Legislature or the Executive had turned thumbs down...
...Sorenson is President Kennedy's brilliant young chief of staff...
...It was the Presidentto-be who gave the orders...
...This is less than the President asked for, but more than he and his advisors actually expected...
...And if they are Democratic Congressmen from the South they are likely to have long terms in office and to be chairmen of important committees...
...His purpose was to thank them for their cooperation during the 1961 session of Congress...
...Such men make better friends than enemies...
...As President, Kennedy is no different...
...Then less hurried legislation to beef up the economy: the minimum wage bill (a clear victory for the Administration and doubly sweet after last year's Congressional fiasco following the conventions), and the housing bill, which Kennedy spokesmen call "a landmark," rating with any of the measures passed in Franklin D. Roosevelt's first 100 days...
Vol. 44 • October 1961 • No. 34
