Kennedy and the Arithmetic of Congress

...Of course the President should go over the head of Congress to the people...

...To whom...

...And what effect would a direct appeal to the voters have on those 99 Southern Congressmen...

...The result was a resounding five-vote margin of victory...

...Some of this may be attributed to the fact that Kennedy is a minority President still trying to build an image attractive to a large majority of the people, even when this is no longer necessary or desirable...

...Democrats say the Republicans have scented the drop in Presidential popularity and think this may be the time to try to chop him down a bit...

...The President must have the kind of opposition party support which Democrats have given Republican Presidents...

...And how...

...Last year, in the most naked power struggle of all, on the crucial issue of expanding the House Rules Committee, the President threw in his full personal weight...

...The operation, conducted over the past two years, seems to have been a considerable success—but, despite this, a lot of the patients have died...

...And confining our view to the narrower field of Congressional operations, a look, not at moods and emotions but at the arithmetic of the possible, the probable and the achieved reveals Kennedy as the immensely cold, practical and realistic man he is...

...These men are a hardy breed, as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman found out...

...It is the addition of the Republicans and the subtraction of the Democrats that is before them at every waking moment...

...Sure the President should "exert his leadership...

...The Senate has 64 Democrats, 18-22 of them Southerners (depending on how "Southern" the issue of the moment may be...

...There is a demonstrable gap, for example, between the florid drum-beating style of certain messages sent up to Congress and the lackadaisical White House follow-through...

...Nevertheless, it is also fair to recall Professor Richard Neustadt's observation that the pattern of a President's use of power usually begins to develop about the time he responds to the challenge of his first mid-term election...

...The President's answer has been typical—a snort of disgust for all the hortatory advice from the columnists and a realistic attempt to get along with the existing facts of life...

...That has not been ignored...

...They have a warm, comfortable conviction that they will be around longer than any boy President...

...Kennedy has fought hard and cleverly for what he has really wanted...

...It is entirely fair to observe that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, and that a President who wants to enact controversial legislation must drive hard for support from a working majority of the people who matter, rather than a large popular majority...

...The seats which shift from party to party, the "swing seats," are extremely important to a President...

...By George E. Herman Kennedy and the Arithmetic of Congress You can hardly pick up a newspaper in Washington these days without reading a thoughtful, brilliantly written and highly persuasive column about President Kennedy's failure to provide the powerful leadership expected of him...

...Naturally he should be doing more...

...Under Kennedy, that opposition inside the Democratic party has dropped to around 45 per cent...

...And these are men with a power base independent of the White House...

...The House, on the other hand, is elected under ancient districting systems which make it a chamber representing the rural voter far out of proportion to the urban voter...

...But he has refused to waste time tilting at windmills, or defying men he cannot hope to defeat and whose votes he needs...

...One other element should be mentioned in this review of Congressional math...

...Surely a President troubled with new evidence on nuclear tests, annoyed by the failure of business to expand as desired and constantly on edge over the future of Berlin— surely such a man must give an occasional grunt of contempt as he reads another collection of generalities lacking any Congressional balance sheet...

...President Kennedy, like most Democratic Presidents, was elected by the urban vote...

...In the House of Representatives there are 263 Democrats, 99 of them Southerners...

...Or else, he must have the support of more than half the Southern Representatives, and perhaps one-third of the Southern Senators...

...George E. Herman is the White House correspondent for CBS News...

...Is it possible that direct pressure, threats, arm-twisting and the withholding of patronage will move them...

...These are the insecure seats held by men who eagerly seek the help of a President from their own party, men who listen to his advice and his desires as avidly as the men from oneparty districts ignore them...

...Once again it is numerical: The measured 15-20 per cent support from the Republicans has been shrinking away, especially in the days since the steel price crisis...

...Ours is an increasingly urban nation...

...And the Democratic program is one which appeals to the city man far more than his country cousin...

...And this simple arithmetic of power neglects the more subtle calculus of seniority...

...But what...

...So did the late powerful Sam Rayburn, who used all his prestige and collected all his years of accumulated political debts...

...In a strictly party-line vote, the President can afford to lose only 44 of those 99 Southern votes...

...Is it conceivable for a moment that any Kennedy fireside chat would move the voters who send the 99 Southern Congressmen to Washington every year...

...The facts of life are simple and clear...

...Because the numbers game is the central preoccupation of the President and the men who carry his wants and needs up to the Hill...

...Responsible Republicans on the Hill say there is nothing so deliberate afoot, and argue that Kennedy's lack of decisiveness has simply made them lose confidence in him...

...Carried away by this discovery, only nine Republicans defected when the House Republican leadership voted against a rise in the National Debt limit—a rise which, as the Republicans well knew from Eisenhower's time, was necessary to the continuation of our space and defense effort...

...If they stick to the rules they are likely to return to Washington term after term, until eventually the mere process of survival puts them into the chairmanships of all the major committees...

...The President needs five or six Southern Senators...

...There is room, no doubt, to argue about other aspects of Kennedy's leadership...

...Southern lawmakers come from one-party constituencies...

...He has not only wooed the Southerners, but running the unromantic figures of Congressional votes through a check reveals he has made progress...

...The complaints have come mainly from persons who have read the wrong portions of the President's campaign speeches with eager eyes, and who have failed to detect the real man behind the campaign image...

...The 21 seats dropped by the Democrats in the election Kennedy barely managed to win are also a part of this arithmetic...

...Most particularly, of late, the punditry revolves around Kennedy's defeats in Congress and his so-called failure to provide strong leadership, to do enough, to "fight hard enough for his own bills.' The articles also deal with moods and emotions, speak of the wants and desires of the American people, the will of the country, etc...

...Few, if any, are so mean and pettifogging as to deal with the crude arithmetic of the balance of power in the Congress...

...In the course of the post-mortems conducted at the White House one major common denominator has emerged...

...Whatever the case, there is little doubt that the scent of election is in the air, and to their delight the Republicans are finding that Kennedy's popularity is not the tower of strength they had gloomily expected it to be...

...Southern opposition to the proposals of Democratic Presidents has ranged around 60 per cent, sometimes 85 per cent...