Kennedy, Congress and Reality
HERMAN, GEORGE E.
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Kennedy Congress and Reality By George E. Herman Washington lies languid under the depressing influence of an unpleasantly wet winter. There is a pervasive feeling of...
...It is merely avoiding a head-on collision where defeat seems predetermined...
...Even with these, he is reconciled to the prospect that the work done now may not bear fruit this year or next...
...Across the table from Cabinet members sit administrative assistants, legislative clerks and important staff members of the top committees of both houses...
...Mike Mansfield (D.-Mont), Majority Leader of the Senate, says he expects Congress to adjourn by the end of July...
...The President's relations with Congress have fallen into a distinct pattern...
...The constitutional aspects of Vinson's position were widely discussed...
...On Capitol Hill the same feeling of dullness prevails...
...George E. Herman is the White House correspondent for CBS News...
...I've never seen anything quite like it in my 29 years in the Senate...
...Having made his point for the record, the President exerts little effort to push the measure any further...
...Some special interest groups, however, are unhappy about the President's approach...
...He will tolerate this kind of thing up to the point where it does not interfere with his basic plans...
...Meanwhile, his supporters on the Hill make whatever speeches may be necessary for home consumption in this election year, and let it go at that...
...At the proper moment Vinson bowed to Presidential firmness and withdrew, keeping his committee forces in good order...
...Using language more suited to past battles with a Republican administration, Vinson attempted to "direct," "require" and finally "mandate" the Administration to reverse its policy on the B-70 bomber...
...There is a pervasive feeling of fatigue and dullness...
...And Vinson, acting rapidly and forcefully, not only encouraged Lemay's opposition but set the stage for other Pentagon officials to challenge future Administration policies...
...The questions he is asked may not be brilliant, but the answers are a baffling mixture of evasion, bits of previous speeches and official statements, and cautiously worded, nonessential information...
...His Cabinet, for instance, has been holding some unusual briefing sessions on Capitol Hill...
...Senator Harry Byrd (D.-Va...
...Congress considers the difference of opinion in the Pentagon, which developed when Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis Lemay strongly opposed McNamara's policies, to be a good thing all around...
...But he keeps a careful eye on what sort of information his aides bring back to the office...
...The new trade and tariff bill, for example, which the President considers one of his most important measures, was for a time scheduled to be put off until next year...
...The strategy is simple: An extension of the old act this year will pave the way for action on the new bill next session...
...Kennedy has broken records in the constancy of his weekly news conferences...
...Representative Carl Vinson (D.Ga...
...It finds such differences useful in manipulating military policy that is ostensibly determined by the Executive Branch of the Government...
...He knows that Congressmen facing tough elections want a few scalps hanging from their belts to show the voters...
...Senator Kenneth Keating (R.-N.Y...
...It looks like a hard sell to the people who help us in Congress," says Keating...
...cannot achieve victory against the direct opposition of the bipartisan conservative coalition...
...What he forgets is that the gap between his provocative messages to Congress and what he actually expects them to achieve hampers understanding throughout the country...
...The brave new suggestion is then promptly swallowed up in the arithmetic of the House...
...But the tide was turned in favor of the immediate try by the quiet but effective Representative Hale Boggs (D.-La...
...By implication it is clear that the lesser prestige, not to mention the oratorical malapropisms, of Speaker John McCormack (D.Mass...
...is even more upset about the briefings...
...Not surprisingly, therefore, the Administration sometimes seems to follow rather than lead its advisers in Congress...
...These sessions are not advertised, and when asked about them, Administration spokesmen shrug them off as "informative...
...And he is aware that the most prominent and newsworthy scalps in Washington belong to the Administration...
...But on the Hill it is received with only the most perfunctory reaction, whether of approval or disapproval...
...But these brief bubbles of activity do not disturb the calm, slow chemistry of the legislative process...
...Almost the only people who see great conflict and intense disappointment ahead are those who are deceived by bright and shiny gift wrapping on the very moderate packages of legislation the President has decided to expedite...
...the formidable swamp fox of Georgia, recently tested the mettle of the President and his Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara...
...The Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy has chided the Administration for not pushing hard enough to expand industrial participation in atomic power development, and for not building enough new plants of its own...
...But neither the astute Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee nor the President desired a showdown, and there was none...
...The message is written in the now familiar Kennedy style: vivid, dramatic, appealing to the public interest...
...From time to time his aides draw up a message to Congress embodying certain promises left over from the campaign...
...A political realist, President Kennedy finds it hard to believe that this simple fact is not more widely understood...
...The President certainly is exerting intense pressure," says Byrd...
...For his part, President Kennedy expects to be well satisfied with what Congress will pass...
...It should also be noted that the President is trying to get his program across in other ways...
...The President takes this and other Congressional jabs in stride...
...In a recent news conference, the President rather impatiently reminded newsmen that even when the late Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, placed his immense prestige squarely on the line, the Administration won its fight to enlarge the House Rules Committee by only six votes...
...And for the first time, the crisis atmosphere which dominated John F. Kennedy's Presidential campaign and his early days in office seems to have completely disappeared...
...It is released with a flourish and often with appropriate background briefings by the White House...
...But when Congress attempts to attack an area he considers vital, then there is a major clash of wills...
...Vinson gained from having shaken the monolithic nature of Defense Department policy laid down by Secretary McNamara...
...He has ordered his assistants not to attend sessions held by Secretary Abraham Ribicoff, whose Department of Health, Education and Welfare is responsible for the medical care bill and other legislation opposed by Byrd...
...The President's news conferences, for example, are lackluster...
...has allowed his staff to participate in meetings held by the Secretary of the Treasury, Republican Douglas Dillon, as well as those run by Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman and Postmaster General Edward Day, both Democrats...
...As Chairman of a Joint Economic subcommittee, he persuaded the backers of the new trade bill to start pushing it immediately...
...Then, as Congressmen return to their constituencies, either for visits or biennial campaigning, they will sense the mood of the people and vote accordingly...
...The President and the Secretary of Defense protected his retreat by promising a complete review of the program...
...This is not to say that the Administration has given in to the conservative coalition...
...Boggs argued that the one-year extension of the old trade act which Administration experts favored for this year would be about as hard to obtain as the new improved measure...
...Kennedy's theory is that ideas should be exposed to the public and given time to acquire popular support...
...Far from exerting intense pressure, however, the President seems to be conserving his energies for a few vital bills...
...He may also be breaking some in the complete lack of news emerging from them...
...Kennedy benefited from having beaten down Congressional defiance...
...Members of Congress who oppose the Administration see them differently, however, and sometimes refuse to allow their aides to attend...
Vol. 45 • April 1962 • No. 7
