Kennedy's Chances in Congress

...Southern Democrats joined the President in an unusual demonstration of party unity...

...reports from Washington as a correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune...

...But it has not yet proved itself...

...In sum, the forecast for the 88th Congress is partly cloudy with moderate political temperatures—and even this fuzzy prediction is subject to change without notice...

...When and how this civil war will end is anyone's guess, but it is not an auspicious beginning for the new Senate...

...IN the Senate, it is fashionable to say that the Administration will have fair winds and smooth sailing this year, but there are elements of instability there that warn of storms ahead...

...Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania, a weighty elder stateman of the House...

...In addition to the Speaker and Representative Albert, a soft-voiced Rhodes scholar, the indispensible members of the cabal include Hale Boggs, an economic liberal from Louisiana...

...reports from Washington as a correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune...

...O'Brien is an organizer, probably the shrewdest political organizer in the country today...

...the Northern liberals, symbolized by Minnesota's John Blatnik...

...but his influence was pervasive and reached into every vital part of the Democrats' fragmented and disjointed majority: the Southern Bourbons, headed by Judge Smith...

...And the Republicans, or most of them, relish the spectacle of 67 Democrats engaged in one of their favorite pastimes, knocking the stuffings out of each other...

...A more precise analysis of the Rules Committee vote early this month is to Rowland Evans Jr...

...There is not a Democratic Senator on Capitol Hill who enjoys trying to stop a filibuster, and at the end of this one, however it turns out, harsh recriminations may be expected...

...Whether it does will depend on the durability of the President's new prestige and, more important, on the efficiency of the McCormackAlbert-Boggs leadership...

...This year, though, it just might come to something...

...John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky and other Republicans, including the Assistant Minority Leader, Thomas H. Kuchel of California, have drafted several timesaving proposals of their own...

...This year a far more comprehensive tax bill, proposing an $ 11 billion cut in individual and corporate income rates and a $2.5 billion offset in loophole-closing, is the main order of business...

...AN IRRESISTIBLE FORCE Kennedy's Chances in Congress By Rowland Evans Jr Washington It is already being said here that the President's impressive showing in the vote on the House Rules Committee promises new harmony between the Administration and the 435 unruly individualists in the House of Representatives...

...Liberal Republicans, 22 of whom voted with the Administration to enlarge the Rules Committee in 1961, came over in greater numbers this year, an indication that Republicans from the big cities of the North may now be less eager for straight party-line combat with the President...

...the pragmatic moderates, headed by Richard Boiling of Missouri...

...The Southerners are using the filibuster to prevent a change in the filibuster rule...

...Majority Leader Mike Mansfield is a gentle, professorial type, the soul of kindness and the last man to put the arm on a colleague for that one extra vote...

...Yet, when it wants to, the Senate can be more unruly than the House, more difficult to control—as the infinitely patient Mansfield discovered last year during the filibuster on the communications-satellite bill...

...But one chord does not make a symphony...

...say that if President Kennedy had lost it, the 88th Congress would very likely have become an immovable object...

...Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee...

...Sweeping conclusions that the President and the House have found a new path to peaceful coexistence are premature...

...Congressman Boiling...

...From the one-man Rayburn operation, the Democratic leadership is developing into an efficient cabal of legislative experts that sits down together, pools its resources and diligently conspires to round up a majority on important measures...

...But until the filibuster ends, reform of the Senate's legislative procedures—and the procedures themselves—are beyond reach...

...the Southern conservative leader, a fall-off of 16 from two years ago...

...Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, the Assistant Majority Leader, is already pushing reforms in Senate procedures, quite apart from the filibuster, in an effort to cut down on the indefensible waste of time in the Senate and make it a more responsible legislative body...

...The new speaker, John McCormack of Massachusetts, spent most of last year picking up the beads...

...Last year, the President's tax bill got through the House almost intact, but in the Senate it was cut to ribbons...

...The death of Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma may have assured passage of the Medicare program, which he defeated last year, but it is bound to aggravate the Administration's problems on the new tax bill...

...For the new Senators, sudden immersion in the dream world of a filibuster is an uncomfortable introduction to Washington...

...He does not play the legislative game as Lyndon Johnson played it in the old days, or as Robert Kerr played it in the 87th Congress...

...True, the movement for reform is an old habit in the Senate...

...This year, the Senate was in the throes of a filibuster before it named its committees, adopted its old rules or performed any of the openingday housekeeping chores...

...Now, one year later, he and the indefatigable Majority Leader, Carl Albert of Oklahoma, have put together the best leadership team—emphasis on team —that the Democrats have had in the House for many years...

...During the long reign of Speaker Sam Rayburn, the Democratic majorities in the House were curiously responsive to the dictat of one man —the Speaker himself...

...The cabal is mightily reinforced, of course, by the White House, and particularly by Lawrence F. O'Brien, the President's Congressional agent...

...and, depending on the issue, a good many others who are called on from time to time...

...And now that he has won it, the President has a fighting chance to become an irresistible force...

...He is no intriguer and he does not collect political IOUs...

...The Northern liberals are trying once again to change the filibuster rule to make it easier to end filibusters...

...Not that Rayburn always got his way...

...The pressure for reform, the loss of Senator Kerr's strong arm to push the Administration's tax program and the predictable trouble-making of maverick Democrats like Wayne Morse of Oregon, William Proxmire of Wisconsin and Frank Lausche of Ohio, all spell trouble for the Administration in the new Senate...

...only 48 of them clurg to the shredded coattails of old Judge Howard W. Smith (D.Va...

...Senator Kerr was without doubt the canniest legislator and the most powerful man in the Senate, and when a man with his credentials is suddenly removed, it takes time to fill the vacuum...

...There is nothing particularly new about this, however, except that it has not been done for some time in the House with anything approaching systematic proficiency...

...Because of his influence and his glittering prestige, the Speaker ran the House pretty much out of his hip pocket...

...When he died, those disparate groupings in the Democratic majority suddenly found themselves on their own, like beads on a broken strand...

...His resources encompass the entire power of the Presidency, and when they are joined with those of the McCormack cabal, the result is to make the House more responsive to the majority...

...and the big-city politicians, like Philadelphia's Bill Green...

...So at this early stage of the second Kennedy Congress, it is fair to say that the President has a distinctly improved position in the House of Representatives and that a harmonious relationship may evolve...