The Democrats' 'Odd Duck'
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA THE DEMOCRATS''ODD DUCK' BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington It is being mischievously suggested here that J. Edgar Hoover arranged to have the Capitol bombed March 1 to elicit a more...
...But he gets up in the morning to tell the world that the President is doing the best job he can, although the Senate must face its responsibilities just as the President is facing his...
...Sneak previews of coming attractions, with annotations by Dr...
...But, in truth, the liberals once again displayed a genuine flair for digging their own graves, without requiring any extra shovelfuls from Mansfield...
...Ostensibly, Mansfield maintained that Harris' zeal was unwarranted, thus putting the Senate's pooh-bahs at ease...
...But it takes a cynic even to think such thoughts...
...They now are aware that they can be ousted in an uprising from below, just as Teddy Kennedy (less for his old arrogance than for the new blood lust of his peers) was ousted as majority whip this year...
...while he was running Cambodia, he named a highway in Mansfield's honor...
...to finally prod the Majority Leader into action...
...All 17 of the Senate's Democratic-run standing committees are still gathering provisions for a two-year climb—with the prize of the Presidency at the mountaintop intriguing at least a half-dozen of the climbers...
...Actually, Mansfield hoped to do better than he did...
...He fuzzed up the issue by inserting an elusive deadline, and he stressed all along that the resolution was meant to be helpful to the President...
...It took the White House quite a while to fathom this trait in Mansfield's character...
...it is his right flank in the Republican party that worries him...
...Mansfield in his time has been a soldier, sailor and Marine...
...Although no one, least of all Mansfield, could say with certainty what time was meant by the phrase "time certain," the press corps, having reviewed several possibilities, ultimately settled upon January 1973 as a logical reference point...
...Only two or three senators bothered to come to the floor at any one time to hear the now-familiar arguments...
...With Mansfield leading the way, this group managed to divert the bored troops by passing a resolution February 22 calling for total U.S...
...When Harris' dark-horse Presidential prospects also failed to jell, he focused his considerable energy on the need for Senate reform...
...Clip-on microphones, a newly available accessory, merely amplified the hollowness of the charade in the chamber...
...For a time it looked as if the anti-filibuster forces would at least have the satisfaction of putting Vice President Agnew on the spot, forcing him to rule either in their favor (in line with the official position of the Nixon Administration) or against them (in line with the views of most Republican conservatives...
...Finally, he named a special three-member committee, headed by Harris, to examine the seniority issue, neutralizing Harris for the present as a critic...
...A steady diet of ham and eggs, prepared by the White House mess, has helped Mansfield assuage his deep anger at the President's failure to inform him of the plans to invade Cambodia last April...
...Of course, there was none...
...Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who is now living in Peking, was once a great fan of Mansfield's...
...Senator Philip A. Hart (D.-Mich...
...The point is that someday there may well be objections voiced, and that Mansfield's actions insure a hearing for them...
...Nixon, of course, knows this already...
...When Mansfield took this Indochina position before the newly revitalized Democratic Conference, a plenary forum, all hell broke loose...
...Damage to the Senate's timetable from the filibuster will be repaired as neatly as the damage to its walls from the bombing...
...To be sure, reflections on Hoover as an agent provocateur are offered in humor or in malice, depending on one's feelings about the Director...
...Yet Mansfield has never learned in a remarkably diverse career how to cultivate political enemies for fun and profit, which is why he stands out as an odd duck among Democratic politicians...
...According to one participant, "Mansfield did not read the names of the committee chairmen as an announcement, which had always previously been the case...
...By now, though, Nixon realizes that Mansfield will never attack him, no matter what he does, and their relationship has become a good deal warmer than is generally known...
...First, he arranged to convene the conference whenever any of its 55 members requested a meeting...
...Instead, he read them as a proposal, subject to ratification, and leaving room for objection...
...Within this broader community of lawmakers, private observations on the explosion are largely confined to the damage inflicted upon the barbershop, depriving senators of free haircuts for some time to come...
...The Democrats debated the war and the politics of the war for more than three hours before dividing about 3-1 in favor of the resolution...
...While it took a leader of Mansfield's consummate tact to get long-range party reforms adopted without an open fight, it took Senator Fred R. Harris (D.-Okla...
...These changes have been widely ignored outside the Senate because Mansfield's methods staved off a battle and his bland explanations blinded many observers to what was really going on...
...probability have voted 3-1 against such a declaration...
...The President and the Senate Majority Leader have breakfast together about once a month...
...When Lyndon Johnson was President, the Senate Democrats would in all...
...Over the years, Mansfield has viewed any escalation of the war, whatever is said to be its ultimate motive, as bad policy...
...Meantime, the Majority Leader had been greasing some rusty gears...
...Mansfield's uncanny ability to turn over precedents without appearing to unduly threaten entrenched interests, however, has been noted by the more perceptive senators...
...drawing invidious comparisons with the Reichstag fire would be quite beyond them...
...The Senate is capable of reforming itself only an inch at a time...
...Toward the end, they undermined their arguments by failing to disguise their lingering suspicion that the day might come when liberals would want to use the filibuster to check a conservative majority...
...withdrawal from Indochina "in a time certain...
...who tries hard to get along with everybody, for the debacle, accusing him of stabbing them in the back by not pushing energetically enough to cut off debate...
...This amounted to tipping Nixon off that his political flanks would be protected on the Democratic left should he decide to accelerate troop withdrawals from the Asian mainland...
...Every time Nixon agrees to cross a border in Southeast Asia, Mansfield loses a lot of sleep...
...On February 10, he told the Democratic Conference: "The whole issue of seniority is one which in my judgment has been greatly exaggerated...
...Mansfield has also been busy reforming many of the Senate's most hallowed institutions, notably the seniority system of picking committee chairmen...
...But Agnew wiggled away by announcing he would rule that the Senate vote on what his ruling should be...
...told me: "We've shifted our ways of doing things in a bloodless coup and outsiders have hardly noticed what has happened...
...And, for another 10 years, he taught Asian history...
...The closest thing the Senate Democrats have to a board of directors is their 14-member policy committee...
...Second, he announced to the conference that it had the right to nullify by majority secret ballot any committee assignment and, in the same manner, to depose any committee chairmen...
...But the steps already taken are probably sufficient to deter committee chairmen from dealing outrageously with their junior colleagues...
...Whoever did it enlivened the legislative session, off to one of the dullest starts in memory...
...If he [Mansfield] had tried something like this eight years ago--or even five years ago--he would have had a full-fledged revolt on his hands...
...Since the Cambodian invasion, the White House has revamped its information policies, as they apply to Mansfield and other leading Democrats in Congress...
...Despite all the editorial hand-wringing over how the Senate was again disgracing itself, no important legislative business has had to be set aside...
...Kissinger, had much to do with the relatively muted reaction from Capitol Hill to the U.S.-assisted invasion of Laos in February...
...Harris challenged the accepted theory that the Democrat who has served the longest on a committee automatically must be named its chairman, with autocratic powers to hire a staff and to control the committee's agenda...
...These events occurred at a January 26 meeting of the conference...
...This is a convenient time because both men rise very early, hours before their respective staffs are geared up to brief them...
...In the beginning, they failed to generate widespread sympathy for their cause...
...He feels the Communists will simply respond to any increased pressure they may encounter by stepping up their own efforts...
...Most senators couldn't tell a joke about Hoover...
...Even at that, I wouldn't make book that it would have happened under other leadership...
...Harris has been something of a lost soul around Washington since early last year, when he was eased out as chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...Washington-USA THE DEMOCRATS''ODD DUCK' BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington It is being mischievously suggested here that J. Edgar Hoover arranged to have the Capitol bombed March 1 to elicit a more generous spirit in Congress toward FBI appropriations...
...The House had little to do while the Senate was bogged down in a filibuster against a move by the liberals to curb filibusters...
...Most of the machinery of the Senate is in good working order...
...He dug for copper 3,000 feet below the Montana hills for eight years...
...The more bitter liberals blamed Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D.-Mont...
Vol. 54 • March 1971 • No. 6
