THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON
The Word from Washington Liberal Democrats in the House are less than sanguine about the prospects for fundamental rules reforms when Congress convenes January 4. One reason is the essential...
...Leaders of the Democratic Study Group, which consists of about half the party's House strength, have discussed reform plans and forwarded them to absent members for final discussion by the group January 2. The basic change liberals are seeking is a modification of the seniority system that automatically escalates Congressional veterans to chairmanship positions...
...Russia's new rulers are still trying to find their feet...
...The revelations, in fact, grow darker and darker...
...So long as the seniority system for picking chairmen persists, the Southern Democrats will continue to enjoy disproportionate power...
...How would William F. Buckley's gazette explain away the defeat...
...sua...
...The key man may be Albert, who is regarded as the inevitable successor to McCormack as Speaker...
...Representative Richard Boiling of Missouri, a Rayburn protege, would give the Speaker the power to nominate chairmen, who would then be elected in party caucus...
...Representative Morris Udall of Arizona, for example, would provide for the secret election in the Democratic caucus of each committee chairman, with the candidates comprising the three ranking Democrats on the respective committee...
...Humphrey, when he was whip, served just this adrenal function...
...This does not mean that the United States can delay forever some basic choices nor that the MLF is completely dead...
...I have said that discussions of limitation of world armament—a world court—even the United Nations—were useless without including China, with a fourth of the world's population...
...There may be too little time for the liberals to organize concerted action to achieve reforms, since most members will not arrive in Washington until shortly before Congress convenes...
...Though both McCormack and Albert are talking about changes, and may yet go along with some, there is a feeling that neither is really dissatisfied with the status quo...
...But for the moment, anyway, Mr...
...Ironically, the very strength of pro-Administration forces may militate against reform...
...The need is to get together on a reasonable formula and to organize for a fight...
...Indeed, reminiscent of the Texas hegemony of the late Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senator Lyndon Johnson, we may find that the Oklahoma team of Monroney and Albert may be an influential tandem in days ahead...
...Landon spoke before the Ohio Petroleum Marketers Association in Columbus, Ohio, on October 20, and—of all things—appealed for a change in our non-recognition policy toward China...
...It was this fact that seems to us most worrisome about the whole business—the fact that sophomore enthusiasts, be-yond-the-fringe faddists, and a gaggle of former Communists could implant their candidate on the GOP...
...Thus the hallmarks of the President's approach seem sure to be caution and a slow pace...
...First, there is a philosophical issue...
...Monroney proposes that a bipartisan ten-member Senate-House committee tackle the problem of rules reform...
...And when it's needed— say, after the 1966 midterm elections, we won't have enough votes...
...The Senate Rules Committee, like Laocoon and his sons, is hopelessly entangled...
...One respected Democrat on the Committee, who voted with his party confreres last summer to shut off the inquiry, now sadly acknowledges that the case is a long way from completed...
...Several formulas designed to achieve this reform have been proposed...
...the opening word set the tone for the soul-searching inquiry: "Arrrgh...
...Months ago the Senate grudgingly voted to tape a band-aid onto the cancer by authorizing a bipartisan committee on ethics, with equal representation from both parties...
...If the bolters are purged, it would put a premium on such hypocrisy, and not really change much else in the House...
...he is not going to go-it-alone unless the stakes are sufficiently high and the possibility of success sufficiently good...
...A pleasing prospect in many ways—but a prospect that would seem to rule out altogether any real attack on the special privileges of oil and natural gas interests...
...Reports in Washington indicate that only Germany has any true enthusiasm for the MLF nuclear fleet, and that our allies are almost unanimous in questioning the wisdom of an expanded Vietnamese war...
...Each time the doughty Senate investigators hack at one tentacle of the Bobby Baker case they are enfolded by other serpentine coils...
...It is now obvious that President Johnson is not going to be stampeded by the bureaucracy into widening the war with Vietnam or going full-speed ahead with the mix-manned fleet known as the multilateral force...
...Johnson is no glutton for punishment...
...We expectantly opened the postelection issue...
...In the Senate, the excitement centers on the three-way race for Democratic whip among Senators John Pas-tore, Russell Long, and A. S. Mike Monroney...
...Johnson is not persuaded he can shoot his way out of that hell with more napalm bombs...
...It has not escaped notice that Monroney has quietly expanded his contacts with the gas and oil crowd...
...What has oozed out of the latest round of hearings confirmed that the Rules Committee was shockingly premature in first closing the books on the case last July...
...Republican members of Congress were criticized—and rightly so, we think— for cravenly going along with the Gold-water ticket even in instances where individuals had no sympathy with Goldwater...
...How many Democrats would have the spunk to speak these simple truths...
...No magazine has more shrilly advanced the thesis that the country was yearning for the radical right—indeed, in a moment of giddy euphoria, National Review outlined the program for Gold-water's first hundred days as President...
...He said: "Since 1948, I have urged the recognition of Red China and its admission to the United Nations...
...As Kipling once said, there are a thousand ways of building an elephant trap and all of them are good...
...This portentous and soggily stereotyped remark supplies an apt footnote to the election...
...that China could no more be ignored than Pikes Peak . . . "Therefore, if we are to examine seriously Mao's proposal for a conference of nuclear powers to deal with control of nuclear weapons—as I believe we should—in all good faith— we must be prepared to reverse our policy of non-recognition of China and opposition to its admission to the United Nations...
...So it has been going for more than a year, and so, we predict, it will continue to go...
...Monroney was a member of the House when the late Senator Robert M. La-Follette, Jr., worked with him to put through the landmark Congressional Reorganization Act of 1946...
...The Word from Washington Liberal Democrats in the House are less than sanguine about the prospects for fundamental rules reforms when Congress convenes January 4. One reason is the essential psychology of the existing leadership of Speaker John McCormack and Representative Carl Albert, Democratic whip...
...With the present margin, the existing system could be made to work—and indeed, autocratic chairmen like Representative Howard Smith, czar of the Rules Committee, are promising to be good and to allow key White House bills to reach the floor...
...Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara was commenting on the absence of a news conference: "It would be impossible for Max to talk with these people without leaving the impression that the situation is going to hell...
...This circumstance lessens the pressure for reform...
...Carl is one of the ablest men on the Hill," a Northern Democratic liberal told us, "and if he wants to be a truly great Speaker he may be persuaded that a change in the rules now could enable him to be a bigger man later...
...Oklahoma's Monroney is an extremely attractive Senator whose thoughtful-ness could find a better outlet in leading the drive for procedural reform...
...Perhaps the epitaph will have to be written in a Federal courtroom...
...This would give every Democrat a voice in the organization of the House...
...This January is a rare opportunity—if President Johnson gives quiet and effective support to the reformers...
...Our vote would go to the extrovert, eager-beaver Pastore, on the grounds that Majority Leader Mike Mansfield needs a dynamo to offset the detached lassitude that is Mansfield's trademark...
...there are suggestions of unregistered lobbying, of legislative payoffs to Congressional employes, and of scandalous manipulation of campaign funds...
...Second, and more fundamentally important, the disciplining of Dixiecrats would not have a significant effect on the power structure of the House...
...Germany faces an election next year...
...Now there are two formal inquiries underway—one by the Rules Committee in the circus atmosphere of the Senate Caucus Room and the other by a Federal grand jury meeting in secrecy...
...Buckley, normally so voluble in advising the Republic, found only the award of the Nobel Prize to Jean-Paul Sartre as a subject fit for his signed lucubrations...
...There has not been the slightest move on the part of the leadership to implement the resolution...
...No doubt the fight will bring visceral satisfaction, but we confess to little enthusiasm for it...
...POTOMACUS...
...Arrrgh...
...Failing action in the House in the opening session, this may be the realistic fallback position for the reformers—to back Mon-roney's move...
...Maybe that will give the United Nations the lift it badly needs...
...If a lonely insurgent like Representative John Lindsay of New York is applauded for refusing to endorse Goldwater, why should the Democrats set an example that would make such independence less likely in the future...
...Much emotion will surely be vented in the House vote to deprive the Dixie-crat renegades, Representatives John Bell Williams of Mississippi and Albert W. Watson of South Carolina, of their Democratic Party prerogatives...
...From the outset, Goldwater and his supporters were never in any meaningful sense serious about politics, any more than the Beatles are serious about music...
...More than that, Johnson feels that there is too much uncertainty elsewhere to warrant any bold initiatives by the United States...
...Meanwhile, the everlasting shame of the Baker case will not be the transgressions of its principals...
...Now, for the first time, there are clear intimations of more than mere impropriety...
...It will be the failure of the Senate to take any remedial steps toward preventing a recurrence of the abuses...
...When we've got enough votes for reform," one House liberal said, "it's not needed...
...A lapse into college humor rounded out the unsigned election comment: "An election that fails to be choosi Deserves Ladybird, Lynda, and Luci...
...The best quote of the month was overheard at the White House after Ambassador Maxwell Taylor's briefing on Vietnam...
...Men like Otto Passman, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that butchers foreign aid, frankly tell people in their district that they go along with the national ticket only to assure their party position in Congress...
...Harold Wilson's government could fall at any time in Great Britain...
...It will be many months," National Review reflected elsewhere, in a more sober moment, "and perhaps even many years, before the clairvoyance of Senator Goldwater will be widely recognized...
...The postelection issue of National Review, with its acne in such conspicuous display, is the terminal document...
...Almost lost in the campaign tumult was an interesting speech by Alf M. Landon, GOP Presidential candidate in the rout of 1936...
...This is the significance, it seems to us, of his first moves in foreign affairs—that he is going to apply the same cautious pragmatism in this area that he adopts in domestic politics...
...Present rules provide a convenient alibi for inaction and neither man, in his heart of hearts, is enamored of an aggressive program of liberal legislation...
...Most post-election autopsies seemed predictable to us, but we confess to seizing the November 17 issue of National Review with mordant curiosity...
Vol. 29 • January 1965 • No. 1
