The Word from Washington
The Word from Washington If the roof had caved in on the Gregory Gymnasium of the University of Texas at Austin on the evening of February 27, 1968, the disaster would have wiped out a sizable...
...We need these people and have to keep them alive...
...He is an Annapolis graduate, a decorated Navy veteran who was skipper of the nuclear submarine Nautilus on its historic polar voyage twelve years ago...
...Potomacus...
...He has been a middle-of-the-road Democrat in the House, and he used to call for "victory" in Vietnam...
...It is merely the best instrument yet devised for holding an Administration accountable to the public, week to week, for its policies and actions...
...I don't intend to make any changes," Chairman Hebert says...
...I am disappointed that one of our colleagues has seen fit to attack a distinguished public servant merely for doing his duty," said Representative Lawrence J. Ho-gan, Maryland Republican...
...We're a little tired of the subject ourselves, but one thing needs to be said in the wake of Mr...
...That was in the old NYA days here in Texas...
...I'll be seeking the same goals that Mendel did...
...It was probably one of the richest birthday parties in the nation's history...
...as an attempt to undercut the liberal Democrats by enhancing conservative Connally's prestige or, alternately, to undermine the conservative Democrats by removing Connally from active party politics...
...I decry bombing innocent civilians, but there is no impediment to our destroying the docks and harbor of Haiphong...
...Nixon, by the most generous count, held seventeen...
...The January 4 production—which the President promises to repeat in the future^—was just show biz, and pretty tedious show biz at that...
...We'd like to see the weekly press conference become part of the White House routine again, if only because it might provide the President with a rare opportunity to relax...
...And his prescription for ending the war is this: "We should move and destroy everything—everything that is in the hands of the enemy...
...William R. Anderson is no big-city dove...
...One of their colleagues spoke out on a matter of principle from which he could derive no conceivable political advantage— which threatened, in fact, to destroy his political career...
...The draft will not end," Hebert assured reporters on succeeding to the chairmanship, and he will be in a position to make his prediction come true...
...I cannot see why a member of this House would visit two convicts in a Federal prison," said Representative John J. Rooney, New York Democrat...
...A reporter present wondered whether Mr...
...The conventional press conference is by no means a perfect institution...
...The President's press conference in December was the first he had held in nineteen weeks...
...He would like to see the candidate selected by consensus of "those of us sufficiently mature in politics" in order to avoid "fratricidal warfare" and waste...
...There is nothing puzzling at all about Representative F. Edward He-bert, the sixty-nine year old Louisiana Democrat who has just succeeded the late L. Mendel Rivers as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee...
...If proceeding on that course involves political risks, that is the course I'll have to take...
...He represents a "safe" district and has served on the Committee for twenty-seven years—longer than any other member...
...An open adjudication of the allegations against the feerrigan brothers has been my prime concern in this matter from the beginning...
...Small wonder his colleagues in the House were puzzled...
...He told the House on December 9: "The war—so appalling and tragic, so revolting and destructive—has forced Fathers Daniel and Philip Berrigan to climax a lifetime of service which includes in both instances service to the armed forces of the United States, a lifetime of love and brotherhood, a lifetime of gentle persuasion against poverty and oppression, to commit the dramatic, illegal act of destroying draft records, a step which we, the members of the House, cannot condone...
...Members of the House scrambled for the microphones even before Anderson had finished to defend J. Edgar Hoover's good name...
...The place to air such allegations, Anderson said, was in the courts of law, not in an FBI appropriations hearing...
...He came across their writings while trying to educate himself about the Vietnam war, and he has visited them in the Federal penitentiary at Danbury, Connecticut...
...Among those goals is the perpetuation of Selective Service, the appropriation of ever-higher budgets for the Pentagon, and the pursuit of "victory" in Vietnam...
...See "The Congressional Jury that Convicted Itself" by Thomas R. Harkin in the October, 1970, issue of The Progressive...
...Hebert automatically assumed his important chairmanship because of seniority...
...Knowing the Berrigan brothers and being reasonably well acquainted with their career as priests, theologians, scholars, and their dedication to Christian principles, and having read much of their writings, I found it impossible to believe that Mr...
...Franklin D. Roosevelt held 150 press conferences during his first two years in office...
...Johnson had anything specific in mind—a Cabinet post, perhaps, or even a place on some future national Democratic ticket...
...Hubert H. Humphrey, whose idea of introducing "the politics of joy" in to the 1968 Presidential campaign never quite got off the gound, has come up with another happy thought for 1972...
...Any one of the network's nightly talk show hosts could have asked sharper questions than the cream puffs served up by the network commentators in their hour of jolly bonhomie...
...A friend told us—warned us, perhaps—on New Year's Eve that he has highly resolved to read no commentary on President Nixon's press conferences or the lack of same in calendar 1971...
...Anderson was referring to Hoover's charge before a Senate subcommittee that the Berrigan brothers, the radical priests now serving prison sentences for destroying Selective Service records, were leaders of a revolutionary group planning to destroy Washington utilities and kidnap a high Government official...
...The political commentators had a field day with the Connally appointment...
...It has its share of silly questions, grandstand plays by the correspondents, evasive and deceptive answers by the President...
...At such intervals, press conferences become events of major national significance, and Mr...
...Nixon's televised interview with four network correspondents on January 4: No one should be deceived that these carefully staged performances with hand-picked interrogators—hand-picked by the White House—-are any substitute for the all but vanishing press conference...
...It seems curious that a politician who still likes to refer to himself as a populist should advocate a reversion to the king-making process of selecting Presidential candidates, especially at a time when the entire political process is in serious danger of being totally discredited because of its remoteness from the people...
...Many members of the House of Representatives were puzzled, and some were angered, by a strange episode that took place on the House floor a few weeks ago...
...Nixon's next Vice President...
...The oil men cheered as the President ventured a prediction: Connally, he said, was "a man whose greatest gifts to democratic government are, I think, yet to come...
...Such speculation is good, clean fun in an off year, and keeps the political writers out of the poolrooms...
...The Congressman, as it happens, knows the Berrigan brothers...
...They hardly make that kind any more...
...In Anderson's Bible-belt district in western Tennessee, his defense of two Catholic priests would be enough to put him in political hot water, even if it were not coupled with an attack on the war and the director of the FBI...
...Everybody who is anybody in the oil and gas industry was present in the gymnasium that night to join a jovial celebration of the fifty-first anniversary of Governor John B. Connally's birth...
...Nixon's next Secretary of Defense...
...Hoover's allegations are true...
...Some are predicting that Connally, who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Kennedy Administration, will be Mr...
...Well, Connally is "Nixon's Boy John" now, and President Johnson's prediction is coming true, after a fashion...
...Just looking at Nellie's gown here tonight is proof of how far, Johii, you have come from $12 a month...
...Nixon feels obligated to provide a dazzling "performance...
...I hope that it will lead to a speedy, open, and fair trial on the issues," he said...
...Some of it may even turn out to be valid...
...But he has been thinking hard about the war for the last couple of years, and last summer he was one of two Congressmen who blew the whistle on the infamous "tiger cages" in South Vietnam...
...He doesn't seem to understand that informing is more important than performing...
...When a Federal grand jury handed down an indictment in the case a month later, Anderson expressed satisfaction that the matter had finally been "removed from the trial-by-headline arena" and placed into proper judicial channels...
...I gave you your first job," Johnson told the guest of honor...
...But John Connally's Texas friends—the ones who turned out for his birthday party three years ago—have more immediate and practical concerns: such concerns as the depletion rate and the oil import quota system and all the special privileges on which their wealth and power are based...
...If the Democrats were to follow Humphrey's advice, they would define their party as an ever-shrinking club of tired old men—men who could meet from time to time to hand-pick their candidates and congratulate themselves on being "sufficiently mature...
...The man who ventured this peculiar departure from House custom was Representative William R. Anderson, Tennessee Democrat, who chose to challenge the most sacred cow of them all, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, accusing him of "tactics reminiscent of McCarthyism, using newspaper headlines and scare dramatics rather than the due process of law...
...A few suggest he may be Mr...
...Harry S. Truman held ninety-four, Dwight D. Eisenhower fifty-eight, John F. Kennedy forty-six, and Lyndon B. Johnson fifty...
...But the Congressman told a reporter: "I have two children and I have 'X' number of years to do what little I can to serve their best interests and promote a bright future for the younger generation coming along...
...as a deft move to assure Mr...
...They can happily contemplate the fact that once again one of their own is sitting in the seats of the mighty...
...That was a month before the President announced he would not seek another term...
...That may be where the phrase 'LBJ's Boy John' came from...
...The Word from Washington If the roof had caved in on the Gregory Gymnasium of the University of Texas at Austin on the evening of February 27, 1968, the disaster would have wiped out a sizable contingent of America's richest and most powerful men...
...Nixon of capturing the twenty-six Texas electoral votes in 1972...
...As Secretary of the Treasury, the former Governor will be in a position to bestow his greatest gifts—if not to democracy, at least to the special interests he has served so faithfully since those $12-a-month times...
...If a Democratic front-runner has emerged by the end of this year, Senator Humphrey suggests, the Party should "unite" behind him without bothering to hold primary elections...
...So long as John Connally is on the job in Washington, the roof will not cave in on them...
...They variously described it as a master stroke that would "defuse" the shaky economy as an issue to be exploited by the Democrats...
...The main speaker was Lyndon Baines Johnson, who made it plain to his audience—as if they needed reminding—that Governor Connally was the President's special protege...
...Nobody in the House gets angry about that...
...The military-industrial complex is a part of us, a necessary part," he said...
Vol. 35 • February 1971 • No. 2
