WASHINGTON CALLING
Washington Calling... WASHINGTON, at the moment, is at loose ends, waiting, Micawber-like, for something—or somebody—to turn up. A curious uneasiness seems to pervade all levels of the Government....
...All this has resulted in a distinct cooling-off toward the White Home on the part of such militant organizations as the CIO and its offspring, the PAC...
...The Republicans are badly split themselves among reactionaries, middle-of-the-roaders, sad progressives, and there isn't the slightest semblance of unity or program...
...Thus, two of the Senators most enthusiastically touted by publications like PM only a couple of years ago, are Joe Ball of Minnesota and William Fulbright of Arkansas, both of whom have now lined up solidly with the reactionary forces in Congress...
...They have even less confidence in the Republican Party—which Hannighen, Shenanigan & Company know all too well—and they have been too busy dynamiting every incipient third party movement in the country to provide themselves with that type of bargaining povier...
...Fulbright, by the way, is being mentioned for the presidency of Columbia University, and would make an ideal successor for Nicholas ("Miraculous") Butler...
...The President's snap statements and off-hand judgments often dismay the members of his own inner council and have made it difficult for his lieutenants in Congress to lead effectively...
...The Florida Democrat was absent for the two must urgent measures on the CIO-PAC program—the Kilgore Bill and the Full Employment Bill—and nobody in Washington knows at this writing when he may turn up in the Senate again...
...THE MOOD OF CONGRESS BLAME for the present confusion and frustration in Washington does not rest with the Administration alone—by any means...
...Other Senators have been a distinct flop to liberals who were led to believe, during those unbelievable war years, that internationalism and liberalism were synonymous...
...Progressives were dismayed by the readiness with which even the sponsors of the Full Employment Bill surrendered on amendments which had been beaten down in Committee...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., of Wisconsin, who rallied lagging votes to make the 26-week coverage provision mandatory on the states, after Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky seemed to have lost that fight...
...But there was great hope that he would play a fighting part on economic legislation...
...The New Republic summed up the final moments of the fight best when it reported: "The hero of the final floor fight to get even this much protection for industrial veterans was Progressive Sen...
...The difficulty in Congress is not only the numerical dominance of Tory-minded Senators and Representatives, but the lack of drive, determination, and staying pvwer on the part of liberal Democrats...
...The process, of course, has hardly approached the status of a break, partly because the boys have no place to go...
...Or take the base of the Kilgore Bill for liberalized unemployment compensation, which staggered through the Senate in greatly emaciated form...
...Basically most of the criticism of the Truman Administration —and it is growing steadily—shakes down to these two complaints: 1) There is no over-all policy or direction, and 2) There is no unified, coordinated administrative control...
...However, Pepper decided to embark on a barnstorming junket of Europe just when the Senate was lining up for a basic showdown...
...Too many top officials don't know half the time what's expected of them, either in the way of policy or administrative responsibility...
...Perhaps the best example is Sen...
...His eagerness to please almost everyone more often than not piays into the hands of the conservatives., since the Truman technique on several critical issues has been to please the liberals by his words and appease the conservatives of both parties by inaction...
...THE GOP MISSES A MAJOR BET THE wrangling and drifting in Democratic ranks gives the Republican minority a golden opportunity to make political hay, but the GOP leaders are wrangling and drifting themselves and are letting a potential harvest rot in the field...
...Pepper, of course, is of no use to the liberal cause on issues of race discrimination because of his Southern constituency...
...The only hope of preventing passage is the possibility that the present uproar over labor may subside before Sen...
...There is a feeling, at times, that there is no hand at the wheel, that Mr...
...The present Congress is dominated by reactionaries, Democrats and Republicans alike, and there is little prospect that any basic, far-reaching progressive legislation can ride through both houses without being whittled down to much more than a pious preamble...
...WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN SOME of the lawmakers on whom organizations like the CIO and the PAC rely most heavily to lead the fight for progressive legislation have been conspicuous by their absence when the chips were down...
...One comparative newcomer to the Senate—a hard-hitting progressive— told this correspondent that the temper of both houses of Congress was so anti-labor at the moment that the violently anti-union Ball-Burton-Hatch Bill (B2H1) would pass by overwhelming majorities if it were reported out of the committee now...
...And the lines of responsibility within the White House itself often baffle the most patient unraveler...
...Truman, for all his good intentions, is given too much to drinking in the scenery and not enough to studying road-maps and the road...
...Claude Pepper, Florida Democrat, on whom the CIO-PAC leadership lavishes so much favorable publicity...
...James E. Murray's Committee on Education and Labor completes extensive hearings on the measure...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 43
