Advise and Consent (22 page)

Chapter 1

On this Monday morning when Seab Cooley is about to begin his last great battle against Bob Leffingwell and all the forces of detriment to the country which the senior Senator from South Carolina firmly believes he represents, the Senate, as on any average morning of any average session, is hard at the committee work which forms so large a part of its activity. In addition to the first meeting of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Leffingwell nomination—promptly dubbed by the press, in customary fashion, “the Anderson subcommittee”—there are gatherings which cover everything from space to the building of a dam in northern Wyoming. Each in its earnest, disputatious and searching way is advancing the public business.

For Bessie Adams, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and such hard-working colleagues as Alec Chabot of Louisiana and Roy Mulholland of Michigan, the morning is centering around progress reports by the Air Force on the desperately slow and slowly desperate attempt to pull ahead of the Russians. What the Senators hear is, as usual, compounded in about equal parts of gain and frustration, and when they emerge later it will be to tell the waiting reporters as little as possible in tones as optimistic as they can manage. Their job, as Bessie often says, is to maintain public hope while riding the hell out of the Defense Department; and her uncharacteristic use of profanity lends her little aphorism an extra impact with her colleagues, who grin and agree and reflect that Bess, as usual, has put her finger on it. This shrewdness, which is characteristic, makes of her that rarity, a woman in the United States Senate who comes as close to achieving parity with her male colleagues as a woman in the Senate ever gets.

Also meeting under the broad wing of Appropriations are the Subcommittee on the Post Office and the Subcommittee on Public Works, both of which Seab would look in on ex officio in his capacity as chairman of the full committee if he were not bound for the Leffingwell hearing. Post Office is hearing testimony by the Postmaster General, a man whose qualifications for running the public mails were decided decisively in the last Presidential campaign when he contributed the surprising sum of $150,000 to the President’s cause. This was a handsome indication of faith and loyalty from one of the nation’s wealthiest hardware manufacturers, and it did not go unnoticed at the White House, where it was presently rewarded with the Post Office Department. Now the maker of sleep-two sofas and friend of Presidents is outlining roseate plans to send airmail to California and other outlying points by intermediate-range ballistic missile, a project which has him starry-eyed, though it leaves the subcommittee somewhat skeptical. Robert Johnson of Connecticut wants to know what arrangements would be made with other countries if such service were expanded beyond the national borders. Would the Russians know, for instance, that an IRBM suddenly crossing the European frontier was on its way to the Moscow Central Post Office, or would they take a more abrupt and intolerant view of the matter? And in turn, how would we know, when the DEW Line reported an incoming greeting from over the pole, that it contained correspondence instead of cobalt? Victor Ennis of California says in his hearty and good-natured way that this is really kind of an absurd objection, Bob, and Marshall Seymour agrees with a little puckish needling of his own; but Senator Johnson, who thinks the Postmaster General’s whole idea is silly, persists deadpan in his line of questioning while the hard-pressed hardware maker sweats and squirms in some discomfort on the witness stand.

Across the hall, in a mood of needling as persistent and sometimes not as good-natured, William H. Hamilton of Oklahoma, living up to his corridor reputation as “the worst spoilsman in the Senate,” is raking the Army Corps of Engineers over the coals in the Subcommittee on Public Works. The subject is the annual rivers-and-harbors and flood-control bills, and Senator Hamilton is receiving staunch aid in his endeavors from George Hines of Oregon, who really ought to be attending the full Foreign Relations Committee to hear Secretary Sheppard testify on foreign aid. But George, who is quite as good a fighter for flood control and rivers-and-harbors as Bill Hamilton, has decided he can’t afford to miss the opportunity to give the Engineers a little hell. In the same spirit dapper, ironically gracious Jack McLaughlin of Georgia has also decided to be on hand, along with busy, bustling little Dick Mclntyre of Idaho and quiet-spoken, steady John H. Baker of Kentucky.

Confronted by these determined and forceful gentlemen, the Corps of Engineers is not in the least dismayed. Serene in the knowledge that they are proprietors of the lobby which is, year in and year out, the most ruthless, the most effective and the most untouchable on Capitol Hill, its high-ranking officers are going through this annual charade with unperturbed suavity. In the comfortable Siamese-twin relationship which exists between the Corps and the Appropriations committees of the two houses, the Engineers know that when they reach to scratch their own backs they will also give solace to some solon, and that when Senator or Congressman in turn relieves his own itch he will in the process ease the Corps of Engineers. In close harmony and perfect accord they will spend the public monies together and both will be happy. When the bills reach the floor it will be found that there are handsome expenditures for Oklahoma, which Bill Hamilton represents; for Oregon, lucky birthplace of George Hines; for Georgia, personal satrapy of stylish Jack McLaughlin; for Idaho, home range not only of Dick Mclntyre but of the Minority Leader as well, which means that it will be especially well remembered; for Kentucky, for which John Baker in his quiet way manages to extract a good many plums; and for the states of various other important people such as the Speaker of the House, the leading figures in his chamber, and the like. This will make everybody happy, not least the Engineers, for of course all these new funds and new projects will require new personnel to administer them, and so the always-swelling empire will continue its steady, inexorable growth. In the practical world of Washington the Corps and the Congress, it might be said, have each other firmly by a tender and important part of the anatomy; and in case either side should ever attempt to get out of line, a little squeeze is all that is necessary to restore a perfect understanding.

While this comfortable unity of view is being worked out in the Subcommittee on Public Works, the Banking and Currency Committee is considering another of its perennial bills to aid small business. Without small business, it sometimes seems, B. and C., as it is familiarly known, might well have closed up shop years ago. This of course has not happened, and today it is present in full strength, headed by Royce Blair of Oregon, whose harshly antagonistic speech to the Portland Kiwanis Club on the Leffingwell nomination has received, just as he knew it would, widespread national publicity. Widespread national publicity always makes Royce feel good, and today he is at his most expansive, beaming out from his big, round, curiously little-boy face and addressing everyone cordially in his full, round, pompously unctuous voice. This does not fool the Secretary of the Treasury, who has seen this smiling aspect before. But the Secretary, who is a stranger to his own office four days out of ten when Congress is in session, so popular a witness has he become, returns smile for smile.

Today he is agreeing with Royce and such other interested colleagues as Julius Welch, Murfee Andrews, and Taylor Ryan—all of whom can scarcely wait for the vote on the Federal Reserve bill this afternoon, so sure is each that he will triumph—that small business is certainly important to the economy, all right. (Sometimes, so various are the subjects upon which he is called to testify, the Secretary wonders if there is anything that isn’t) Agreement is not enough for Royce and his colleagues, however, and they are insisting that the Secretary give his endorsement to a bill to lower interest rates on loans to “certain selected classes of small businessmen.” (“Little teeny-weeny businessmen,” AP suggests to UPI when Royce enunciates this phrase in his rolling way.) The Secretary is not altogether sure he will. In fact, he is in process of deciding that he damned well won’t. This will upset the committee no end, and so in sharp but amicable wrangling they will pass the morning and will eventually go ahead and pass the bill through the Senate just as they have intended all along. The Secretary will advise the President to veto it, the President, who has as kind a regard for the little teeny-weeny businessman as the next one, will disregard the advice, and a week after the bill becomes law Senator Blair and the Secretary will be out at Burning Tree playing golf together in the greatest of harmony with all differences forgotten until the next time.

The Finance Committee, as he is rather wearily aware, is also waiting to hear from the Secretary. Finance Committee wants to amend the Social Security Act, and of course the Secretary is an expert on that, too; and so presently, after the committee has spent most of the morning on minor witnesses from the Social Security Administration, the Secretary will be along, and they will have him for a few minutes that will reaffirm their proprietary interest in him, too.

At the same time members of the Committee on the District of Columbia are considering a bill to build another bridge over the Potomac. There is always a bill to build another bridge over the Potomac, and the number of times these ephemeral spans have been launched across drawing boards and paraded before Congress and displayed to usually irate and always loudly outspoken citizens’ organizations is almost beyond calculation. But the District Committee, charged under the Constitution with the management of the affairs of the voteless Federal City, patiently goes through the motions whenever required. This morning, with Magnus Hollingsworth of Wisconsin in the chair in his usual small, shrewd, purse-lipped fashion, it is giving the matter its usual intensive consideration. Just to show how seriously they take their duties and how important it all really is, such freshmen as bluffly vapid George Carroll Townsend of Maryland and worried Henry Lytle of Missouri are being as solemn as all get out about it, but Magnus Hollingsworth, as befits a veteran on the committee, is surreptitiously reading the funnies under the table edge and isn’t paying attention at all.
He
knows that bridge isn’t going to be built.

The Committee on Government Operations under Rhett Jackson of North Carolina is conducting one of its expeditions through the government procurement agencies, turning up as usual small, dark, loudly injured men from New York and Chicago who have been busily fleecing their country out of millions of dollars with the willing and well-paid compliance of several government inspectors who now wish they had taken up some other line of work or been more honest about the one they did decide to follow. It is too late now, however, and the committee is having a field day with their misjudgments. Senator Jackson, lean, hawk-featured and astute, is making the most of it, ably aided and assisted by such colleagues as razor-tongued Leif Erickson of Minnesota and patient, well-informed Lloyd B. Cavanaugh of Rhode Island. Right now all three of these gentlemen are bearing down on an inspector for the Army Quartermaster Corps, and the press is looking forward to some substantial sensations by noon.

Wool quotas, the Taylor Grazing Act, and the possibility of building a dam on the Big Horn are occupying the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, and Fred Van Ackerman, forgetting for the time being his well-publicized campaign for a new approach to the Russians, is acting like the junior Senator from Wyoming for a change. He is opposed to both the proposed changes in the Grazing Act, violently unpopular among the big sheepmen in the state, and to the suggestion for the Big Horn dam. He is saying so at fiery length, treating the committee to a sample of his oratory almost as flamboyant as that with which he urged negotiations with Russia at a great rally of the Committee on Making Further Offers for a Russian Truce (COMFORT) at Madison Square Garden a couple of nights ago. Stanley Danta, sitting in for the chairman, is watching this performance with a kindly but appraising air and reflecting that it is probably pretty effective back home in Wyoming. He knows how effective it was at the COMFORT rally, for few recent public addresses have received quite such widespread national coverage as the dynamic young Senator’s challenge to the Administration to fish or cut bait on this issue of imperative import to America and the world. With a fine careless rapture Senator Van Ackerman had cried, “Some say it means crawling to Moscow. I say I had rather crawl to Moscow than perish under a bomb!” Approximately 20,000 of his fellow Americans who felt the same way had made the rafters ring. Fred at the moment is applying the same free-swinging technique to the Taylor Grazing Act, and only the quietly deflating questions of Senator Danta—for some reason no other member of the committee is present, though Fred called them all last night to let them know that he would be testifying—are keeping the proceedings on a reasonably even keel.

In Judiciary Committee, on the other hand, attendance is high, for there, under the smooth chairmanship of glib Rob Cunningham of Arizona, the issue this morning is a bill to provide certain legal encouragements to defense-plant construction; and this is a subject on which Senators and certain influential constituents alike have powerful views. Equally high is the attendance in the Agriculture Committee, where the issue is the disposal of farm surpluses. The issue in Agriculture is almost always farm surpluses in one form or another, and all hearings on the subject have approximately the same features: the stern denunciation of the Secretary of Agriculture by the chairman and most of the committee, his amiable but stubbornly unyielding rejoinders, and finally the bitter climax of threats of retaliation and impeachment. The Secretary, who has gone through all this on both sides of the Capitol twenty times before, is not noticeably impressed by it today, and so the committee’s annoyance is rising somewhat more rapidly than usual. The press is now betting that the threats of impeachment will begin somewhere around 11 a.m. instead of at noon as they usually do. This will give them the usual story on the subject, and later on in the chamber members of the committee will make their usual indignant speeches; and nothing will be done to the Secretary, nor will the Congress offer any sensible alternative of its own, nor will the earth stop giving its yields in ever greater amounts, nor will anything be done to solve the paradox of history’s greatest producer of food, unable to find a use for its surpluses in a world where people starve.