The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

THIS year’s long congressional session produced a mixed bag of results, as was probably inevitable, given the division of power in Washington, Fundamentally, the President was right in the comment which he made after Congress had crept home in the dawn before Nikita Khrushchev’s arrival. “ I believe,” said Eisenhower, “ we cannot fix responsibility and there cannot be really the kind of leadership of the whole nation that the nation deserves” until both the executive and legislative branches are once more controlled by the same party.

The President, once he began really to use the powers of his office, was able to obtain much that he would not otherwise have wrung from the Democrat-controlled Congress. Above all, by use of some effective footwork of his House leader, Charles Halleck of Indiana, Congress passed a labor bill fairly close to the Administration formula.

On the other hand, much of the substantial amount of approved legislation was the result of Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson’s philosophy that Congress, faced with a Republican President’s veto, had “a choice of doing something or doing nothing, creating laws or creating issues.”

Johnson is right, of course, despite all his critics, in saying that “in a divided government, no one group can have everything exactly as desired.” This is especially true when the huge Democratic majorities, only a few votes shy of two thirds in both Senate and House, are examined realistically. These majorities dwindle considerably when almost all the Southern Democrats join the majority of Republicans on economic issues. From the liberal standpoint, Senator Humphrey saw it as “ too many Kremlin vetoes in the United Nations and too many White House vetoes in Washington.”

The failures this year were apparent: no aid to education, no way out of the farm surplus mess, no reforming of the foreign aid program to meet the Communist economic challenge, no substantial changes in the nation’s military program. The veto-induced compromises were many — among them, a housing bill with a pigmy approach to the crying need for massive urban redevelopment in our great cities and a too-limited expansion of airports and safety programs in the onrushing jet age.

Some of these gaps are likely to be filled next year, when the veto may be less effective because of the proximity of the November election. Even so, there will be many bitter battles before Democratic Chairman Paul Butler’s minimum list of four bills is passed: aid to depressed areas, aid to education, a boost in minimum wages, and a new civil rights bill.

Civil rights

The Senate did loosen somewhat its filibuster rule, and it did extend the life of the Civil Rights Commission. In the final hours of the closing night, it all but formally set a date for a major civil rights debate in mid-February.

The Civil Rights Commission, which the Southerners had earlier accepted as something that would cause them little trouble, turned out to be of major importance in 1959. Its report, made just as Congress was winding up this year, is a landmark, certain to take its place with the report of a somewhat similar group appointed by President Truman more than a decade earlier.

Most remarkable of its recommendations, and one which raised the greatest Southern alarm, was the proposal to appoint special federal registrars to enroll Negro voters where the Southern whites refused to do their duty. Whether or not this would be a wise step is debatable. But there is no doubt that this recommendation, accompanied as it was by a suggestion of three of the six commission members for a constitutional amendment setting minimum nationwide registration standards, will open a new phase in public discussion of the discrimination problem. The emphasis may now shift from school desegregation to finding a means to break down the voting barriers.

Sound money

The issue of fiscal responsibility permeated the entire session. Here the results were mixed. Senate Democrats yielded very little on the President’s request to allow interest rates to rise, but Congress, as it should have done without such a long fuss, raised the gas tax a penny to finance the muchneeded and highly popular highway program.

Senator Johnson claimed that he had pared $1.3 billion from the Eisenhower spending requests. These claims are always suspect, for congressional bookkeeping often has the appearance of the old shell game. But Johnson and House Speaker Rayburn did knuckle under to the President’s attack on the Democrats as spenders. Here Johnson judged the temper of the nation to be as conservative as the President did. And Johnson had the majority in both houses with him.

Labor legislation

As to the Labor Bill, it must be considered in two parts. The part which attempts to curb union corruption and racketeering had overwhelming support and probably will have considerable effect, The hoodlums will have a tougher time acting as unionists, if they are able to do so at all. But in this effort to legislate more democracy in some areas of organized labor, the Congress has opened uncertain gates.

The Labor Bill aims at breaking the stranglehold on union offices, which is so marked in a number of unions. The big question here concerns the sections calling for periodic secret union elections and the guarantees that rank-and-file members can vote, caucus, pass on dues, sue their union, or speak up against its policies. Will these changes bring more democracy in unions where most members are apathetic, or do the changes go so far that the crackpots on the one side or the doctrinaire left on the other can use them to harass the unions? Only experience can answer these questions.

New faces in Congress

The session saw the emergence of some new faces. In the Senate, an outstanding newer member was liberal Republican Javits of New York. A GOP maverick in his House days, Javits has demonstrated skill and intelligence in the Senate, with effective results on many issues.

A man of whom more will be heard is Minnesota’s Eugene McCarthy, a newcomer from the House, where he was a leader of the influential liberal group. This fall, McCarthy is heading a nine-man committee inquiry into unemployment, and the results of this study are awaited with interest. McCarthy is steady, highly intelligent, and has a low boiling point but strong convictions.

In the House, Chester Bowles, the former Connecticut governor and ambassador to India, did what few first-termers do: he created a stir and managed, as a newcomer on the Foreign Affairs Committee, to influence its actions. Another Connecticut newcomer, Thomas J. Dodd, aroused comment in the Senate. Dodd is a puzzle to many in Washington, who respect his intelligence but suspect he will turn out to be a fanatic. In the final hours in the Senate, Dodd crossed swords with Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Fulbright in a way which did not add to Dodd’s stature.

A word, too, should be said about the new GOP leaders, Halleck in the House and Dirksen in the Senate. The change from Martin and Knowland was striking, because the new leaders, whatever may be said of this on-again, off-again liberal Republicanism, played the President’s game to the hilt and very effectively.

Mood of the Capital

The verdict in Washington on the Khrushchev visit to America and the negotiations with the Piesident at Camp David was extremely hopeful. Aside from the skeptics, few doubted that, at the least, the pressures of the Cold War would be mitigated, and therefore the chances of a “hot” war greatly lessened. For the talks opened a new stage of negotiation between East and West, negotiation on almost all levels, including a Summit conference and the Eisenhower visit to the Soviet Union next spring.

A second reaction, and an almost immediate one, was that the outcome would provide a major boost to Republican prospects in 1960. The Khrushchev tour of America made clear beyond doubt the intense public feelings on the issue of peace. Everywhere the Soviet Premier stopped, people seemed to be hoping against hope that somehow the two leaders could settle their differences and assure an end to wars and threats of war. Peace and prosperity will weigh heavily in favor of the Republican presidential nominee. If Vice President Nixon is the nominee, his part in helping to melt the ice will not go unstated by the Republicans or unnoticed by the voters.

This initial rosy glow, for it was just that, to the Khrushchev visit is doubtless due for a certain amount of diminution in the coming months. Yet both the President and the Premier gave every evidence of making a major effort to lessen the intensity of the Cold War, lest someday they both be faced with the hideous alternative of decisions involving nuclear war.

The long view

There are likely to be many other results of the Khrushchev visit to America, perhaps some of them even more important. Certainly no one in Washington — or elsewhere in America, for that matter—could have predicted the day when the head of the Soviet Union would be telling the United States on its own television that this nation had reached “the ceiling of achievement in the capitalist world,” as well as painting a more attractive picture of the Communist utopia than ever came from Marx or Lenin. Only the pressure of events could have brought this about. The simple fact is that Khrushchev came to America because the Soviet Union has been matching the United States in terms of raw power and of nuclear weapons, and because the Premier coupled his missile threats with blackmail over Berlin to force the meeting.

Once in the United States, the Soviet leader fought for and demanded, again and again, a recognition of parity for his nation. He interpreted every slight as a failure to recognize that parity; he took advantage of every opportunity to argue that parity will soon be replaced by Soviet superiority.

Khrushchev succeeded in winning far more respect for the Soviet Union and in dislodging many of the unfavorable stereotypes about his own country. This has all been to the good, though his American trip demonstrated that the mental gulf between the two sides is still vast and difficult to bridge. Especially, it puts a tremendous responsibility on the President and his aides in planning the return trip to Russia to find the right words and acts to dispel the ignorance there about the United States.

The most hopeful people in Washington after Khrushchev departed were those who felt that his visit was a second Sputnik. The first Sputnik, in October, 1957, shattered the American illusion of military superiority. Khrushchev shattered the illusion — or so the Russians hope — that the American system can continue on its present rambling, complacent course and still maintain first place among the economies of the world.

What the Khrushchev visit thus has done, it is hoped in Washington, is to force a great public discussion, all across the nation and at many levels, on the nature of the American society and on its ability to meet the needs of a growing population at home and the obligations of a rich democracy to the millions abroad who remain impoverished. This discussion had already begun after the first Sputnik came into orbit.

One can only hope that the Soviet challenge so often and so directly thrown at the American system will become an important issue in the presidential campaign, that all the would-be candidates of both parties will be compelled to discuss their ideas on how this challenge is to be met.

The Khrushchev visit, it seems, suddenly lit up the night skies over America so that the nation could see itself. The outcome of that selfexamination, including the outcome of the presidential election, is likely to fix the nation’s pattern for a long time to come. If the outcome is good, the Khrushchev visit will have brought results of a different order from those the Premier and his Communist colleagues in the Kremlin anticipate.