Obnoxious & Objectionable

Short of the big ones--Cabinet jobs, ambassadorships, Supreme Court seats--the President of the U.S. has no finer guerdons to bestow than those $15,000-a-year salaries that go with federal judgeships and top federal jobs. Harry Truman has often bestowed this largess as such--to cheer a personal friend, to assuage the hurt of a defeated candidate, to grant a political boon. Last week the U.S. Senate, which is also politically minded, brusquely brought it to Harry Truman's attention that such appointments are made only "with the advice and consent of the Senate."

By clubby congressional custom, this meant the advice and consent of the Senator whose home state is involved. Typical was the case of M. Neil Andrews, nominated for a judgeship in Georgia's Northern District. Georgia's Senator Richard Russell complained that he had submitted a nominee of his own and been ignored. "Personally obnoxious and objectionable to me," said Russell, using a ritualistic phrase. The corroborating chorus of noes was deafening.

Shouts & Affronts. The Senate rapidly dealt with three others. Michigan's Homer Ferguson objected to the nomination of a brash, left-winging ex-Congressman named Frank Hook to the Motor Carrier Claims Commission. Hook had run against Ferguson for the Senate in 1948. "The nominee is lacking in capacity," said Ferguson. Down went Hook. Then there was Martin A. Hutchinson, an able Virginia lawyer nominated to the Federal Trade Commission. Hutchinson had run against Senator Harry Byrd in the 1946 primary--Byrd's first opposition in 21 years. Byrd told the Senate that he did not want Hutchinson to be an FTC commissioner; he did not bother to discuss Hutchinson's qualifications. The Senate backed up Byrd 59 to 14.

Last came the nomination of Carroll Switzer to an Iowa judgeship. Switzer was the Democrats' defeated 1948 candidate for governor, and Harry Truman had not consulted Iowa's Senator Guy Gillette about appointing him to the bench. "A personal affront," said Gillette. Senators --who might want the favor returned some day--shouted their support of Gillette, rebuffing Harry Truman for the fourth time in one afternoon.

Deadweights & Mutiny. During the week the ship of state developed other squeaks; Harry Truman was kept busy jettisoning deadweight and trimming ship. He dropped overboard two members of RFC, including the chairman, and nominated three new members (see BUSINESS). And he also had to deal with a mutiny in the Atomic Energy Commission.

General Manager Carroll Wilson, a boyish-looking, scholarly protege of Vannevar Bush and David Lilienthal, marched into the President's office and quit. He had no confidence, he said, in Gordon Dean, the man Truman had just appointed AEC chairman. Wilson said that the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy under Connecticut's Senator Brien Mc-Mahon was trying to become "a super board of directors," and argued that Dean, who was formerly a law partner of McMahon's, had neither the ability nor the inclination to resist political interference.

Wilson got little sympathy from Congress. "I have been criticized as having been too stiff and formal in my relations with Congress," said Wilson. "I have been stiff and formal. That is the way I think a program like this should be run." The President thanked him for his good work in the past, but did not urge him to stay.

The Fifth Man. At week's end, Truman tried a new $15,000-a-year appointment on the Senate. He named Dr. T. Keith Glennan, 44, president of Cleveland's Case Institute of Technology, to fill a vacancy on the five-man AEC. A Yale-trained electrical engineer who once worked in Hollywood as studio manager for Paramount and Sam Goldwyn, Glennan was director of the Navy's underwater sound lab at New London, Conn, during World War II. He had no special interest in or knowledge of atomic energy ("My interests have been in administration and in people," says Glennan), but Harry Truman hoped that Glennan would not be "personally obnoxious" to any of the "courtesy"-minded Senate.

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