The Crumbling Morseberger

When balding, bespectacled Richard Lewis Neuberger hove into the U.S. Senate as Oregon's junior Senator in 1955, a new team was born. Capitol Hill sensed that Democrat Neuberger and Republican -turned -Independent -turned -Democrat Senator Wayne Morse were as ideologically alike as two juicy Oregon apples, quickly dubbed the pair "Morseberger." Last week there were signs that the Morseberger was beginning to crumble. Both Senators denied reports that they were feuding. But in the same breath both admitted that they were more and more seeing eye to eye on less and less.

During the last session of Congress, the two Oregonians Morsebergered such routine Northwest Democratic proposals as the federal high dam in Hells Canyon (aye) and such routine liberal stands as Scott McLeod's appointment as Ambassador to Ireland (nay). But on larger issues they were almost totally at issue. Neuberger favored the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Administration's budget requests, the civil rights bill. Fiery Wayne Morse opposed them all, testily told the folks back home that "Dick Neuberger was one of the Democratic liberals sucked in on the civil rights bill." Through the entire session, Neuberger more often than not sided with the Administration and Morse more often than not opposed it.

Part of the widening gap between the two was due to Neuberger's increasing self-assurance; in his third session the junior Senator no longer felt obliged to listen to his onetime University of Oregon law professor. He spoke up in class without regard for what Teacher thought, padded the Congressional Record with his thoughts on subjects ranging from Asian flu to the Klamath Indians. After Morse attacked Neuberger's position on civil rights, the junior Senator infuriated the senior Senator by getting Illinois' philosophizing -Senator Paul Douglas to write letters to Oregonians extolling Neuberger, the great liberal. "A snide attack on me," snapped Morse at one point. Neuberger admitted sadly that he was "disappointed" in Senator Morse.

Wayne Morse has been assuring troubled Oregon Democrats that he will "be out there on the campaign trail battling for Dick Neuberger" in 1960, but he has added that "we are not Siamese twins." The operation was painful, and complications are setting in.

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