Back on the Hustings

"It's a department of dirty water, dirty air and dirty looks. I feel sorry for the so-and-so who is going to take my place." So last week said Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Abraham Ribicoff, referring at a lively Washington party to the post he was about to resign. The first Cabinet member to be appointed by Kennedy, Ribicoff was also the first to leave. He was not exactly bitter, but he was glad to be getting back to what he likes best. "I like the challenge of elective office." he told a Connecticut TV audience. "I want to be in the United States Senate. I want a vote as well as a voice." With that, Connecticut's Democratic convention predictably nominated him, and he promised, if elected, to serve out the rest of his days in the Senate.

Least Glamorous. For Abe Ribicoff, service in the Kennedy Administration had not brought much of either a voice or a vote. Ribicoff, an able and savvy politician, was an early Kennedy supporter, and he expected to become Attorney General. Instead, he was given the HEW appointment--after it proved impolitic to hand it to Soapy Williams. Then Ribicoff also got word that a long-discussed post on the Supreme Court was not for him; he disclaimed his candidacy before the first vacancy went to Whizzer White.

Even worse, Ribicoff found himself outside the President's inner circle of confidants. It was the technicians of the Cabinet--McNamara, Dillon, Rusk--who had the President's ear, but they rarely saw fit to question his political judgment. So Abe was reduced to the dull and thankless job of administering a department.

In the Backwaters. Administering HEW turned out to be an excruciating task. HEW contains an unlikely collection of agencies whose activities range all the way from operating a school for the blind to child guidance, from caring for social security to financing cancer research. Ribicoff had responsibility for 110 programs, 75 separate budgets, and the work of 75,000 civil servants. He had voted against creating the post when he was in the House back in 1950; he still thinks the department should be divided into three parts. He was generally rated as a capable, hardworking administrator who got good marks for his complete overhaul of the nation's welfare program. But it was obvious to Ribicoff--and to others--that he was languishing in the backwaters.

Even before Ribicoff strode into HEW's grey concrete headquarters on Independence Avenue, much legislative initiative had been purloined from him. Already, other liberal Democrats had laid the groundwork for the two most important pieces of HEW legislation that would concern him in his 18-month tenure--aid to education and medicare. As it turned out, much of the ill-starred medicare bill was actually written by Congress, with little help from Ribicoff. All he could do was get behind the measures and push them as Administration bills. Yet when the bills ran into trouble, many Democrats pointed a carping finger at him.

They accused him of not pitching in with all the influence of his office to swing crucial votes. They charged that he was skipping around the country making speeches when he should have been influencing Congress on the aid to education bill last year. Of his less than white-hot campaign for medicare, a Democratic member of the House Ways and Means Committee grumped: "If Abe was really for this bill we might pass it."

No Ulcers. After all that, Connecticut --and the Senate--began to look like paradise. At Connecticut's Democratic convention last week, Ribicoff easily beat down a threatened primary fight by Congressman Frank Kowalski in his first step back to Washington. Still standing between Ribicoff and the Senate is Republican Congressman Horace Seely-Brown Jr. But after HEW, Ribicoff is anxious to take on a challenge where politicking counts--and he is a hard man in a campaign. As he retired from HEW and headed for the hustings, he said: "I came into this office without an ulcer and I'm happy to say I'm leaving without one.''

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