Head Winds

Not in many a moon had Senate Republicans had such a marvelous time. All they had to do was sit back to enjoy -and heckle -the spectacle of Democrats embroiled in a messy and embarrassing intraparty wrangle.

The entertainment was a filibuster, staged not by Deep Southerners -the most frequent filibusterers of recent years -but by liberal Democrats, notably Oregon's Wayne Morse and Maurine Neuberger, Tennessee's Estes Kefauver and Albert Gore, Texas' Ralph Yarborough. Some of them, over the years, had conspicuously denounced Southern filibusters against civil rights measures. Ex-Republican Morse (he quit the G.O.P. in the midst of the 1952 campaign) once called filibustering a "disgraceful and contemptible procedure," and has been one of the Senate's most vociferous advocates of rule changes to shut off filibusters, even though in 1953 he set a senatorial wind record with a speech lasting 22 hours and 26 minutes.

"Monstrous Giveaway." Morse and his fellow liberals were trying to block an Administration bill to set up a corporation to develop and operate communications systems that utilize space satellites. As the bill emerged from the Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, 50% of the stock would be sold to the public and 50% to companies. The corporation would in effect operate as a monopoly, but the public would be safeguarded against excessive rates by the Federal Communications Commission's rate-setting authority.

The bill had plenty of support in Washington. The President was for it, defended it once again at his midweek press conference. Brother Bobby called it "one of the most important pieces of legislation offered by this Administration." The Senate committee voted it out unanimously. A similar bill passed the House in May by a lopsided 354 to 9. In the face of all this backing, it was hard to tell just what the filibustering liberals were distressed about. Senator Kefauver called the bill a "monstrous giveaway." Some objectors voiced fears that the satellite corporation would be dominated by already huge American Telephone & Telegraph Co., sponsor of Telstar -although the bill specifies that no private firm could elect more than three of the new corporation's 15 directors.

Silent Filibuster. As a sometime Senate talk champion, Oregon's Morse fittingly started the filibuster off fortnight ago, getting the floor and holding it for two rambling days. Another day was spent in constant calls for quorum, in which only six minutes were spent on debate. In frantic attempts to muster a quorum on a summer Saturday, Senate Democratic leaders summoned Senators to Washington from as far away as Mackinac Island in Lake Huron, even dispatched a Navy PT boat to fetch three Democrats from the nuclear merchant ship Savannah, cruising off Norfolk, Va. At one point, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, acting as majority leader in the absence of Montana's Mike Mansfield, considered ordering the sergeant at arms to place absent Senators under arrest and bring them to the chamber. The quorum was achieved only at 3 p.m., five hours after the session started, when North Dakota's Republican Senator Milton Young, still wearing his windbreaker, arrived from a Virginia golf course to round out a quorum.

Handy Rhyme. When the Senate met again after the weekend, Senator Maurine Neuberger delivered a 4 1/2-hour speech against the bill -by far the longest speech ever vented by a woman member of the U.S. Senate. She thereby sparked a small argument among veteran Senate galleryites about whether she should be called a filibusterer or a filibustress. Near the end of her speech, Maurine noted that when she taught English back in Oregon she used to quote a little rhyme to her pupils as an example of anticlimax: O dear, what shall I do? I've lost my beau and my lipstick too.

"A man standing here in the Senate as I have stood here today would begin to show a 5 o'clock shadow. I feel that I have lost my lipstick too ..."At that point, Rhode Island's John Pastore, floor manager of the satellite bill, asked whether she would yield so he could speak. Suspecting some parliamentary maneuver, she refused, instead called for a quorum. During the quorum call, Pastore walked over to the lady and whispered: "I was just going to say you are charming and lovely even without lipstick." Next day the battle grew bitter. Oklahoma's Robert Kerr, chairman of the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, hurled at Filibusterer Kefauver one of those windy insults dear to the oracular: "I think it is noble of him that he has volunteered to become the conscience of the Senate. It would be a little bit difficult for him to succeed in providing something for 100 Senators that there has not been too great evidence he has been able to provide for himself." In another outburst of irritation Morse repudiated Majority Leader Mansfield and Whip Humphrey ("They are not my majority leader and my whip"), and all but called gentle, patient Mike Mansfield a liar.

"Amazing & Dissonant." Delighted Republicans found it impossible to hold their silence. Arizona's Barry Goldwater sarcastically wondered aloud whether ex-Republican Morse was considering a switch back to the G.O.P. side of the aisle. Illinois' mellow-voiced Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen arose to "protect" Mansfield against Morse. "Let me pay tribute to the humility and forbearance of the majority leader," said Republican Dirksen. "I know what a humble character he is. He has made an effort to harmonize 100 diverse personalities in the U.S. Senate. O great God, what an amazing and dissonant 100 personalities there are -from the orchards of Oregon and Washington, from the cotton fields of Mississippi, from the cranberry bogs of Massachusetts, from the rockbound coasts of Maine, and from the cornfields of Illinois . ."

And so it went for five days before all present exhausted their voices, their patience and their defiance. The filibuster ended in an inconclusive truce, and the Senate turned to voting on piled-up appropriations bills.

Embarrassing as the filibuster was to the Democratic leaders in the Senate, it was even more embarrassing to President Kennedy. Almost all of his 1962 legislative programs have been defeated or delayed in Congress by a coalition of, as he put it, "nearly all the Republicans and a handful of Democrats." Now Democratic Senate liberals were filibustering against him. This could only be galling to the man who won the presidency on the promise to get the U.S. "moving again" -and was in the humiliating position of having failed even to budge the lopsidedly Democratic U.S. Congress.

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