The Guardian

THE CONGRESS

Millions remember him mostly from the televised sessions of Democratic National Conventions. He was the hunched-over little hobgoblin who always seemed to be whispering parliamentary advice into the ear of Permanent Chairman Sam Rayburn. He had a big splotchy nose, squinty eyes and a mouth that always made it appear as though he had just eaten a peck of green persimmons. He wore black shoes, black socks, a black suit and a black tie. He was grumpy as all get-out, and he seemed to take a perverse pride in being unpopular.

Yet when he died last week at 85, more than 40 colleagues and President Johnson flew out to his funeral in Elsberry, Mo. Clarence Cannon had been 40 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, was its foremost parliamentarian, and had performed a considerable public service as an Appropriations Committee chairman who spent the taxpayers' money as charily as if it were his own.

The Bloody Ninth. Cannon's career began in 1911 when he gave up his law practice in Troy, Mo., and went to Washington as confidential secretary to House Speaker Champ Clark. With Clark's encouragement, he became a specialist in parliamentary procedure, was made the House Parliamentarian, later wrote the House parliamentary bibles Cannon's Procedure and Cannon's Precedents.

In 1920, Clark, who represented Missouri's "Bloody Ninth" district, was defeated in the Harding landslide. In 1922, Cannon ran for the seat and won. He was re-elected 20 times, and on the day following his last election in 1962, he filed for his 22nd term. In all those years, he stood free of all political commitments by stubbornly refusing to accept campaign contributions of any size or sort.

Targets. In 1941, Cannon became chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and in that capacity he saw himself as the guardian of the nation's wallet. "We've got to keep people from taking more and more money out of the U.S. Treasury," he stormed. "Every day they devise a thousand new ways to do it." To maintain tight control, he made himself a member of every one of his dozen or so subcommittees, so that he could attend their meetings and vote when the occasion arose. Pleas from Presidents to restore money cuts were often ignored; once Cannon deliberately refused to take a telephone call from President Kennedy, who wanted to cajole him into releasing a money bill.

Cannon simply figured that a budget had never been made that could not be cut. To prove it, he spent long nights wearing a black eyeshade, seated behind a gallimaufry of reports, books and papers, studying and slicing. He especially delighted in heckling the military. In an annual spring ritual, he would arise with flailing arms to castigate the Pentagon. Starting with Philip of Macedon's tactics, he would trace the history of warfare through Henry V down to the first and second World Wars. Military men, he protested, were not susceptible to change--especially changes that might save money. "We had a deuce of a time getting them to give up the cavalry," he cried. "They liked to ride those horses."

For all his thriftiness, Cannon could be generous when it came to dealing with his own pet programs for power projects and farm subsidies. When an opponent called him two-faced, Cannon exploded. "My God!" he roared. "If I had another face, don't you think I'd use it?"

"I'm easily the most unpopular man in the Congress," said Clarence Cannon, and occasionally he found it necessary to live up to that billing with his fists. In 1933, he and Missouri's Democratic Representative Milton Romjue tangled and had to be pulled apart. Nineteen years ago, Cannon and New York Republican John Taber had a scuffle; Taber got a cut lip. Six years later, he had a fight with California Republican John Phillips. And on one occasion there was a big set-to with Tennessee's Democratic Senator Kenneth McKellar, who nearly gaveled Cannon on the skull, while Cannon took after the Senator with a cane.

New Man. Although his colleagues did not like Cannon, they will surely miss him; he was by way of being a House institution, and he was loyal and dedicated. Succeeding him as chairman of the Appropriations Committee is a considerably less controversial man: Texas' rangy, easygoing Democratic Congressman George H. Mahon, 63, who was first elected to the House in 1934. Methodist lay leader, attorney, teacher and farmer, Mahon has made a specialty of military appropriations. At Mahon's accession to the Appropriations chair, there was an almost automatic assumption that he would cooperate with the spending programs of his old friend and fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson. But that is not necessarily so: in fact, Mahon is almost as thrifty as Cannon, still carries an old-fashioned black change purse from which he reluctantly pulls out nickels and dimes for his personal spending.

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