A Vote for Moderation

The U.S. Senate is a cave of winds redecorated as a 19th century gentlemen's club. No matter what wrenching changes the nation has undergone, the Senate retains its lacquered snuffboxes. Among the more insistent traditions has been the conservative leadership of the Republican Party. In the past 20 years, the post has been held by such stalwarts of the right as Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry, Ohio's Robert A. Taft and California's William F. Knowland.

Everett Dirksen, did not, of course, quite fit the mold. He took many diverse positions in his long career. Last week the postwar pattern of conservatism was all but broken. The Senate's 43 Republicans gathered beneath the ornate crystal chandeliers of the G.O.P. Conference Room to elect Dirksen's successor as minority leader. They chose Pennsylvania's Senator Hugh Scott, 68, a moderate liberal of the Eastern Establishment. Then, three hours later, the same band of G.O.P. Senators who accomplished that feat combined to give Scott's old job as assistant minority leader to Michigan's Robert Griffin, 45, a moderate only slightly to the right of Scott.

Double Bugaboo. Thus in one day the ideological furniture on the minority side was considerably rearranged. Both Scott and Griffin represent industrial states with large labor, urban, black and ethnic constituencies. Neither, of course, is anything like a social radical, and both have voted often enough for conservative causes. Scott and Griffin supported the President on the ABM. Last year Griffin led the Senate fight against Abe Fortas' appointment as Chief Justice. Both Senators have generally subscribed to the President's Viet Nam policies, although Scott has been anxious for accelerated troop withdrawals. Both Scott and Griffin are liberal on civil rights. Last June, Scott attacked the Administration's positions on voting rights and school desegregation guidelines. During the 90th Congress, he voted less than half the time with the conservative Senate coalition. Scott's Republicanism is ecumenical. "There is room enough within the party for traditional conservatives, progressives, moderates and liberals," he says.

Both are skilled political operators --which partly accounts for their success last week. Most of the Senate's conservative G.O.P. was aligned behind Dirksen's son-in-law, Howard Baker of Tennessee. Working against the 43-year-old Baker, however--even among such conservatives as Idaho's Leonard Jordan, Utah's Wallace Bennett and North Dakota's Milton Young--was the senatorial tradition of seniority.

Scott, who served as G.O.P. national chairman from 1948 to 1949, had been in Congress since 1941--except for two years after he lost an election--and in the Senate since 1959. Baker came to the Hill only in 1967, after he was elected Senator. Another element favoring Scott was the fact that his elevation would leave open the whip's post, which was coveted by several of his colleagues. "I got hit," said Baker afterward, "by a double bugaboo--the seniority system and the proliferation of whip candidates." Scott won by 24 to 19--the precise vote he had predicted.

No Docility. The importance of the Scott-Griffin victories was that they demonstrated a new cohesion among G.O.P. liberals and moderates. After Scott's election, his supporters gathered during a luncheon recess in the office of Ohio's Freshman Senator William Saxbe. There were five candidates for whip: Baker, Griffin, Moderates James Pearson of Kansas and Jack Miller of Iowa, and Texas Conservative John Tower. Miller dropped out, and the 14 moderates and liberals agreed that if either Pearson or Griffin failed early in the balloting, the group would vote en bloc the next time for the one with the higher tally. Thus when Pearson's score sagged on the second of three ballots, all of his supporters switched to Griffin, electing him by 23 to 20 over Baker.

There was much about the outcome of both elections that ought to disturb Richard Nixon, even though he maintained strict neutrality throughout the leadership battle. Contributing to Hugh Scott's victory was the fact that Baker suffered substantially because his young colleagues were disturbed by his unquestioning allegiance to the White House. Scott undoubtedly will lead many Administration fights in the Senate. But he will be anything but docile. In his first vote as minority leader last week, in fact, he sided against Nixon by voting for a plan to broaden the Administration's food-stamp program.

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