Nation: THE ONE WHO WORRIES THEM

Criticism by Republicans of President Kennedy’s tax cut bill was predictable. So was that of such a fiscal conservative as Democrat Harry Byrd. The bill can probably pass over their opposition, but it will need down-the-line support from liberals. And for that reason the man whom White House strategists are most worried about is Tennessee’s Albert Arnold Gore, 55, a liberal member of the Senate Finance Committee whose dislike of the bill may influence other liberals.

A farm boy from Possum Hollow, near Granville, Tenn., Gore worked his way through a state teachers college at Murfreesboro by teaching country school. Later, after taking courses offered by the Y.M.C.A., he got a law degree, decided to enter politics, campaigned with a fiddle that scraped out lively hillbilly tunes, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938, when he was 30. Gore earned a reputation among colleagues as a remarkably diligent worker—in his first year, during a House economy drive, he was the Democrat responsible for the defeat of a Roosevelt bill to add $800 million to federal housing funds.

He Was Bitten. After 14 years in the House, Gore handily won the Senate seat of aging Kenneth McKellar in 1952, soon won choice assignments on the Finance, Foreign Relations and Joint Atomic Energy committees. He was the Senate’s chief sponsor of the 1956 bill creating the interstate highway system, then killed Eisenhower’s plan for bond financing and substituted his own pay-as-you-go tax system. In 1958, he was the first Senator to propose a treaty with Russia banning atmospheric nuclear testing.

Twice, Gore came within hailing distance of the Democratic nomination for Vice President. The first time was in 1956, when Adlai Stevenson was looking for a running mate. Recalls Wife Pauline: “I had been picking vice-presidential bugs off Albert for a year, but when Governor Stevenson announced the nomination was open, I looked at Albert and discovered I had missed one and it already had bitten him.” On the first ballot Gore, with 178 votes, trailed Fellow Tennessean Estes Kefauver and hopeful Jack Kennedy; on the second he saw the handwriting, withdrew, and supported Kefauver, who won. Again in 1960 Gore thought he had a chance, was disappointed when Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson.

He Was Opposed. A meticulously groomed man with a handsome head of silver hair, Gore neither smokes nor drinks, is one of the Senate’s more accomplished speakers and an authority on fiscal policy. His money views were forged under a courthouse maple in Carthage, Tenn., where, as a youth, he talked with then-Representative Cordell Hull about foreign trade, taxation, public debt. At its simplest, Gore’s fiscal philosophy is that the national economy should be stimulated by increased public works, not by tax cutting.

That, of course, is the main reason for Gore’s opposition to the Kennedy tax bill. But his opposition may also stem in part from a Gore political feud with Treasury Secretary Doug Dillon. Gore had twice written to President-elect Kennedy and once spent 2½ hours trying to dissuade him from appointing Republican Dillon. Later Gore explained: “I wasn’t particularly concerned about his being in the Eisenhower Administration. That was his natural habitat. I was concerned as hell that he became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration.” To Gore’s way of thinking, Dillon is the author of a tax bill tailored to benefit corporations and the wealthy. Says Gore of Dillon: “I draw my views from Hull and Jackson and Roosevelt and Truman. His views are from Mellon and Hoover and Wall Street.”

He Was Enraged. Adding to Gore’s unhappiness with the tax bill last week was a seven-page telegram sent by William A. Keel Jr., research director for the Democratic National Committee, to several Tennessee Democratic politicians, suggesting statements they could use in the local press to criticize Gore for his stand against the bill. “Senator Albert Gore is making a most serious mistake in opposing the tax reduction,” said one item. “He should support it and do anything possible to speed its passage. The Senator’s opposition is not only contrary to the best interests of the people of [here the politician was instructed to insert his county name] but to Tennessee and the nation as a whole.” Gore was enraged. Cried he as the hearings got under way: “So far as I know this is the beginning of a purge.” The wire, Gore said, was plainly “an attempt at political intimidation” by members of his own party.

Red-faced Democratic National Committee Chairman John Bailey promptly assured Gore that such a thing would never happen again. Yet the damage obviously had already been done—and if there had ever been a chance that the Administration would win Gore over to the tax cut side, it seemed gone now.