THE CONGRESS: Elbow Grease

Last week the members of the Watkins committee, with one defection, stood alone in the active Senate fight for censure of Senator Joe McCarthy. They were also alone in defending their personal honor against the attacks of Joe and his cohorts. The rest of the Senate sat silent—or in the case of several top Republican leaders, worked for a backroom deal that would save McCarthy.

McCarthy began the week by summoning Utah’s Arthur Watkins to appear before the Permanent Investigating Subcommittee. (Among the handful of spectators in the hearing room were Five-Percenter John Maragon. a strong McCarthyite, and Professional Demagogue from Army Secretary Robert Stevens, naming 30 officers involved in the Peress case. Scoffed Joe: “I am afraid we are wasting the time of the Senate if that is all the information you have.” Said Watkins: “I do not believe you could ever be satisfied unless you can find somebody that ought to be shot or hung.”

In the Senate itself that morning, Indiana’s G.O.P. Senator William Jenner took the floor to defend McCarthy. Pretending that the six members of the Watkins committee were exclusively responsible for the charges against Joe, Jenner cried in injured tones: “Now 96 Senators from all 48 states are obliged to take time they should spend in their constituencies to come here and decide the issue raised by a few members.” He neglected to add that 75 Senators—including Jenner—had voted to make the Watkins committee the Senate’s agent in considering charges against McCarthy.

Re-election Problems. Bill Jenner was in rare form. He quoted John Stuart Mill, Edmund Burke and Martin Dies. He roared in a voice obviously intended to be heard all the way back in Indiana. He stomped his pointed shoes. He held out his hands and quivered his fingertips. The Watkins committee, he shouted, came close “to recommending the punishment of a member of this body for fighting an alien conspiracy to destroy our nation.”

But attention was distracted from Jenner’s floor show by a note sent to the press gallery by South Dakota’s Republican Senator Francis Case, a Watkins committee member. Case (who is up for re-election in 1956 in a state where McCarthy has powerful political friends) had suddenly changed his mind about censuring Joe for abusing Brigadier General Ralph Zwicker. Case said he had just learned that the Army had honorably discharged Irving Peress the day after receiving a warning letter from McCarthy. Case’s switch came despite the fact that the Peress chronology had been public knowledge for months (TIME, March 8). And Case himself had written the part of the censure resolution that referred to treatment of Zwicker.

That afternoon North Carolina’s Democratic Senator Samuel Ervin, another member of the censure committee, arose to speak. He recalled that McCarthy had accused him of bias and, as usual, had quoted out of context from newspaper clippings to prove the charge. This habit of Joe’s reminded Ervin of the North Carolina preacher who about 75 years ago deplored the local women’s custom of wearing their hair in topknots. One Sunday he preached a sermon on the text: “Top (K)Not Come Down.” At the end an irate woman—with a topknot—protested that no such text could be found in the Bible. Whereupon the preacher opened the Scriptures to Matthew 24:17 and read: “Let him which is on the house top not come down to take any thing out of his house.”

Moral or Mental. Far from being biased, said Ervin, he “gave Senator McCarthy the benefit of all doubts, both reasonable and unreasonable.” Then Ervin moved to another subject: the McCarthy speech (released to the press but never delivered on the Senate floor) calling the Watkins committee the “unwitting handmaiden” of the Communist Party. Said Ervin: “First, if Senator McCarthy made these fantastic and foul accusations against the members of the Select Committee without believing them to be true, he attempted to assassinate the character of these Senators, and ought to be expelled from membership in the Senate for moral incapacity. Second, if Senator McCarthy made these fantastic and foul accusations against the six Senators who served on the Select Committee in the honest belief that they were true, then Senator McCarthy was suffering from mental delusions of gigantic proportions, and ought to be expelled from the Senate for mental incapacity.”

Cowardice? The next day Arthur Watkins replied to Joe’s weekend charges of “cowardice.” While Watkins spoke, McCarthy was ostentatious in his absence. Said Watkins, apologizing for his low voice: “If I attempted to make it possible for everyone present to hear me, I would have to shout, and then it might be thought that I was angry. I should like to be dispassionate in this discussion, even though it involves my own honor.”

Since McCarthy had brought up the subject of cowardice, said Watkins, perhaps the Senate should consider Joe’s own behavior. Items:

¶J McCarthy had refused to face the Gillette-Hennings subcommittee, which investigated him in 1951-52. He would not be placed under oath or subjected to examination. Instead, he charged the committee members with “dishonesty”—in letters, said Watkins, issued “from the safety of his office.”

¶ In a press statement, before the Senate censure debate began, McCarthy called the whole affair a “lynch bee.” Again, said Watkins, “I call attention to the fact that he did not come into the Senate to do that.”

¶ Joe released his “handmaiden” speech to the press, but cited lack of time as his reason for not making it to the Senate. “There was a shortage of speakers,” said Watkins. “At one stage it seemed that we were about ready for a vote on the first amendment because there were no speakers; yet here was a man who told the press he was going to make a speech … I cannot say that he was afraid to face us, but the facts are there, and we can take notice of them.”

“In our own presence,” said Arthur Watkins, “here in the Senate, we have seen another example of the Senator’s hit-and-run attack. Senators have seen what I have called to their attention, an attack on their representative, their agent. They have seen an attack made on that agent’s courage and intelligence. They have heard the junior Senator from Wisconsin say that I am both stupid and a coward.

“It must be remembered,” Watkins continued, “that the members of the Select Committee were practically drafted for the job, and, so far as I am concerned, it was the most unpleasant task I have ever had to perform in all my public life. I am asking my colleagues: What are you—and you—and you—going to do about it?”

Watkins jabbed his finger at G.O.P. Senators. They remained silent in their places—at least those of them who were not out in the back room trying to cook up a deal to let Joe off. But later Watkins’ Utah colleague, Republican Senator Wallace Bennett, a former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, announced that he would propose additional contempt action against McCarthy for abusing the Watkins committee.

Catch, Anyone?When Watkins finished, Idaho’s Republican Senator Herman Welker, who seems to be McCarthy’s floor manager, began a speech that lasted through most of the next day. Trying to prove his thesis that other Senators have acted just as badly as McCarthy, Welker gave a fascinating account of the aftermath to a 1951 radio recording session in which Senators debated Far Eastern problems. Said Welker: “The Senator from Indiana [Republican Homer Capehart] threw out of the broadcasting studio into my arms the Senator from Minnesota [Democrat Hubert Humphrey], a friend of mine. The Senator from New York [Democrat Herbert Lehman] then decided to get into the fray, on the back of the Senator from Indiana. He was, in turn, thrown back into the studio. The late Senator Taft—I never knew he came from the West—bulldoggedthe Senator from New York, took him around the head and led him out; and soon thereafter, peace and quiet prevailed.”

Welker apparently had forgotten that in 1951, a few hours after the scuffle actually took place, he had told a reporter that accounts of the row were exaggerated, that in reality it had been “a cream-puff affair.”

All week long, Republican Senate leaders worked behind Arthur Watkins’ back toward a “compromise” agreement on McCarthy’s censure. They made a series of telephone calls to Joe, trying to get him to 1) apologize to New Jersey’s G.O.P. Senator Robert Hendrickson for the famed “without brains or guts” remark, and 2) stay quiet and keep out of trouble for awhile. The matter of apology became moot when Hendrickson said on the Senate floor that no apology would change his mind about Joe; that it was not the affront to him but the affront to the Senate that mattered. But, McCarthy finally agreed to remain silent for 24 hours. A few minutes later he called back and asked: “How about if I stay quiet for twelve hours instead?”

The Senate week came to an end shortly after word was received that Joe was in the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He had, it was said, banged his right elbow against a glass-top table while shaking hands with an enthusiastic admirer when he was back in Wisconsin for the weekend. Visitors to the sick room reported that Joe’s illness made him unable to converse satisfactorily about the censure movement (the congressional doctor reported that McCarthy “could possibly” have an infection).

Revolving Door. After a great deal of rushing about and whispering, Majority Leader Knowland made a motion for a ten-day adjournment to give McCarthy time enough to recover. Some Democrats protested that the long delay was not necessary; they viewed it as a trick to delay censure action until the Democratic 84th Congress takes over. Oregon’s Wayne Morse told how he had made nine speeches in 1951 with his broken jaw still wired. New York’s Lehman told how he had campaigned with a fractured leg. Finally, however, Illinois’ Republican Senator Everett Dirksen spoke up.

Said Dirksen: “We could send to Joe McCarthy a note, this afternoon, in which we could say to him, ‘Joe, we are going to have the Senate take a recess from day to day; we are going to be here to catch you the minute the revolving door of that hospital lets you out into the world.’ That would be a healing sentiment, would it not, Mr. President?

“How amazing it is, Mr. President,” Dirksen continued, “that when a man lies in pain in a hospital, to send him a message at once so cynical and so brutal. Where are the common charities, after all, Mr. President? How bad must be the evil acids eating at the soul if finally they stir in such a way our passions and our tempers . . . Mr. President, there is fever and there is pain. The least we could do in an effort to be charitable would be to recess the Senate, in consonance with the suggestions made by eminent medical authority. When Senator McCarthy is ready, he will be back here to defend himself, with his chin up.”

Posies. Some ten feet away from Dirksen, drinking it all in, was North Dakota’s Non-Partisan League Senator William Langer. Dirksen’s speech, said Langer, “brought tears to my eyes. I wondered if we should not include in the resolution a provision for sending flowers to Senator McCarthy, and whether we should not debate the kind of flowers which should be sent—whether they be forget-me-nots, chrysanthemums or roses.”

Everett Dirksen apparently could not decide if Langer was being facetious. He finally decided to play the North Dakotan straight, and as always, Dirksen was ready with a flowery reply. Said he: “The only thing I know in the rulebook about flowers is that there is in the general rules appertaining to the Senate a provision that flowers must not be brought into the Senate Chamber.” It would be best, he thought, for individual Senators to follow their consciences about sending bouquets to Joe. But, he added, “Any Senator is at liberty to send flowers … if the sweet and gentle spirit moves him.”

When the ten-day adjournment was finally voted, the pro-McCarthy Republican Senators could scarcely conceal their delight. Ev Dirksen unintentionally explained why. Leaving the floor, he was asked by newsmen if some sort of filibuster was in prospect. Dirksen seemed shocked. “Goodness me, no,” he replied. “Nothing could be further from the fact, that I’m trying to prevent a vote. Time is always a great healer, its soothing effect brings peace of mind.” Then he paused, and added: “I don’t know whether a vote can be reached or not.”