National Affairs: Press Reaction

Los ANGELES TIMES: Petty malice has triumphed. Partisanship in the Senate has not descended to such meanness in our generation.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: The Senate’s action was dangerous . . . disgusting.

SACRAMENTO BEE: The Senate had ample justification for its action.

WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS : The principal argument against Mr. Strauss has been that some Senators do not like him.

ATLANTA JOURNAL: [Strauss] either can’t, or won’t give straight answers to straight questions. He seems a man with little faith in the Senate or the people. Now the Senate has replied, in the name of the people.

OREGON JOURNAL : The President should be allowed to choose his administrative assistants unless his candidate has such deep and fundamental defects of character and ability that his unfitness for any Government service can be demonstrated. If Strauss has such defects, Congress has been a long time in finding it out.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Upon the two Republicans who deserted their party will be visited the deserved condemnation of their countrymen. If their votes had gone the other way, the Admiral would have won confirmation, 48 to 47.

BOSTON HERALD: The rejection of Admiral Strauss’s appointment was an act of ruthless vindictiveness.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: It is possible to be grateful for the able and devoted services of Admiral Strauss and still recognize good motives among his opponents.

MIAMI NEWS: The worst that can be said about him is that he doesn’t win friends and influence people.

NEW YORK POST: One of the less glamorous chapters in U.S. liberal history . . . the anti-Strauss rhetoric of recent weeks may one day haunt a Democratic Administration.

DETROIT FREE PRESS : The affair leaves a bad taste. If it was a setback for President Eisenhower, it also added very little to the prestige of the Senate.

New York Times’s Columnist Arthur Krock: Since many of the reasons given by Senators as outweighing [Strauss’s] extraordinary achievements were captious, plainly contrived, palpably the result of political or personal pressure or vindictive, it is not inconceivable the American people will produce a much larger majority for Strauss than the Senate produced against him.