known prejudices of certain domestic critics, some of the latter more noted for their ability to raise hell than for their capacity to understand issues.
Contemplating the results of it all, Senator Robert Munson of Michigan will be inclined to think that the first reactions in Washington were the right ones; although, being aware with what imperfect knowledge and imperfect understanding the human race moves toward its mysterious and shrouded destiny, he will conclude honestly that, after all, the decisions taken may have been the right ones, or, at any rate, no worse than any others that might have been adopted.
Right now, however, as he takes his position at the first desk, center aisle, of the Senate and prepares to bow his head to another of the Senate Chaplain’s maundering prayers, the senior Senator from Michigan is not concerned with such philosophic musings as this. Right now the M’Bulu of Mbuele and all the events and people about to be involved with him are among the least important items in the world of Bob Munson. He is aware that the United Nations is engaged in one more controversy about one more would-be African state, and he has followed its general outlines in the press. But he is much more concerned at the moment with the practical problems involved in bringing to conclusion the Senate’s debate on the foreign aid bill, and in pushing his balky and cantankerous colleagues toward an adjournment that is already, in late September, several weeks overdue.
It has not been his idea, Senator Munson reflects with some impatience as the clock reaches noon, the President Pro Tempore bangs his gavel, and the Rev. Carney Birch, Chaplain of the Senate, snuffles into another of his admonitory open letters to the Senate and the Lord, to let the Congressional session run on so long. Certainly he and the Speaker of the House would have liked to wind it up a month ago; only the President has seemed to want it prolonged. Since his return from Geneva and the growing public praise and acclaim which have mounted steadily as the world has begun to realize that it will not be blown up because of his actions, Harley has been displaying what Senator Arly Richardson of Arkansas has referred to with his customary sarcasm as “a great urge to play President.”
Leaving aside the fact that Harley of course is the President and definitely not playing at it, Arly’s casual cloakroom crack nonetheless does express a certain wry attitude on the part of the President’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill. The Executive whom Time magazine now hails respectfully as “the man the Soviets couldn’t scare,” and whom the editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post now pictures with a certain homespun strength that was hardly noticeable in his drawings when Harley first took office, is obviously enjoying his job. Not only that, he is using it to attempt to push through certain reforms which, like most other reforms of the human, haphazard, peculiar, and peculiarly successful American system, are long overdue. Possibly spurred on by Robert A. Leffingwell, who is receiving great press commendation as director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform, the President has already proposed a sweeping overhaul of the Defense Department and its allied missile and space programs, a streamlining of the Foreign Service and the overseas information activities of the government, and even, God save the mark, a new farm program. This last has already caused some revision in the Congressional estimates of what he will do next year when his party holds its national nominating convention, “I really believed he meant it when he said he wouldn’t run again,” Senator Stanley Danta of Connecticut has just been quoted by Newsweek, “but when I saw that new farm bill I knew he’d changed his mind.”
Whether he has or not (and, queried at his press conference a week ago, the President would only chuckle and say, “My, my, you boys must
Contemplating the results of it all, Senator Robert Munson of Michigan will be inclined to think that the first reactions in Washington were the right ones; although, being aware with what imperfect knowledge and imperfect understanding the human race moves toward its mysterious and shrouded destiny, he will conclude honestly that, after all, the decisions taken may have been the right ones, or, at any rate, no worse than any others that might have been adopted.
Right now, however, as he takes his position at the first desk, center aisle, of the Senate and prepares to bow his head to another of the Senate Chaplain’s maundering prayers, the senior Senator from Michigan is not concerned with such philosophic musings as this. Right now the M’Bulu of Mbuele and all the events and people about to be involved with him are among the least important items in the world of Bob Munson. He is aware that the United Nations is engaged in one more controversy about one more would-be African state, and he has followed its general outlines in the press. But he is much more concerned at the moment with the practical problems involved in bringing to conclusion the Senate’s debate on the foreign aid bill, and in pushing his balky and cantankerous colleagues toward an adjournment that is already, in late September, several weeks overdue.
It has not been his idea, Senator Munson reflects with some impatience as the clock reaches noon, the President Pro Tempore bangs his gavel, and the Rev. Carney Birch, Chaplain of the Senate, snuffles into another of his admonitory open letters to the Senate and the Lord, to let the Congressional session run on so long. Certainly he and the Speaker of the House would have liked to wind it up a month ago; only the President has seemed to want it prolonged. Since his return from Geneva and the growing public praise and acclaim which have mounted steadily as the world has begun to realize that it will not be blown up because of his actions, Harley has been displaying what Senator Arly Richardson of Arkansas has referred to with his customary sarcasm as “a great urge to play President.”
Leaving aside the fact that Harley of course is the President and definitely not playing at it, Arly’s casual cloakroom crack nonetheless does express a certain wry attitude on the part of the President’s former colleagues on Capitol Hill. The Executive whom Time magazine now hails respectfully as “the man the Soviets couldn’t scare,” and whom the editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post now pictures with a certain homespun strength that was hardly noticeable in his drawings when Harley first took office, is obviously enjoying his job. Not only that, he is using it to attempt to push through certain reforms which, like most other reforms of the human, haphazard, peculiar, and peculiarly successful American system, are long overdue. Possibly spurred on by Robert A. Leffingwell, who is receiving great press commendation as director of the President’s Commission on Administrative Reform, the President has already proposed a sweeping overhaul of the Defense Department and its allied missile and space programs, a streamlining of the Foreign Service and the overseas information activities of the government, and even, God save the mark, a new farm program. This last has already caused some revision in the Congressional estimates of what he will do next year when his party holds its national nominating convention, “I really believed he meant it when he said he wouldn’t run again,” Senator Stanley Danta of Connecticut has just been quoted by Newsweek, “but when I saw that new farm bill I knew he’d changed his mind.”
Whether he has or not (and, queried at his press conference a week ago, the President would only chuckle and say, “My, my, you boys must
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