New Team

To fill the vacancies left by the death of Mississippi's well-loved "Old Fox" Pat Harrison (TIME, June 30) and the appointment of Jimmy Byrnes to the Supreme Court, the Senate's Democratic Steering Committee did a neat shuffle, came up with one of the strongest Administration teams the Senate has seen in years. Main purpose of the shuffle was to keep the Finance Committee chairmanship from falling into the isolationist hands of Massachusetts' David Ignatius Walsh, Naval Affairs' chairmanship into the anti-New Deal hands of Maryland's Millard Tydings, keep Administration men on top.

Solemn, forthright Senator Walter F. George of Georgia gave up his post as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to become chairman of the all-important Finance Committee, which has the difficult job of pushing the Administration's 1941 Tax Bill through the Senate (see col. 1). To head Foreign Relations, an oldtime, all-out follower of the President's foreign policy stepped in: wavy-haired, black-hatted Senator Tom Connally of Texas. Jimmy Byrnes's Audit & Control post went to a 50% New Dealer, Scott W. Lucas of Illinois. Isolationist Walsh and anti-New Dealer Tydings stayed where they were.

Of all these committees Tom Connally's Foreign Relations is the most crucial. Texas' Connally looks like a genial, old-fogy, movie Senator, but he is not. A thoroughgoing progressive (Southern style), he is known as the best rough-&-tumble debater in the Senate. With 24 years' Congressional experience, 13 of them in the Senate, Tom Connally has departed just once from orthodox Democracy on a major issue--he helped Burton Wheeler lead the fight against President Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court in 1936.

War is Tom Connally's meat, though he has never quite got his teeth in it. He volunteered as an infantryman in 1898, became a sergeant major, was on his way to Puerto Rico when the war ended. His first act when he went to Congress in 1917 was to vote for a declaration of war against Germany. Then he left the House (without resigning) to join the Army. He was a captain at Camp Meade, with overseas orders, when World War I ended. Too old to tote a gun now (he will be 64 this month), Tom Connally is not too old to enjoy power politics as head of Foreign Relations.

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