Brain Storm

Oklahoma's burly, scrappy Robert Samuel Kerr is a Democratic multimillionaire (Kerr-McGee Oil) who snap-shoots from the hip when he hears a rustling in the brush. Indiana's jowled Homer Earl Capehart is a Republican millionaire (Capehart radio-TV) who usually prefers to wait for another day. Last week Snap-Shooter Bob pressed Hesitant Homer too far, and the Senate echoed with high-priced debate. Subject: Dwight Eisenhower's brains.

Knocking down Capehart's plea for a White House advisory commission on monetary policy, Kerr fired first: "No man can help Eisenhower study the fiscal policies of this Government, because one cannot do that without brains, and he does not have them." While gallery spectators gasped and Capehart, outraged, tried to break in, Kerr went grandly on: "If the greatest fiscal experts this nation has ever produced marched in solid phalanx before Eisenhower for months ... he would emerge from the experience just as uninformed as he is now."

Homer Capehart finally got the floor: "After making the statement which the Senator has just made ... I should think he would be utterly ashamed of himself, being over 21 years of age, and a capable man who has made a great success in business--I do not know how many millions--to say publicly, in the presence of schoolchildren and others in the galleries, that the President of the U.S. has no brains. . ."

Next day, Homer Capehart, still smarting under Kerr's angry reply to "the midget" from Indiana, discovered that the Oklahoman had prudently revised the Congressional Record transcript to read that Ike had no "fiscal brains." That, said Capehart, shows exactly what "kind of gentleman" Bob Kerr is. Then Capehart did a doubletake on another Kerr line in the Congressional Record from the previous day's debate. Kerr: "I do not say that the President has no brains at all. I reserve that broad and sweeping accusation for some of my cherished colleagues in this body."

Asked Capehart: "Who are these cherished colleagues? Am I one of them?" For answer, Kerr, deadpan, asked permission to revise his earlier statement: "I desire to have the word 'some' changed to the word 'one,' and . . . the word 'colleagues' changed to ... 'colleague.' " Undaunted, Homer Capehart unfurled the flag: "I would rather be a friend of the President of the United States without any brains than to be a friend of the Senator from Oklahoma with brains."

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