HOOSIER POLITICIAN

OUTNUMBERED nearly 2 to 1 in the 86th Congress, the Republican minority in the House of Representatives--as well as the embattled Eisenhower Administration --will lean heavily upon the political talents of the new G.O.P. floor leader, hard-hitting Charlie Halleck, 58, of Rensselaer, Ind. (pop. 5,000). Hoosier state professionals, players in as rough a practical political game as the country knows, rate curly-haired, paunchy Charlie Halleck a tough and ruthless performer, who has been often battered but never beaten in 35 years of office-holding. Old hands in the House, where he is a twelve-termer and twelve-year veteran as G.O.P. No. 2 man, rank him as "an Indiana politician with brains," a blunt, hard-driving scrapper.

Born & Bred G.O.P. Halleck's mother and father, both lawyers and Lincoln-loving Republican workers, christened him (Aug. 22, 1900) Charles Abraham Halleck, called him "Little Abe." At 14 he worked furiously in local campaigns, hauled voters to the polls as soon as he was old enough to drive a car. In 1917 he signed up as an infantry private, developed his parade-ground voice (the House's second loudest, after Illinois' Noah Mason), won lieutenant's bars Stateside before flu struck him down. At Indiana University, one of the big playing fields for future Hoosier politcos, he maneuvered his way to student-union president, helped earn his own way (food manager for Beta Theta Pi fraternity), made Phi Beta Kappa, graduated (A.B., 1922) sixth in a class of 600. At I.U. Law School he graduated first in his class, dashed home to northwestern Indiana's Jasper County to win the first of five consecutive terms as prosecuting attorney of the Jasper-Newton county circuit.

Fighting Rooster. Rushing into a death-created vacancy, Prosecutor Halleck won the Second Congressional District seat in 1935, thus became the only Hoosier among the 103 House Republicans left after Democratic landslides. "I felt like a banty rooster in a barn lot full of Percherons," he says. "I said, 'Boys, let's be mighty careful about stepping on one another.' " But caution was never Hoosier. His all-out kicks at New Deal and Fair Deal "regimentation and extrava gance" won him toe hold enough in the national G.O.P. to give a practical political push to the campaign of volunteers that got Indiana's Wendell Willkie (I.U. '13) the 1940 presidential nomination.

Party Regularity. Conservative and isolationist by background (he voted against fortification of Guam and against the draft just before Pearl Harbor, still has to defend the votes in every election), Halleck soon broke with the defeated Willkie on foreign policy, but not before he outraged Indiana's Taft regulars by revealing a key political trait: in the interest of party unity and strength, he would battle for men and policies far more liberal than himself. His party-first drive, tirelessly applied after he became chairman of the Congressional Campaign Committee in 1943, paid off by 1947 in the party's first House majority for 16 years. As Joe Martin moved up to Speaker, Halleck overrode Taft regulars to become majority leader, ramrodded through bills such as the Taft-Hartley Act and tax-cutting measures. Promised --he says--the vice presidential nomination in 1948. Halleck took Indiana votes to Tom Dewey only to see Dewey nod to California's liberal Governor Earl Warren. Halleck has never lost a chance to tell Dewey that the 1948 vote would have gone Republican had the second man on the ticket, no matter what his leaning, been a real fighter for the party.

Follow the Leader. Eisenhower Backer Halleck (who golfs with Ike at Burning Tree more than anybody else on Capitol Hill) became majority leader for the second time after Eisenhower's 1952 victory. His party loyalty code soon led him to support policies of the middle-roading Administration, e.g., public housing, reciprocal trade, foreign aid, with the same narrow-eyed gung ho he had mustered against the same programs for 17 years. He did not flinch. "Damn you, you've got to be with us on this one," he twanged at reluctant colleagues. "The President needs your support--and so do I." Many an Administration measure squeaked through because the vigilant Halleck stood in the House well on close votes, collected from errant Republicans for past favors rendered and future favors promised.

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