The Coming Battle Between President and Congress

IT was the day before the President's address, and children romped in the august aisles. Misty-eyed wives of the initiates applauded the elevation of their husbands. Like a schoolboy, Virginia Senator William Spong carved his name in his desk drawer. Warmed by their sense of continuity with an opening-day ritual that has changed little in 182 years, the members of the convening 92nd Congress of the United States momentarily buried their deep differences. They basked in the expansive mood of mutual esteem common to those who know that they are about to influence their nation's history.

In the House, Michigan Republican Gerald Ford and Oklahoma Democrat Carl Albert discreetly withdrew to an outer room as colleagues placed their names in nomination to become the 46th Speaker of the House, the nation's third highest office. Neither was the least bit surprised when the vote was announced as 250 for Albert, 176 for Ford. Graciously, the defeated Ford escorted Albert, whose elfin face crinkled into a massive grin, through the cheering chamber. At the rostrum, Ford observed that "we are the representatives not of political parties but of the people." He praised Albert warmly and noted with mock solemnity that "until this moment, there has never been a Speaker from Bug Tussle, Oklahoma." Amid more applause, the diminutive Albert (5 ft. 4 1/2 in.) took his place at the Speaker's desk and, in his surprisingly deep voice, declared: "We shall not look upon presidential proposals through partisan eyes; we will not oppose for the sake of opposing."

In the Senate, New York's liberal Republican Jacob Javits and the state's incoming Conservative James Buckley exchanged friendly banter, even though Javits had just challenged Buckley's right to join the Republican caucus. After he was sworn in, California Democrat John Tunney smilingly grasped the hand of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had personally fought his election. A bipartisan ovation greeted the return of Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, whose eternal ebullience is still enjoyed by his longtime colleagues. Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy, deposed from his job as majority whip only minutes before in a stunning upset, quietly beckoned the man who beat him, West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd, to take over his front-row desk. Byrd sympathetically declined and the two sat side by side at the rear of the chamber throughout the opening ceremony.

Political Collision

The sense of congressional camaraderie was real enough, but also deceptive. The professed intention of placing people above the party was laudable but illusory. The controlling truth is that the 92nd is certain to be a showdown Congress in which the partisan stakes are the presidency itself. The new Congress is controlled by aroused Democrats who are convinced that Richard Nixon can be denied re-election next year. Although he is generally satisfied with his accomplishments in foreign policy, Nixon knows that his survival may depend on how he deals with the problems involving life at home --and what he gets out of Congress in the next 22 months could be decisive. He has vowed privately that there will be "blood all over the floor" if Congress does not pass some of his priority programs. Democrats are equally determined that if blood must flow, it will be that of Richard Nixon.

In the impending clash between the two branches of the Government, neither is in a commanding position. The President can more easily appeal directly and with a single voice to the nation. Congress can deny him what he wants, but its public image was badly bruised by its bickering and procrastination last year, and it cannot benefit from merely obstructing the President.

Democrats must present alternatives, and Nixon, of course, can veto them, but then he runs the risk of an impasse in which national needs remain unmet. The complexity of the political equation is compounded in the Senate by the presence of half a dozen Democratic Senators eager to run against Nixon. As they maneuver to embarrass him, they will also jockey for advantage over one another, riding their own pet issues. Thus the stage is set for a political collision at both its rawest and its most sophisticated levels.

A Party Leader

No one is more sensitive to all the nuances of this power struggle than the new Speaker of the House. Carl Bert Albert, 62, poses a singular and purposeful threat to the President if Nixon tries to enhance his re-election chances at the expense of Congress. Although he has long shunned the national spotlight and suppressed his ego out of deference to his party superiors, Albert is a shrewd and fiercely partisan politician who is now at last free to be his own man. For him, the speakership is the end of the line (he vowed last week to retire to Oklahoma within eight years). A Rhodes scholar with a keen sense of history, Albert is determined to be remembered as a man who restored the office of Speaker and the repute of the House to their former preeminence. Colleagues who have long admired but rarely feared Albert's gentle nature and sweet temper may be surprised at his private assessment of his new role. "The Speaker is the hub of the whole Congress, not just the House," Albert insists. ''It's hard to beat him on anything."

Although Albert does not openly discuss the matter, he is aware of how the House slipped in prestige during the nine-year tenure of Speaker John McCormack, who assumed the post when he was past his prime (at 70) and held it too long. McCormack frequently took the floor to oppose the President, but he was too weak--and often too petty --to unify House Democrats. The Senate, instead, grabbed most of the attention as a center of opposition to Administration policies at home and abroad. Albert intends to change that. He contends that a House Speaker is, first of all, "a party leader trying to put over the party program." He is not looking for a fight with Nixon, Albert says, but if Nixon intends to "run against Congress, it's up to us to run against him. We'll run on our record."

Albert's concept of his new job is thus in line with that of the strongest of his predecessors, men who felt fully capable of ruling the House--and, if necessary, filling a vacancy in the presidency if the Vice President, too, should die. The fifth Speaker, Nathaniel Macon, considered himself "the elect of the elect," while the 35th, Joseph Cannon, haughtily declined a dinner invitation from President Theodore Roosevelt because he was to be seated below the Attorney General. Albert has none of the dictatorial bent of Cannon, the eloquence and ambition of Henry Clay (who got the House to declare war on Britain despite the reluctance of President James Madison), or the arrogance of Thomas Reed (whose highhanded use of House rules made him a virtual czar in the 1890s). Albert would most like to emulate his longtime Southwestern neighbor, the late Sam Rayburn. The canny Texan was the kind of Speaker who always insisted that "I haven't served under anybody, but I have served with eight Presidents."

While all of his colleagues admire Albert's intelligence and his intimate knowledge of the House, some feel that he is just too kindly a man to shake up the place. One who senses a deeper strength in Albert is TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil, a longtime scholar and historian of the House. Says he: "I believe, after 16 years of knowing the man well, that he does have, in Rayburn's phrase, 'iron in his backbone.' He does not enter the speakership with any queasy thoughts that he is inadequate to the office. He intends to prove himself, not with any sense of personal aggrandizement or arrogance, but because he knows that he has a job that must be done."

Kennedy's Defeat

Even as Albert prepared to challenge Administration programs in the House, a persistent Nixon adversary slipped badly in the Senate. Overconfident and aware only too late that he was seriously threatened, Ted Kennedy failed to win re-election by Senate Democrats as the assistant majority leader. He was bumped in a stunning upset by West Virginia's conservative, hard-working Robert C. Byrd, 53, who had waged no noisy campaign for the post but had discreetly pleaded with almost every Democrat. His basic pitch was that he had in effect been handling the whip duties in Kennedy's frequent absences from the Senate and ought to have the job in title too.

A cautious man who rarely enters a contest he is not certain to win, Byrd figured at the last minute that he held a one-vote advantage--the proxy he held in his hand from Georgia's critically ill Richard Russell. He allowed his name to be put in nomination at the closed meeting only after checking with a messenger outside the caucus room to be certain that Russell was still alive. If the vote of Russell, who died less than four hours later (see story, page 19), had not been valid, Byrd would not have run. But once Byrd was nominated, a Kennedy supporter, knowing Byrd's nose-counting talents, gasped, "I'll be goddamned; he's got it." Actually, Byrd had in this instance miscounted; he won easily, 31 to 24.

Why was Kennedy rejected? The first reaction of one Kennedy supporter was that Ted had been victimized by senatorial "jealousy, envy and spite." That was too jaundiced an explanation for a subtle situation, although there certainly was some deviousness in the voting. One Senator organizing the Kennedy support insists that he had "28 eyeball-to-eyeball commitments 24 hours before the vote," but that four Senators did not keep their pledges on the secret ballot. Suspicion centered mainly upon Washington's two Senators, Henry Jackson and Warren Magnuson, because Kennedy had opposed Seattle-based Boeing's supersonic transport; Connecticut's Abe Ribicoff. who has had past differences with the Kennedy brothers; and South Dakota's George McGovern, an announced presidential candidate, who is trying to appeal to the same kinds of voters that a Kennedy candidacy would probably attract.

A more likely reason for Kennedy's defeat was that he simply did not mind the store sufficiently. That was ironic, since Kennedy won the whip job two years ago by waging a quiet telephone campaign against an establishment type, Louisiana's Russell Long, who had shirked his work. But when Ted took over and absented himself frequently to attend to other matters, the club turned against him too. Byrd, as secretary of the Democratic Conference, carried much of Kennedy's load. Thus there was at least a half-truth in Byrd's kindly explanation that "this was not a slap at Kennedy--it was an affirmation of the job I had been doing."

Kennedy tried to take the rejection philosophically. "If you don't know how to lose, you don't deserve to win," tie said. But it was a new experience for him; he had never lost a political contest before. He was, says a friend, "kind of crushed." Nevertheless, Ted gamely held a scheduled reception at home for his staff and re-election volunteers of last November. His mood, one aide reported, seemed to be: "Well, now that's over, what do we do next?"

It was hardly a blow as damaging as Chappaquiddick, but it did further cloud the possibility that Kennedy might emerge as the presidential nominee next year. An aide to Leading Contender Edmund Muskie undoubtedly overestimated the impact when he proclaimed that "it was a smashing defeat --I don't know where he can go from here." The whip's job may not cut all that keenly with many voters, especially those who have no high regard for the Senate. A few Senators even thought that the affront just might goad Kennedy into saying "to hell with them" and running away. Assuming that Kennedy, as he repeatedly proclaimed, had no intention of jumping into the 1972 race, the defeat was not a total gain for Nixon. Byrd may be more philosophically attuned to some Nixon programs, but he takes his partisan role seriously and is a far more abrasive and belligerent scrapper AP than either Majority Leader Mike Mansfield or Kennedy.

In the President's own party, Pennsylvania's Senator Hugh Scott turned back a challenge to his post as Senate minority leader from Tennessee's conservative Howard H. Baker Jr., although the margin was slim: 24 to 20. The moderate Scott was under considerable fire from many Republicans for his reluctance to champion several Nixon proposals, including the nomination of Clement Haynsworth to the Supreme Court. Scott's victory seemed to indicate that progressive Republicans in the Senate are still determined to exercise a degree of independence from the Administration.

Boggs' Triumph

As Albert moved up, an in-FRANCES triguing race developed over who would succeed him as Democratic floor leader in the House--a spot from which the next Speaker normally emerges. Although a quintet of candidates was involved, the basic battle was between Arizona's Morris Udall and Louisiana's Hale Boggs. Udall, an intuitive intellectual and a liberal, was the slight favorite over Boggs, a brilliant and tough debater. But each had handicaps. Udall had angered labor by failing to support repeal of a part of the Taft-Hartley Act and had drawn the wrath of New Englanders by trying to dislodge McCormack from the speakership in 1969. Boggs, favored by "Establishment" veterans, had a history of eccentricity and was accused of being lazy.

The two main contenders went into the caucus wholly uncertain of whether their pledged votes actually would hold up in the secret balloting. Other candidates complicated matters. Michigan's James O'Hara, backed by labor, competed for Udall's liberal support; two conservatives, Ohio's Wayne Hays and California's B.F. Sisk. vied for Boggs' Southern and Establishment followers. The key seemed to be whether the Southern veterans would stick with Boggs. "The old bulls are undecided," one insider observed. Boggs led Udall on the first ballot; Hays and O'Hara withdrew. On the second vote, Boggs won. 140 to 88. That caused Udall to turn his "MO" nickname button upside down to read "ow."

The Boggs victory was the result of a curious but frequently repeated coalition between the Southern veterans and Northern machine Democrats, who may be poles apart on issues but have one bond: to them, Congress is a career, and their first aim is to protect their mutual power positions. They thus support seniority practices--and each other.

White House Relations

From a presidential perspective, the net effect of the leadership shifts in Congress--except for the elevation of Carl Albert--was a slight improvement. The antiwar, antimilitary, prolabor liberals seem to have slipped. But Nixon's task in coaxing cooperation from the Congress is still formidable. The elections last November left the Democrats twelve seats stronger in the House; their edge is now 254 to 180. Republicans gained two Senators but still trail 54 to 45. Richard Russell's Georgia seat undoubtedly will go to another Democrat; Russell will be succeeded as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee by Louisiana's Allen Ellender, who is more critical of defense budgets.

Nixon's relations with the Congress have been dismal. He lashed out at the Senate for refusing to go along with his Southern appointees to the Supreme Court. He campaigned harshly against Democratic candidates in the congressional elections. He allowed his Vice President to attack "permissivists" and "radic-libs" in Congress, apparently including some liberal and moderate Republicans. He personally joined the battle for some of his key programs, such as welfare reform and revenue sharing, only when it was much too late--and then he blistered Congress for not acting on them. Even the new Republican National Chairman, Kansas Senator Robert Dole, used to complain about the poor liaison; as many as 80 telephone calls at a time from Congressmen and Senators would go unanswered by White House aides.

To do better this time around, Nixon has appointed an affable and able former Republican Congressman, Minnesota's Clark MacGregor, to help build new bridges to the Hill. MacGregor has been given direct access to Nixon, hurdling the formidable staff barriers in Nixon's outer offices, and the President has promised to cut him in early on all legislative plans. Frequent bipartisan meetings with Nixon over drinks or at breakfast are promised to confer on legislation before combat is joined on the floor and positions harden. Texan John Connally is also expected to turn his persuasive charms on the legislators.

Those are commendable moves, and MacGregor is working especially hard to mollify the more progressive Republicans in the Senate. They are such men as Mark Hatfield, Charles Mathias and William Saxbe, who have felt not only ignored by the White House but threatened by the Nixon-Agnew attacks that helped defeat New York's liberal Republican Charles Goodell. Yet much more is needed than MacGregor's good will. Old pros on the Hill are beginning to wonder if Nixon really understands Congress, despite his four years in the House. The fact that MacGregor is sporting an I CARE ABOUT CONGRESS button seems to them to symbolize the Administration's naive cheerleader approach to politics.

Showdown Issues

The congressional veterans are awaiting signs that MacGregor carries real influence with the President. They recall that one of the most effective legislative aides they have known. Jack Kennedy's man Larry O'Brien, was virtually unknown when J.F.K. took office. But in the first few weeks all of their appeals to Kennedy drew a stock answer: "Have you talked about this with Larry?" The Congressmen got the message and O'Brien became the man to see; he had the clout.

From inside the White House came other doubts that Nixon really knows how to deal with tough legislative pros. He may berate them in public after he has lost a battle, but he shies away from confrontations in private. In the past when he was hustling votes on a bill, his tete-a-tetes with Senators and Congressmen have begun with the preface, "I understand your problems--and if you can't come with us, I'll understand." So a legislator leaves feeling that no commitment was asked or given. But if he votes his constituency against the White House, the President feels betrayed. On any issue, the more effective tactic for a President, maintains Neil MacNeil, is to "flat-out demand the vote, leaving unspoken any matter of forgiveness or understanding, and let the Senator sweat out whether there might be political retaliation."

Many Hill veterans also consider the inner White House staff, apart from the legislative liaison team, inept in its approach to Congress. One member of that staff claims that his colleagues "don't understand politics, much less the congressional variant of national politics. They don't know what finesse is. This is government by political advance men."

That is a harsh assessment and may yet prove wrong, but it represents a significant feeling that Nixon must overcome. He seems determined to try. "The White House has discovered Congress," observes one presidential aide, "and it is going to be romanced to death." The attempt is crucial, considering the taut and complex political climate and the stern demands that Nixon is making upon the new Congress. At the moment, serious obstacles loom for most of the major proposals Nixon is trying to push through the showdown session. They include:

WELFARE REFORM. The Administration's Family Assistance Plan, which would provide a minimum income for all qualified families, died in the last Congress when House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills argued that there was too little time to resolve differences with the Senate. The bill has now been given the priority designation of HR 1 in the new House, and passage seems ensured. Tied to an increase in Social Security benefits, Mills' version is a bit tougher than Nixon's plan on requirements for welfare recipients to seek work and includes tighter limitations on the potential cost of the program.

REVENUE SHARING. The principle involved is controversial (see box, page 18), and passage is doubtful. The proposal must originate in the House, and there it is opposed by a formidable trio: Speaker Albert, Chairman Mills and the top-ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, Wisconsin's John Byrnes. Their opposition is based primarily on the premise that Congress should not allocate tax revenue without controlling the ways in which it is spent. Moreover, the federal budget already runs a deficit. HEALTH CARE. Some form of national health insurance has long been proposed by liberals. It has political appeal, but passage is doubtful, paradoxically, because the Democratic Congress may provide more aid than Nixon wants. Nixon might veto any bill that he considers overly expensive.

EXECUTIVE REORGANIZATION.

Nearly every pressure group that now has influence with a Government agency may feel threatened by a major new line-up of Cabinet departments. Political advocates of specific programs also worry. Democrats who support the antipoverty efforts of the Office of Economic Opportunity, for example, fear that OEO could be stifled in an administrative shakeup, and may oppose the plan. The conflicting pressures could easily kill this idea. It would also require extensive revision of congressional committees, since many now parallel the executive departments. Convincing powerful committee chairmen to abolish their own jobs will be difficult.

SST. Perhaps prudently, Nixon in his State of the Union address did not men tion the supersonic transport. The last Senate voted against it, the new House seems to be leaning that way, and the plane may be permanently grounded.

In the Senate, parts of the Nixon program could easily get lost, distorted or delayed as ambitious Democrats eye 1972. Maine's Muskie will want to keep his brand on the environmental controls he has long championed. South Dakota's George McGovern will push the war on hunger. Ted Kennedy will be seeking national health insurance. Iowa's Harold Hughes has some ideas about combatting drugs and alcoholism. Oklahoma's Fred Harris wants to shape family assistance his own way. Indiana's Birch Bayh will continue to guard the pass on Nixon appointments.

Indeed, so thick are the 1972 contenders in the Senate that their maneuvering for the limelight could impede the upper chamber's work. Over in the House, Ohio Republican Clarence

Brown has an impish solution. Already in the hopper is his resolution for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate and create in its place a House of Lords, whose duties would be nonexistent. "To qualify," reads his resolution, "each member must swear or affirm publicly that he is a sincere candidate for the President of the United States."

In addition to facing potential opponents in the Senate, Nixon must contend with Carl Albert on the other side of the Capitol. Albert is in one way the more formidable adversary, since he is free of any presidential ambitions of his own. Nixon has already predicted privately that Albert will be "much tougher" to deal with than Mc-Cormack was. The President had a personal word for Albert on television before his State of the Union message, whispering with a grin, as the assembled officials applauded, "they like you!" As Nixon noted, the two have known and respected each other ever since they entered Congress together in 1947 (in the same class with Jack Kennedy), but they have not been social intimates.

Albert has already shown a willingness to assail the Nixon Administration when he thinks it has been wrong. When Nixon vetoed a Labor-HEW appropriations bill on the grounds that it was inflationary, Albert acidly urged that he "utilize the awesome power of his office not against the children, the sick, the aged and the poor, but rather against the giant monopolies that are the true culprits causing inflation." He has accused the White House of "primitive medieval economic bloodletting" and nee-dlingly labeled the state of the economy as only "the first Nixon recession."

Albert does not consider such talk brash. He hopes, in fact, to make his own "Report from the Speaker" on television in a few weeks, in an innovative reply for the Democrats to Nixon's State of the Union message. He wants to present Democratic alternatives to Nixon's programs. Precisely what they will be is not yet clear. It is a delicate operation, since Nixon has in fact co-opted some ideas that Democrats have advocated in the past. Anything the Democrats now suggest could smack of me-tooism or look as though they were merely seeking more money for the same programs, unless they present their case with finesse.

A more immediate challenge for Albert is to put his own House in order. It has been more diligent than the dawdling Senate, but he insists that its members need more "discipline, promptness and dispatch." He will ask them to work a five-day week instead of the common Tuesday-through-Thursday hours on the Hill. "The business of the House must take precedence over everything else," he says. Albert supported a successful move in his party--and a similar motion was approved by Republicans--to modify the entrenched practice of selecting committee chairmen solely on the basis of seniority.

Albert intends to elicit the opinions of more members for his own guidance in running the House. He will revive Sam Rayburn's "Board of Education" --a leisurely, informal after-hours session over drinks in the Speaker's hideaway to discuss pending business with key Congressmen. He is organizing a Special Committee on National Goals, consisting of both veteran and promising younger Democratic Congressmen, to help map party policy and respond to any Nixon attacks on Congress.

The Rayburn Populist

As he tries to strengthen his Speaker's office, Albert continues to lead a self-effacing personal life in Washington. He, his wife Mary and son David, 16, occupy a modest two-bedroom apartment; Mary Frances, 22, is attending Rice University. He rarely makes the cocktail circuit, devotes himself almost solely to his family and his work. He enjoys political anecdotes but seldom tells them himself, and the closest he comes to cursing is to cry "Jeepers creepers!"

The son of an Oklahoma coal miner, Albert was born in McAlester, attended grade school in Bug Tussle (it has since been renamed Flowery Mound). He won a national oratorical contest and was a Phi Beta Kappa student at the University of Oklahoma, whose president at that time called his "the brightest mind ever to come to this university." A lawyer, he entered the Army in 1941 as a private, emerged four years later as a lieutenant colonel.

Albert considers himself a populist in the tradition of Rayburn; the districts the two men represented adjoin on the Texas-Oklahoma border, and they were fast friends. Rayburn helped pick Albert as Democratic whip in 1955. To Rayburn admirers, the two small men (Rayburn was l 1/2 in. taller) even seemed to operate alike. Said one as he watched Albert in 1962: "Look at the little fellow! Ain't that Mr. Sam?" Albert has stumbled only once in his steady climb since then; he appeared vacillating and uncertain as he chaired the chaotic 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. He had suffered a heart attack two years before the convention, but has now fully recovered both his health and self-confidence.

Without personal vanity, but in terms of the Constitution, Albert insists that the Speaker of the House ought to rate almost on "a par with the President." That is a view that Carl Albert does not really expect Richard Nixon to share, and the collision of their wills undoubtedly will play a significant role in coming battles between Congress and President.

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