Bad Week for the Doves

THE SENATE Bad Week for the Doves One after another, the amendments to limit military spending came up for a vote in the Senate, and time after time doves absorbed defeat. ABM deployment was approved by a resounding margin. The Navy's controversial new fighter-bomber was funded handily after an abortive attempt to block it. Money for a prototype Army tank that has provoked debate in the past was quickly assured.

In all, twelve cost-cutting measures were rejected in the worst string of defeats for the doves since disenchantment with the Viet Nam War and huge cost overruns first focused congressional attention on Pentagon spending. By week's end, the doves were so demoralized that Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton proposed a "victory party" when he lost a floor fight by only nine votes.

Bargaining Chip. Particularly galling to the doves was the way in which they were beaten. Debate was truncated and desultory--and often played to a near-empty chamber and galleries. The margin of defeat was embarrassingly large on once bitterly contested issues such as anti-missile funding. In 1969 when ABM Safeguard deployment was first proposed, debate lasted one month and the doves came within one vote of victory; this year, the floor fight took just two hours and the vote, 64 to 21, was a resounding rebuff.* Administration spokesmen insisted that the ABM was an important "bargaining chip" in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks currently under way, a viewpoint rejected by doves in 1970 but embraced by a large majority of Senators in 1971. Even Kentucky Senator John Sherman Cooper, a leader of ABM foes in the past, urged passage of the appropriation.

The fight over the Navy's F-14 interceptor plane was more spirited, but the vote only slightly closer, 61-28. Spending watchdogs considered the F-14 to be the most vulnerable item on the military procurement bill; it will cost four times more than the plane it is designed to replace, the F4, and there have already been cost overruns during its development, One Senator attributed its acceptance to unemployment: "Some members told me that they would rather have people working on useless things than being out of work. That's a hell of a commentary when you think of all the things that need to be done in the country."

If the state of the economy undermined the doves' cause, so did the familiarity of their complaints. Said California Democrat John Tunney: "It's become a stylized dance--almost like Kabuki." Eagleton ruefully admitted: "To many of our colleagues our arguments are old hat. There's a tendency to sit back and say, 'Well, here we go again.' The issue has lost its zip."

Unmistakable Message. The doves found one bright spot among the disarray. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's amendment calling for complete troop withdrawal within six months after an agreement to release American P.O.W.s passed for the second time this year. The original amendment, tied to the draft-extension bill, was watered down in the House-Senate Conference Committee; a similar fate could await the second amendment. Although the amendment is not binding on President Nixon, its passage carries an unmistakable message to the White House: despite the week's defeats, the doves are still capable of mustering Senate sentiment against the long, dreary war.

* Last week a report prepared by the Operations Research Society of America--a professional organization for systems analysts and researchers--criticized scientists involved in the ABM debate. The report was critical of research methods used by both sides, but the ABM opponents, specifically M.I.T. Provost Jerome Wiesner and M.I.T. Professors George Rathjens and Steven Weinberg, drew the most censure for misusing scientific evidence.

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