Talking Out of Turn

For a few moments in the Senate filibuster last week, some oldtimers had the uneasy feeling that they ought to go out into the Capitol's Statuary Hall and see if the bronze statue of Huey Long was still on its pedestal. Before them in the well of the Senate they saw Huey's pug-nosed, mischievous face, watched his arm chop the air, and heard the voice of Louisiana's murdered demagogue. Huey's 30-year-old son Russell was making his maiden speech.

Russell Long was sorry, he said, that his first formal words had to be spoken under such circumstances, i.e., talking to death a Senate rule against filibustering. His desk was piled high, he said, turning on the old Huey quaver, with letters from the poor, the sick, the disabled, pleading for his help. But this other matter had to be taken care of first. He had to protect those same people from a change in the Senate rules "which some future oppressive group could use to grind them to dust."

Insistent Mumble. He talked just under an hour (his father once filibustered 15 1/2 hours straight), and after a fast start, his oratory became only a pale reflection of his father's roaringest. But neither he nor any of his Southern colleagues extended themselves. They didn't have to: the sessions lasted only from noon to dinner; everyone had plenty of time to rest. The filibusterers were satisfied to maintain their legislative blockade with a kind of insistent mumble, waiting for the Administration to get tired, or make a mistake.

At week's end, it looked as if the Administration had made a mistake. Until then, Majority Leader Scott Lucas had had the assurance of considerable Republican support. In fact, he had hoped to have enough votes to apply cloture (limitation of debate), break the Southerners' filibuster, write a new rule widening cloture power,-* and, in the end, pass Harry Truman's civil rights program. Then Harry Truman put his foot in it.

The President Speaks. Bursting with self-confidence, the President said that he thought the proposed cloture rule should be even more drastic than the one Russell Long & Co. were talking down. He said he would favor applying cloture by a simple majority vote. Under such a rule, 25 Senators (a simple majority of a functioning quorum of 49) would be able to end a Senate debate.

Coming when they did, the President's remarks floored even loyal Administration leaders. As for the Republicans, many of them decided that in the light of what Harry Truman had said, they were ready at last to agree with the Southerners. The Southerners had been saying right along that any change in the present cloture rule would open the way for further attacks on the long-cherished right to talk in the Senate as long as voice and kidneys held out. Republican enthusiasm for the anti-filibuster fight, never great, dwindled.

As the filibuster droned on, effective without being exhausting, Administration leaders had two choices: to continue the fight which they now might very well lose, or give up the civil rights program and get on as best they could with the rest of Harry Truman's legislation.

* Debate on any measure can now be shut off by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Administration wants to be able to shut off debate on any motion in the same way. It was against a motion to bring up a rule to limit filibusters that the Southerners were filibustering.

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