Dawn Over Capitol Hill

All week Congress had been tapping its foot, waiting for the President's veto of the McCarran anti-Communist bill. In the House, when the page boys burst in with mimeographed copies of the message, members grabbed eagerly at the bundles, helped pass them out. With little more than a glance, they began shouting: "Vote! Vote!" And minutes after the clerk had intoned Harry Truman's 5,500 words of warning, they had overridden the veto without a word of debate, by a thumping 286 to 48.

In the Senate, half a dozen Democrats with the gravity of a band of martyrs had just made another kind of decision. They would try to filibuster long enough for the nation to wire its reactions to the presidential veto message. Perhaps an avalanche of emphatic last-minute protests, plus the Senate's desire to finish up and go home, might swing the votes necessary to uphold the veto.

In Imperfect Wisdom. For five hours, with the White House turning on the heat and helping to direct the strategy, Minnesota's civil-righteous young Hubert Humphrey, Tennessee's Estes Kefauver, New York's Herbert Lehman and North Carolina's lame duck Frank Graham took turns lecturing against the bill. Their arguments were a direct paraphrase of Harry Truman's message.

The law, the President had declared, was a "terrible mistake." Parts of it were "a clear and present danger to our institutions." Ordering Communists to register with the Attorney General, he wrote, "is about as practical as requiring thieves to register with the sheriff."* And the section ordering the Secretary of Defense to list all defense plants (so Communists could be barred from them) was, said the President, like publishing a guidebook for the enemy.

Illinois' big, shaggy Paul Douglas (who, like Minnesota's Humphrey, had voted for the bill in the first place) joined the filibuster. Obviously torn by the issues at stake, Douglas blurted: "In such imperfect wisdom as I have--and I say this with no sense of self-righteousness--I will vote to uphold the President's veto," and slumped into his chair with a groan.

"Get Some Sleep." It was a lone-wolf Republican, North Dakota's rawboned, unpredictable Bill Langer, who stepped up with much-needed relief for the Democratic corporal's guard. Langer had been obstinately against the bill from its inception, and began his harangue in the clangorous voice that makes every sentence sound like the cry of a newsboy with an extra. Weary Senators drifted off to doze on black leather couches in corridors or handy offices, leaving a few sentinels to guard the Senate floor. Shortly after 2 a.m., one of Langer's roars, punctuated by a crashing thump of his fist, frightened a sleeping page boy and sent him sprawling off his chair onto the floor.

But by 3:25 a.m., Langer's voice was growing hoarse, and his face pale and haggard. By 5 o'clock he was in obvious distress. Humphrey, fresh and trim after a midnight shower and shave, sidled up to him. "I can stay until 6 o'clock," hissed Langer. "Go get some sleep."

Minutes later, the big North Dakotan sagged, reached for Humphrey's arm. Humphrey shouted for a lateral pass: "Will the Senator yield?" "I yield," gasped Langer as his big, heavy hand pawed across his desk and scattered his papers on the floor. To gain time, fast-thinking Hubert Humphrey demanded a quorum call.

Stretcher Retreat. While the clerk droned imperturbably through the 96 names, the sergeant-at-arms hustled down the aisle to help Humphrey lay Langer out on the floor. They ripped off Langer's coat and tie, tore open his shirt and bathed his forehead with a damp towel. Just as the first splotches of dawn paled the eastern windows, a stretcher crew hauled Langer off to the Naval Hospital. (Diagnosis : diabetic Bill Langer was totally exhausted; prognosis: recovery after uninterrupted rest.)

The filibuster, too, was paling fast. Majority Leader Scott Lucas, who had parted with Harry Truman on the bill and was prepared to override the veto, vowed the Senate would stay all day "if necessary, to get a vote." Democrat Pat McCarran and Republican Co-Sponsors Karl Mundt and Homer Ferguson rattled off their arguments like debaters who already have the cup.

By 3:31 o'clock that afternoon, Humphrey admitted that the strange filibuster had failed. The wires from the hinterland had warmed hardly at all and most of the telegrams that did come in bore the parrot tracks of organized pressure groups. By 57 to 10, the Senate voted the anti-Communist bill into law. Ten minutes later it endorsed a waiting resolution from the House calling for adjournment,* and setting a "lame duck" session for Nov. 27.

So ended the second session of the 81st Congress. It had ignored more major Fair Deal proposals (repeal of Taft-Hartley, federal aid to education, an anti-lynching bill, national health insurance, FEPC, the Brannan Plan) than it had passed (extension of rent control, higher minimum wages, expansion of social security). But it had written a solid record of far-reaching foreign-policy measures: extension of ECA aid, arms for U.S. allies abroad, enough money to get the Point Four program going. After Korea, it had often outrun the President's own mobilization requests, voted economic controls he hadn't wanted and shoveled out defense and foreign arms appropriations as fast as he asked for them. First up on the agenda for November: an excess-profits tax, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii.

*An argument that could also have been used in the bill's favor. Police in many big cities keep track of underworld movements by required registration of ex-convicts. *The resolution was carefully phrased. The word was "adjourn," instead of "recess." It meant that Congressmen could qualify for 20-c--a-mile travel pay both to & from their homes.

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