A Crowning Defeat

Right after President Eisenhower's veto of the farm bill, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson set the style for Democratic reaction. "The veto of the farm bill," keynoted Johnson, "can be described only as a crushing blow to the hopes and the legitimate desires of American agriculture." Then, as other Democrats arose in the Senate to lambaste the President, Johnson sprawled out in his chair, grinned broadly and winked at his party colleagues. Feeling that they had at last been handed a deadly issue against Dwight Eisenhower, other Democrats grinned along with Lyndon Johnson in the early days of last week.

Crucified. Promising that he would call Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson on his Senate Agriculture Committee carpet within 48 hours, Louisiana's Allen Ellender nonetheless took direct aim at Eisenhower. "The choice was the President's," cried Ellender. "He has chosen to let our farm population dangle at the end of Secretary Benson's flexible noose." Oklahoma's Senator Robert Kerr supplied the oratorical topper: "From his ivory tower at the Augusta country club, where he has been completely insulated from the voice of the people, the President has again acted on the advice of little men who made his decision for him . . . The nails that have been driven into the farmer's hands, the cross upon which he is being crucified, may have been furnished by Benson, but the hammer that drove those nails into the farmer's hands was wielded by the hand of Eisenhower. The hand that placed the crown of thorns upon the farmer's head was the hand of Eisenhower."

On the House side, Speaker Sam Rayburn, his battle gorge up, decided to contest the presidential veto without even consulting House Agriculture Committee Chairman Harold Cooley, who was back home in North Carolina. While Rayburn knew that he could not get the two-thirds vote necessary to override the veto, he felt sure that he could win the simple majority necessary to show that Ike was flouting the clear will of Congress. But Mister Sam's famed political antenna wasn't working.

Outmaneuvered. In the hours before the vote on overriding, a secondary political reaction began to set in. Congressmen with an ear cocked to the country began to hear editorial approval of the President's veto in such Midwestern cities as Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha and Chicago, and from such Southern centers as Dallas, Miami, Richmond and Memphis. Even the Des Moines Register, a supporter of the farm bill, was philosophical. Republican leaders meeting in Washington (see below) began to perk up after initial despondency. The President, they figured, had pulled the rug from under the Democrats by his principle-over-politics decision, as well as by his offer of administrative relief to farmers and his request for immediate soil-bank payments. By midweek, House Republicans who had backslid on the farm-bill vote (TIME, April 23) began to rally.

The House debate on overriding was distinguished only by a memorable line from North Carolina's Cooley. Cried he: "Why should anyone be so absurd as to suggest that any of us are prompted by partisan politics?" An hour later the House voted 211 (173 Republicans and 38 Democrats) to 202 (182 Democrats and 20 Republicans) against overriding the veto. The Democratic leadership, in failing to win even a simple majority, had suffered a crowning defeat, and no amount of subsequent maneuvering would repair the damage.

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