Democrat Abroad

Senate Minority Leader William Fife Knowland was outspokenly annoyed at the appointment, and so were a lot of other Capitol Hill Republican leaders. Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn protested to the White House. New Mexico Republicans simmered.

Last week, despite the mutterings of patronage-bent Republicans, President Eisenhower named Democrat Robert McKinney, New Mexico newspaper publisher (Santa Fe New Mexican), cattleman and corporation director, as the U.S. representative in the 45-nation International Atomic Energy Agency, created to carry out the atoms-for-peace program that the President proposed in December 1953. Patronage problems aside, brainy Bob McKinney, 47, seemed a sound choice for the post. A onetime (1951-52) Assistant Secretary of the Interior, he served ably in 1955-56 as chairman of a top-level citizens' panel set up by the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy to study and report on peaceful uses of atomic energy. As a pal and protege of the committee's vice-chairman, New Mexico's Democratic Senator Clinton P. Anderson, McKinney has an influential friend on Capitol Hilla valuable asset when it comes to keeping Congress friendly toward IAEA.

Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater served public notice that he "certainly will oppose" McKinney's appointment when it comes up for Senate confirmation. But Democrat McKinney can point to a detail that might soften Republican Goldwater's wrath: after the citizens' panel turned in its report on uses of the atom, McKinney handed back $17,000 of the $50,000 that Congress had appropriated for expenses.

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