What Mister Sam Wants . ..

"I'm a soldier in the ranks," wailed Brooklyn Democrat Manny Celler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "I've got to do what the Speaker wants me to do." What House Speaker Samuel Taliaferro Rayburn, 76, wanted, instead of a constitutional amendment, was a simple congressional statute that would give Congress the dominant voice in deciding whether a President is disabled and whether a Vice President ought to take over as Acting President. And after two hours of hot opposition to Mister Sam's ukase, the Judiciary Committee last week voted to send even the Celler version of the Mister Sam plan back to subcommittee for more study and the whole disability issue back for more delay. Said Celler: "This kills it!"

In the Senate Judiciary Committee, nine out of 15 members, led by Tennessee's Democrat Estes Kefauver and Illinois' Republican Everett Dirksen, were co-sponsoring a bipartisan constitutional amendment designed to wrap up last fortnight's historic--but informal--Eisenhower-Nixon agreement that the Vice President becomes Acting President in event of presidential disability (TIME, March 17). But doubts were mounting about whether the amendment would ever get the needed two-thirds majority in the Senate and House. Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson was noncommittal. One key reason: the great weight Johnson places on the opinions of his fellow Texan, Mister Sam.

Mister Sam's stubborn stand left chances for action on presidential disability this session at something close to zero. And that also left the nation's security against chaos-by-disability resting solely upon the Eisenhower-Nixon agreement, which Mister Sam derides, with the prestige he has piled up in 45 years in the House and 13 years as Speaker, as little more than a scrap of paper.

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