The Great White Goof

Its grey-veined marble flanks as bleached as a great prehistoric bone, its entrance guarded by pretentious bronze doors, the new 500-room, $25 million Senate Office Building sprawled resplendently last week on Capitol Hill--dubbed "The Great White Goof."

For all the money it cost, the proud new S.O.B. was more vexatious than a slippery collar button. The clocks had bronze hands that were too heavy to hold the time. The mail chutes choked up with letters, had to be taped closed. Slow-moving elevators forced Senators to overflow into freight lifts. Private conversations were being filtered into the corridors through louvered air ducts in the doors. Long-legged lawmakers cracked their kneecaps against low-slung desks. And the new subway to the Capitol lay dead-ended about 250 ft. short of its destination (cost to complete: $4,000,000).

Facts with Wax. As if this were not enough, Illinois' Democratic Senator Paul Douglas kept carping about a couple of additional problems. For one thing, the nine-man Senate Office Building Commission had ordered two bronze plaques (total cost: $5,000), emblazoned with commission members' names, to be placed at each entrance. Worse, Douglas was alarmed at a $150,000 appropriation for new carpeting to cover the $100,000 rubber tile flooring. The committee explained that Government girls kept slipping on the tiles (TIME, May 11), rounded up a group of supporters who were promptly labeled "carpet-backers." Countered Douglas in the Senate last week: How about the 600 office doors that would have to be removed and shaved down to allow free swinging above the carpets?

Douglas answered his own question by suggesting the use of a nonslip floor polish. With that, Wisconsin's Bill Proxmire (who hails from the state where Johnson's Wax makes its home) offered to let Douglas use his office for a waxing bee. Few days later, Washington newsmen and TV crews crammed into Proxmire's office to watch a high-speed floor-waxing machine tow the two Senators around the room like water skiers. It all proved, claimed Proxmire breathlessly, that the floors were really nonslip (although his receptionist takes no chances, keeps a pair of sneakers in her desk drawer).

Shame Without Blame. Nevertheless, the carpeting appropriation still stood, and the doors will come off for a refit. Last week, as Senators and their staffs moved from their cramped quarters in the old Senate Office Building over to the White Goof (only 42 out of 98 are making the switch), Washingtonians were still casting around for somebody to blame.

There were so many committees and subcommittees in the picture that the blame became as institutional as the Great White Goof itself. "In any $25 million Government building," said a Capitol employee philosophically, "you're bound to have some things go wrong."

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