The Successor

Speaker Rayburn's incurable illness gave inevitable rise to the question of his successor. The odds-on choice: Massachusetts' Representative John McCormack, 69, a craggy Bostonian who has been Democratic floor leader for 17 years, longer than any other man, and who served as Speaker pro tern during Rayburn's absence in the closing weeks of the past session.

McCormack's floor leadership gives him a big leg up on the Speaker's job. With only one exception in the last half a century, Speakers have been succeeded by floor leaders. *McCormack commands the respect of other Democratic professionals. When Pennsylvania's Representative William Green, who bosses the Democratic organization in Philadelphia, was approached by an anti-McCormack man, the answer was flat: "I'm for McCormack.

He has earned the speakership." When a speakership boomlet puffed up for Democratic Whip Carl Albert of Oklahoma, Albert assured McCormack that he was not a rival.

About the only way that McCormack could fail to get the job would be if the Kennedy Administration were to go all out in opposing him--and that was the dimmest sort of possibility. As it happens, Jack Kennedy and John McCormack, both natives of Massachusetts, have never been very friendly, either politically or personally. But McCormack worked hard for President Kennedy's programs, with the single exception of the Administration's aid-to-education bill, which he opposed because it did not include assistance to parochial schools. There is some feeling that Roman Catholic McCormack's joining Catholics Kennedy and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield in the topmost level of executive-legislative leadership might be pushing things a bit far.

Among dark-horse candidates for the speakership is Missouri's Representative Richard Boiling, a Rayburn protege and an influential member of the House Rules Committee. But McCormack, because of his age, is not likely to be a long-term Speaker--and Boiling, at 45, should have plenty of later chances. Another possible contender is Pennsylvania's conservative Representative Francis ("Tad") Walter, who is far more popular with Southerners than McCormack, and who has displayed impressive abilities as a House presiding officer. But the mere mention of Walter, one of the authors of the McCarran-Walter immigration act, and chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, makes beads of sweat stand out on many a liberal brow.

Thus, come next January, there is every chance that John McCormack--the "archbishop" of the cloakrooms--will take up the gavel handled with such dexterity for so long by Sam Rayburn.

*In 1919, when the G.O.P. won control of Congress, the nominal heir apparent was James R. Mann of Illinois, the Republican floor leader. But Mann had been a supporter of the policies of despotic Speaker "Uncle Joe" Cannon, and he lost the speakership to Massachusetts' Frederick H. Gillett.

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