The Big Chairman Up Yonder

In the Baltimore Room of Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel last week, the 18-member Arrangements Committee tiptoed through the motions of picking the top officers for the Aug. 24 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. National Committee Chairman John Bailey ran the meeting--but there was the Big Chairman Up Yonder in the White House, and it was he who really called the shots. Periodically Bailey loped off to a telephone in the next room to give Lyndon Johnson running reports on how well his committee was rubber-stamping Lyndon's directions.

With Johnson's "approval," the committee named House Speaker John Mc-Cormack, 72, as permanent chairman of the convention and Oklahoma's Carl Albert, 56, the House majority leader, to head the Platform Committee.

Tremendous. Far greater interest focused on the selection of Rhode Island's Senator John Pastore, 57, as the convention's temporary chairman and keynoter. Pastore, a natty, mustachioed little guy (5 ft. 4 in.), is an outspoken liberal who earned Lyndon's respect and friendship as one of Majority Leader Johnson's most dependable floor managers. "That Johnny Pastore," Lyndon liked to say, "he's tremendous; sometimes I think he can do anything."

People have been saying things like that about Pastore for a long time. His father, an immigrant Italian tailor, died when his son was barely eight. Not long after that, young John went to work earning his own keep, first as an errand boy in Providence, later in college as a part-time bookkeeper. With a law degree earned in nighttime university courses at the Providence Y.M.C.A., he climbed steadily through a clutch of state-government jobs, from assembly member to Governor in 1945. In 1950 he was elected the first U.S. Senator of Italian parentage. In the Senate he was absorbed quickly into the leadership circle and rose to head the important Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

The President had further good reason for choosing Pastore as keynoter. He is an orator who can wind stems with the best of them. He is a champ in rough-and-tumble debate, belts out speeches from the Senate floor without text or notes, all the while flailing and dancing about like a bantamweight going for the K.O. Says one friend: "Nobody will go to sleep while he's talking. And I hope they give him room enough on the platform to move around."

Sticky. Pastore may well be the star performer in a show that might be notably lacking in drama. There will, of course, be a few sticky chores falling to the chairman of the Credentials Com mittee. For that post Johnson wisely picked Pennsylvania's former Governor David L. Lawrence, 75, a longtime, party pro who has a flair for hammering out a slick, smooth compromise.

Lawrence will have to handle the Mississippi problem. There, the newly formed, predominantly Negro Freedom Democratic Party has announced that it will send its own delegation to the convention to challenge the seating of regular state party delegates. The new party charges that the regular organization sacrificed its true Democratic man date by discriminating against Negroes and opposing national party programs. Lawrence will probably split the difference and seat half of each delegation. In Alabama, moreover, the 36-man delegation, while technically unpledged, is still committed to Governor George Wallace, despite his withdrawal as a candidate. Almost inevitably, the seating of that delegation will be challenged. There is not much hope for even a Lawrence-engineered solution, and it is likely that by the time the convention is called to order, Alabama will absent itself from further proceedings.

Despite the prospect of these sticky wickets, the Democrats figure they will breeze through their four-day convention in a fraction of the time the Republicans were on screen in San Francisco. Only one two-hour session a day has been scheduled. Each will start early in the evening and end in plenty of time for televiewers to catch the late show.

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