How the SST Died

Heading into the showdown Senate vote on the SST, proponents clung to a single hope, wispy as a contrail, of keeping the aircraft from crashing. Their head count showed 49 Senators against the plane, 47 for it, two absent and two wavering: Maine's Margaret Chase Smith and Kentucky's John Sherman Cooper. If Richard Nixon could land those two Republicans, the SST might yet take off. Vice President Spiro Agnew stood ready to cast a tie-breaking vote to continue the aircraft's funding.

Nixon telephoned Cooper, pleaded for his support. Cooper had voted against the aircraft last year, but he did not want to get tagged as an anti-Nixon Republican and thus lose his influence with the President on foreign affairs, his main interest. Moreover, Cooper's

Kentucky colleague, Republican Marlowe Cook, had switched from his anti-SST vote last year to stand with the Administration this time.

Leave Her Alone. Nixon also pursued the independent Mrs. Smith, who had opposed the plane earlier but had voted for it this year in committee. He sent her a "Dear Margaret" letter announcing that he was "pleased" to rescind an order by the Johnson Administration closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on the Maine-New Hampshire border. With cool class, Mrs. Smith showed the letter to newsmen, and blandly said that she was "very much gratified" by the President's decision.

Just as intent upon getting Mrs. Smith's vote, aides of Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire, who has been a leader in the fight against the SST for ten years, followed a more prudent course. They asked other Senators how to approach her, were warned flatly to "leave her alone"--and they did.

In the final hours before the roll call, Nixon also summoned to the White House five Senators believed to be against him on the issue. He saw another avenue of possible success when two of them, New York's Freshman Senator James Buckley and Colorado's Republican Peter Dominick, assured him that they would vote for the plane. An Administration victory hinged on preventing any unanticipated defections.

When the roll call began in a hushed and crowded chamber, opponents of the SST proceeded slowly in the hope that one of their number, Indiana Democrat Birch Bayh, could return in time from a Colorado skiing trip, which he had recklessly extended to the day of the vote. Slowed by icy roads, Bayh missed a flight--and the roll call.

Shocks. The clerk had reached only the fourth name, that of New Mexico Democrat Clinton Anderson, when the Administration received its first shock. Anderson, an intimate of one of the SST's prime supporters, Washington

Democrat Henry Jackson (who is married to Anderson's former secretary), voted no. Proxmire smiled with surprise, lifted a closed fist in a "go, team" gesture. Anderson, who had voted for the plane before, explained that his mail had run heavily against it this time. Friends suggested that he was influenced by his wife Henrietta, who has become aroused about ecological hazards.

The galleries murmured again when Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, a freshman widely viewed as a conservative, uttered his no--even though Fellow Texan John Connally had been assigned to coax a yes from him. Heads bowed over their tally sheets, Jackson and Washington's other SST proponent, Democrat Warren Magnuson, looked glum. Proxmire's fist shot up again when Cooper showed that Nixon's appeal had not influenced him; he voted against the SST. Minnesota Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who owes a huge debt to labor for its support in his presidential race, nevertheless cast his vote against the funds.

By the time Mrs. Smith, who was either unmoved by Nixon's letter or angered at its timing, offered her barely audible no,-the outcome was clear. The final vote was 51 to 46 against spending any more money to develop the aircraft. Colleagues rushed to congratulate Proxmire. Jackson, too, shook his hand. Magnuson remained seated.

Party Indifference. For Nixon, the defeat was as sharp a rebuke to his leadership as were the Senate's earlier rejections of his Haynsworth and Carswell nominations to the Supreme Court. On the SST, he lost 17 Republicans--more than a third of his party's membership --in the Senate. The "ideological gain" he claimed to have made in the 1970 election did not materialize. Of the 11 new Senators, seven voted against the SST--providing exactly the same margin by which their 11 predecessors had opposed the plane last year.

Even more ominous to Nixon's future legislative success: when the House rejected the SST a week earlier, he had lost almost half of the Republican Representatives on that issue--including three who hold leadership posts. This happened despite the fact that party loyalty, especially among Republicans, has traditionally been much stronger in the House than in the Senate.

Beyond the often repeated arguments against the SST--that it would be a multibillion dollar gamble, represented an unrealistic ordering of national priorities and would endanger the environment--the congressional decision to kill the aircraft demonstrated a surprising indifference to presidential pressure. Representatives, especially, are attuned to political currents at home, and it is obvious that, at least at the moment, they do not fear the grass-roots political clout of Richard Nixon.

-White House aides had mishandled Mrs. Smith, to their regret, once before. On the Carswell Supreme Court nomination last year, they circulated word that she was planning to vote for him. Angered at that use of her name, she voted against him.

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