The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

CLARENCE B. RANDALL, chairman of the Commission on Foreign Economic Policy, won the confidence of Washington faster than any other businessman the Eisenhower Administration has brought to the Capital. When Mr. Randall arrived to take what appeared to be an impossible assignment, the cynics said that he would be quickly tripped up by old political hands determined to check President Eisenhower’s propensity for freer international trade. Senior members of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee occupy strategic positions on the seventeen-man commission, and they have been in the habit of running things their own way.

But without wasting any time, Mr. Randall showed that he knew the bureaucratic and political ropes, could exercise discipline during hearings, and was determined to hammer out a report which the American people can support. There have been grumblings that Mr. Randall is a tyrant. His staff, which has been inspired by his striking ability to get at fundamentals, says that he is a benign tyrant whom the Administration will never let leave the city because he knows how to get things done.

Mr. Randall’s report is nearly completed. He hopes to be able to submit it to the President and Congress early in the new session. His task is essentially a political one. He and his colleagues, who represent industry, finance, labor, agriculture, and politics, must find a substitute for the reciprocal trade program, which has a Democratic heritage.

Part of the problem is in semantics. There must be a new name for whatever program is proposed. It must be a name that Republicans in Congress will like, and the program will have to be one that they can champion, or at least defend. Given the present Congressional suspicion of our allies, it probably will be necessary to devise a new bargaining instrument. Congress is not likely to lower American tariffs without a quid pro quo.

Randall and the protectionists

Mr. Randall, the businessman, is fully alive to his political problems. But many Washington experts are convinced that he cannot, succeed. The committee system in Congress, for example, is a towering roadblock. Senior Republicans on the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees are protectionists of the old school. Dan Reed of New York, Richard Simpson of Pennsylvania, and Eugene Millikin of Colorado are members of the Randall commission who, if they sign a minority report, could cut the ground from under the majority.

Shortly after the commission was organized, one of the Republican members from Congress told a reporter: “I can imagine the report and we won’t sign it. And what will the Administration do when the heads of tthe House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee refuse to sign Randall’s report?” Dan Reed alone, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, can block any recommendation that might come from the Randall commission.

Mr. Randall started out with the objective of trying to get a unanimous report. From the beginning, Senator Millikin, chairman of the Finance Committee, was regarded as the key figure, He is a protectionist, with large wool and mineral interests in his state clamoring for higher tariffs.

But Millikin has not been as unyielding as some of his colleagues in the House. In 1953, the President persuaded him to support a one-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. And the Senator was instrumental in upsetting the Republican scheme to pack the Tariff Commission. He was wise enough to see that if Republicans packed the Tariff Commission one year, the Democrats might do the same thing the next.’ Mr. Randall’s attention, therefore, has been focused on winning Senator Millikin.

Senator Millikin and Representative Reed worked in close harmony with Chairman Randall on the trip which a dozen of the commission members made to Pans. The commission interviewed Winthrop Aldrich, Ambassador to Britain; James B. Conant, U.S. High Commissioner for Germany; R. A. Butler, British Chancellor of the Exchequer; Jean Monnet, President of the European Coal & Steel Community High Authority; and other representative’s, both European and American, of NATO, the ECSC, and the Economic Commission for Europe. Those interviews produced a profound impression on Mr. Randall’s group. One person who watched said, “They were overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility.”

Mr. Randall returned to Washington with far greater confidence that he could avoid a minority report. Instead of a split down the middle, as seemed inevitable at first, the chances are favorable for a report which most members, except Representative Simpson, who refused to go to Europe and who has boycotted most of the meetings of the commission, will sign. Since so many things will be covered besides the tariff — economic and military aid, the problem of agricultural surpluses, customs simplifications, East-West trade, foreign investment policy, and relations with Latin America

— there probably will be dissents at various points by individual members that will cause considerable trouble.

In view of the obstacles in the way, some of the President’s most persuasive advisers are telling him that the Randall report should be put on the shelf for a year. They argue that in 1954 Congress will be in no mood to tackle highly controversial problems. Its chief interest will be in avoiding harsh decisions and adjourning as early as possible. This is an election year for all members of the House and a third of the Senate. The argument of the President’s political advisers goes like this: “Congress will not be able to do much business this year. There are some important essentials that have to be attended to, such as appropriations bills, tax legislation, raising the debt limit, amending social security, and foreign aid. Tariff problems should wait until the Republican majority is larger. The only practical course in 1954 is to extend the Reciprocal Trade Act for another year and postpone until 1955 the lengthy debate on the Randall proposals.”

Many State and Treasury Department officials, as well as Mr. Randall, think that postponement would have tragic political repercussions here and abroad. Democrats would make the most of Adlai Stevenson s criticism that we have “government by postponement,” and our allies might take protective steps of their own that would be difficult to retrace.

Because of the “escape clause” in the Reciprocal Trade Act, which permits industries that believe they are hurt by foreign competition to appeal for tariff protection, it is virtually impossible for the Administration to hold the tariff line as it is for very long. Unless Congress soon takes positive steps toward freer trade, there will be backsliding. That is one of the reasons why Mr. Randall wants to have a report ready in time for action by Congress in 1954. It remains to be seen whether the President will be persuaded by Mr. Randall or by his political advisors.

Intraparty struggles

It is partly because Mr. Eisenhower is receiving conflicting advice that Washington observers see difficult times ahead. It is said now that Mr. Eisenhower will look back on his first year as the easiest. His party is torn between those who want to retrench and those who want to go forward.

One of the first manifestations of this struggle in the new year will be over the Capehart proposal to enlarge the Senate Republican Policy Committee. The Indiana Senator will propose that all committee chairmen become members of the Policy Committee. This would mean a further intrenchment of the seniority system.

Senator Capehart’s plan would weaken the authority of the majority leader, who is the Senate’s chief contact with the President. The effect would be to wrest policy control from the elected Policy Committee and place it in the hands of men whose power derives solely from their seniority. If Senator Capehart is successful he will win a significant victory for the party’s old guard. It will mean, for example, elevation to the Policy Committee of Senators McCarthy and Jenner.

That is but one of the intraparty power struggles which the President faces at a time when the Democrats are confidently coming out for battle. Control of the Senate now could be lost by the change of one seat, and control of the House could be lost by the change of three.

In such a supercharged political atmosphere— exaggerated by the November elections and the BrownellTruman uproar—the President will appreciate the full force of the argument that Congressional elections are held too often in this country. The climate of an election year can have a paralyzing effect on the machinery of government, especially when the smallest change could affect control of Congress.

Mid-tern elections

Advocates of a four-year term for House members got a boost recently from an unexpected quarter. When Parliament reconvened in Westminster, Sir Winston Churchill put at rest rumors that he would call a general election in an attempt to increase his majority. He said that the time was not ripe for another “costly, quarrelsome, machine-made tumult.”

The five-year term of the House of Commons, Churchill said, “strikes a happy medium between Parliaments which last loo little and Parliaments which last loo long.” He could have been thinking of the House of Representatives when he spoke of Parliaments which last too little.

Administration leaders are deeply disturbed by the problem which politics now poses. They readily concede that they got their programs off to a slow start in 1953 and that they did not fully take into account the midterm elections. Now they are faced with some crucial decisions that require ratification by a Congress whose members are primarily concerned with campaigning.

Sir Winston said that elections exist for the sake of the House of Commons and not the House of Commons for the sake of elections, but nearly everything Congress does in the next few months will be with an eye to next November.

The President and the press

At his first press conference after the Brownell charges against President Truman in the Harry Dexter White case, the President made a desperate but vain attempt to stay above the battle. He likes to be the chairman of the board, seeking harmony and agreement. He refused to chastise the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities for subpoenaing Mr. Truman. He made it clear that he would not criticize the committee, but he added that he would not have done what it did.

No press conference in recent times has been as stormy as that one, and the President finally cut off the questions, saying that he would answer no more. He was obviously nettled and seemed surprised that questions should be as pointed as they were. It was an extraordinary conference, not at all typical.

The President has not hidden the fact that the press conferences are an ordeal. But only occasionally is his nervousness or unhappiness apparent to the correspondents. Several times he has shown that he has a quick temper, but generally he has kept it under control. He gives every appearance of trying earnestly to answer every question fully. Sometimes he talks animatedly without giving away much specific information.

Many correspondents complain that Mr. Eisenhower is verbose and platitudinous. He himself has said that he is a garrulous person. Sometimes he also is inept and bumbling, as when it took three or four statements to clarify his position on his role in campaigns. Although he is more careful on most, things and certainly more averse to entering a fight than his predecessor, he too makes mistakes that show inadequate briefing and study and imperfect coordination in the Administration.

Eisenhower’s hesitancy in making a decision or taking a firm stand is the exact opposite of Truman’s attitude. When Attorney General Brownell made his first charges in the Harry Dexter White case the President, through his press secretary, quickly identified himself with them. But at his press conference the President backed away and cut much of the ground from under Mr. Brownell’s original attack. Then the President took two additional steps to dissociate himself from the fracas. The announcement came from the White

House that the President had not seen the Brownell speech in advance and that he had not listened to Mr. Truman’s television report.

Mood of the Capital

As the Administration prepares for its second bout with Congress, its first interest is in trying to down the ugly partisanship that lately has been apparent in so many ways. The charges and countercharges over the Harry Dexter White case served to add fuel to the flames.

It is astounding that party recriminations should become so acrimonious under Dwight D. Eisenhower. For seldom has a man attempted to stand above party to the extent that he has. But time and again things have happened that were beyond his power to control or after he had taken inadequate preventive measures. His lack of skill as a politician has left him open repeatedly to the charge of rank partisanship.

In his testimony before the Jenner committee, Mr. Brownell, with the enthusiastic support of J. Edgar Hoover, unquestionably put the Democrats back on the defensive, whatever the effect of Mr. Truman’s television appearance may have been.

Two conclusions were immediately apparent: the Jenner committee has Administration support for a thorough and prolonged investigation into the past sins of the Truman Administration; and full corroboration is given by the announcement of Leonard W. Hall, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, that Communism under the Democrats will be a major campaign issue in 1954. The President expressed the hope at one of his press conferences that the investigations would be a matter of history by the next election. But Senator McCarthy, in his TV -radio reply to Truman, took direct issue with the President, and for the first time was openly critical of the Eisenhower policies.

President Eisenhower’s great opportunity to lift his Administration above the political quagmire rests in his willingness to present Congress with a forward-looking program, which will command the support of responsible men in both parties, and in his capacity to see the program through, whatever the political obstacles.