Over cocktails in Manhattan last week, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko inquired politely of Dean Rusk if Congress was still in session. Yes, it is, said the U.S. Secretary of State, explaining that it was dealing with home rule in the District of Columbia. Quipped Rusk: "It's one of our last vestiges of colonialism."
What Rusk and other Administration officials could not foresee was that Lyndon Johnson's mighty efforts to end the capital's colonial status would come to naught. In one of the rare and least expected setbacks dealt him by the docile 89th Congress, the House last week killed Johnson's...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
