The Congress: Bitter Pill

Right before the eyes of the voters, the New Frontier employment agency put members of the U.S. Senate on the spot with the nomination of Charles M. Meriwether, 49, to be director of the Export-Import Bank—and the Senate did not like it a bit. Alabaman Meriwether was an acknowledged segregationist and 1950 campaign manager for Senatorial Candidate John Crommelin, racist and anti-Semite. Oregon's Wayne Morse suggested —and Meriwether stoutly denied—that he was a reformed alcoholic and a onetime Ku KIux Klansman. Meriwether's political know-how and his experience in the insurance business...