Within a few minutes after the House began debating the Defense Appropriations bill one day last week, the opposition line was clearly charted: this was not Dwight Eisenhower's budget; the proposed cut in Air Force funds was the clumsy work of inexperienced and economy-minded civilians, e.g., Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, Deputy Secretary Roger M. Kyes and Assistant Secretary Wilfred McNeil. After the line was laid down by Texas Democrat George Mahon, other Democrats promptly began to walk it. Then, like a schoolteacher wiping a misspelled word off the blackboard, Kansas' matter-of-fact Errett Power Scrivner erased the line with one swipe.
Republican...