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Twenty minutes before the rapping of gavels convened the 85th Congress, a massive, bull-shouldered man entered the empty Senate chamber and moved with long strides to his desk in the front row, right side. For a few moments he sat alone among the curving rows, rustling through the pile of documents he had brought with him. Then one by one, two by two, his colleagues began drifting in through the swinging doors. The man leaped to his feet, began greeting each and every one with booming-voiced gladness, in the manner of one who truly loves his club and its members—not for what they may be individually, but simply because they are members of the club. William Fife Knowland, 48, Republican from California, minority leader of the Senate, was back in his element, pleased with his lot, and eager to come to grips with the conflicts facing a party that has just triumphantly won the White House, and lost control of the Congress.
Already Bill Knowland had met with fellow Republican congressional leaders at a nine-hour White House session, lunched with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, attended a bipartisan legislative conference at the White House, worked at reshuffling the Senate's Republican high command, helped draft a unanimous-consent agreement under which the Senate would debate a change in its rules, and assisted in writing a resolution paving the way for President Eisenhower's Middle East message to a joint session of Congress. All this was part of Knowland's job as leader of a Senate minority that represents a party in executive power. It was also prologue to a political challenge that has no precedent in U.S. history.
As leader of the G.O.P. Senate forces, Bill Knowland's job is to transmit the plans and attitudes of a majority President to the minority party in the Senate, to seize the initiative, where possible, in a chamber balanced at 49 Democrats and 47 Republicans. As the most spotlighted Republican on Capitol Hill, Knowland's responsibility (which he shares with House Minority Leader Joe Martin) is to see to it that the Republican congressional record will contribute to Republican congressional victory in a 1958 that looks all too shaky. Moreover, if the U.S. is to get value received for its national electoral choice, Bill Knowland and his Republican colleagues must give legislative expression to the mandate awarded Dwight Eisenhower.
Under these compelling terms, the job of leading the Senate Republicans is not one for a wire-pulling maneuverer, an obstructionist or, in the proud U.S. Senate, a White House errand boy.
Qualities of Leadership. The U.S. Senate respects only those who respect it; no man has a deeper feeling for the Senate than Knowland. A party leader, by definition, must be a party man; Knowland has been a Republican from birth, and his attachment is to the party itself, not to any of its factions. "I consider myself," he says, putting first things first, "a member of the Republican team, and the President certainly would be the leader of that team."