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Enter Senator Margaret Chase Smith, 71, an ABM opponent, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, a retired Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, wearing her customary red rose. Without a hint of what she was up to, the lady from Maine put in an amendment of her own to ban research as well as deployment for Safeguard. That was handily defeated, 11-89, to no one's surprise. Then the Cooper-Hart forces, fearing that they were about to lose a vote they desperately needed, sweet-talked Mrs. Smith into putting in a new amendment: this one would also halt both research and deployment on Safeguard but allow research on other types of ABM systems. Since Mrs. Smith was clearly not going to vote any money whatsoever for Safeguard—not even the research-only funds included in the Cooper-Hart amendment—the opposition's only hope was to get all the anti-ABM forces together behind Mrs. Smith's new amendment. They did just that, but it was not enough. Even with Mrs. Smith, they had only 50 votes, one shy of the majority needed to carry an amendment. Although the amendment was already defeated, Vice President Spiro Agnew added his vote to make the result 50-51. Far easier passage of Safeguard is expected in the House.
Richard Nixon won an important, if narrow, victory. Unlike his Democratic predecessor, however, he had left Congress free to work its will. Nixon's manner in dealing with Congress is almost diffident, a throwback to the more passive presidency of the Eisenhower years, a direct contrast with the hot-breath methods of Lyndon Johnson. Nixon quietly lobbied dozens of Senators for Safeguard, but he never made it a party issue with Republicans. A month ago, Nixon met with five anti-ABM Republican Senators, but mentioned the issue only in passing. He understood their position, he said, and they were free to vote as conscience dictated.
Some in Congress believe that Nixon is making a deliberate effort to dissociate himself from the wheeler-dealer image of L.B.J. If so, the President could not have made the point more dramatically than he did during the final hours of Senate debate last week. On the Senate floor, a page slipped up to Delaware's John Williams, one of the very few Senators who had not announced a position on Safeguard. "Senator," the page stage-whispered, "the President is on the telephone." The ABM opponents concluded that Nixon was applying last-minute pressure to win a wavering vote. Not a bit of it. ABM was never mentioned in the phone conversation, though Williams eventually voted with the Administration. Williams is the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and the President merely wanted to talk over with him the tax-reform proposals that the House of Representatives was about to take up.
The Tax Bill
That tax-reform bill was something had not reckoned on— at least yet. It was a classic case of a Congress of one party forcing on a President of the other party something he not particularly want, though it was from the rancorous kind of battle Democrat Harry Truman fought almost weekly with the Republican 80th Congress. The habitual formula — the President proposes, Congress disposes—was turned around.