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For a time, Dirksen, who was always ambitious, had hoped to run for the vice-presidency with Robert Taft in 1952. But when he ascended to the Senate G.O.P. leadership in 1959, he was mellower, and his ambitions were satisfied. Under Kennedy and Johnson, he became a uniquely loyal opposition to the White House. In hindsight, his largest failure during the '60s arose from his devotion to Lyndon Johnson. Dirksen refused to criticize the President for the conduct of the Viet Nam war and kept most Republican Senators silent as well—although it is doubtful that many would have been highly critical in any case.
It was Dirksen's fate to spend almost all of his years in Congress as a member of the minority party. Characteristically, he made the best of it, and no member of the Republican Party had greater impact on the legislation of those Democratic years.
Among Senate Republicans, Dirksen exercised an unchallenged leadership that will probably be impossible for his successor to achieve. With a Republican President, for one thing, the influence of all G.O.P. Senators is somewhat diminished as they defer to the White House's lead. As Republicans have increased their strength in the Senate (there are now 43, compared with 35 in 1961), their factionalism has also increased. Last week, even as Dirksen lay in state in the Capitol rotunda, the maneuvering to claim his mantle began. Pennsylvania's Hugh Scott, the Minority Whip, was the choice of party liberals, while the conservatives leaned toward either Nebraska's Roman Hruska, Colorado's Gordon Allott or Tennessee's Howard Baker, who is Dirksen's son-in-law. Since both Hruska, 65, and Allott, 62, are comparatively colorless, the Senate G.O.P.'s conservative majority may well settle on Baker, 43, a Nixon moderate who would provide the party with a more youthful image. A day after the funeral in Pekin, both Baker and Scott declared their candidacies for Dirksen's chair, and Hruska added his bid two days later.
There was Senate gossip about working out a deal in which Scott, who is 68 and faces a difficult re-election race next year, might be named leader, with Baker as his whip. Baker, who has been in the Senate for just three years, could thus gain parliamentary experience and inherit the leadership before long. In any case, the position will inevitably count for less now that Dirksen is gone.
The reason is not merely the scope of the job; it is the stature and the enormous range of the man who has vacated it. Dirksen's act would be impossible for anyone to follow. Who else, after all, could have won a Grammy and outsold Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan with a record on which he read the Declaration of Independence, backed by full orchestra and chorus?