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Such campaign shibboleths as plumbers and Gemstone have gained overnight currency. The testimony is peppered with quasi-legalistic phrases, designed to show both earnestness and precision, but sounding vaguely Einsteinian: "At this point in time," "Did there then come a time when ...?" And the characters are becoming a nationally familiar cast.
There has never been a grandfather figure quite like Senator Sam Ervin. His face is a cast in itself—the incongruously black eyebrows constantly reaching for the ceiling, the young eyes hiding in a face beyond age, the jowls and chins twitching with merriment or outrage. His apt biblical allusions, his dropped g's and regionalisms ("Yo' thinkin' ... Yewnited States") are a happy antidote to Archie Bunkerisms.
Opposite this imposing septuagenarian, Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., 47, gives the impression of a leading man who has just come from musical comedy to his first dramatic role. Baker's style finds itself in the magisterial pause—possibly learned from his late father-in-law Senator Everett Dirksen —coupled with curious innocence ("What do you mean, 'a pretty good wireman?' "). His next show, Washington speculators have it, may be another drama: candidate for Vice President. No family is complete without its low-key philosopher. The part is flawlessly enacted by Herman Talmadge of Georgia, whose Mason-diction lines give credence to Mark Twain's observation: "Southerners have no use for an r." The supporting cast, a master stroke of ticket balancing, could populate a soap opera, western or detective series with equal skill. Among the audience favorites: Samuel Dash, a bright bald eagle in the great Jacob Javits tradition, who possesses a memory so phenomenal that he can correct the witness's recollection of dates and places; Lowell Weicker, the stolid patrician from Connecticut, once a firm conservative supporter of the Administration, now one of its most eloquent detractors; and Daniel Inouye, the one-armed Hawaiian war hero whose mask of stoicism cannot quite hide the sense of humor that keeps peeking out from behind his hornrimmed spectacles.