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"Feet in the Fire." The team of Martin and Halleck is a powerful combination. While Martin is making tactful requests, Charlie Halleck. ruddy-nosed and glint-eyed, is charging up and down the aisles of the House chamber, telling his troops, "Damn you, you've got to be with us on this one. The President needs your support. So do I." The session's crowning personal success for Halleck was the farm bill, which he saved from defeat under farm-bloc opposition to Agriculture Secretary Benson's sliding price scale of 75% to 90% of parity. Halleck, who has represented his Indiana farm district for 20 years, thought he could win on a compromise of 82½% to 90%, and told the President so. Said Ike, "Charlie, you're the captain. Go ahead."
Charlie went ahead, with an assist from Joe, who told his boys not to argue, just vote. Said Martin: "An umpire just calls a ball a ball. He doesn't stop to explain that it's high and outside or low and inside. That's what you should do." Halleck won his farm-bill gamble, but his driving tactics eventually stirred up some resentment among the hard-pressed troops. "Charlie is holding our feet to the fire too much," carped one G.O.P. Congressman. The resentment converged on the President's health-reinsurance plan. Deciding that the bill was not crucial to the Administration, 75 Republicans threw off Halleck's harness, jumping the traces to defeat the bill. Health reinsurance was Politician Halleck's sacrifice play, the price of delivery on other measures.
To help keep the legislative gears well oiled, Charlie Halleck uses "the Clinic," a secluded Capitol office comparable to Democratic Leader (and former Speaker) Sam Rayburn's "Board of Education," where Mister Sam's friends can sip at a bourbon-and-branch-water. Teetotaler Martin rarely visits the Clinic, but there, at the end of a long day, Halleck quenches the thirst of his assistant whips and plans the next day's work.
Frigid Work. The Senate's machinery is less well lubricated. One hot day this summer, Illinois' Senator Everett Dirksen stopped in to talk to Majority Leader Bill Knowland. Dirksen said he was thirsty, although Knowland had not asked him. Bill Knowland went to his icebox, found the ice trays frozen in from long disuse, began hacking at them with a letter opener. With characteristic single-mindedness, Knowland turned down his aides' suggestion that they get some ice from the Senate restaurant, and ignored Dirksen's pleas to forget it. Fifteen minutes later, Knowland had his ice.
The Senate is as intractable as Knowland's ice trays. Its rules are designed to humor the egos and the caprice of men who all regard themselves as national celebrities. In his difficult job, Knowland works with tireless energy, but in training himself for statesmanship, he had to bypass a tutelage in political finesse. He lacks Martin's knack for looking ahead, often neglects to count votes long enough in advance because of his preoccupation with a bill currently on the Senate floor.