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Despite the defeats and the enforced compromises, the Kennedy Administration's legislative record compares favorably with any since the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt. Steered intact through the divided 87th Congress were a $394 million depressed areas bill, an increase in the minimum wage from $1 to $1.25 an hour with expanded minimum wage coverage, an omnibus $6.8 billion housing bill, a controversial feed-grains bill, a huge, eleven-year, $21 billion interstate highways bill. Most of the credit belongs to Larry O'Brien, a man who hates to lose. "We never know when we're beaten," he says of himself and his staff. "We never say die."
He does know that there is a time to compromise. Says he: "As realists, we want to get as much of our program through as we can. If you feel that you are getting as much as you can, all right. If you don't get as much as you can, you've failed." On that basis, no one can say that Larry O'Brien has failed.