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The first major Administration legislative item to come up for floor vote in Congress found O'Brien with his organizational fences not yet in place. It was the feed-grains bill, which found rural and urban Congressmen bitterly divided. About the only appeal that O'Brien and his staffers could make to Democratic Congressmen was not to let the President down on his first bill—"Let's win this one for Jack, Jackie and little Caroline." The bill passed the House by seven votes—and since then O'Brien has been able to move more sophisticated weapons into action on behalf of the Administration program.
His bulky (5 ft. 11½ in., 187 Ibs.) frame and his reddish, whisk-broom thatch are a familiar sight in the Capitol's corridors. In turn, Larry has made it his business to meet nearly all the inhabitants of Capitol Hill at a marathon succession of cocktail parties and at leisurely Sunday brunches on the O'Brien's Georgetown terrace, with Wife Elva presiding at meals that include O'Brien potatoes. But O'Brien has remembered the Kennedy warning: although he is liked by nearly everyone, Republican as well as Democrat, on the Hill, he has made use of only one close friend: Representative Eddie Boland, the Congressman from O'Brien's own district. (It was Boland who was the earliest to spot Jack Kennedy's presidential potential. In 1946 he told O'Brien: "Kennedy's a real comer. He can go all the way.") On the Hill, Boland's office has become an anteroom to O'Brien's headquarters, and other Congressmen have come to regard the Springfield Democrat as the resident of Capitol Hill who has the most direct line to O'Brien.
The Tough Way. In the heat of battle, when persuasion fails. O'Brien is perfectly willing to play it the tough way. When Louisiana's penny-pinching Representative Otto Passman decided to block a $600 million request for Latin American aid money in his House appropriations subcommittee, O'Brien's operatives went quietly behind his back, lined up enough votes to pass the bill over the chairman's objection; Passman eventually voted for the appropriation himself, rather than have it known he could not control his committee. Again, during the aid-to-education debate, Chicago's Representative Roman Pucinski threatened to kill the public school measure by tagging onto it a parochial school amendment. O'Brien appealed to Chicago Boss Dick Daley, who immediately telephoned Pucinski: "Who sent you there, me or the bishop?" he growled. "And who's going to keep you there, me or the bishop?" Pucinski has since remembered who sent him there.
Such political gamesmanship has won many a hot battle in Congress during the seven Kennedy months. The Administration has suffered defeats: its medical care for the aged bill was shelved without ever coming up for vote; its farm program was gutted; its school aid bill, now vastly diluted, is still in grave doubt. Its crucial foreign aid bill got relatively unscathed through the Senate, was murdered in the House—despite O'Brien's valiant fight for sorely needed long-term borrowing authority—and some time this week will come compromised out of a Senate-House conference.