National Affairs: Incurable Habit

Though he is supposed to be serving as Senate spokesman for the Administration and the Republican Party, California's Minority Leader William Fife Knowland has an apparently incurable habit of throwing his burly body in the way of Administration proposals. He persisted in his ways even after he became a half-lame duck by deciding to resign from the Senate and run for Governor of California next November. And his poor showing in California's popularity-poll primaries last fortnight failed to subdue him. Hours after he got back to Washington he blocked the Administration on the issue of aid to Communist satellites (TIME, June 16).

Last week the reciprocal trade bill's overwhelming victory in the House brightened its Senate prospects, and Texas' Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson announced his "wholehearted support." Then ponderous Bill Knowland spoke up. He favored extension for only three years, not five, he proclaimed, adding that he might oppose other features of the House bill too. Rumbled the New York Times: "The so-called minority leader and spokesman for the Republican Party in the Senate is once again demonstrating how ridiculous it is that he holds that august post in the party's hierarchy."

In plainer words, it was high time for Bill Knowland either to quit acting like an independent running for office on a private platform—or else to resign as minority leader.