The Congress: Time Out for Ev

It was 3:30 a.m. when the 70-year-old patient, staying overnight in Walter Reed Hospital for a routine early-morning checkup, swung his legs from under the covers to get up. Drowsy and unaccustomed to the high hospital bed, Everett Dirksen went sprawling onto the vinyl floor of his third-floor V.I.P. suite, instantly felt a pain shoot along his hip. The diagnosis: a fracture of the right femur.

Though the Senate minority leader often jests about his ailments—complaining about what he likes to call "this old carcass"—last week's accident was no joke to official Washington. President Johnson, flying back from Texas, placed a worried call to the hospital and dispatched a White House plane to bring Mrs. Dirksen to her husband's bedside from Nashville, where she was visiting their daughter. Later in the week, Johnson paid Dirksen a personal call. The President's concern was more than a reflection of longstanding friendship. It was also acknowledgment of Dirksen's unique eminence in American politics, both as the guiding spirit of congressional Republicans and the pragmatic champion of his party's support for the Johnson Administration's Viet Nam policy and its major legislative goals.

Hours after the accident, the fractured bone was reset and pinned without complications and the patient was reported "alert and joking with his doctors." Dirksen is expected to stay in the hospital for two weeks, after which he will be on crutches for two months or so. Meanwhile, with no major legislation scheduled for immediate Senate action, the mishap had one welcome effect. His hospital stay, as Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield noted, will give the hard-driving Republican a "well-earned rest."