The Congress: A Vote for Non-Leadership

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"So help me God," the tall, white-haired Democrat from South Carolina told the House in an emotion-choked voice, "we are going to have a follow-on bomber if it kills me. If I live, I am determined to get my nation a bomber." It was Lucius Mendel Rivers in the kind of histrionic performance to be expected during a tense debate. But there was no debate. When the Armed Services Committee chairman was finished, the House gave him a standing ovation and voted 356 to 2 in favor of his bill authorizing $931 million more than the Administration had requested for military hardware, research and development.

Apart from the price tag, the bill as passed contains the fiat that the Pentagon must build "as soon as practicable" two new nuclear-powered guided-missile frigates similar to the Navy's Bainbridge. The measure also provided twice as much money as the Defense Department had requested in order to accelerate development of the so-called advanced manned strategic aircraft, a new long-range heavy bomber.

Torrent of Eulogy. While it has become almost routine for Congress to vote more funds for particular weapons than Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wants to spend—and for McNamara to ignore the appropriations—last week's bill "mandates" him to use the funds for the Navy's frigates. If enacted, it could result in an unprecedented constitutional impasse between the executive and legislative branches. The committee tried the same maneuver in 1962 under Rivers' predecessor, Carl Vinson, but the Administration was able to muster enough strength to persuade Vinson to back down.

Since then, McNamara's foes on Capitol Hill have become increasingly incensed by his insistence on total control over the military establishment. The Rivers committee report demanded acerbically "whether we might not be better non-led by a mediocrity than be absolutely dominated by a Caesar." The House's rare show of solidarity behind Rivers' bill was also in part a fervent rejoinder to a column by Drew Pearson that very day charging that the committee chairman's absence from the House (which delayed action on the bill for two weeks) resulted from a monumental drinking binge. Rivers, who has been on the wagon for years, mentioned bursitis, not booze, as the cause of his hospitalization, and his colleagues responded with a torrent of eulogy seldom accorded a living member.

Rare Solidarity. Thus the technical issues in the dispute with McNamara were barely discussed. The Pentagon's original request for $16.9 billion had already been fattened by the Senate, which authorized an extra $243 million to further a number of projects presently unwanted by McNamara, notably a new fighter, an antimissile system and a single nuclear frigate.