National Affairs: Joe & the Pols

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Crooned Illinois' Republican Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, who parts his metaphors in the middle: "First we have the winter of discontent, then we hathe balmy breezes of spring, the refreshed earth. When the fishing and voting season comes, tantrums, testiness, gripes begin to fade. That's the time to get the show on the road." This was merely Dirksen's way of saying that he hopes Senator McCarthy will quit tossing tantrums at the G.O.P. Administration in time for the party to take advantage of Joe's touted vote-getting skills.

Other Republicans were also trying to chew their McCarthy and have it, too. National Chairman Leonard Hall, just leaving the White House after talking to President Eisenhower, said: "While Joe is fighting Communism, I go along and we all go along. When he begins to attack persons who are fighting Communism just as conscientiously as he is, I can't go along with him." Then Hall told McCarthy the same thing. Joe was not visibly disturbed.

Hall's Republican National Committee had sponsored a recent McCarthy speaking tour across the nation. Would it sponsor another before the November election? Had the top Republican politicians made up their minds whether Joe was a liability or an asset? Last week no clear conclusion was apparent; the pols didn't want Joe in the Administration's hair, but they thought they might need him in the campaigning season. But the pols were not writing Joe's script. Joe was writing it—with more of an eye for his headlines than for the interests of his party.