Old Joe Out

They called him Old Joe. They loved the man in the blue serge suit and the box-toe, ankle-high shoes, the teetotaling bachelor with the cowlick and the beetle-browed scowl that could vanish in a smile of quick warmth. They delighted in such malaprops as "gilded muscle" for "guided missile" and "the chair recognizes the gentleman from Rayburn, Mr. Texas." They marveled at his instinct for the House that was his home. Said President Dwight Eisenhower: "I can't understand how he knows what's going to happen in the House months before it happens. It's uncanny."

For years, then, Old Joe was a term of respect and affection. But some of his fondest followers had recently come to admit that he really was Old Joe—too old.

And last week the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted Joseph William Martin Jr., 74, of North Attleboro, Mass., two-time Speaker (1947-48, 1953-54), out of the leadership post he had held for 20 years.

Well-Traveled Limb. Named to succeed Martin as the Republican House leader: Indiana's Charles A. (for Abraham) Halleck, 58, able, driving graduate of one of the toughest of all state political schools (see box), who, like Joe Martin, has swallowed his longtime conservatism to become a congressional spokesman for the middle-roading Eisenhower Administration. Charlie Halleck had been waiting impatiently for four years. Twice before, in 1954 and 1956, Joe Martin had said that he would retire from his leadership job at the next session. Both times Halleck got ready to fight for the job. Both times Joe Martin changed his mind; he just could not let go. Both times Halleck was persuaded to withdraw—leaving his followers out on an embarrassing limb—only by the personal intervention of President Eisenhower, who did not want to see his two good congressional friends in a fight.

But Halleck hardly had to lift a finger in last week's House revolution: after weeks of closed-door planning, whispered canvassing and worried negotiating, the rebels came to him.

Greyheads' Revenge. The revolution began one day in mid-December when 14 Republican Congressmen, who just happened to be in Washington, got together in the office of California's Bob Wilson to talk about what had hit them in last fall's election. In political coloration, the 14 ranged from Wisconsin's right-wing John Byrnes (chosen chairman of the Policy Committee under Halleck last week) to Michigan's middle-roading Gerald Ford. Yet all agreed on one thing: inept Republican House leadership had contributed to election disaster. They complained that beyond attending White House conferences and carrying White House messages, the latter-day Joe Martin had:

¶ Failed to keep them informed about what was going to happen next.

¶ Lost touch with his own followers so that he was unable to represent their thinking to the President.

¶ Rarely called into session the Republican House Policy Committee, let it make no party policy whatever.

¶ Let congressional Republicans go their separate ways, uninformed, and unable to anticipate problems, to the general detriment of the party.