Nation: The Leader: Everett Dirkson

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From the ceiling of the Capitol office hangs a magnificent chandelier, circa 1802. Its crystals oscillate freely. They touch and tinkle in a sparkling Mozartian minuet. But hark! Whence comes this counterpoint that shivers the crystals into new and shimmering song? It comes from the man behind the desk—a big-handed, big-boned man with a lined, cornfield face and greying locks that spiral above him like a halo run amok. He speaks, and the words emerge in a soft, sepulchral baritone. They undulate in measured phrases, expire in breathless wisps. He fills his lungs and blows word-rings like smoke. The sentences curl upward. They chase each other around the room in dreamy images of Steamboat Gothic. Now he conjures moods of mirth, now of sorrow. He rolls his bright blue eyes heavenward. In funereal tones, he paraphrases the Bible (" 'Lord, they would stone me . . .'") and church bells peal. "Motherhood." he whispers, and grown men weep. "The Flag!" he bugles, and everybody salutes.

No one who has seen and heard this performance will ever forget it. For this is Illinois Republican Everett McKinley Dirksen, 66, minority leader of the U.S. Senate. He is his party's spokesman in the Senate and the man responsible for unifying the often disparate views of G.O.P. members, and for translating those aims into action. As the keystone of the loyal opposition, he must move with a sure political sophistication and a thorough grasp of political events. By dint of these qualities, and abetted by his marvelously furry voice. Dirksen has become one of the truly remarkable characters of the Senate.

True enough, the character has often been caricatured. They call him "Irksome Dirksen." "the Wizard of Ooze," "the Liberace of the Senate," and "Oleaginous Ev." They claim that he was born with a golden thesaurus in his mouth, that he marinates his tonsils in honey. They say that he got his cornball ways from working for the Corn Products Refining Co. plant in Pekin. Ill., his home town, and that his felicity for hot air is a result of his stint as a World War I balloonist.

They recall that in his prepolitical days, he had a consuming ambition to become an actor — and they argue that he has succeeded superbly. They delight in his adventurous hairdo : "Whatever you want to say about him, he doesn't use that greasy kid stuff." And they point to a political trail that has more twists than that of a palsied sidewinder: the Chicago Sun-Times (whose political creature Dirksen is often, and inaccurately, accused of being) once reported that in his 16 years in the House of Representatives, Dirksen changed his mind 62 times on foreign policy matters, 31 times on military affairs, and 70 times on agricultural policies.

But most of all, outside the Senate itself, they tend to forget or ignore the fact that Dirksen has become the most effective G.O.P. floor leader in a line of succession that includes Oregon's Charles McNary, Maine's Wallace White, Nebraska's Kenneth Wherry, Ohio's Robert Taft and California's William Knowland.