The Congress: Bitter Pill

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Right before the eyes of the voters, the New Frontier employment agency put members of the U.S. Senate on the spot with the nomination of Charles M. Meriwether, 49, to be director of the Export-Import Bank—and the Senate did not like it a bit. Alabaman Meriwether was an acknowledged segregationist and 1950 campaign manager for Senatorial Candidate John Crommelin, racist and anti-Semite. Oregon's Wayne Morse suggested —and Meriwether stoutly denied—that he was a reformed alcoholic and a onetime Ku KIux Klansman. Meriwether's political know-how and his experience in the insurance business seemed to be his only positive qualifications for the job.

In doling out patronage to the faithful, Kennedy had rewarded Meriwether at the behest of his good friend, Alabama's Gov ernor John Patterson, one of the first all-out Kennedy campaign supporters in the South. The President had unaccountably neglected to clear Meriwether's name with Alabama's Senator John Sparkman.

A word from Sparkman would have prevented Senate confirmation, and even without a word, many Northern Senators teetered on the edge of a nay vote. But John Sparkman swallowed his bitter pill, loyally backed the President, and his fellow Senators went along, approving the Meriwether appointment, 67 to 18.