The Congress: Mr. Speaker

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The great walnut doors of the U.S. House of Representatives swung wide, and Doorkeeper William ("Fishbait") Miller announced in his drawlingest Mississippi delivery the arrival of a distinguished member. Through the door came a tall, gaunt man with a shock of white hair, rimless glasses and a thin-lipped smile. The House rose in welcome, and Massachusetts' Representative John William McCormack made his way slowly down the center aisle. His peers had just elected him the 45th Speaker of the House.

When McCormack mounted the rostrum to voice his thanks and to take the oath of office (administered by Georgia's Carl Vinson, the dean of the House), his smile flickered. It was a supreme moment for John McCormack—one he had dreamed of for half his life. Yet McCormack could sense a melancholy and a reserve in the House mood.

The House was haunted. McCormack evoked the spirit in the opening words of his acceptance speech: "Speaker Rayburn was not only a great man. He was a good man." For all of McCormack's days as Speaker, he will be pursued by the memory of his predecessor and dear friend, the little Texan who had presided over the House more than twice as long as any other man. The House had rarely given a Speaker such wholehearted trust and respect.

There was no Democratic challenge to Majority Leader McCormack's more or less automatic succession to Rayburn's chair—nor was there any marked enthusiasm about it. Some liberal columnists and editorial writers grumbled, but the young liberals of the House, much closer in "style" to their President than to their new Speaker, were too prudent to voice their misgivings publicly.

Beyond these liberals, there was general House concern about the capacity of John McCormack to achieve real stature in the Speaker's chair. All could agree that McCormack, after 33 years in the House, has a keen and crafty mind, that he is a diligent worker and a dangerous debater, with a knifelike sarcasm that can cut an opponent to tatters. McCormack delights in being described as "The Fighting Irishman from Boston," and he is all of that. But some Congressmen wonder if that is enough.

Power & Trappings. McCormack is the first Roman Catholic to attain the speakership; one of the futile arguments mentioned by the anti-McCormack press was that with one Catholic in the White House and another, Mike Mansfield, leading the Senate Democrats, it would be asking too much of non-Catholics to elevate a third to the speakership. At 70, McCormack is the second-oldest man to win election (the oldest: Illinois' Henry Rainey, who was 72 when elected Speaker in 1933). He is the third Northern Democrat to become Speaker in this century. The seventh Bay Stater to lead the House, he puts Massachusetts far in the lead as the mother of Speakers (following are Virginia and Kentucky, each with four).