The Congress: Mr. Speaker

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Off the floor, McCormack can be strangely thoughtful and gentle. His door has always been open to fellow members with problems, and he has been, through all his years in the House, among the most accessible of leaders. In the evenings, with his wife in their hotel suite, McCormack snips dozens of useful items from the newspapers and furiously pens helpful memoranda in an often undecipherable scribble, then dispatches them to his colleagues the next day. One of McCormack's first acts after Sam Rayburn's death was to offer to help get Rayburn's staff new jobs. For years, Congressmen of both parties, eager to deliver speeches but frustrated because they could not get recognition from the Chair, knew they could come to McCormack with their problem. His invariable answer: "You just sit by me for a minute, and I'll get the floor for you." The many favors he has done will stand Speaker McCormack in good stead.

Cast of Characters. The McCormack speakership will raise the curtain on a new cast of leading House characters. To get things done, the new Speaker will depend not on such White House favorites as Missouri's Dick Boiling and New Jersey's Frank Thompson, but on McCormack-style Congressmen like Massachusetts' Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill Jr. and New York's James J. Delaney, members of the key House Rules Committee, and Massachusetts' Edward P. Boland, who, as the only intimate shared by McCormack and Jack Kennedy's liaison man Larry O'Brien, can serve as a link between the House and the White House.

It is a tough House that Speaker McCormack faces across the well. McCormack must deal not only with the Republican opposition but with conservative Southern Democrats, the grey-flannel liberals and the entrenched committee chairmen. He has promised to go down the line in attempting to win passage of the Administration's legislative program. But in the 87th Congress' second session, the New Frontier legislative prospects look murky even to many New Frontiersmen. Not so to Speaker McCormack. His prediction: "I think we'll make as good a record as last year, and last year was an outstanding record." But, cocking an eye at the agenda and the problems of Housekeeping, McCormack characteristically hedges his bet: "By the end of the session, Congress will have enacted into law a majority of the President's program."