The Congress: Mr. Speaker

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He voted for Boulder Dam agricultural supports, and many another project that had no particular connection with the parochial interests of South Boston. Yet McCormack is an oldfashioned, frock-coat liberal, and a vastly different breed from the young, grey-flannel liberals who man the New Frontier. McCormack's liberalism is instinctive and emotional, culled from personal experience as a member of the "deserving poor." He has little use for the liberalism derived largely from books and faculty-club discussions. Such House liberals as Missouri's Richard Boi ling and New Jersey's Frank Thompson regard McCormack as a hack politician who is all too ready to compromise modern liberal principles. Replies John McCormack: "I'm a progressive who believes that the road to progress is, in moments of contest, reasonable compromise. You don't compromise principles, but you harmonize tactics to preserve unity." McCormack proved his point with consummate skill in three grueling turns as chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee (in 1944, 1952 and 1956). At each convention, he managed to control and placate, if not to elate, both the flaming Northern liberals and the truculent Southern conservatives on the explosive issue of civil rights.

Anathema to the Family. John McCormack and John Kennedy are not boon companions. In the past, the President and the new Speaker have had several well-publicized clashes, beginning with Kennedy's refusal, as a downy-cheeked Congressman, to sign McCormack's petition for the pardon of James M. Curley from his mail-fraud jail sentence (Curley had been the bitter foe of "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, the President's grandfather, and therefore anathema to the unforgiving Kennedy family). That same year, Kennedy seized the Massachusetts Democratic organization from McCormack: the two men had agreed to a compromise, but the McCormack-endorsed candidate for state Democratic chairman, William Burke, refused to withdraw his candidacy; McCormack stuck by him, insisting that "my word is my bond." Another altercation threatens in this year's Massachusetts senatorial election: State Attorney General Eddie McCormack, the Speaker's 'nephew, is already a candidate; Ted Kennedy, the President's brother, would like to be. In this case, the probability is that the Kennedys and the McCormacks will reach an amiable accommodation, with either Ted or Eddie bowing out before the primary.

But if nothing else, Jack Kennedy and John McCormack both talk the language of practical politics. Both are determined to get along in the President-Speaker relationship, and McCormack's personal dealings with Kennedy are likely to be among the least of his problems during his first term as Speaker.