The Congress: Mr. Speaker

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Cigar Smoke. McCormack's House critics accuse him of slippery ways, and McCormack himself admits to what he calls "diversionary" tactics. When pressed for a decision or a political commitment, he shrouds his plans and motives with a cloud of words as thick and nebulous as the cigar smoke that usually surrounds him. Says a frustrated White House staffer: "He takes half an hour just to say hello.'' Once, McCormack drove Curley to distraction by refusing to say whether or not he intended to run for mayor of Boston. After mushroom clouds of doubletalk, and in his own good time—when a candidate of his own choosing had built up support to the point of no contest—McCormack laconically announced that he would remain in the House.

McCormack is enraged by the persistent charge that he is under the thumb of the Catholic hierarchy. He resents his cloakroom nickname, "The Archbishop." as an insult to the Catholic Church. He is a deeply religious man who always wears the blue rosette of the Knights of Malta in his lapel. Of the eleven honorary degrees he has received, seven are from Catholic colleges.

He was dismayed and hurt when his Catholic constituents castigated him for his first appointment to the Naval Academy—of a Jewish boy. (In one ward of his Twelfth District, McCormack is still known as "Rabbi John.") He has consistently defended all minorities, and once, in a battle in the House with Mississippi's Racist John Rankin, he poured forth his feelings: "A man's racial origin means nothing to me, a person's name means nothing to me. A person's religion I respect. But what does mean everything to me is a person's mind. And when I meet a person with a bigoted mind, I am meeting a person I do not like, a person I have nothing but contempt for."

"Just Sit By Me." Although McCormack is extraordinarily thin-skinned himself, he can and does dish it out with one of the House's roughest tongues. Once, in the middle of a formal debate, he bluntly called Representative Earl Wilson of Indiana a "damned fool," and was required to retract his words. Again, in a 1953 argument with Michigan's acidulous Republican Representative Clare Hoffman, McCormack delivered an insult that is still recalled whenever Congressmen trade stories. "I would defend the Gentleman," he said, in a mockery of the politest parliamentary style, "because I have a minimum high regard for him." Once he called Republican Floor Leader Charles Halleck a "hijacker," and stuck his finger into Halleck's jowl for emphasis. But Indiana's Halleck comes from another hard political school, and he understands McCormack. "John McCormack," he says, "always was a worthy and formidable antagonist, who fought hard—and fair."