No one takes seriously reports that Congress may go back into session after elections to speed the fight against inflation. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield has his doubts about it. Minority Leader Hugh Scott thinks the idea is unrealistic, as does House Minority Leader John Rhodes. Says Scott, who is not above making a little partisan gravy on the subject: “What the leadership of Congress, through the [Democratic] majority, has failed to do in 38 years I do not think can be done in three months.” The AFL-CIO is very quietly junking millions of pieces of mail it had printed up urging the people to return a “veto-proof Congress” in November, not only a) because Richard Nixon, the veto-proof Congress-ee is no longer there but b) because campaign badly backfired, caused moderates to wonder whether labor might not be calling for end of two-party system.Former Democratic National Chairman Lawrence O’Brien, in fascinating Christian Science Monitor interview (Sept. 5), thinks two party system may have had it anyway. The deterioration of both parties has been so great, he says, that “a new and lasting third party might emerge.” The longtime alliance between the Democratic Party and organized labor is under increasing stress. The AFLCIO’s chief lobbyist on the Hill, Alexander Barkan, has threatened to cut COPE’s ties with the Democratic Party if Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss fails to make changes Barkan and Meany insist on in how next Democratic presidential convention is run. And Strauss may not be able to deliver. Meanwhile, former Sen. Eugene McCarthy is threatening to be “a deadly serious candidate for the White House” in 1976, as head of a new political movement. (Among McCarthy’s supporters is John Kenneth Galbraith who, comments columnist John Roche, “specializes in deriding the conventional wisdom even if it is wise.”)
Holland, London Sunday Telegraph Rothco “One’s oil and the other’s dollars.”
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