1960: United States

A summary of U.S. foreign relations, political events, and legislative and judicial developments in 1960 is presented below.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Throughout 1960 U.S. foreign policy responded essentially to the countervailing purposes of the U.S.S.R. In Europe, the Kremlin continued to seek further stabilization of the Soviet hegemony. In the Afro-Asian world, the U.S.S.R. encouraged change and the breaking up of traditional political relationships. U.S. policy, on the other hand, favored stability and minimal change in the world's backward areas and a maximum of political liberation inside the Soviet empire.

U.S.-Soviet Relations.

The Summit Conference.

During the early weeks of 1960, Western relations with the Soviet Union focused on the approaching summit conference at Paris. For a year Berlin had been the central issue in European affairs. Having achieved no satisfactory settlement of the Berlin issue at the Geneva Conference of May-August 1959, in December Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev again warned the West that if negotiations brought no desirable results the U.S.S.R. would have no other alternative than to sign 'a peace treaty with that of the two German states which will want one. . . . A peace treaty must be signed and the status of a free city introduced for West Berlin.' In the eyes of Western observers, a separate Soviet-East German treaty would have the effect of destroying all prospects for German unification and would give the East German Communist regime jurisdiction over the access routes into West Berlin from West Germany.

Khrushchev's threat left the West divided. To the British, it seemed futile to maintain an inflexible stand in the face of the Soviet demands. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan argued that it was vital to negotiate an interim settlement on Berlin and that an agreement could be arrived at only if the Berlin issue were divorced from the over-all German problem. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, opposed to all concessions on Berlin, was forced into the position of denying the Western powers the right to discuss Berlin except as part of the larger question of German unification. Any summit negotiation, he feared, would include some limited recognition of Communist East Germany.

Adenauer was assured the uncompromising support of the United States. In March, a lengthy conference between the German Chancellor and President Eisenhower at the White House produced the following statement: 'The President and Chancellor . . . agreed that the preservation of the freedom of the people of West Berlin, and their right to self-determination, must underlie any future agreement affecting the city.' At his news conference the following day, President Eisenhower made it clear that American policy had not changed since 1959.

More than any other leader of the Western bloc, President Charles de Gaulle of France took a starkly realistic view of the German question. De Gaulle regarded unification as a dead issue because neither the Soviets nor the West really wanted it. At their Paris meeting in March, De Gaulle had told Khrushchev, 'You have your Germans, and we have ours.' At Camp David, Md., in late April, De Gaulle attempted to convince President Eisenhower that the United States should resign itself to the long-term division of Germany and Berlin. Western Europe in general felt so prosperous and secure that its chief concern was that the summit conference might disturb the status quo. The unanswered question was the intention of the Soviet government, for it was within the power of the Kremlin to force a crisis at any time.

Collapse of the Summit.

On May 5, two weeks before the summit conference was to meet in Paris, the Soviets announced that on May 1 they had shot down an American U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance plane over U.S.S.R. territory. In making the incident public, Khrushchev expected President Eisenhower to denounce the flight and to disclaim all responsibility for aerial espionage. Instead, the President declared that he had known of the flight and others of a similar nature and that he assumed full responsibility.

Although few American observers criticized the government for seeking information about the military readiness of the Soviet Union, many questioned the timing of the mission. Carried out two weeks before the summit conference, the flight had placed the President under a serious diplomatic handicap.

Upon his arrival in Paris, Khrushchev accused 'reactionary forces' in the United States of making serious negotiations impossible. The Soviet Premier then launched into a tirade against the President. Negotiation was impossible, he said, 'when the government of one of the great powers declares bluntly that its policy involves intrusion into the affairs of another state.' Khrushchev demanded an apology from the President for the U-2 flight and insisted on a promise that there would be no U.S. spy flights in the future. The Soviet Premier warned the West that unless the United States agreed to his terms, he would leave the conference. In his reply, President Eisenhower made it clear that he would not apologize for the U-2 flight. The President said that he had come to Paris to seek agreements which would make it unnecessary for nations to engage in any form of espionage. De Gaulle and Macmillan supported the President in their pleas that the meetings continue. When Khrushchev would not relent, the conference broke up.

In his report to the nation on May 25, President Eisenhower again accepted full responsibility for the U-2 flight and assured the American people that the Soviet Premier had determined in advance that 'nothing constructive . . . would come out of the summit conference.' The President observed hopefully that Khrushchev had not gone beyond invective in wrecking the conference. He emphasized that the United States had again demonstrated its willingness 'always to go the extra mile in behalf of peace.' The President reminded his nationwide audience that war would leave civilization in a state of shambles, and that the United States 'must continue business-like dealings with the Soviet leaders on outstanding issues and improve the contacts between our own and the Soviet peoples, making clear that the path of reason and common sense is still open if the Soviets will use it.'

In Moscow Khrushchev again placed the blame for the collapse of the summit conference on reactionary forces behind the President. 'I still believe that the President wants peace,' he told the Russian people, 'but it appears that the President's good intentions are one thing and the foreign policy of the American government is another.' Khrushchev also expressed approval of Eisenhower's statement that business-like relations between the two countries must continue. This verbal exchange again relieved the taut atmosphere created by the Soviet Premier's actions in Paris.

The UN General Assembly.

Neutralist leaders at the fifteenth UN General Assembly in early October, convinced that big-power diplomacy constitutes the only genuine hope for peace, introduced a resolution asking for the resumption of negotiations between Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower. When the President objected, declaring that talks with the Soviet leader would serve no useful purpose, Western spokesmen at the United Nations attempted to substitute a proposal recommending that the two nations resume negotiations.

On October 5, Prime Minister Nehru of India told the Assembly that the resolution was meaningless without some reference to negotiations between the President and the Premier. In calling for continued big-power diplomacy, the Indian Prime Minister warned, 'The choice today, in this nuclear age, is one between utter annihilation and the destruction of civilization, or of some way to have peaceful coexistence between nations. There is no middle way.' When the Western bloc managed to delete the specific reference to the two government heads, the resolution was withdrawn by its five neutralist sponsors.

As 1960 drew to a close, it was obvious that another year of conversation had resolved none of the conflicts between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Khrushchev was again threatening the Western position in a divided Berlin. On his return to England, Prime Minister Macmillan declared that negotiations between the U.S.S.R. and the West on Berlin and Germany would have to be resumed. The international situation, he said, had 'substantially worsened' since the collapse of the Paris conference in May.

U.S. Relations with Asia.

U.S. policies in Asia were anchored to a system of mutual security, aimed primarily at containing the expansion of Chinese Communism. The South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) remained the fundamental American defense establishment in the Far East. In an address to the sixth conference of the alliance's Council of Ministers in May, Vice President Richard M. Nixon renewed the U.S. pledge of support for the organization. The Vice President told the delegates, meeting formally in Washington for the first time, that the 'record of SEATO as a defensive military alliance is an impressive one.' Nixon paid tribute to SEATO's record in coping with Communist subversion, but warned that collective security alone was not the answer to the challenge of Communism. The underdeveloped countries, he said, demanded progress and would prefer Communism, even at the cost of freedom, to no progress at all.

Neither an alliance system nor large U.S. expenditures were able to guarantee political stability in Asia. But instability was less the product of Communism than of the quest for personal and national self-realization. Behind every political upheaval was the desire for increased governmental efficiency and greater responsiveness to demands for racial, social, and economic equality. In 1960, events in South Korea and Laos illustrated the fact that no amount of American aid could successfully sustain an unpopular or reactionary regime.

South Korea.

Syngman Rhee and his Liberal Party, supported by American aid and a police force of 300,000, had enjoyed a monopoly in South Korean politics throughout the postwar period. In the election of Mar. 15, 1960, Rhee tried to handpick his potential successor by maneuvering the victory of Lee Ki Poong as vice president. This initiated a wave of student protest, which culminated on April 19 in a mass uprising of more than 100,000 persons in Seoul. In the course of the rioting, 140 people were killed. Rhee summoned his American-trained army to defend his regime, but it refused to fire on the students.

At the height of the rioting, U.S. Ambassador Walter P. McConaughy called on President Rhee at his palace and warned him of the gravity of the situation. Rhee agreed to go into semiretirement as the ceremonial head of state, and promised to secure the resignation of Lee. But on April 25 another throng of students toppled a public statue of Rhee and sacked the home of the vice president. On the same day the army capitulated, turning over its equipment to the insurgents. Supported by a number of tanks, the revolutionary forces then closed in on Rhee's residence and compelled him to resign.

U.S. officials had long been aware of the undemocratic character of the Rhee regime, but in the American view stability seemed a better defense than democracy against the Communist enemy. When the twelve-year-old Rhee regime, regarded throughout the world as a ward of the U.S. government, succumbed to the pressure for democratic reform, the prestige of the United States fell with it. Fortunately, American leadership preferred to suffer the ignominy of seeing its favorite deposed than to continue to support the Rhee regime with military aid. On August 12, the office of the Korean presidency went to Yoon Bo Sun, a British-educated, pro-American leader of the South Korean Democratic Party.

Laos.

On August 9, the American-backed regime of Premier Tiao Somsanith of Laos was overthrown by a military coup engineered by Captain Kong Le, an officer in the Laotian parachute corps. The deposed government had received huge amounts of American military and economic aid. Indeed, in terms of population, Laos had received more U.S. assistance than any other country in the world. About 90% of the U.S. aid had been used to support an army that had but one purpose — to fight the Communist Pathet Lao forces of northern Laos.

In the view of many observers, the military coup of August was a second Korean revolution, for the election which had brought the extreme right-wing government into power had been blatantly rigged.

After having seized control of Vientiane, the administrative capital of Laos, Kong Le called for support in purging the country of foreign infiltration and corruption. The rebel leader accused the former government of warring on the Pathet Lao merely to obtain money from the United States. In mid-August, King Savang Vathana of Laos designated Prince Souvanna Phouma, a leading neutralist, as the new premier. This appointment promised to terminate the fighting between the pro-Western and Communist forces in the country.

Meanwhile, the extreme right-wing leader of Laos, Phoumi Nosavan, retired to southern Laos and there organized a pro-Western regime. In the north, the left-wing Pathet Lao stepped up its campaign against the Laotian army, largely under the direction of Phoumi, to improve its bargaining power with the new government. The U.S. formally suspended its foreign aid program in Laos on October 7, but when the Russians offered to fill the financial gap, American officials responded by resuming aid to both the neutralist regime and the Phoumi forces. In accepting American funds, however, Souvanna Phouma rejected U.S. demands that he discontinue peace talks with the Pathet Lao guerrillas. By December it was clear that the U.S.S.R. intended to challenge the American position in Laos.

Japan.

After President Eisenhower's admission in May 1960 that the U-2 flights were government policy, the Kremlin warned Pakistan, Okinawa, and Japan that it would retaliate with nuclear weapons against bases used for launching further spy flights. Pakistani officials were visibly shaken, for the U-2 flight had originated within the borders of their country. But it was in Japan that the U-2 flight and Soviet warnings produced the most violent neutralist reaction to American policy. Large numbers of Japanese were still resentful over the destruction of Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Yokohama, and the humiliation of defeat and occupation, by U.S. forces. Thus, even before the U-2 flight, determined neutralists had challenged the Japanese government's military arrangements with the United States.

This growing opposition to Japanese military policy burst into open rioting on the issue of the U.S.-Japanese security treaty. Although the new pact of January 1960 gave Japan a larger voice in joint defense decisions than had the treaty of 1951, it seemed to involve a commitment to America's continuing Cold War against China. Premier Nobusuke Kishi rammed the treaty through the lower house of the Diet on the night of May 20. Under the Japanese constitution, the treaty would be ratified automatically in 30 days whether the upper house acted or not, provided the Diet were not dissolved in the meantime. The rioting of May and June was designed to force Kishi to resign and dissolve the Diet. Much of the rioting was also directed at President Eisenhower's scheduled visit of early June, for Kishi's opponents interpreted the move as an effort to bolster his regime and save the treaty. However, despite the mass demonstrations against the treaty in Tokyo, the President refused to cancel his trip.

President Eisenhower's Asian Tour.

After leaving Washington on schedule, the President received a warm welcome at Anchorage, Alaska, and then flew across the Pacific to the Philippines. A crowd estimated at a million people turned out to greet him as he drove through Manila with President Carlos P. Garcia. The same day 20,000 rioters stormed the Japanese Diet in a violent demonstration against the treaty, the Kishi regime, and the President's visit. Kishi met with his cabinet and informed reporters that he would ask President Eisenhower to cancel his visit. In Manila, Press Secretary James C. Hagerty announced that the President accepted the decision of the Japanese government with sympathetic understanding. The Kishi government withstood the siege and the treaty eventually went into effect.

When President Eisenhower sailed for Taiwan on the cruiser St. Paul, the Communist Chinese commenced an unprecedented shelling of the offshore island of Quemoy to express, as Peking put it, 'China's scorn and contempt' for the U.S. President. At Taipei, President Eisenhower was met by President Chiang Kai-shek of the Nationalist regime on Taiwan, and was accorded a welcome comparable to the one he had received in Manila. Before he returned to the United States, the President stopped off at Okinawa where he received a cordial welcome, marred by minor demonstrations of an obviously hostile order.

In his report to the nation late in June, the President said: 'It seems apparent that the Communists some time ago reached the conclusion that these visits were of such positive value to the Free World as to obstruct Communist imperialism. . . . With their associates in Peiping [Peking], they went to great lengths and expense to create disorders in Tokyo that compelled the Japanese government to decide . . . that it should revoke its long-standing invitation for me to visit that sister of democracy.' In his address, the President absolved the United States of all responsibility for the Tokyo riots. He refused to acknowledge the existence, much less the legitimacy, of neutralism as a factor in Japanese thought.

China.

U.S. policy toward China remained unchanged in 1960. The United States continued to favor the Nationalist regime on Taiwan and to deny recognition to the People's Republic of China. Ambassador James J. Wadsworth warned the UN General Assembly in October that the world organization would gain nothing by seating a Peking delegation. The admission of Communist China to the United Nations, according to Ambassador Wadsworth, would have no moderating influence on Chinese actions and would violate the principle of self-determination. To those who insisted that present UN policy barred 600 million Chinese from representation, Wadsworth declared: "In view of the long record of aggressions and threats of war by the Peiping [Peking] regime, this argument would have no validity under the Charter even if it were true. But the truth is that the rulers of Peiping [Peking] do not represent the Chinese people. The Peiping [Peking] regime was imposed by military force and in ten years it has carried out political purges which have brought death to some 18,000,000 Chinese . . . Surely no government which represents its people has to resort to wholesale murder and mass slavery to keep itself in power." To admit such a government to the United Nations, he concluded, would stultify the organization and 'subject it to a stunning blow at the very moment when it faces new and historic tasks for the sake of freedom and peace.' By a vote of 42 to 34, 22 nations abstaining, the Assembly agreed to keep the China question off its agenda.

Quemoy and Matsu.

U.S. relations with China centered on the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Unwilling to antagonize either Chiang Kai-shek or those Americans who regarded the U.S. commitment to defend the offshore islands, as unnecessary and dangerous, the U.S. government escaped the necessity of making a firm decision by clinging to the Formosa Resolution of January 1955. In this resolution, Congress had granted the President the authority to defend the offshore islands if it appeared that an attack on them was a prelude to an assault on Formosa [Taiwan] itself.

U.S. Relations with the Middle East.

Although the Middle East was relatively quiet in 1960, there was no indication that its problems had been solved or that the American policy of achieving stability in the area had triumphed. U.S. prestige in the Middle East continued to decline as the nation found it impossible to formulate effective policies for the region's many problems. The passage of time did not lessen the bitterness of Middle Eastern peoples toward the West, which they held responsible for their difficulties. The Middle East was still a region of political, religious, and dynastic rivalries in which freedom and democracy had no genuine meaning. Aspiring nations tended to collapse into the hands of benevolent dictators backed by military power. And The United States, in search of stability against Communist penetration, committed itself under the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 to support every reactionary and feudal autocrat who agreed to join the anti-Communist club.

Israel.

Neither the United States nor the United Nations made any progress toward a solution of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Fearful of continued Egyptian and Iraqi threats, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, on his visit to Washington in March 1960, sought U.S. guarantees of the territorial status quo in the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli conflict confronted the United States with two specific challenges. One was the U.S. pledge to force U.A.R. President Gamal Abdel Nasser to permit Israeli ships to use the Suez Canal. The other was the problem of arriving at a permanent settlement of the Palestine refugee question.

Turkey.

Turkey, key to the Western-sponsored CENTO defense pact for the Middle East, saw the overthrow of the American-backed Menderes regime on May 27. In a successful coup, army leaders seized control of the government, charging the officials of the Menderes regime with political repression, waste, dishonesty, and even atrocities. During the months that followed the coup, the military junta, under General Cemal Gursel, maintained parliamentary government and prosecuted the accused officials on the grounds of treason and violation of the Turkish constitution.

U.S. Relations with Africa.

The Congo.

Throughout the turbulent Congo crisis that dominated African affairs in the second half of 1960, the United States pursued its customary goals of stability and anti-Communism. When the former Belgian colony, thoroughly unprepared for independence, disintegrated into profound political confusion and rioting at the moment of its creation as an independent nation, Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba attributed his declining authority to the continued presence of Belgian troops and called on the United Nations to drive them out. On July 14, the UN Security Council asked Belgium to quit the Congo and dispatched UN security forces to establish order.

The resolution which authorized the Secretary General to take the necessary steps to maintain order in the Congo had the full backing of the U.S. government. On July 21, Secretary of State Christian A. Herter told a news conference that the United States would continue 'to back with all its moral force and material resources' the efforts of the United Nations to restore order in the Congo. The United States, with no clear interests in the region except to counter Communist activity, was content to tie its policies to those of the United Nations. However, Lumumba, unable to establish his authority, especially in the provinces of Kasai and Katanga, turned first to the African nations represented in the UN forces and then to the U.S.S.R.

Immediately, U.S. policies became as much anti-Soviet as pro-United Nations. At his news conference of September 7, President Eisenhower denounced the unilateral action of the Soviet Union in supplying aircraft and other equipment for military purposes to the Congo. The President stated the U.S. position clearly: 'The main responsibility in the case of the Congo has been thrown on the UN as the only organization able to act without adding to the risks of spreading the conflict. The UN maintains very strict principles regarding foreign military intervention in the Congo or in any country. . . . In the interest of a peaceful solution in Africa, acceptable to all parties concerned, I urge the Soviet Union to desist from its unilateral activities and . . . to lend its support instead to the practice of collective effort through the UN.' At the Security Council, U.S. Ambassador Wadsworth defended the efforts of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to keep the Soviets out of the Congo and warned Soviet delegate Zorin that continued Soviet interference would lead to 'unilateral action by many parties.'

What eventually eliminated the Communist threat was not the United Nations but the Congolese themselves. Those elements in the Congo which opposed centralization and close ties with the U.S.S.R. rallied to President Joseph Kasavubu. On September 14, Colonel Joseph Mobuto, Chief of Staff of the Congo army, announced that he was taking over the government. Supported by Kasavubu, Mobuto ordered the Czechs and Russians to close down their embassies in the Congo and gave them 48 hours to leave the country. The Communist officials offered no opposition. They promptly hauled down their embassy flags, burned their documents, boarded their planes, and departed with their retinues.

During October and November it became clear that the United Nations could not maintain order in the Congo. But a new source of stability had appeared in the form of the Kasavubu-Mobutu regime, which was supported by Belgian forces. Increasingly, the United States turned to this source of authority, while the United Nations opposed Belgian interference in Congolese affairs and favored the formation of a coalition government that would include Lumumba, who still had wide support in the Congolese parliament. In supporting Kasavubu, the United States now backed off from the UN position. It refused to criticize the Belgian government and opposed sending a UN conciliation commission to the Congo.

On November 8, Kasavubu, at the invitation of the United States and much to the discomfort of UN officials, arrived in New York to seek recognition for his regime from the world body. At a press conference, Kasavubu announced that he was opposed to a coalition government with Lumumba, made it clear that he would not call the Congolese parliament into session, defended Belgian interference in the Congo, and denounced UN efforts at conciliation. Late in November, the Kasavubu regime, vigorously supported by the United States, received recognition from the United Nations. Shortly thereafter, Lumumba escaped from his residence, but was quickly arrested and imprisoned. The United States, it appeared, had achieved its goal of stability for the Congo.

U.S.-Latin American Relations.

Cuba.

Fidel Castro's Cuba confronted the United States in 1960 with its most difficult and embarrassing hemispheric problem. A year earlier most Americans had viewed Castro as a courageous guerrilla leader who had triumphed against overwhelming odds. But the Cuban Premier's subsequent dictatorial methods, his program of nationalization, his close ties with the Soviet bloc, and, finally, his accusation that the United States supported counterrevolutionary forces in Cuba gradually brought U.S.-Cuban relations near the breaking point.

By February 1960, when President Eisenhower embarked on his good-will tour of Latin America, Cuban-American animosity had become the concern of the entire hemisphere. Pro-Castro groups charged that the President's tour was designed to win support for interventionist policies against the Castro regime. In the course of his tour, the President reaffirmed U.S. respect for the principle of nonintervention. He avoided any emphasis on the problem of Communism in the Americas, but made it clear that the United States would oppose any outside interference in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere republics.

The Declaration of San José.

In August, inter-American tensions centered on the meeting of the Organization of American States, scheduled to open at San José, Costa Rica, on August 16. Venezuela had demanded the meeting after it had secured documentary proof that the plot to assassinate President Romulo Betancourt in Caracas in June had been engineered by the Dominican Republic. When Khrushchev, on July 9, warned the United States that he would support Cuba with rockets if the Pentagon started any action against the island, Peru proposed that the Soviet threat to the hemisphere be included on the San José agenda. On August 2, the United States supplemented the charges against Cuba with a 78-page document, which it planned to submit to the OAS foreign ministers conference.

Following the early withdrawal of the Dominican foreign minister, the nations represented at San José unanimously voted sanctions against the Dominican Republic. The conference then took up the U.S. charges against Cuba. Latin American enthusiasm for condemning Castro was limited. The colorful Cuban leader was popular among various elements throughout the region, and many delegates felt that U.S. fears of Communist penetration in Cuba had no basis in fact.

Officials in Washington lauded the Declaration of San José, signed by 19 nations, as a firm stand against the Sino-Soviet threat to the Western Hemisphere. Secretary Herter termed it a clear indictment of the Castro regime. To many expert observers, however, it was not clear what the declaration meant. Castro called it 'an imperialistic United States maneuver to oblige Cuba to renounce the aid promised by the Soviet Union if our country is invaded.' Latin Americans regarded the declaration as far less significant than did either the United States or Cuba. The foreign ministers of Venezuela and Peru refused to sign the declaration, but permitted subordinates to do so in their stead. Manuel Tello of Mexico said that the declaration was of a 'general character' and did not constitute a condemnation of Cuba. Most of the other delegates at San José agreed with this characterization of the declaration. The total effect of the resolution was to strengthen the ties between the U.S.S.R. and the Castro regime and to aggravate the Cuban leader's active campaign of invective against the United States.

The Act of Bogotá.

At the Economic Conference of American Republics in Bogotá, Colombia, on September 5, Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon announced an expanded program of economic aid for Latin America. Dillon reminded the delegates that the United States had already appropriated $500 million for the program, and promised that additional funds would be forthcoming. The U.S. Under Secretary also called attention to the newly formed Inter-American Development Bank, an instrument for inter-American financial cooperation. The Act of Bogotá, which concluded the conference, was signed by 19 nations. Under this cooperative program for economic development, the Latin American nations agreed to improve their existing institutions and practices, especially needed in the important fields of taxation, land ownership, education and training, and health and housing.

LEGISLATION

An election-year Congress, worried sick over what November ballots may bring, usually doctors itself with a good dose of politics. The 1960 session of the 86th Congress was no exception and, indeed, seems to have taken more than the usual dosage. At the outset of the session in January few people would have guessed that Congress would still be meeting in September, and that there, sitting in the Senate, would be the two Presidential candidates, one Vice Presidential candidate, and the national chairmen of both parties.

The late summer session came as a result of the Democratic leadership's having decreed in July that the unfinished business of the session should be deferred until after the national political conventions. The session had convened January 6, recessed July 3 for the conventions, and reconvened—the Senate on August 8 and the House on August 15—for their summer meeting with one Presidential candidate in the Vice President's chair and the other on the Senate floor.

Politics, then, may well have colored virtually every action of the second and last session of the 86th, but no party spokesman would quite take responsibility for the session's failings. Politics, in short, is what Politician A blames Politician B with when B is pushing legislation A is against. Both, of course, insist that they are acting in the 'best interests of the country.'

Call it 'statesmanship' or call it 'politics,' this session of Congress was loaded with it. Democrats, with heavy majorities in both houses, called the two-part session fruitful and blamed any shortcomings on reluctant Republicans. Republicans in turn tried to pin a 'do-little' label on the session and to identify its failure to approve some bills sought by President Eisenhower with failings of leadership on the part of Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic Presidential nominee, and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, the majority leader in the Senate and the party's Vice Presidential nominee.

The Congress was perhaps the most Democratic in two decades, with Democrats in control of the House by a 280-152 margin, and of the Senate, by 66-34. Democratic liberals particularly had hoped to achieve some far-reaching legislation during the session, but found themselves somewhat disappointed at the end. Congress did pass some new civil rights legislation to provide court-appointed referees to help insure Negro voting rights. But it failed to provide any federal aid for school construction and to liberalize the minimum wage law, among other proposals the liberals had pushed.

In sum, the accomplishments of the second session represented only moderate advances toward meeting many of the nation's social and economic needs.

On the achievement side, Congress approved bills to extend existing excise and corporation income taxes, to outlaw payola and fixed TV quiz programs, to extend some existing housing programs, to set up a medical care program of federal grants to states, to permit the President to shut off sugar shipments from the Castro regime in Cuba, to set up a Latin American aid program, and to increase the pay of federal workers.

Into the unfinished-business category, fell the minimum wage bill, an omnibus housing bill, federal aid for schools, aid for economically depressed areas, major farm legislation, the President's request for higher postal rates and higher gasoline and aviation-gas taxes, and other bills.

The Economy.

Taxes.

Most election-year congresses like to indulge in a little taxcutting. Not so this year, however, as Democratic Congressional leaders and the Administration agreed to head off any moves along these lines. Even drives that for a while looked as if they might succeed were stopped. It was indeed a surprise when a move to repeal federal taxes on transportation and on local telephone service was halted in the Senate.

Congress granted the President's annual bid for another one-year extension of $4 billion in corporation and excise taxes imposed in the Korean war. On the other hand Congress ignored his proposals for a $1 billion revenue increase through higher postal rates and increased taxes on gasoline and aviation fuel.

National Debt.

A Presidential request for a $293 billion limit on the national debt until July 1961 was approved, replacing an expiring $295 billion ceiling. But Congress failed to give the President the long-sought authority to repeal a 4% limit on interest rates the Treasury may pay on marketable bonds to help finance the debt. Democratic leaders got the bill out of the House Ways and Means Committee, but the bill died when they began to feel that money-market conditions no longer required the action.

Minimum Wage.

Senator Kennedy put the weight of his candidacy behind liberalizing the wage-hour law by increasing the minimum wage in stages from $1 to $1.25 an hour and by expanding coverage to several million more workers. It didn't work.

Before the recess for the conventions, the House had approved a bill raising the minimum wage to $1.15 an hour for some 23 million workers already covered by the law and extending the coverage, at $1 an hour, to 1.4 million additional workers not previously covered.

Going to bat for the $1.25 bill after the conventions, Senator Kennedy was sponsor and floor manager of the more liberal bill, termed a 'must' by organized labor. The bill, bitterly attacked by Senate conservatives, passed the Senate. However, when it went to a Senate-House conference to adjust differences, the bill ran into trouble. The conservatives from the House rejected Mr. Kennedy's efforts at compromise, insisting on virtually the House bill as it was or nothing. The bill died, with the Senator arguing he preferred no bill to the House bill. He expressed hope that the more liberal bill would win in 1961.

Depressed Areas.

One of the extremely sharp clashes between the President and Congress came in May over a bill to provide a federal program of loans and grants for the redevelopment of chronically depressed areas of the country. The Democrats pushed through a bill providing $251 million for the purpose, but the President promptly vetoed it, saying he did not want to 'squander' the taxpayers' money.

With an eye on the forthcoming political campaign, Democrats decided to try to override the veto but they managed to get only 45 votes, or 11 short of the necessary two thirds needed to pass a bill over the President's veto.

The President, however, did not let the matter rest there. He, too, had an eye on the campaign and it was not long thereafter that he was asking Congress to pass a new depressed-areas bill of a more limited nature. His bill would have provided $180 million for the purpose. There was no action.

Federal Pay.

Only twice during the Eisenhower tenure did Congress manage to muster enough votes to override his objections to legislation. The first came in 1959 when Congress enacted a public-works bill over his veto. The second came on July 1, 1960, when the Senate and the House overrode his veto of a bill authorizing an across-the-board 7% pay raise for 1.6 million federal classified and postal workers. After the Congressional action, the White House issued a statement saying this was the 'second time that pressures and pork barrel tactics have overridden a Presidential veto. Nevertheless, the President will not abandon but will continue unabated his efforts to further responsibility in government.'

Housing.

Apart from the routine extension of some existing programs, Congress took under consideration an omnibus billion-dollar housing bill that would have expanded urban renewal and college housing programs. The bill was approved by the Senate and by the House Banking Committee, but the Rules Committee of the House, with its majority of conservatives from both parties, refused to permit the bill to go to the floor. The routine measures approved included an extension of the Federal Housing Administration's home-improvement loan program for one year and authorization of additional funds for the college housing program.

Medical Care.

Perhaps no other issue before Congress this session evoked the response from the folks back home than the question of how the Federal government ought to help meet the high cost of medical care for the nation's 16 million persons over 65. The mail was heavy to every members of Congress. 'The heat is on,' one member of the Senate commented.

And so it was. Democrats in particular felt the warmth which the issue generated. Their party leaders, including Mr. Kennedy, had committed themselves to the passage of legislation to broaden the federal old-age insurance system to provide the medical care benefits to social security pensioners as a matter of right. Social security payroll taxes were to be increased to finance the new benefits.

The Administration, in the face of the heavy Democratic majorities in both Houses, insisted on a so-called 'voluntary' program of state aid to elderly persons with low incomes. This approach involved federal grants from general tax funds to help the states meet the costs.

The issue came to a head at the post-convention session, and Senator Kennedy gambled by throwing his influence behind an amendment that would have embodied the Administration-opposed social security approach. A group of conservative Southern Democrats and Republicans joined to help defeat it. But Vice President Nixon, who had just been nominated by his party as their Presidential nominee, suffered a setback also. He had been identified with an amendment—also defeated—to give more liberal benefits to a total of about 11 million persons.

The bill that finally went to the White House called for the establishment of a new program of medical assistance for the needy aged that would augment existing federally supported state old-age assistance programs and would be financed by federal-state matching grants. Participation was made optional and the program became effective Oct. 1, 1960.

It authorized a total of $202 million in federal grants for relief-type state programs the first year, with the states paying $61 million. About 1,360,000 needy persons over 65 could benefit. The benefits included nursing and dental care, and eyeglasses and physical therapy, as well as the usual doctor and hospital bills. When in full operation, it was estimated, the program will cost the federal and state governments a total of $615 million a year. Liberal Democrats denounced the compromise act as inadequate, and promised to try to liberalize it in 1961.

While the medical care feature was the major part of the legislation, the act also contained provisions making some technical changes in existing social security regulations.

Civil Rights.

The longest battle of the session centered around a bill following up the civil rights bill passed three years ago, the first major civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era. As in 1957, Senators—particularly those from the South—found much in the issue to discuss. The legislation came up on February 15 in the Senate and was not disposed of until April 8. In between, from February 29 to March 8, a southern filibuster kept the chamber in session around the clock. There were only two brief recesses during that period. Efforts to invoke the Senate's cloture rule failed to shut off debate, but the southerners found their strength ebbing. They did win concessions that made the bill somewhat easier to swallow, thwarting efforts by liberals to stiffen the measure.

The bill, providing guarantees for Negro voting rights in the South, established a voting-referee plan. This authorized federal district judges to appoint referees to enroll qualified Negro voters in areas where local authorities systematically deny them the right to vote. Another section required local authorities to preserve voting records for a period of 22 months and to make them available to federal investigators. To prevent mob violence in school desegregation disputes, another provision made it a federal crime to interfere by threats of force with federal court orders.

The bill also authorized the Federal Commissioner of Education to provide for continuing the education of servicemen's children in areas where public schools are closed by integration disputes.

Many liberals and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People felt the bill should have been stronger. For example, the original voting-referee provision contained language directing the referee to accompany Negroes to the polls, to see that they were permitted to vote, and to make sure that their votes were counted. This was dropped at the insistence of the southerners and with Administration approval. The President, however, hailed the bill as a 'historic step forward in the field of civil rights.' During the campaign Democrats generally took note that the bill was to a great degree the result of work by their majority leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas.

Foreign Affairs.

Administration policies toward the Castro regime in Cuba and the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, a Latin American aid program, and the annual discussion over foreign aid dominated the session in the foreign affairs field.

Cuba.

Action by the Administration against the Castro government was made possible in a routine extension of the Sugar Act of 1958, which was due to expire Dec. 31, 1960. The bill gave the President complete authority to determine the amount of sugar to be imported from Cuba and specified the manner in which he was to obtain sugar to make up for any reduction in the Cuban supply.

The bill was passed by the President on July 6 and he immediately moved to cut off shipments of 700,000 tons of sugar during the rest of the year, this being Cuba's unfilled normal quota for the year. Shipment of another 156,000 tons Cuba would have sent to make up domestic deficits from Hawaii and Puerto Rico was also barred.

According to the President, Cuba had embarked on a 'course of action to commit steadily increasing amounts of its sugar crop to trade with the Communist bloc, thus making its future ability to fill the sugar needs of the United States ever more uncertain.' Castro replied, saying the President acted in a 'moment of hate and stupidity.'

Dominican Republic.

The action on the sugar bill appeared to end the issue for this session, but the President revived it at the bobtail post-convention session in August and threw the Congress into a last-minute flurry. It seemed that when the Cuban sugar quota was cut, the Dominican Republic, under the Congressional formula in the first bill, was assigned 322,000 tons of replacement sugar in addition to its normal United States sales quota.

But after the Conference of American Foreign Ministers in Costa Rica during the summer, the United States on recommendation of that group broke diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic. To buy that sugar now, the Administration believed, would have bad repercussions. Accordingly, the President asked for authority to cut off the bonus allotment. The Senate approved a bill which would relieve the President of the obligation to buy the sugar or give him the option of buying it from other nations. The House refused to go along. It wanted to tie onto the bill conditions the Senate would not accept. An all-night session, as Congress neared final adjournment, failed to solve the problem. No way could be found to bring the House into agreement. House Democratic Leader John McCormack explained: 'The White House has declared war on the Dominican Republic and I don't think Congress should be a party to it.'

When Congress failed to act, President Eisenhower issued a statement saying he regarded the failure as 'extremely serious.' Unmoved, Congress adjourned.

Mutual Security.

Foreign aid bills each year usually run the same course. The President sends his requests to Capitol Hill, and Congress proceeds to cut them; the President makes a plea to restore the funds cut, and Congress goes along part way. 1960 was no exception. The President requested $4,275,000,000 for the mutual security program. Congress cut it to $3,787,350,000, which was nevertheless $560 million more than 1959's appropriations. One unusual feature of the 1960 bill was to give the President authority to deny aid to any country supplying arms to Cuba or the Dominican Republic.

Other.

Congress also authorized U.S. participation in the International Development Association, a new lending institution affiliated with the World Bank. It also authorized $500 million to help Latin American countries in social and economic development and $100 million for Chilean earthquake rehabilitation.

Two treaties also won approval: The U.S.-Japanese security treaty which had been the target of Japanese rioting that lead to the cancellation of the visit to Japan by President Eisenhower; and a 12-nation treaty banning nuclear weapons development in the Antarctic and freezing present territorial claims there.

National Security.

As in recent years, a battle of words raged all through the session between the President and his supporters and Congressional Democrats over the adequacy of the nation's defenses. A case of 'gap-ism' afflicted Washington with both sides using terms like 'missile gap,' 'rocket gap,' 'thrust gap,' 'space gap,' and so forth. For his part, the President often denounced what he felt were Democratic suggestions that he had misled the country on the nation's defense position. 'If anybody believes that I have deliberately misled the American people,' he told a news conference one day, 'I'd like to tell him to his face what I think about him.' The nation's defense 'is not only strong, it is awesome, and it is respected elsewhere,' he added.

The Democrats, including Senators Johnson and Kennedy, and Stuart Symington, of Missouri, continued the attack on the Administration's defense policies as insufficient to meet the Soviet threat.

Their feelings were reinforced when Congress voted a $39,996,608,000 defense money bill, about $660 million more than the President had recommended. The additional funds were for the missile-firing Polaris submarines, modernization of some Army equipment, stepped-up development of the B-70 high altitude bomber, increased preparations for a possible continuous airborne alert of bombers against possible attack, and for antisubmarine warfare.

The President, of course, signed the bill, but when he put aside about half a billion of the extra money, critics once again began 'viewing with loud alarm.'

In the space field, the President asked for various changes in the basic National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, including a suggestion that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration be given full legal responsibility for developing and executing the civilian space program. This would merely have given the agency authority to do what it was already doing, but Congress took no action on the ground that the new President in January might want to make some different changes.

Education.

Both the Senate and the House passed bills providing federal aid for school construction, but there was one problem. They were different bills and the House Rules Committee, which has never quite warmed to the school aid idea, successfully blocked the legislation. It refused to permit the already passed bills from going to a conference committee for adjustment of differences. Four Republicans combined with three southern Democrats on the group to produce a 7 to 5 vote by which the bills were killed for the session.

The Senate bill would have authorized $1.8 billion over two years for construction and teachers' salaries. The House bill would have provided $1.3 billion over four years in federal aid for construction.

Agriculture.

Though there was unanimous consent as usual among both Republicans and Democrats that 'something' ought to be done about the farm problem, neither side could agree on just what that 'something' should be.

The President did send a message to Congress relaxing to some extent his firm stand against high price supports and rigid production controls favored by the Democrats. But all efforts to devise a farm bill acceptable to both sides failed. The Senate did pass a bill to deal with the wheat surplus by reducing acreage allotments. The House rejected it.

One relatively minor farm bill got through, however. The bill, opposed by the Administration, raised government support prices on milk used for manufacturing and on butterfat. The President signed it, but without enthusiasm.

Home Rule.

Tireless efforts to win the right to vote for the citizens of the nation's capital paid off finally in this session. Congress approved a constitutional amendment giving citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President and Vice President. The amendment went to the states where three quarters of the states, or 38, must adopt the amendment before it becomes effective. It would be the twenty-third amendment approved since the writing of the Constitution.

Broadcasting.

The inquiry by a House subcommittee that brought revelations of TV quiz show rigging and hidden payments to disc jockeys for pushing records, opened Congressional eyes to the need for revision of the regulations governing television and radio broadcasting practices. As a result, Congress passed a bill outlawing undisclosed payments to disc jockeys and others in broadcasting for aid in promoting records or other products. It also declared illegal any secret assistance to contestants on quiz shows.

And in another action, Congress cleared the way for the Kennedy-Nixon debates by suspending the so-called equal time provisions of the law that would have required the networks to offer the same amount of time to minor party candidates for the Presidency.

POLITICS

The United States changed its political course in 1960, but by the smallest popular margin in this century.

The Presidential Candidates.

The beginning of the year found a number of Democrats competing for their party's presidential nomination. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts formally entered the race on January 2, joining Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, who had announced three days earlier. Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas were also known to be interested, though Symington did not announce until March 24, and Johnson not until July 5.