Full Employment in a Free Society

Ever since Herbert Hoover retired from presidential business cycle prognostication to private life and Sunday supplement interviews, a lot of people including Herbert Hoover have been wondering why all this talent can't be put to better use. This issue will crystallize in the next session of Congress where an already drafted bill will be offered guaranteeing Hoover a steady job. The legislation cannot be assailed on party bias, however, because it would also keep Harry Truman out of haberdashery and on the floor of the Senate for good in the event of defeat in '48.

The bill calls for all ex-presidents to become senators-for-life on the theory that the talent of elder statesmen should not lie fallow after they step down from the White House. The idea isn't new. In the days of President Buchanan the six ex-presidents still alive were known to have favored the scheme.

Only one ex-president ever actually served in the U.S. Congress, and he came from Boston where standing in the community is to this day a political asset. Distinguished Citizen John Quincy Adams died on the floor after recognition from the chair in 1848, although the two incidents have never been positively connected.

Nineteen years previously the then latest success-story in the Adams family had packed his bags on the White House lawn, inwardly hoping that Old Hickory Andy Jackson would move in through the delivery entrance. Major-General Jackson, himself, was elected to the Senate after his years in the presidency, but his fellow Tennesseans were obliged to bury him before they could install him in Washington once again.

Whether the more modest annual stipend of a senator ($10,000) could support an ex-president (former salary, $75,000) in the style to which he is accustomed is a moot point in these times of inflation and meatless Tuesdays. Other questions arise in the minds of solons already nervous about Congressional balance of power should Hawaii send three men to the Capital. Whom would a permanent senator represent? Would his automatic seniority be worthy of consideration in the allotment of committee chairmanships? Would these "older statesmen" break with party affiliation, and/or could they in the teeth of Congressional whips?

The example of Theodore Roosevelt who retired to big-game hunting after public prominence poses fewer problems. If it is a question of starvation as in the case of ex-President Grant, surely something could be found in the Post-Office Department. The national Senate is a body of sufficient dignity, numerous incidents to the contrary, not to require the enforced presence of old chief executives. If they can prove their usefulness and popularity at the polls, that is another story.