Not So Grand Wizard

The mellifluent, loquacious, rumpled, dimpled, damp, and wondrous Wizard of Ooze has done it again; Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen has confounded nearly everyone by announcing that he will place in nomination at the Republican convention the name of a man whom he denounced strongly in the Senate only eleven days ago.

Judging motives in politics is always a highly popular but exceedingly tricky business. And discovering the motivation underlying the meanderings of the shaggy Senator is unusually difficult. Dirksen, always theatrical, would give reporters no explanation for his decision, "Why I did it because I wanted to," he said with almost puckish glee.

Dirksen may have "wanted to" for a number of reasons, the most obvious and least likely being a desire for the vice-Presidential nomination. As an old and potent Senator it is highly improbable that he wants to trade his seat as Minority Leader for the second spot on the ticket. (Analogies between him and Lyndon Johnson must be tempered by the fact that Johnson was 52 when he became Vice-President, Dirksen is 69.)

More likely, Dirksen wanted to avoid embarrassment in his own delegation which was strongly committed to Goldwater and over which he had little or no control. But this only explains his vote, not the nominating speech.

A "Reasonable" Image

Some suggest that Dirksen wanted to placate the conservative wing of the party. This they argue, gives him the image of a "reasonable" man and allows him to exert strenuous leadership in support of vital, liberal, bi-partisan measures like the Test Ban Treaty and the Civil Rights Bill.

But such a view is unwarranted. No one in recent weeks has discerned a deterioration of Dirksen's prestige; it has, in fact, never been higher. More to the point, it assumes that Dirksen is more consistently liberal than he actually is.

Until his vote in favor of the foreign aid bill two years ago, Dirksen was regarded as being much farther right than he seems now, although he could at times be a maverick from the conservative cause. Since then he has cultivated the image of a statesmanlike, middle of the road Minority Leader, and backed it up with some key votes which brought him boundless praise. But Dirksen's support of Goldwater merely reaffirms the central fact of his political life when seen in the perspective of 30 years in Washington.

Dirksen always waits until the last moment, tests the wind, builds suspense, and then throws his support to the seemingly popular side. If he is wrong (as in his opposition to the Marshall plan, federal housing, rural electrification, or even the test ban treaty) he doesn't stay wrong for very long.

The Time for Goldwater

Clearly Ev feels that the time for Goldwater is now and he would strengthen his own position within the party by supporting him. Moreover, his political philosophy isn't always so radically different from Goldwater's. Besides, Goldwater will do the most for the Republican party in the fall elections. One could not of course expect Ev Dirksen to stop playing politics. But his hypocrisy in boosting Goldwater after earning plaudits over civil rights is monumental.

It was also unnecessary. In a divided Republican party, Dirksen could have rested comfortably on the other side. By supporting a candidate who must rely heavily on placating the South, Dirksen is potentially threatening the very bill he helped to pass, is acting with a cynical disregard for an issue which deeply troubles his party and as little as two weeks ago seemed deeply to trouble him.