The McCarthy Issue

Tanned, rested, the President of the U.S. returned to Washington after six days in Southern California's sunshine. He -and the U.S. -needed all the energy he could muster.

One Urgent Task. In the great mass of problems awaiting the President, the most urgent was the McCarthy issue. It was entwined with another problem: the supersensitive mood of Congress. The four Senators who talked Army Secretary Stevens into the hurtful "Memorandum of Understanding" were all Republicans, but they were acting as Senators arrayed against the Executive, not as Republicans arrayed against the Democrats. Even that solid Percheron of New Dealism, New York's Herbert Lehman, defended his last month's vote for McCarthy's committee appropriation by saying: "To withhold all funds from a legally constituted committee of the Senate would furnish grounds for a plausible claim that its activities has been sabotaged." This congressional esprit was one of the factors that Stevens underestimated.

Eisenhower has said again and again that he does not want to dictate to Congress. He thinks it should regain its proper place in U.S. political life after the years in which F.D.R. used Congress as a rubber stamp and the years of bitter deadlock be tween Capitol Hill and Harry Truman.

But the nation cannot be made to suffer grave damage while Congress rediscovers its potency. McCarthy is part of the problem of White House-Congress relations -but he goes much beyond that. He hurts the nation's good name with its allies. He muddies the important Communist issue. He distracts the Government and the country from the grave perils and golden opportunities that surround it.

No one but the President can get McCarthy out of his dominant position in the headlines -a position from which he gives the false impression of dominating the Government.

Three Essentials. How the President goes about this task is his problem. But any observer of Washington knows that he has to insist that his own lieutenants show rudimentary political savvy in dealing with McCarthy. Next, he has to clarify the U.S. strategy against Communism, especially in the Far East, so that Mc Carthy cannot make capital out of Administration weakness.

And the President has to tell the country that his Administration needs neither McCarthy's Senate vote nor his influence with the people. Republicans and independents can get disgusted enough with McCarthy to vote Democratic next fall. But where can McCarthy's followers go? Politically, Joe is expendable, and the time to spend him appears to have come. This week Secretary of State Dulles made a start by taking authority over State Department personnel away from McCarthy's pal, R. W. Scott McLeod, the Department's security officer.

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