Word: vandenbergers
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...last week the Senate debated ERP. Michigan's big Arthur Vandenberg, imbued with a sense of "terrible urgency," and with most of the Senate behind him, drove hard for swift action. But against him a handful lined up in relays to argue, haggle, hold back. From the crowded galleries, spectators' attention focused on the massive figure of Big Van, on his feet most of the time, parrying questions, thrusting home his answers, meeting objections & complaints. When he left the floor, Massachusetts' able young Henry
Some opponents of ERP seemed determined to sludge up the going. Some, who had once quailed at the magnitude of ERP, now asked: "Is it enough?" How, demanded Missouri's white-haired James P. Kem, could a "wall of dollars" keep Communism out of Western Europe? Arthur Vandenberg admitted that ERP was simply "the best of calculated risks." But Kem insisted on having some kind of "reasonable assurance." Snapped Vandenberg: "Can the Senator from Missouri give me any reasonable assurance as to what the plans of the Politburo are . . . regarding their conquest of the west...
...Replied Vandenberg: "If the Senator is asking me to disclose the plans of the Executive ... he has applied at the wrong window. ... I know of no bargains that war has. I think that peace does have a bargain once in a while. Perhaps [ERP] is one. I am irrevocably of the opinion that it is well worth finding...
...Vote. Vandenberg countered by inquiring sarcastically: "Is it the Senator's theory that the majority of the . . . nations on his proposed council could declare a state of war . . . without our consent?" It was. "The Senator," taunted Arthur Vandenberg, "is a little more internationalist than I am." "I suspect I am," said Joe Ball. "I think I probably always have been." Vandenberg fired his last broadside: "It is interesting to be in favor of everything that is not available for us to vote on, and not in favor of anything that...
...Vandenberg's baroque oratorical style was scarcely equal to his urgent sense of history. But his long and detailed presentation had a ponderous impressiveness. Said he solemnly: "[This plan] is the final product of eight months of more intensive study by more devoted minds than I have ever known to concentrate upon any other one objective in all my 20 years in Congress. ... If it fails, we have done our final best. If it succeeds, our children and our children's children will call us blessed...