Mom, Apple Pie, and a Farm Bill Veto

Ah, 1956. Just mention any year in the 50s and it conjures up days of prosperity and civility in political discourse. In 1956 America was booming (thank you unions!), the GI Bill was fueling a wave of prosperity, and the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance. Jack Kennedy was still somewhere in Congress, and you could turn on your brand-spanking-new color TV to watch good, wholesome programs on weekdays and hit the drive-in on weekends. Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, and Elvis Presley was on Ed Sullivan for the first time.

However, there were signs of discord. Marilyn Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller (!), Jackson Pollock didn't make it past August, and that pesky Egyptian Nasser spent most of the year messing with the Suez Canal.

And then, in a shocking display of moral fortitude, President Dwight Eisenhower vetoed a farm bill. Now we have to remember, at that time there were about 23 million people living on farms in the US (around 2 million now), and not only that, it was a presidential election year. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson rubbed his hands with glee (lot of glee back then, you know), thinking of the possibilities. He was going to make the General pay a heavy political price for vetoing one of the most popular pieces of legislation ever. Time Magazine, 1956:

Right after President Eisenhower's veto of the farm bill, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson set the style for Democratic reaction. "The veto of the farm bill," keynoted Johnson, "can be described only as a crushing blow to the hopes and the legitimate desires of American agriculture." Then, as other Democrats arose in the Senate to lambaste the President, Johnson sprawled out in his chair, grinned broadly and winked at his party colleagues. Feeling that they had at last been handed a deadly issue against Dwight Eisenhower, other Democrats grinned along with Lyndon Johnson in the early days of last week.

But somehow, things didn't work out the way Johnson wanted:

In the hours before the vote on overriding, a secondary political reaction began to set in. Congressmen with an ear cocked to the country began to hear editorial approval of the President's veto in such Midwestern cities as Milwaukee, Kansas City, Omaha and Chicago, and from such Southern centers as Dallas, Miami, Richmond and Memphis. Even the Des Moines Register, a supporter of the farm bill, was philosophical. Republican leaders meeting in Washington (see below) began to perk up after initial despondency. The President, they figured, had pulled the rug from under the Democrats by his principle-over-politics decision, as well as by his offer of administrative relief to farmers and his request for immediate soil-bank payments. By midweek, House Republicans who had backslid on the farm-bill vote (TIME, April 23) began to rally.

The veto stood- and the Democrats, who needed 2/3 of House votes to override, couldn't even muster the simple majority it took to pass the bill in the first place (211-202).

You know, it occurs to me that the Mulch Blog has been compiling quite the list of pro-reform editorials, from many of those same cities. Some things never change. 1956 was the last time any president vetoed a farm bill, and Eisenhower came out looking good. He won re-election handily. And more than 50 years later, Eisenhower is still viewed as someone who put principle over politics.

Despite our collective fond remembrances of the 50s, political discourse was probably just about as nasty back then as it is now (think McCarthy). One thing has changed, though. They had some serious orators in Congress back then. I know I'm posting practically the entire article here, but it's just so good:

Promising that he would call Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson on his Senate Agriculture Committee carpet within 48 hours, Louisiana's Allen Ellender nonetheless took direct aim at Eisenhower. "The choice was the President's," cried Ellender. "He has chosen to let our farm population dangle at the end of Secretary Benson's flexible noose." Oklahoma's Senator Robert Kerr supplied the oratorical topper: "From his ivory tower at the Augusta country club, where he has been completely insulated from the voice of the people, the President has again acted on the advice of little men who made his decision for him . . . The nails that have been driven into the farmer's hands, the cross upon which he is being crucified, may have been furnished by Benson, but the hammer that drove those nails into the farmer's hands was wielded by the hand of Eisenhower. The hand that placed the crown of thorns upon the farmer's head was the hand of Eisenhower."

Damn. I wish I could have live-blogged some Senate debates back then. I listened to the Senate press conference for about 30 seconds last Thursday and had to get another cup of coffee to stay awake. Politics beat out principle in that press conference. Let's hope Congress has enough principle as a whole to sustain a veto.

UPDATE/CORRECTION:  Bill Harshaw notes in the comments that more veto activity took place after 1956, just not on stand-alone farm bills  Chris Clayton makes the same point at DTN. 

More 1956 factoids.

Happy Mother's Day to all, but especially to moms who work in libraries and have recently visited Istanbul (That's in Turkey, or so I'm told).