House Speaker Retires

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32303, 22 May 1970, Page 13

House Speaker Retires

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright)

WASHINGTON, May 21.

President Nixon has called the retiring House of Representatives Speaker, Mr John McCormack, “one of the finest public servants I have known” and praised him as a-politician who always put his country above his personal ambitions.

Mr Nixon, in a White House statement, said: “Few men in my acquaintance over many years of public service have held faithfully to the patriot’s concept that our country comes first. “He has served with seven Presidents . . . and' with each, on the great issues involving the security and safety of the United States, unfailingly John McCormack has put country above party —the national good above self.” The White House said that Mr McCormack had telephoned Mr Nixon to say he was retiring after 42 years in Congress and eight years as Speaker.

Mr McCormack’s announcement that he would not seek re-election next year marks the impending departure of one of the last of the “old pros” of American politics, the Associated Press reports. The 78-year-old Speaker rose to power in the classic tradition of the lowly toiler in the constituencies who, through hard work and loyalty to the party organisation made it to the top. In the end, with the times changing rapidly, his unchanging style brought mounting

criticism from younger Congressmen.

Once a fiery, energetic floor leader who helped shape the momentous legislation of the New Deal, he became in the last few years the symbol of what many feel is wrong, with Congress—that it is too old, too deaf to new ideas, too concerned with old loyalties to meet new challenges. Mr Carl Albert, the Majority Leader of the House, emerged as the overwhelming Democratic Party choice to become the forty-sixth Speaker next year. Mr McCormack, whose post is the third most powerful elected position in the United States Government after the President and Vice-president, gave Mr Albert his blessing.

He said that Mr Albert had done an outstanding job as majority leader—the House’s No. 2 Democrat—and that he would have the Speaker’s enthusiastic and powerful support. The fiery, 62-year-old Mr Albert, a former Rhodes Scholar who stands barely sft 2in tall, in stark contrast to the over 6ft Mr McCormack, immediately said he. would be a candidate for the post, and picked up support from several influential House members.