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Show Part Five Watkins had been induced by the White House to take on an unpleasant chore, that of presiding over the Senate trial of Senator McCarthy, and it put him in a position to receive a favor. Time magazine carried the story that when the President summoned Watkins to congratulate him for doing such a good job in slapping down McCarthy, Watkins asked Mr. Eisenhower to mention the crsp in the next State of the Union mes- sage.183 The President did more than that.184 In the 1955 budget, he recommended that $5 million be appropri- ated to get the project's engineering started. It had been shown long before this, however, that the President agreed with his advisers that the crsp was im- portant to the success of the Republicans. With Vice- president Nixon, Majority Leader Knowland, and Governor Knight in its high ranks, the party wasn't especially worried about holding California. There were sixteen other states, however, in which the reclamation laws applied. Thus, it seemed doubtful that Watkins' hatchet job on McCarthy had as much to do with in- tensifying the administration's support of the crsp as did politics. |
