• Background of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership Press Statements
• Republican Leadership Press Statements

Background of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership Press Statements

The first session of the 87th Congress witnessed a Republican innovation in leadership that had a very unifying effect. Early in January 1961, shortly before the end of his administration, President Dwight Eisenhower summoned to the White House the Republican members of Congress who had regularly attended his Tuesday morning congressional leadership meetings, including Everett Dirksen, Minority Leader of the Senate.

After discussion, the group reached the following conclusions:

1. The Republican leaders of the Senate and the House would form a joint group, to be known as the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership, with the chairman of the Republican National Committee to act as presiding office (a practice soon abandoned), to hold meetings approximately once a week, after which the Senate and House leaders, as spokesmen, would hold a joint press conference for the newspaper, periodical, TV and radio correspondents. These sessions became known first as the "Ev and Charlie Show" and then the "Ev and Jerry Show" after Dirksen, Charles Halleck, and Gerald Ford.

2. When desirable, other appropriate GOP leaders would be invited to meet with the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership.

3. For the purpose of coordinating the effort, stimulating research, and carrying out other administrative duties, President Eisenhower suggested the joint leadership be provided with a staff.

The innovation here was the decision to set up a "joint" Senate-House leadership, a key strategy as the Democrats took over the White House and became the center of media attention accordingly. For Republicans, the hope was that the party would speak with a unified voice and that different points of view between the House and Senate might be worked out more effectively.

The first meeting of the Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership occurred on January 24, 1961. A staff consultant was retained and, as a result of experience gained in the first few weeks, an effort was made to give the meetings a more formalized voice. This led to preparation at the meetings of formal statements to be issued at the press conferences before submitting to questions from correspondents.

From the leadership meeting of March 23 forward a record of formal statements was kept and published at the end of each session as an official document of the Senate. Each document contains the formal statements but not the question-and-answer transcripts, most of which are part of the Dirksen Papers.

The Joint Senate-House Republican Leadership meetings ended in 1968 after the election of Republican Richard Nixon to the White House.

Republican Leadership Press Statements

The following table links to scanned versions of these documents. The date in brackets is the date the original document was printed. The items listed under subject are drawn from the table of contents of each of the annual publications.

To determine on which page a subject appears, first link to the Contents page listed under the corresponding date. Find the page number there and then link to the scanned image from this table.