For the last couple of weeks, Rep. Harris Fawell (R., Ill.) has been telling anyone who asked his position on the MX missile that he was ”still cogitating on that son of a gun.”
But although the freshman legislator was undecided, his manner apparently was so low key that it wasn`t until last Friday that any of the Republican nose-counters took seriously the possibility that they could not depend on his vote to authorize building 21 more MX missiles.
The administration is engaged in a hard-sell lobbying effort, and the House began Monday to debate whether to authorize release of $1.5 billion for construction of the missiles.
”He wasn`t on anybody`s list. Somebody screwed up,” said an aide to a House Republican leader.
Now the Du Page County Republican is on everybody`s list. And with the vote scheduled in the House for Tuesday, Fawell has more invitations to meet people than a debutante has dates.
Monday morning he got a phone call from Secretary of State George Shultz. That followed up a meeting Friday in which Fawell was ushered into the Oval Office and spent 20 minutes with President Reagan and his national security adviser, Robert McFarlane.
Fawell says it was all very relaxed.
”We had some good conversation. I didn`t feel at all pressured. He is an easy man to talk to,” Fawell said.
He insisted there were no promises made.
”It was all very above board,” said the veteran of the Illinois Senate. Fawell said that after the initial greetings, ”It got kind of quiet, so I said, `Let me explain why.` ”
Then he laid out why he was wavering from his party`s position on a vote that could be decided by a handful of legislators.
”There was not even one exasperated sigh, and I would give them full right,” said Fawell, aware that most freshmen legislators on their first visit to the Oval Office don`t usually hold out on doing what their own party`s president asks.
”Nobody made me feel as if it was wrong or that I was a bad Republican,” he said.
Fawell, 56, who has doubts about the viability of the MX, said his main concern ”is the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We`re always in a position where we can`t say `no.` We find we`re always looking down the barrel of a gun we have produced with our own technology.”
Yet, he is still see-sawing on the issue because of the counter-balancing argument that Congress should not take this weapon out of the arsenal with which U.S. officials can negotiate at Geneva.
”This may be our best opportunity and perhaps our last opportunity to control offensive nuclear weapons,” he said. ”It is a powerful argument. I think there`s no question that if I`m 50-50 (on the arguments pro and con)
that argument would tip me over.”
Fawell said Shultz, in his telephone call, ”indicated something new about hardening the silos” to give greater protection to the MX missiles.
Fawell said he wanted to learn more about that and headed off to a meeting of about a dozen Republican legislators with arms-control negotiator Max Kampelman.
He`s also listened to MX opponents. For instance, he talked by telephone last week with William Colby, the former CIA director who opposes the MX.
And he is aware of his mail, which is running 4 to 1 against building more MX missiles.
But just like everything else connected with the MX missile, Fawell doesn`t believe the mail indicates the issue is as clear-cut to citizens as the numbers would indicate.
”I mean, people don`t write in, saying, `Please build a missile.` ”
