Offhand, it might seem strange that the 70-year old Leverett Saltonstall should lead the 30-year old Edward Kennedy anywhere, but it is a perfectly natural thing to do in the United States Senate. Salty, as Massachusetts' senior Senator, was the obvious and traditional choice this January to lead Teddy up to the rostrum where he signed the oath book and officially became a United States Senator. Nobody felt any embarrassment at this or any of the other unlikely combinations at the rostrum-Dodd and Ribicoff, or Mundt and McGovern-for the ritual expressed silently what Mike Mans-field said after it was over: "Now you are just as important as any of us."

Despite the fact that they are members of the "world's most exclusive club," the freshmen members are, not surprisingly, tremendously diverse. The club had nothing to do with their selection. Most of them have passed through a rigorous Darwinian selection of one election after another, but the number of successful traits is surprisingly large. There are people who play the game scientifically, like win simply because they're nice, sincere guys-Kennedy or Dominick; there are people who Ribicoff or Ionize; and there are politicians like McIntyre or McGovern whom fortune has favored.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of common ground. They are all politicians and not statesmen. This is not to accuse them of venality; rather, they all operate on a personal basis, considering how things affect people; they do not have an obsession with always doing the "right thing," hoping that history will absolve them. Furthermore, all of them are politicians with a special touch for people. They have something more than the rather common ability to shake hands vigorously and say bland things to a disinterested electorate.

Of the lot, Kennedy perhaps exemplifies best this kind of politician: few would say he was a statesman. The reason, quite simply, is that he treats ideas as subordinate to actions and feelings. Kennedy is not interested in ideas themselves, but in what they can do. In using them to set the tone of his campaign last fall, he concentrated on medicare to great effect against Lodge, and on local issues to the dismay of Hughes. Pragmatically he says of the Senate "you're able really to make some suggestions if you've done your (intellectual) homework."

The special touch was described by Ribicoff, a politician who has it, as "visceral-the ability to get along with people. You'll never learn about it in a government course." Some freshmen, like George McGovern, acquired it: "I used to find handshaking awkward, but now I've developed a special capacity for it;" others took to it immediately. McIntrye has pleasant memories of "going up into the countryside with gals knocking wood with just a chemise," and Dominick proudly tells of the hours he spent "glad-handing" (20 hours a day, 7 days a week by his own estimate). Politics, for these Senators, is people, not issues.

Considering the freshmen's political bias, it is natural that their first impression of the Senate would not be of its power, or of its place in the order of things, but of its people. And Birch Bayh's impression was typical: "it's been wonderful." Besides the oath book ceremony, there are luncheons given by the leadership, and the little gestures that any politician appreciates. Daniel Inouye found his reception "extremely good, embarrassingly good. The senior members go out of their way to be nice to you; they even took me around to the masseur."

But as every political scientist knows, there is something more to the club than its outward friendliness. It is the unseen power structure of the Senate, commonly called the Establishment, that every freshman Senator must work with. Political scientists seem to know more about it than freshmen senators, some of whom cautiously admitted only the possibility of its existence.

And yet the control by the Establishment, which is essentially a personal influence, must be familiar to these men. All of them have been in politics for some time-Ribicoff for 25 years, Inouye for 16, McIntyre for 14, and Kennedy for 7.

Most of them, too, were involved in a series of unprecedented successes in their home states in the late 50's. Gaylord Nelson is the only Wisconsin Democrat in about 70 years to win three state-wide elections in a row. Ribicoff was the boy wonder of Republican Connecticut, and everybody knows about the Kennedy story in Massachusetts. None of these men are neophytes like George Romney, and they all know politics is more than a set of rules written by the Founding Fathers.

Some, like Gaylord Nelson, were quite frank about admitting the Establishment's existence: "It's natural for power to gravitate to people who know how to use it." Most of them justified the system with the back-handed compliment that they couldn't think of anything better.

Beyond this, however, opinions diverged on why the freshmen were at such a loss for alternatives. The Senator who had perhaps given the most thought to it was George McGovern of South Dakota. McGovern is a Stevenson Democrat quite literally: it was Stevenson's '52 campaign that inspired him to quit his position as professor of History and Government at Dakota Wesley, and to become the party's executive secretary. By intensive campaigning, he managed to obtain two terms in the U.S. House, a close loss to Karl Mundt in 1960, and his victory, "not an overwhelming mandate," over Joe Bottum last year.

Despite his political charm, he still maintains the reserve of a section man when he discusses his conception of the Senate. "I don't know of any better system than the present one, because it permits the Senators to be relaxed in their relations with each other." The only alternative, the merit system, "would set off a wild kind of infighting for positions. Politicians are naturally a highly competitive breed." McGovern, despite his academic background, is prepared to take the system as it is, and his discomfort at not being able to think of a better system is not very acute.

Nelson takes a more democratic view of affairs. "Seniority, in theory at at least, is a very poor idea." The Democratic steering committee, in making committee assignments, should "take seniority into consideration, but not be bound by it. The appointments ought to reflect the composition of the Senate. Under the rules, as they stand now, power gravitates unnaturally to the senior members." Yet Nelson isn't really dissatisfied; in the area where the Establishment is supposedly effective, committee assignments, he got what he asked for. He admits that aid from two powerful senior senators, Humphrey and Anderson, was decisive and he is grateful.

Kennedy seemed to summarize the feelings of most freshmen when he remarked "Seniority is the established rule of the Senate-now, can you call it Democracy?" Bayh went along with Kennedy: "Insofar as it reflects experience on the scene, and additional knowledge, it is to the good. A great majority of the time, it would be a great asset." But "as speaker of the Indian House of Representatives, I had too much authority. There is the danger that so far as it permits someone who is no longer in complete control of his faculties to have power it is bad."

Senator Clark of Pennsylvania made a direct expression of these misgivings at the conclusion of the cloture debate. He charged that junior Senators had been discriminated against in committee assignments, which are made by the steering committee of each party after the Senate organizes, if they had voted against the Establishment over cloture.