Chapter 4 / RISE TO POWER IN THE SENATE

The freshman Senate class of 1948 was an exceptional group. It included Hubert Humphrey, the crusading former Mayor of Minneapolis, whose eloquent advocacy for a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic platform had helped drive several Southern delegations from the party; Paul Douglas, the liberal intellectual, professor of economics at the University of Chicago; Estes Kefauver, symbol of the South’s new progressivism, the insurgent who had defied and defeated Boss Crump of Memphis; Clinton Anderson, Secretary of Agriculture in President Truman’s first administration; Robert Kerr, millionaire, former Governor of Oklahoma; Russell Long, son of the Kingfish, Huey Long. Rarely had so many men come to the Senate with already established reputations. Indeed, Lyndon Johnson was among the least known of this most publicized freshman class.¹

Yet three years later it was Johnson, not Douglas or Humphrey or Long or Kefauver, who was elected party whip, and who two years after that became the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate. Chance played a role, but, in retrospect, one can see that the institution of the Senate—its size, modes of function, and the relationships and process through which influence was exercised—was almost ideally adapted to the most formidable of his personal qualities.

Power in the Senate had been exercised since 1937 by an informal coalition of conservative Republicans and Southern Democrats, in which, during the Truman years, the conservative Republicans agreed to vote with the South against civil rights legislation if the Southern Democrats voted against Truman’s social and economic legislation. Born in the struggle to defeat FDR’s court-packing plan, this coalition had enhanced its power over the years by the steady accumulation of key committee chairmanships, the mastery of parliamentary procedure, and the concerted skill of its leaders—Richard Russell of Georgia, Allen Ellender of Louisiana, Walter George of Georgia, Tom Connally of Texas, and Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee.

The power of this inner club was evident at once to the entering freshman. Its members ate lunch at a special table, where, others believed, they discussed and determined how and when various issues would come to the Senate floor. Always before, in every institution, Johnson had sought to attach himself to the sources, of power. Now, in the Senate, he could see at once what was required—deference to the elders, hard work, a low profile, specialization, and an acquiescence to inner-club priorities.

From the beginning Johnson recognized that the influence of Richard Russell would be decisive to his hopes for leadership.² The undisputed leader of the Senate’s inner club, Russell commanded the respect of almost every member. His judgment of Johnson would influence the judgment of all the rest. But the Senate did not lack for ambitious men, many of them shrewd enough to recognize Russell’s unique position in the Senate hierarchy. And Russell had many responsibilities, many supplicants—few of whom could be completely ignored or slighted if Russell did not want to risk weakening his own position. And finally there were only so many hours in a day. Johnson could impress Russell with his qualities only if he could establish regular working contact. The Senate offered more formal opportunities than those offered by a desk outside the college president’s office at San Marcos or a message carried into the chamber by a legislative secretary. “I knew there was only one way to see Russell every day,” Johnson explained, “and that was to get a seat on his committee. Without that we’d most likely be passing acquaintances and nothing more. So I put in a request for the Armed Services Committee—and fortunately, because of all my work on defense preparedness in the House, my request was granted.”³

Having established an access to Russell which would not appear as the imposition of a flagrant ambition, since it arose naturally from their common responsibilities, Johnson was in a position to make use of one of his most powerful faculties—the ability to judge the qualities, needs, and values of other men. From this understanding he could then adapt his conduct to that course most likely to attain his end: in this case, the trust and approving respect of Georgia’s Senior Senator. In temperament and personality the two men were radically dissimilar. The older man was quiet, courtly, aloof; the younger, flamboyant, discourteous, and intimate. Senator Russell shunned publicity and led a monastic life. He dressed like a conservative small-town banker and worked in an austere office, devoid of any token of power or wealth. Johnson, on the other hand, continually pursued public self-promotion and indulged a developing taste for expensive, fashionable clothes and elaborately plush surroundings. Russell had spent his youth in a small farm town in Georgia, where he had absorbed the unshakable conviction that separation of the races was the most desirable and beneficial condition for both Negroes and whites. But Johnson, raised in a town where there were no Negroes, received no such indoctrination. Indeed, his father had been a publicly proclaimed enemy of the Ku Klux Klan and his grandfather a member of the Populist Party.

However, Johnson had a goal whose achievement required that differences—superficial or profound—be submerged. Accordingly, he adapted to Russell’s habits and character so skillfully that the two soon came to seem much alike. Courting Russell, Johnson toned down his appearance and took on a more civilized demeanor.

“Johnson learned to observe amenities with Senator Russell,” said Bill Jorden, long-time assistant to the Georgia Senator. “With other Senators he would just walk right into their offices, wouldn’t even say how d’ya do. He would just barge in single-mindedly. Amenities were not part of his relationships. But Russell was totally incapable of responding to that. He had an Old World courtliness. He was not the type whom you could put your arm around. So Johnson learned. He always referred to him as ‘Senator Russell’ and always sent in a note from the outer office to say he would like to come in.”⁴

“Under magnificent self-control,” two commentators observed, “the Lyndon Johnson of the early Senate years was a subdued fellow not seen before and not to be seen again until his painful vice-presidential period.”⁵ “His manner,” it was said by Newsweek in 1951, “is quiet and gentle, and everything he does, he does with great deliberation and care.”⁶ Directing his attention to his committee work, Johnson became a specialist in the subject matter and legislative problems related to his assigned responsibilities. He shied away from speaking to the galleries or the press in favor of quiet accommodation within the sanctum of the Senate.

A shift toward more conservative politics accompanied Johnson’s tempered style, helping him to gain acceptance to the inner club, whose members were generally conservative. Yet he was also, and perhaps more strongly, motivated by the changing nature of his constituency.⁷ He now represented the state of Texas, which was far more conservative as a whole than the 10th District, which had sent him to Congress. Johnson’s rightward drift culminated in 1949, 1950, and 1951, when he supported the oil and gas industry, fought Truman’s nomination of liberal Leland Olds to a third term on the Federal Power Commission, and defended the Taft-Hartley Act.

Although Johnson’s new style was contrived and his “new politics” expedient, he did share with Russell a genuine and consuming devotion to the Senate. A lifelong bachelor with few intimate friends and virtually no social life, Russell cared for the Senate with an intense fidelity that young Lyndon honestly respected and understood. Yet, at the same time, Johnson also saw in these same feelings a potential source of advantage. “Richard Russell,” Johnson explained, “found in the Senate what for him was a home. With no one to cook for him at home, he would arrive early enough in the morning to eat breakfast at the Capitol and stay late enough at night to eat dinner across the street. And in these early mornings and late evenings I made sure that there was always one companion, one Senator, who worked as hard and as long as he, and that was me, Lyndon Johnson. On Sundays the House and Senate were empty, quiet and still, the streets outside were bare. It’s a tough day for a politician, especially if, like Russell, he’s all alone. I knew how he felt for I, too, counted the hours till Monday would come again, and knowing that, I made sure to invite Russell over for breakfast, lunch, brunch or just to read the Sunday papers. He was my mentor and I wanted to take care of him.”⁸

Johnson drew from his fellow addict and mentor, Russell, a knowledge of Senate function that could be acquired only by sifting daily political events to ascertain where power had been lost and where gained. And yet because Johnson’s ambition extended beyond the interests of the Southern bloc and the inner club, it became necessary for him, even while courting Russell, to maintain a distance that others would recognize. He chose the issue of civil rights on which to demonstrate that his loyalty did not entail complete subordination. He did not want to be inextricably linked to what he recognized as a losing or regional cause. Yet he wanted to forfeit neither Russell’s friendship nor his enabling power. And so Johnson’s first step was to placate Russell: he decided to deliver his maiden speech in support of the filibuster. In January, 1949, the liberals in the Senate, supported by President Truman, were trying to break cloture in order to secure enactment of a Fair Employment Practices Commission. Johnson’s speech—a structural defense rather than an ideological assertion—was, according to his mentor, “one of the ablest I have ever heard on the subject.”

Having openly and effectively allied himself with the Southern position, Johnson then felt free to decline Russell’s invitation to join the Southern caucus, twenty-two Southern Senators who met each week, knowing that membership would indelibly brand him a conservative. Johnson refused, then voted faithfully along the lines of caucus members. Johnson always found ways to serve those he needed, and to conform to their standards and values, but he never submitted his will, never became the devoted and unquestioning subordinate. This autonomy was a source of strength, preventing him from losing sight of his own goals or his capacity for independent action when new opportunity arose. It helped create the kind of impression that, however loyal, he was his own man, which made it possible for others to take seriously his ambitions for positions of leadership and independent authority. After protecting himself from future recriminations born of false expectation, Johnson remained Russell’s friend, loyal associate, active supporter, and effective ally in the effort to achieve a large majority of the legislative action that Russell desired.⁹

Still, Johnson recalled that after three years in the Senate he had felt an “increasing restlessness.” The major leadership positions in the Senate, a half-dozen important committee chairmanships, were awarded on the basis of seniority. Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois seemed entrenched as party leader; as was Party Whip Senator Francis Myers of Pennsylvania. Then, in the elections of 1950, both Lucas and Myers were defeated. Johnson’s swift reaction to the defeats well illustrates Machiavelli’s dictum: “Fortune is the ruler of half our actions … she allows the other half or thereabouts to be governed by us.” Examining the lives and deeds of the great princes, Machiavelli concluded: “It will be seen that they owed nothing to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to be shaped into what form they thought fit; and without that opportunity their powers would have been wasted, and without their powers the opportunity would have come in vain.”¹⁰

Johnson knew that the party caucus would merely ratify the leadership choices previously made by the inner club. Most Senators had mixed feelings about the desirability of becoming party leader or whip. The responsibilities of these positions often trapped one in Washington, reducing contact with constituents. Furthermore, during those years the elected leaders were only front men for the actual leaders of the club. Johnson knew all this, but these were the only available possibilities for changing his status in the Senate, and consistent with his ambition, any change was preferable to a situation that seemed to provide long-time stasis. And perhaps he recognized a potential that others did not see. He told Russell that a leadership position was one of the most urgently desired goals of his life. Once more, the ability to put himself forward paid off.¹¹ The caucus elected Johnson party whip, the youngest in history. In that role Johnson was expected to keep in touch with all the members of the party. These contacts enabled him to learn even more about the Senate and its individual members and enlarged his opportunity to gain the respect of others—resources that would sustain him through the decade. His new title had not changed his subordination to Russell, but it assisted him in beginning to gather the means with which he would advance from apprentice to a full partnership.

Then, in November, 1952, another opportunity opened, when young Barry Goldwater, department store owner from Phoenix, defeated the Democratic Minority Leader, Ernest McFarland. Once again Johnson moved swiftly and with careful calculation, and again circumstances favored him. If either Richard Russell or Lister Hill, of Alabama, had shown the slightest interest, the office would have been his. But Johnson knew they had no such interest. So the day after McFarland’s defeat, Johnson launched his campaign for the leadership, making a series of phone calls to Democratic Senators across the country to inform them that he had decided to run. He persuaded three important Senators—Richard Russell, Earle Clements of Kentucky, and J. Allen Frear of Delaware—to openly promote him for leader while he remained silently at his Texas ranch.

James Rowe, a long-time friend of Johnson, remembers a luncheon meeting during this period at Drew Pearson’s house, where a group of liberal Senators had gathered to develop a plan for blocking Johnson. After several hours of debating, they concluded that the only hope of success was to support Lister Hill. But when they telephoned Hill at his home in Alabama, they discovered that only a few minutes earlier Hill had pledged his support to another caller—Lyndon Johnson. Within two more days Johnson had received thirty endorsements. And on January 3, 1953, Lyndon Johnson was formally elected Minority Leader.

Why Lyndon Johnson—who was, after all, among the most junior members of the Senate? There are several answers. First of all, he chose his goal and then focused his entire energies toward its achievement, resisting other roles that a Senator might strive to fulfill: spokesman for his region or state, lobbyist for particular interest groups, advocate for causes, specialist on foreign affairs, education, or defense. Among the group of stellar newcomers, Johnson alone had deliberately chosen to pursue the role of party leader. Douglas and Humphrey had elected to become spokesmen for their liberal allies across the nation, seeming not to worry about their influence inside the Senate. Kefauver had decided to seek a national arena by exploiting the Senate’s investigative resources to expose what he saw as serious and dangerous flaws in national life. Robert Kerr had opted, instead, to represent sectional, even personal, interests. And although he was to become one of the most powerful men in the Senate—at times even regarded as the unofficial “leader”—it was this choice which finally kept him from the formal office and, eventually, the content of party leadership. In each instance, the chosen role not only suited the personality and natural inclinations of the man but enhanced his strength among his constituency.

A Senator’s most important decision is what to make of a job whose function is ill-defined and whose possibilities are many—what to do with his time, how to allocate his resources, and where to concentrate his energy.¹² However much he may desire it, no Senator can satisfy the expectations and demands of everyone. Nor is it necessary. He must strive rather for respect in those social and political circles he regards as significant. Sociologists call such circles the “relevant others,” the persons with whom the political leader establishes or feels the closest identification and on whom he builds his following. Almost inevitably, this identification starts a process by which, over time, he comes to apprehend the part as though it were the entirety of his function. Yet he must choose because resources—money, time, energy, staff, information, and goodwill—are limited. What is used for one role and one purpose cannot be used for another. Each role has its cost: choosing to be a spokesman for outside groups may reduce leverage inside; choosing to become a party leader inside may reduce linkage to the outside. And, of course, the choice may—and often does—reflect the politician’s own inclinations, values, and sense of what matters.

Since a Senator’s initial choice of audience depends largely on the character of the organization and constituency from which he drew most of his support, his subsequent behavior will respond to the expectations of those people (although changing political circumstances may oblige him to reach out for new sources of support in order to increase his strength or to compensate for disaffections). Moreover, a constituency large enough to elect a Senator will inevitably contain many whose goals and desired performances are contradictory, thereby providing room for a considerable range of action.

Johnson’s decision to strive for leadership within the party appears to have been taken almost immediately upon coming to the Senate. James Rowe recalls a conversation with the new Senator in which he tried to persuade Johnson that, unlike the House, the Senate was a national forum, which could provide Johnson with the opportunity to free himself of dependence on insiders such as Speaker Sam Rayburn and Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Vinson, who had, in Rowe’s view, increasingly constrained Johnson during his later years in the House. Rowe urged him to speak bluntly about a wide variety of national problems, in the tradition of a Borah or a Norris or a Wheeler. “That’s not the way I see it,” Johnson responded. “It may have been possible years ago, but today you have to get along in the Senate if you want to get anything done.”¹³ For Johnson, effectiveness was defined almost solely in institutional terms. Simply to raise issues in order to generate discussion was—and would remain—for Johnson nothing more than “rambling talk.”¹⁴ He wanted to be on the inside, “where the decisions took place, where things really happened.”¹⁵

In the end, Johnson was one of the very few Senators willing to accept the combination of political risk and little real authority attendant on party leadership in the 1950s. He alone saw the equation differently. What appeared as unacceptable costs to others were to Johnson a regular and expected price of the apprenticeship, the often menial tasks, which he had accepted and built on many times before. And here, as before, Johnson proved able to conduct his office with a mixture of subordination and independence that secured his acceptance along with a recognition of his abilities. He had used these qualities and methods before to build from an unpromising base. And he would do it now as Minority Leader. (In the Senate in 1953 there were forty-eight Democrats, forty-seven Republicans and one Independent, Wayne Morse, who had left the Republican Party during the 1952 elections but had agreed to vote with the Republicans on the question of running the Senate. This produced a 48–48 tie, which was broken by Vice President Richard Nixon, to give Republican Taft the majority leadership and leave Johnson with the minority post. Two years later, in 1955, Morse switched his position; the Democrats gained control of the Senate and Lyndon Johnson became Majority Leader.)

By the middle of the decade the powerful “Senate men” who had raised Johnson to the position of titular leader found themselves reduced to lieutenants in a system directed, in fact as well as in name, by the party leader—Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, in a manner without precedent, had made himself the absolute center of the Democratic Party in the Senate. This transformation would have seemed unimaginable in 1953 when he assumed the then titular and insubstantial post of Minority Leader. The party machinery that he inherited had been rendered impotent by an inner club determined to eliminate any force capable of challenging their power. Moreover, even the formal authority of the Minority Leader was unimpressive. He was not an officer of the national party. Unlike the Speaker in the House of Representatives, he was not even a formal official in the Senate. His only formally established authority was his chairmanship of the steering committee that controlled the appointment of members of standing committees. In the Congress of the nineteenth century that power of appointment had been significant. A good committee assignment was critical, both to build prestige and influence within the Senate and to acquire the capacity to serve constituents. By Johnson’s day, however, the increased sway of the seniority system had greatly diminished the leader’s freedom to grant or deny such assignments.

However, Johnson had become Minority Leader without the slightest illusion about the relationship between his formal position and the actual authority—both the process and the men—that governed the conduct of the Senate. After all, he was, as we have seen, a man who believed that success in any institution depended upon the most detailed possible knowledge of the way things worked—how and why some objectives were achieved and others defeated, which individuals exercised the greatest authority, and what were the sources and limits of that authority. In the Senate as elsewhere, he pursued such knowledge with unremitting, almost obsessed persistence—through his own observation and from the experienced and powerful men to whom he gained access. This information was synthesized by a mind gifted with an almost shocking capacity to comprehend the structure of an institution, to become aware of the process through which it operated, and to sense the vulnerabilities of that process. Many knew the Senate as well as, or better than, Lyndon Johnson. However, he saw not only the present realities of his new position but the exciting possibilities that might be latent in hitherto insignificant functions and forms of control.

He began his seemingly quixotic effort to transform the post of party leader—not only because he sensed concealed possibilities, but also because it soon became clear to him, as he later explained, that he “could no longer bear to be an apprentice to the elders, simply sitting back and taking their orders.”¹⁶ He brought to the position of Minority Leader a combination of determination and skill that produced dramatically far-reaching changes in an environment whose forms had remained constant for many years. The functions of a Minority Leader offered little to build upon, but Johnson had often found ways to stretch meager resources. And almost certainly one of the sources of this ability was the popular faith that was part of his heritage. The point of a Baptist sermon popular during his youth was to persuade listeners that acres of diamonds were within reach of those willing to search and endure long and difficult labor. The early settlers of his native Southwest found harsh soil, which seemed sterile but which later proved, after sustained and exacting effort, to yield an abundance of food and flowers.

Johnson’s challenge was to increase his resources without seeming to threaten those with established power who would, if aroused, defeat his efforts; and, at the same time, to emancipate himself from bondage to the inner club. In this process he understood the critical importance of developing foundations on which new authority might be constructed but which others did not perceive as potential sources of power. From the moment of awakening he thought about ways in which he might enhance his authority. Other men about him were too tired at night to think; still others preferred to relax after hours. None used their limited energies and time to reflect upon the implications of Johnson’s action. But for Johnson the evening hours were an opportunity to “review the day’s activities” and to “figure out how to do better tomorrow.” “I knew from the start,” Johnson later recalled, that “all relations of power rest on one thing, a contract between the leader and the followers such that the followers believe it is in their interest to follow the leader. No man can compel another—except at knifepoint—to do what he does not want to do.”¹⁷

Johnson reassured himself that open coercion was not a practical possibility in the quest for Senate leadership; his instrument would be the power of persuasion. By providing others with services and desired resources, he would establish superiority over them; by providing benefits that would serve the political and personal interests of others, he would attain power. Yet the line between persuasion and coercion is thin and ambiguously drawn; the receipt of regular rewards from a benefactor who will also be the source of future benefits can create a dependency close to coercive power, because the ability to bestow also implies the authority to discontinue or refuse as a sign of disapproval or as a punishment. It was with this understanding that Johnson introduced his reform of the seniority system.

Johnson knew there is nothing more difficult than to initiate a new order of things, understanding, in his own terms, the principle which Machiavelli had explained—that “the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order … who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”¹⁸ And the committee system was not just another aspect of the legislative process; it was the foundation of power and the principal determinant of the conduct of Senate business. Thus Johnson dissembled his aim in such a way that his request for change seemed like a trivial departure which did not threaten the governing mores of the Senate.¹⁹

First he visited the Senate elders—beginning with Richard Russell—to seek their views on a proposal to guarantee each new Senator at least one good committee assignment, arguing that the present system deprived some of the most important activities of the Senate of the benefits of young and vigorous talent. But the new rule could be implemented only if the senior Senators were willing to act as statesmen devoted to the well-being of the Senate as an institution by relinquishing one of their three major assignments in order to make room for the freshmen. And Johnson knew that even those who agreed that the proposal would have beneficial results might find it difficult to sacrifice personal prerogatives for a general ideal. So he coupled his plan for a voluntary surrender of committee seats with a suggestion that the committee system be reorganized; that twelve members be subtracted from each of the minor committees and added to the major ones, thus adding to the total number of good assignments. Here again Johnson reflected the classic American tendency, and his own preference of personality, to reduce the possibility for conflict by increasing the supply of resources. He was also trying to demonstrate that one could act the statesman without that cost to political advantage which persuaded most men to restrain their noblest impulses.

Russell was sympathetic to Johnson’s proposed reforms in the committee system. Once Russell appeared to agree, thus preventing a disciplined and insuperable opposition, Johnson arranged to make the change immediately so that all the bitterness of those adversely affected could be expressed and allowed to fade in a short time, after which he could begin to reap the benefits of the change little by little over a long period. And the benefits to Johnson were considerable. He had acquired for himself a substantial power of appointment, and gained the favor of the freshmen Senators, who would most benefit from the change.

The significance of this new power—its potential for influence—was considerably strengthened by the typical freshmen’s unfamiliarity with the Senate. Uncertain what committees to apply for, they would naturally consult Johnson, who would convey his own assessment of which committee assignments would be of benefit to them. By guiding and influencing their judgments, he was often able to make certain that, when they applied, choices could be granted. Henry Jackson went to Interior, Stuart Symington to Armed Services, Mike Mansfield to Foreign Relations, and on and on. In this way Johnson became the patron of the freshmen; from their first week in the chamber he was able to persuade them that he was the source of significant rewards and favors.²⁰

“I want,” freshman Senator Gale McGee wrote to Johnson,

to take time to convey to you my deep personal appreciation for the committee assignments. Because of these appointments we freshmen have no alibis if by the end of this session we have failed to produce—in other days I suspect freshmen Senators have been able to excuse their early actions by the heavy hand of the old seniority system—but not now. Your action has given to us both individually and collectively both the responsibility and opportunity to write a constructive record.²¹

Thus Johnson imposed his command over resources that did not seem especially valuable and became the principal benefactor and support of colleagues who had little influence.

He accomplished this almost without conflict or opposition precisely because authority and influence of this kind had been of no significance to the exercise of Senate power and were not perceived as a potential threat to those who ruled. It did not occur to his powerful associates—respectfully consulted in every move—that from such insubstantial resources Lyndon Johnson was shaping the instruments that would make him arbiter and, eventually, the master of the United States Senate.

The process of acquiring resources and extending their value went on in many ways. By party rule, the leader is also chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, whose establishment was originally proposed during the hearings on the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. It was intended to formulate overall legislative policy that would be consistent with the party platform so as to increase the agreement between the expressed goals of the party in Congress and the pledges it had made to the electorate. As soon as the proposal had emerged from committee, it was opposed by Sam Rayburn, who insisted that it would reduce “flexibility”—in other words, the power of the congressional establishment to formulate its own policy without advice or harassment from outside. Consigned to limbo in the House, the proposal was adopted by the Senate and funds for staff and operation were appropriated in late 1946. So when Johnson took office, he inherited a committee that had links to the national platform and the Democratic National Committee, and—at least in theory—was accountable to the party as a whole. Clearly, the arrangement was a restraint on the authority of his leadership position. Yet simply to abolish the committee—if that were possible—was certain to produce serious conflict within the Democratic Party and with some Senators. So Johnson embraced the committee, but in a manner calculated to make it his instrument and not his guardian. And he accomplished this by so limiting its functions that it became a part of the Senate structure.²²

Under his chairmanship, the Policy Committee did not determine overall legislative priorities and goals. It was confined largely to the task of scheduling legislation on the floor, and providing a forum for announcements, briefings, and discussions among the members of the leadership structure. But decisions of schedule were also significant decisions of substance. Whenever a Senator wished either to expedite or to delay a bill, he would have to request Johnson’s assistance. Every day the leader’s office would receive a half-dozen such requests:

Dear Lyndon:

I would consider it a great favor if you could help me to achieve postponement of the textile bill. As it is now written, it poses enormous problems for the textile industry in my state and I have promised them that I will obtain a delay until at least next month so they can study it further.

Dear Lyndon:

I would be eternally grateful if you would help me to obtain early consideration of the Bank Holding bill. It is a bill that matters a great deal to me and the timing is of the utmost importance.

Dear Lyndon:

I respectfully request your assistance in scheduling S. 2345, a bill that I consider of grave importance to me and to my constituents.²³

Johnson would bring all these requests to the weekly meeting of the seventeen-member Policy Committee—carefully chosen to represent centers of power—and the juggling would begin. The decisions not only could determine the time of debate but would influence its outcome. For, as Johnson recognized, “Timing can make or break a bill. The first weeks provide the best opportunity to fight off a filibuster, the last weeks to avoid a conference committee, and the middle weeks to explore the issue. Sometimes the best tactic is delay—allowing time for support to build up and plunge—moving immediately to take advantage of momentum. Still other times the best timing inside the Senate depends on what’s going on outside the Senate, such as primaries or elections or marches or something.”²⁴

But, Johnson affirmed, he imposed limits upon the use of the classic maneuver of indefinite delay: “I made sure to carry it off in my own way—the Senate Policy Committee was not the House Rules Committee. I would never let it bottle up legislation indefinitely. I can remember countless times when Russell would say: ‘I don’t like this bill one bit, but let’s get it out.’”²⁵ In the end, however, the decisions of the Policy Committee were the will of Lyndon Johnson, so much so that he began to refer to it as “my cabinet.”

If the Policy Committee became Johnson’s instrument, so did the caucus of Democratic Senators, originally designed as the governing body of the party in the Senate. Johnson convened the caucus only once at the beginning of each Congress, and limited even this meeting to ratification of the leader’s tenure in office and the election of lesser officials. Johnson would open these meetings with long, platitudinous statements and fill the rest of the time with announcements and briefings; after an hour, when the call for adjournment came, absolutely nothing had passed but sixty minutes. To a man whose leadership depended on presenting different faces on each issue to each of the different Senators, it was indispensable to avoid group discussions of the same issues. Beyond this, Johnson recognized that so long as there were alternative sources for services and decisions—for committee assignments, information, evaluation of the prospects for particular legislation—the individual Senators would be less dependent on him.²⁶

Once again, the key to Johnson’s strategy lay in his ability to give political significance to functions previously excluded—to make new matters negotiable. According to the Senate rules, for example, the duty of assigning office space in the Capitol fell to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, where it was to be carried out “in strict accordance with precedence and seniority.” Johnson found a loophole in the rules which allowed him to transfer the “burden” of the assignment process to the party leader’s office, which would, he explained, “make matters simpler.” Once in control of this new “duty,” he then relaxed the seniority requirement and turned office assignment into a new tool of influence. After a while, insiders could recognize Johnson’s allies by one look at the roster of office suites—the larger suites in the New Senate Building were reserved for friends, the smaller suites in the Old Building were allotted to “the troublesome ones.”²⁷

Control of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee provided Johnson with additional leverage. The committee was intended to provide money and support to Senators involved in close races. Johnson magnified the committee’s importance by concentrating its limited resources in smaller states, where they could make the most difference. In a state like Wyoming or Nevada or Idaho, a grant of $10,000 could have an enormous impact, not only on an election but on a winning recipient’s attitude toward the Majority Leader. The limited resources were distributed in accordance with a system designed to promote a sense of significant gratitude and obligation in as many Senators as possible.²⁸

The steady increase in Johnson’s power enhanced both his energy and his ego. “I began to feel that I was growing in size as well as importance.… I took great pleasure in the position I was building.”²⁹

In these years in the Senate, more than in college and far more than in the House, Johnson managed to recreate the earliest world he had ever known, his world with Rebekah, run by his clock, centered on his person, allowing him once more to perform the role he enjoyed the most—the role of the exuberant child with an endless supply, indeed almost a monopoly, of things to barter. Only now his hegemony did not depend on somebody else, not even on a loving mother; it was Lyndon himself who had made it so and would keep it that way. What Rebekah had bestowed on her young son, she in part withdrew as he grew older. Now, at last, Johnson seemed safe from any repetition of that betrayal.

While building these tangible bases for the enhancement of his authority, Johnson was also developing an incomparable system of intelligence, through which he sought to learn the wants, the needs, and the desires of each of the Senators. “It requires great fortune as well as great industry to retain [dominions],” Machiavelli once wrote, and “one of the best and most certain means of doing so would be for the new ruler to take up his residence there.… Being on the spot, disorders can be seen as they arise and can quickly be remedied, but living at a distance, they are only heard of when they get beyond remedy.”³⁰ Johnson went one step further: he not only took up residence in a physical sense—in the unequaled hours spent on the job—but he took up residence in a psychological sense as well. He incorporated the Senate into his own psychic processes, became inwardly absorbed by its mores, events, and members, and took his obsession with him wherever he went. For him, there was no time off from work, since the interior landscape of his mind was perpetually concerned with legislative issues, personalities, and procedures.

Johnson’s search for information was ceaseless, a quest that was characteristic of his mind and not a method of conduct that could be suspended. Each encounter, whatever its purpose, was also a “planned interview,” in which Johnson probed, questioned, and directed the conversation according to his ends. Whether in the office or in the cloakroom, over lunch or over drinks, Johnson somehow made others feel that every conversation was a test in which they were expected not only to come up with the answers but to score 100 percent, resulting in a tension that often brought forth additional information.

The style of the questioning naturally varied. Indeed, on some occasions—such as the frequent lunches he held for freshmen Senators and their legislative aides—everything would take care of itself. Eager to please the powerful man, the invited guests would compete with one another to see who could provide the leader with the most interesting tidbits. On other occasions, Johnson would call someone in because “I need your advice, and I can only confide my problems in you.” By the end of the conversation, however, the other Senator was confiding far more than Johnson had disclosed to him. Johnson would invite small groups of Senators to intimate dinner parties at his house, followed by long hours of discussion in the parlor, where the drinks and the warmth conspired to encourage unguarded talk. Political purpose pervaded the beginning, the middle, and the end of these dinners, and if others failed to perceive this, that was further testimony to their success.

In all his work, Johnson relied heavily on his staff—particularly Robert Baker, secretary to the Senate Democrats—to extend his presence and power. Bobby Baker had come to the Senate in the 1940s as a teenage page and had stayed year after year. When Johnson became Minority Leader, he promoted Baker, then twenty-five, to become assistant secretary to the leader. Having spent more than a decade of his life in the Senate cloakroom, Baker knew as much about the workings of the Senate and the habits of individual Senators as any staffman twice his age. Johnson valued this quality in Baker, and, over time, Baker became a confidential assistant.³¹

The essence of Baker’s technique was reciprocity. In return for the information he received about a particular Senator’s attitude toward a bill or another Senator’s plans for an investigation, he provided information about the content of legislation and on the Senate schedule being planned by the leadership. As one member described it: “Baker’s information was essential in planning your schedule. As soon as he told you it would be safe for you to go home this Wednesday, you could pack up and go, knowing full well that your bill on wildlife would not be brought to the floor that day. Or he might say, ‘You are interested in labor matters, aren’t you? Well, you’d better stick around.’”³²

In the end, however, Johnson sought far more than fragments of information about a particular Senator’s attitude toward a bill or an issue. From facts, gossip, observation—a multitude of disparate elements—he shaped a composite mental portrait of every Senator: his strengths and his weaknesses; his place in the political spectrum; his aspirations in the Senate, and perhaps beyond the Senate; how far he could be pushed in what direction, and by what means; how he liked his liquor; how he felt about his wife and his family, and, most important, how he felt about himself. For Johnson understood that the most important decision each Senator made, often obscurely, was what kind of Senator he wanted to be: whether he wanted to be a national leader in education, a regional leader in civil rights, a social magnate in Washington, an agent of the oil industry, a wheel horse of the party, a President of the United States. It was also taken for granted that each Senator desired to secure and strengthen the support of his constituency and that few other matters could ever be strong enough to persuade him to seriously risk a loss of election support. Johnson, however, also perceived that such support could be perfected and enhanced in many ways, that in a complex society each Senator had latitude in deciding just whom he would represent.

As Johnson’s mental portraits of his colleagues became more complete, his political touch became finer. The party leader makes a host of assignments: the senatorial delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Conference in Paris, a trip to Ireland for the unveiling of a statue, a journey to Europe for the dedication of American military cemeteries in England, France, and Italy, the congressional delegation to the Parliamentary Association in India, appointment to the FDR Memorial Commission or the Civil War Centennial Commission, membership on the National Forest Reservation Commission, and on and on.³³ For Johnson, each one of these assignments contained a potential opportunity for bargaining, for creating obligations, provided that he knew his fellow Senators well enough to determine which invitations would matter the most to whom. If he knew that the wife of the Senator from Idaho had been dreaming of a trip to Paris for ten years, or that the advisers to another Senator had warned him about his slipping popularity with Italian voters, Johnson could increase the potential usefulness of assignments to the Parliamentary Conference in Paris or to the dedication of the cemeteries in Italy. If he recognized that the Senator from Oregon could use an official trip to India as a way of shoring up his reputation for expertise in foreign affairs, while the Senator from Massachusetts considered himself a lay historian, then the assignments for the parliamentary meeting in India and the Civil War Centennial Commission would fall into place.

Moreover, Johnson understood that the fewer the wants and needs of an individual, the less dependent he is on others. So his entrepreneurial spirit encompassed not simply the satisfaction of present needs but the development of new and expanding ones. He would, for instance, explain to a Senator that “although five other Senators are clamoring for this one remaining seat on the congressional delegation to Tokyo, I just might be able to swing it for you since I know how much you really want it.… It’ll be tough but let me see what I can do.”³⁴ The joys of visiting Tokyo may never have occurred to the Senator, but he was unlikely to deny Johnson’s description of his desire—after all, it might be interesting, a relaxing change, even fun; and perhaps some of the businesses in his state had expressed concern about Japanese competition. By creating consumer needs in this fashion, and by then defining the terms of their realization, Johnson was able to expand the base of benefits upon which power could be built.

These calculations about the most important concerns of each Senator became even more important when Johnson distributed the assignments for standing committees. Working from two tally sheets—the first listing the principal, second, and third choices of each member, and the second listing past assignments—Johnson managed to keep an exact count of the chips in his bank—which Senators owed him how much and which were due for new investment.³⁵

Although continually calculating advantage, Johnson did not overlook the strength of affection. Indeed, he built his network of allies, not only through the use of his varied authorities, but through his careful and deliberate use of the most important resource of all in a continuing body like the Senate—personal attention. No courtesies were too small or too difficult for the leader to dispense.

Recognizing that the older men in the Senate were often troubled by a half-conscious sense that their performance was deteriorating with age, Johnson made a special point of helping them with their committee work, briefing them on the issues, and assisting them on the floor. These were men who had once been at the center of things, who had experienced the power to control events. “Now,” as Johnson put it, “they feared humiliation, they craved attention. And when they found it, it was like a spring in the desert; their gratitude couldn’t adequately express itself with anything less than total support and dependence on me. And besides, I always liked to spend time with older people. When I was a boy, I would talk for hours with the mothers of my friends, telling them what I had done during the day, asking what they had done, requesting advice. Soon they began to feel as if I, too, was their son and that meant that whenever we all wanted to do something, it was okay by the parents so long as I was there.”³⁶

Aware of the fact that a limited number of difficult moments, such as failure in work, sickness, or death, are likely to be sensed as “tests” of friendship, Johnson was a faithful presence in personal crisis. For example, he forced himself to attend the funerals of Senator Byrd’s favorite niece and Senator Russell’s mother, even though he hated all funerals; indeed, he was apt to become physically ill in the presence of death. Yet he believed that the fact he had come at a moment of profound personal meaning would be remembered and—someday, in some interwoven way—would have compensations. About that, as well as about the responses to hundreds of cards and flowers dispatched on special occasions, he was right. He was right, too, about the effects of praising fellow Senators in person, and of dispatching telegrams to birthday gatherings, on wedding anniversaries, and to family reunions.

Nor did Johnson limit his demonstrations of affection to Senators and their assistants. During the Christmas and Easter seasons, the leader’s office was stacked with hundreds of boxes of candy for delivery to all those men and women who worked for the Senate—the telephone operators, the janitors, the Capitol Hill policemen, the waiters in the Senate dining room, the elevator boys, the help in the mimeo room. These tokens were Johnson’s way of saying: “I see you; I care about you; you, too, are a part of this great institution.” The warmth of their response to this act of recognition was manifest as he walked through the halls with his colleagues, to whom he could say: “They care about me, too”—meaning also, but only implied by his manner: “They are a part of me, and so are you.”

Johnson’s capacities for control and domination found their consummate manifestation during his private meetings with individual Senators. Face to face, behind office doors, Johnson could show a different face, a different form of behavior and argument. He would try to make each Senator feel that his support in some particular matter was the critical element affecting the well-being of the nation, the Senate, and the party leader; and he would also seek to demonstrate that faithfulness to the highest obligations of public service by an act certain to be honored—given the nature of the particular matter at hand—would also serve the practical and political interests of the Senator.

“A lot of people,” Johnson would later say, “have written a lot of nonsense about my private meetings with Senators; that’s because most of the writing is done by the intellectuals, who can never imagine me, a graduate from poor little San Marcos, engaged in an actual debate with words and with arguments, yet debating is what those sessions were all about.

“But the Harvards, they picture it, instead, as a back-alley job with me holding the guy by the collar, twisting his arm behind his back, dangling a carrot in front of his nose, and holding a club over his head. It’s a pretty amazing sight when you think about it. I’d have to be some sort of acrobatic genius to carry it off, and the Senator in question, well, he’d have to be pretty weak and pretty meek to be simply standing there like a paralyzed idiot.

“But you see they [the intellectuals] never take the time to think about what really goes on in these one-to-one sessions because they’ve never been involved in persuading anyone to do anything. They’re just like a pack of nuns who’ve convinced themselves that sex is dirty and ugly and low-down and forced because they can never have it. And because they can never have it, they see it all as rape instead of seduction and they miss the elaborate preparation that goes on before the act is finally done.”³⁷

The arrangements that preceded a private meeting were elaborate indeed.³⁸ First, there was a general head count to determine who stood where and why. This was followed by a more detailed inquiry to help determine which Senators were the key to the outcome of an issue—which Senators, for example, could serve as “umbrellas,”³⁹ whose support would make it possible for four or five others to vote the right way; which Senators were undecided or whose positions were not firmly supported by convictions or political necessity. Then Johnson reviewed the data on each Senator in question—a political breakdown of the power groups in his state, an analysis of his supporters, an evaluation of his voting record. To this material, Johnson would add his personal understanding of the Senator and the people around him. Finally, Johnson would practice his intended approach, often in the presence of one of his aides. He sorted out in rambling fashion the possible arguments pro and con, experimented with a variety of responses, and fashioned a detailed mental script from which he would speak—in a manner designed to seem wholly spontaneous—when the meeting took place. And the meeting itself might seem like an accidental encounter in a Senate corridor; but Johnson was not a man who roamed through halls in aimless fashion: when he began to wander, he knew who it was he would find.

After the coincidental encounter and casual greeting, Johnson would remember that he had something he would like to talk about. The two men would walk down the corridor, ride the elevator, and enter an office where they would begin their conversation with small talk over Scotch. As the conversation progressed, Johnson would display an overwhelming combination of praise, scorn, rage, and friendship. His voice would rise and fall, moving from the thunder of an orator to the whisper reminiscent of a lover inviting physical touch. Transitions were abrupt. He responded to hostility with a disconcerting glance of indignation; the next minute he would evoke a smile by the warmth of his expression and a playful brush of his hand. Variations in pitch, stress, and gesture reflected the importance he attached to certain words. His appeal would abound with illustrations, anecdotes, and hyperbole. He knew how to make his listeners see things he was describing, make them tangible to the senses. And he knew how to sustain a sense of uninterrupted flow by the use of parallel structure and a stream of conjunctions.

From his own insistent energy, Johnson would create an illusion that the outcome, and thus the responsibility, rested on the decision of this one Senator; refusing to permit any implication of the reality they both knew—but which in this office began to seem increasingly more uncertain—that the decisions of many other Senators would also decide the results. Johnson’s argument invoked country and party, loyalty to the leadership, reminders of past services and hints of future satisfactions—but always in a form that disavowed any intention that there was a debt to be paid or trade being offered. There was the welfare of the Senate to be considered and a casual mention of certain powerful interests. All of these mingled arguments were set forth as if they constituted a unitary motive for action, and this was all presented as if Johnson’s object were not persuasion, but to “reason together” in hopes of clarifying the considerations that would help a man to make his own informed decision. Nor did Johnson neglect the substantive content of the matter being discussed. Few appreciated the extent to which he studied and mastered the provisions of particular legislation, and in these sessions he would debate the substantive merits, not only to explain or convince, but to provide the Senator with arguments he might later use to explain his action to his constituency—to tell them how he saved the taxpayer money, or prevented the adoption of an even more foolish and wasteful law.

Whatever the issue, however, the particular format remained the same: Johnson would state his case and prove it, refuting objections in advance and concluding with a review of what had been said and what had to be done. But logic, reasons, explanation, and appeals to motive do not alone explain Johnson’s success at influencing others. They were reinforced at all times with a powerful demonstration of passionate belief. In Johnson, as we have already seen, calculation and conviction were easily confounded. “What convinces is conviction,” he would say later. “You simply haveto believe in the argument you are advancing; if you don’t, you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.”⁴⁰

What gave the most effect to these individual sessions was the wondrously exact fit of the appeal to the man at whom it was directed. Johnson had studied his man carefully and used that knowledge to supplement his powers of intuitive judgment. Thus he could often sense what his listener must be thinking and feeling, enabling him to shape his language and modulate his tone in such a way that what he wanted the Senator to do was made to seem the same as that which the Senator himself had wanted all along. As Johnson later described it: “When you’re dealing with all those Senators—the good ones and the crazies, the hard workers and the lazies, the smart ones and the mediocres—you’ve got to know two things right away. You’ve got to understand the beliefs and values common to all of them as politicians, the desire for fame and the thirst for honor, and then you’ve got to understand the emotion most controlling that particular Senator when he thinks about this particular issue.”⁴¹ Thus Johnson could choose the arguments, words, and rhythms that persuaded each listener best—solemn words and cadenced speech for noble matters, casual words and clipped phrasing for less exalted and more pressing ones.

Johnson was also that rather rare American man who felt free to display intimacy with another man, through expressions of feeling and also in physical closeness. In an empty room he would stand or sit next to a man as if all that were available was a three-foot space. He could flatter men with sentiments of love and touch their bodies with gestures of affection. The intimacy was all the more excusable because it seemed genuine and without menace. Yet it was also the product of meticulous calculation. And it worked. Faced with the ardor and the bearing of this extraordinary man, the ordinary Senator would generally succumb.

Johnson’s performance was not without cost. Toward the end of June, 1955, he began to feel continuously tired, so tired in fact that he agreed to take a vacation over the July Fourth weekend at the estate of George and Herman Brown near Middleburg, Virginia. He left his office late in the day on Saturday, July 2, for the two-hour drive. On the way down, he felt faint and experienced trouble drawing breath. By the time he reached Middleburg he felt nauseous. Certain, however, that it was only indigestion, Johnson refused to let the Browns call a doctor until another guest, Senator Clinton Anderson, warned him that all of Johnson’s symptoms pointed to one thing—a heart attack.⁴²

The doctor was called and Johnson was rushed to the hospital, where he went into severe shock. For several days he remained in critical condition. His illness was diagnosed as myocardial infarction, necessitating a hospital stay of six weeks followed by three months of complete rest at home.

During his months of convalescence Johnson was haunted by his childhood fear of paralysis. The nightmares returned, and with increased intensity. “They got worse after my heart attack,” he said. “For I knew then how awful it was to lose command of myself, to be dependent on others. I couldn’t stand it. But at least I was home with my family and friends. These were people I could trust.”⁴³ During this period Johnson’s temperament was more mercurial than ever before. Responsive to affection one day, he would fall into a rage the next. Recurrent talk of resigning from politics was followed by furious bursts of activity, countless visitors, and constant phone calls. Submission to the most inconvenient orders of mother and wife was followed by refusal to obey their gentlest suggestions.

Gradually, Johnson’s strength returned, due in large part to his family’s constant care, and in late September he signaled his return to the political scene with a public statement expressing his pride in the performance of the Eighty-fourth Congress. Comparing its first session with that of the previous Congress, he enumerated statistics to prove that this Senate and, therefore, its Majority Leader were larger in achievement and, therefore, in stature. “This session,” he announced, “passed about 30% more bills in about 30% less time; it left fewer measures hanging on the calendar and fewer measures lost in committee files; it confirmed nearly 40,000 presidential nominations as compared to 23,500 during the first session of the 83rd Congress.”⁴⁴

On the opening day of the second session of the Eighty-fourth Congress, January 2, 1956, Johnson was back in the Majority Leader’s place. Within a matter of days, it seemed as if he had never been away.

The fact that most interactions in the Senate were face to face was essential to Johnson’s ability to persuade his colleagues, and to do so in a manner which permitted them to believe that their actions were in accord with what they had always wanted and thought. Johnson’s effectiveness in persuasion depended on his ability to keep others from perceiving that they were yielding to a stronger will. Trades and deals, even threats, could be understood and accepted, but not psychic submission. Awareness that this was an attribute of his leadership would precipitate his overthrow. Reliance on intimacy was the key to the Majority Leader’s success in the Senate, and that success would continue so long as he was able to conduct his job through a series of one-to-one encounters. This was possible only in an institution like the Senate, where the limited number of relevant participants permitted Johnson to develop as many different political selves as there were individuals about whose opinions he was concerned. In the secrecy of his office, he could show a different side of himself to each one of the different Senators who entered. Demure with Richard Russell, he could swagger and swear with Robert Kerr. A populist with liberals, he could be a gas and oil man with the conservatives. It was the essence of Johnson’s leadership to play a distinct role specifically adapted to the qualities of the person with whom he interacted. And this, in turn, required control over access to information. He could not let the members of his audience exchange and compare information, often contradictory, about the situation he was defining differently for each of them. His secrets had to be kept.

“Structures differ,” Robert Merton argues, “as to whether they allow insulation and concealment or not.”⁴⁵ In contrast to the Presidency of the 1960s, the Senate of the 1950s protected Johnson remarkably well from having his activities become known to his colleagues or to the general public. Both the nature of the Senate—with its heritage of the cloakroom—and the structure of the senatorial press—with its tradition of inside reporting—operated to insulate Johnson’s activities from the public spotlight.

“When,” Erving Goffman writes, “the members of a team go backstage where the audience cannot see or hear them they regularly derogate the audience in a way that is inconsistent with the face-to-face treatment. Customers treated respectfully during the performance at the sales counter are often ridiculed, even caricatured, when the salesmen are backstage.”⁴⁶ Johnson’s backstage was the cloakroom. There, in the company of his Southern friends, where no one else could see or hear him, Johnson would imitate the speech, tone, and manner of the liberals, calling them the “ultra hots” or the “fancy boys,” casting doubts on their virility. Of course, when speaking with liberal Senators, he showed nothing but convincing respect. And it worked—so long as the whole was separated into compartments, so long as each of his several roles was seen by different persons, so long as no Senator stumbled upon a show that was not meant uniquely for him.

Johnson was often able to use the same behavior with the press as he did with his colleagues, dividing it into separate components, and carving out a special relationship with each of the reporters. Especially important in this regard was the fact that William S. White, a fellow Texan and friend of Johnson since the NYA, just happened, during Johnson’s stewardship, to be covering the Senate for the New York Times. “I knew that White admired subtlety,” Johnson said, “and that if I played it right, I’d come out looking very subtle myself.”

But Johnson did not apply his skill in one-to-one relations only to White. “You learn,” he said, “that Stewart Alsop cares a lot about appearing to be an intellectual and a historian—he strives to match his brother’s intellectual attainments—so whenever you talk to him, play down the gold cufflinks which you play up with Time magazine, and to him, emphasize your relationship with FDR and your roots in Texas, so much so that even when it doesn’t fit the conversation you make sure to bring in maxims from your father and stories from the Old West. You learn that Evans and Novak love to traffic in backroom politics and political intrigue, so that when you’re with them you make sure to bring in lots of details and colorful description of personality. You learn that Mary McGrory likes dominant personalities and Doris Fleeson cares only about issues, so that when you’re with McGrory you come on strong and with Fleeson you make yourself sound like some impractical red-hot liberal.”⁴⁷

Yet the press had its own demands and traditions, which were different from those of the Senators. What worked with individual members of the press proved a failure when large numbers of reporters assembled for a press conference in the Majority Leader’s office. What had been expansive in private appeared arrogant in public. What had seemed witty was now dull. As his audience increased in size, Johnson could no longer rely on the almost physical intensity that he could focus on another individual. Away from the security of bilateral sessions, where he was at his best, his mind seemed untuned, and his voice dropped to a monotonous muttering, audible only to those who sat close to him. In such situations he was at his worst. Even for those who could make out the words, his metaphors did not seem to fit, his adjectives were bland. Large audiences alarmed Johnson. In public gatherings the presence of even one enemy whom he could not disarm with the instruments of his personal faculties could deprive him of control of his language and manner, tend to unstabilize him. And in spite of, or perhaps because of, his mother’s attempts to teach him elocution, Johnson remained tense with written texts or formal questions and answers. At his press conferences, he would proceed, in slow, belabored phrases, cluttered with pauses, repeating again and again the litany of the Senate’s accomplishments. And in the end, when the reporters tried to parse just what it was that he had said, they found out that in fact he had said nothing at all.

If Sam Johnson’s boy created the private style, Rebekah’s son could not accept the public image. Always he came back with the same theme: “People don’t understand one thing about me, that is, the one thing I want to do is my job.… Some are always writing that I’m a backroom operator. They say I’m insensitive. How would you like your little daughter (or your mother) to read that you are a backroom operator, a wire puller, or a clever man?”⁴⁸ Johnson could not choose between arguments: that the world, including his severest critics, lived by the grace of backrooms; or that there was no such thing as “backroom rule,” that “persuasion in private discussion mirrored public debate.” At different times, and sometimes at the same time, he made both arguments. And in the end, he was fatally vulnerable to the sound instincts of public opinion, which, if offered success as the sole justification for the means by which power is exercised, can admire the process while it works but assail it when things go wrong.

In the Senate, however, press conferences were not the source of information for the important reporters. They depended on the face-to-face conversations with the Majority Leader in which Johnson excelled. Here he could play the role he liked the best: the benefactor distributing needed services—information, details, plans—in return for favorable coverage.⁴⁹ Because there were few alternative sources from whom Senate reporters could obtain the information they needed, they remained dependent on Lyndon Johnson. Later, we will see how badly this worked under the very different operational conditions of the Presidency.

Of the many arenas in which he moved throughout his long career, none was more congenial to his spirit and faculties than the Senate of the United States.

That institution—with its style of gentlemanly behavior and its substance of realistic maneuver—provided Johnson with an opportunity to accommodate, for the time being, the split between his public and his private self; he was at ease with both the genteel world of the Southern committee chairmen and the hard-dealing world of Western gas and oil men. For Johnson, the polite, polished conduct on which the Senate prided itself had a familiar ring; these were the forms cherished by Rebekah Baines and her father. And if the facts of life in the Senate belied the fiction, so they had in his home. Not only was Johnson able to accept and work with both the fiction and the fact, as does every successful Senator; he relished their coexistence, which was both reminiscent of the trials of childhood and annulled them: now he was in control—his was the authority to bestow and withdraw—and he was receiving more than he had to give.

Undoubtedly, institutional conditions—face-to-face relations, the limited number of actors, insulation, and monopoly—helped Johnson to cope effectively with many different types of situations. However, to overemphasize the fit between the individual and the nature of the Senate institution can also be misleading, giving the impression of a wholly static relationship, as if Johnson’s qualities and modes of behavior just happened to conform to the Senate’s firmly established style of decision-making. In fact, the relationship was dynamic and complex; the Senate’s conception of itself was at least to some extent represented—or enhanced—by the party leader. Johnson increased his power by using possibilities inherent in the established structure and traditions of the Senate, but he also used this authority to modify the conduct of the Senate to conform more closely with his methods of leadership. For example, Johnson evolved a system for handling procedural questions that was a natural extension of his personality. Because he himself felt uncomfortable in larger groups and formal debate, he gradually shifted senatorial and public attention away from the floor to the places where he felt most at home—the cloakroom, the office, the hallways. He established a rule that, wherever feasible, the Senate leadership would negotiate unanimous-consent agreements limiting debate to a specified number of hours for each side. Indeed, debate beyond a sparse allotment of time became a favor which a Senator had to request from the Majority Leader.

On the floor itself, Johnson was in perpetual motion. Visibly impatient at any delay, he would frequently leap ahead of a page boy to rush a Senator’s amendment to the clerk’s desk. The moment one amendment was disposed of he would be on his feet reminding another Senator that he was scheduled to offer the next amendment. Over time, Johnson developed a set of signals to the Senate clerks. If things were moving well, and the votes were in place, he would twirl his finger rapidly in a circular motion, and the roll call would proceed at a fast clip. If his aides were still out looking for a Senator whose vote was essential, Johnson would push the palm of his hand gently downward, and the names would be called at a slow pace.

Johnson was extremely successful in manipulating attendance on the floor, somewhat as a musician manipulates an accordion—expanding or contracting it at will. He could muster a respectable vote for a Senator’s bill that was bound to lose—an act which could be a substantial boon to the man who wanted his constituents to take him seriously. When Johnson favored a bill, he could organize a group to applaud a Senator as he spoke on its behalf. Alternatively, when a “troublesome” Senator was due to speak, he could let others know that attendance on the floor would be closely watched and subsequently punished. He would exploit the right of the leader to be recognized first, in order to control and determine when legislative fights would be initiated and the terms of conflict. The stories of his legerdemain are legion: On one occasion Johnson wanted the Senator from Arkansas to be absent from a vote scheduled for two o’clock, so he arranged a special lunch in honor of the Senator to be held at the other end of the city. On another occasion, Johnson was positive that an important bill would pass if an undecided Southern Senator could be made to support it. In the middle of the floor debate, Johnson walked over to the Senator, told him that he had to leave the chamber for an hour or so, and asked the potential dissenter to take over as floor manager. The Senator hesitated, agreed, and voted for the bill.⁵⁰

One should not overlook that one of Johnson’s most important resources in building his base of power was what one observer called “the biggest, the most efficient, the most ruthlessly overworked and the most loyal personal staff in the history of the Senate.”⁵¹Those who made up that staff found that working for Johnson subjected them to unpredictable expressions of feeling. “One minute,” a member of Johnson’s Senate staff remarked, “he would give an aide a tremendous tongue-lashing, and then he would turn right around, give him an expensive gift, and say to him, ‘You know you are my right arm.’”⁵²

“You never want to give a man a present when he’s feeling good,” Johnson explained. “You want to do it when he’s down!” Similarly, Johnson justified his violent swings in feelings and conduct by the need to keep his staff continually off guard in order to ensure that they would not relax their efforts. Everything—from staff meetings to rides in his car—was by invitation only, allowing Johnson to arbitrarily freeze out or bring in anyone at any time.

Yet if one of his staff decided to leave, Johnson would become desperate, begging him to stay, attempting to bribe him with material objects, fulsome praise, and reassurance of his love; to pressure him by claiming that he could not possibly get along without his services. It generally worked. “He told me,” one of the staff recalled, “that if I stayed I’d be his right-hand man, I’d be his chief of staff, I’d be with him every minute of the day. And as I looked at him, I realized that while he handled the pettiest things in the pettiest way imaginable, he handled the big things in a big way, such that whenever I really needed him he was there.”⁵³ So the aide who thought of leaving remained, perhaps because he felt he had now acquired the intimacy that Johnson had hitherto denied him. And with this, the play would start all over again. Johnson would return to his typical pattern, the aide would find it increasingly difficult to stay with him, and again threaten to leave, whereupon Johnson would once again shower him with love and praise: he would stay to begin another cycle.

But Johnson’s aides were not the only ones whom he treated as manipulable instruments, clay in the potter’s hand. There were also a half-dozen or more colleagues who became, through a tangled web of affection, resentment, and dependency, the objects of his domination. Hubert Humphrey is one example, perhaps the most interesting one.⁵⁴ While he was reform mayor of Minneapolis and a candidate for the Senate, Humphrey had become a national hero. Then in 1948, he suddenly took the floor at the 1948 Democratic Convention to deliver an impassioned plea for a strong civil rights plank in the party platform. A strong plank was adopted—too strong for many Southern delegates, who walked out of the convention to form their own party. Humphrey’s dramatic and successful performance undoubtedly helped him to win election to the Senate. But his term of glory did not last long. As soon as he entered the Senate, he found himself the target of the inner club—not only for his performance at the convention, but also for his compulsion to talk too fast, too much, and on too many issues. Then Humphrey chose to speak out against Harry Byrd, the Senator from Virginia, the mild-mannered aging priest of the Democratic Caucus. Outraged by this already disliked freshman Senator’s attack on a very senior member, the Senate establishment retorted with a withering denunciation of Humphrey from both sides of the aisle.

Within a matter of days, Humphrey had become anathema to everyone—except to Lyndon Johnson, who seemed to foresee that someday Humphrey might be useful to him just as he now needed help from Johnson.

So Johnson took Humphrey under his wing, tutoring him on the unwritten rules, urging him to become a “liberal doer” and not just a “liberal talker.” “Johnson sought me out,” Humphrey later recalled, “and would visit me from time to time. He always had a good sense of humor. He would say to me that he wanted to cross-breed me with Byrd. If he could get two pints of Byrd’s blood in me to cool me off and a little of Russell’s restraint, I’d be great. Johnson didn’t enjoy talking with the liberals. He didn’t think they had a sense of humor. He thought that most liberals were never so unhappy as when happy, or so happy as when unhappy. So he wanted someone in the liberal ranks for information and help. Perhaps he came to the conclusion I could be had. I never felt I was. I felt I was getting more than giving.”⁵⁵

The grateful Humphrey learned his lessons well: he mastered parliamentary skills, he settled down to the work of his committees, and he became, over time, the principal envoy from the camp of the liberals to Lyndon Johnson’s court—and, thus, a central figure in the Senate’s inner club.

But Humphrey paid a price for his reclamation. As the relationship grew, Humphrey’s independent will, while not shattered, was softened, bent, and guided. Johnson’s power did not tyrannize; it exerted a diminishing compression, a process that would be repeated, with more devastating impact, in the 1960s, when Humphrey became Johnson’s Vice President. “When I picture Hubert in my mind,” Johnson later said, “I picture him with tears in his eyes; he was always able to cry at the sight of something sad, whether it be a widow with her child or an old crippled-up man. And that part, it’s just fine; it shows he can be touched.

“The trouble is,” he continued, “that he’s never learned to put feelings and strength together; all too often he sways in the wind like a big old reed, pushed around by the pressures of staff and friends and colleagues.”⁵⁶ In these words, Johnson seemed almost sad, as if he wished that the very men who had submitted to his will had fought a little harder against him.

Yet Johnson never lost his deep respect for Humphrey’s brilliance, talent, and ability. On another occasion he said of Humphrey: “He has the greatest coordination of mind and tongue of anybody I know. He’s genuine, he has a depth of sincerity and real compassion. He doesn’t have a lazy bone in his body and not a dishonest bone. He is truly a happy warrior. Maybe he doesn’t have enough reserve because he feels very deeply about human problems. People from Minnesota have a propensity for talking. When I was Vice President, I disagreed with Kennedy on three or four basic things, but never publicly. Hubert Humphrey also disagreed with me, but there is a difference between disagreement and disloyalty. I told the Cabinet I considered myself a B Vice President but Humphrey was an A or A plus.”⁵⁷

Lyndon Johnson tried to be everything to everybody in the Senate—and, in defiance of the cliché, he succeeded. His power did not evaporate, as power often does with most men the longer they exercise it; instead, the use and even the abuse of his power seemed only to increase it. His personality did not fade and become indistinct, as personality often does in most men who must continually adapt to others; instead, even though it bent enough to seduce and reshape other wills, Johnson’s own will became stronger. Yet Johnson often seemed as discontent in conquest as he was eager in pursuit. Perhaps he always needed some new challenge to his powers of domination and control; perhaps this man who so feared paralysis in himself dreaded equally the sight of a man “melting” under him, even as he sought it.

But was the process of conquest and control his sole purpose? Or was there more, alongside his father’s demand—to make himself great among the men whose company he shared? Was there also his mother’s dream—to do good for others?