Chapter 5 / THE SENATE LEADER

During the Senate years, few questioned Lyndon Johnson’s skill in attaining power; that was an undeniable reality, continually on display. But as he rose in prominence and began to exhibit an impressive mastery over the Senate unequaled in modern political history, there was increasing criticism. One group of critics argued that Johnson had subverted the safeguards of representative democracy: by taking the process of decision into his own hands, he had deprived individual Senators of independent judgment. Other critics complained about the purpose to which Johnson’s power was put. Some argued that in the end his awesome system yielded little but legislative trivia, affecting the lives of the American people in marginal ways at best. Worse still, they said, Johnson conceded too much to the Eisenhower White House, forfeiting the chance to raise the issues that might provide a strong platform for his party and a progressive alternative for the nation.¹

The argument that Johnson’s conduct in some way violated and endangered principles of democratic government became a matter of public controversy. Johnson, however, disdainfully rejected any argument that his conduct might do any such thing. This was evident in the controversy that erupted when Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin argued in 1958, directly challenging Johnson on the floor of the Senate,

to end one man rule in the Senate, to win dignity and full representation for all Democratic Senators … to win democracy.…

There has never been a time when power has been as sharply concentrated as it is today in the Senate. In January 1958, the Senators assembled in the Democratic caucus and listened to the Majority Leader read a speech which he had previously prepared—there was not a single matter of party business discussed. There wasn’t even a mention of party program … the next meeting of the Senate caucus was a full year later. The only business of the entire caucus had taken less than two and a half minutes. And Senators had to surrender for another year their right and duty to determine the Democratic party’s policies and programs.²

Proxmire’s expression of concern with procedure reflected the themes of the American Political Science Association in its celebrated 1950 report, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System.” That report had called for more frequent party caucuses, more concretely programmatic platforms, and more direct accountability to the public. Paul Douglas echoed Proxmire’s concern, arguing that “Under Johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy: all the action takes place offstage, before the play begins. Nothing is left to open and spontaneous debate, nothing is left for the participants but the enactment of their prescribed roles.”³

Johnson believed, however, that, as he later put it, the debate was not a reflection of a genuine difference of conviction, that all this “fuss about democracy and procedure had nothing to do with my leadership and everything to do with the liberals’ need to criticize. First they tell me they want a strong leader in the Senate so they can get results. So I give them leadership and I get results. Then they change their tune, and say that what they really want is democracy, and participation, and decentralized leadership. Then, in the same breath, they contradict themselves by crying out for hundreds of caucus meetings where they can go around binding everyone else to their positions, while refusing, on their part, to be bound to anything but their own conscience. It just doesn’t hold water. The only link is in their endless need to cut me up. No matter what I do, it’ll never be good enough for them. This one-man-rule stuff is a myth. The theory that one man is able to tell sixty-four other Senators how they shall vote is nonsense. I do not know how one can force a Senator to do anything. I have never tried to do so.”⁴

To the extent Johnson’s response was not only an attack on the motives of his critics but an answering argument, the essence of his argument was that, given the character of the Senate, no single man could possibly hope to dominate decisions over a wide range of issues. Because there were numerous bases for political influence—expertise, geography, the possession of committee positions, and a member’s right to vote, that might be useful to his objectives on other matters, and the like—each Senator could make himself heard at some crucial stage in the process of decision. Issues were resolved through bargaining between individuals and groups, in a variety of forums and discussions, which, because they were separate, permitted agreement to be based on a large diversity of terms and understandings. Debates, either in the caucus or on the floor, could only hamper, even cripple, this process, which was, Johnson argued, the only way in which important issues could be resolved. Legislation was the product of private negotiation, not public debate. The proper function of public debate—indeed, its only useful function—was to ratify and increase general acceptance of a decision that had already been made. Public words, Johnson felt, were stumbling blocks to effective action; and the less ambiguous, the more harmful. Public expressions tended to freeze men into positions, making it more difficult for them to accept later compromises or modifications, and thus reducing or limiting the capacity for bargaining that was the source of effective legislative action. “The process itself,” Johnson said, “requires a certain amount of deception. There’s no getting around it. If the full implications of any bill were known before its enactment, it would never get passed.”⁵ This observation implied that if those full implications were described in public debate, many potential supporters would be forced into opposition.

Johnson was incapable of sympathetic understanding for Senators who were concerned with process instead of results. He had no patience or respect for those who challenged desirable results on the basis of concepts and ideas; he seemed almost to perceive them as individuals who had succumbed to fantasy. Tending to view reliance on the dictates of conscience to justify conduct as a sign of cowardice, Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were “troublemakers,” more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tangible achievement. Even worse, the press tended to echo their critique. “Every so often,” Johnson suggested, “the writers get hard up and begin writing about a liberal revolt against Johnson. Well, every couple of years we have a caucus and there has never been a single vote against me. Now what kind of revolt is that?”⁶

In fact, most of the Democratic Senators did not complain about Johnson’s leadership, nor were they anxious for procedural reforms that might threaten the familiar political context within which they preferred, and were accustomed, to operate. Since they wanted to appear independent to their constituents, they preferred the discreet dominance of Johnson to the open discipline of a party caucus with genuine power to bind them to the freely and collectively determined choice of a majority of their colleagues. In their relationship with the Republicans, the objective was different. They wanted to appear united. Thus productive unity or agreement on measures that might be inadequate or of little significance was far preferable to the paralyzing divisions that great issues would create. And Johnson seemed almost uniquely capable of providing this kind of unity while somehow preventing the potential sources of great division from ever emerging. Thus the general atmosphere, as the publication The Washington Window described it, was one of contentment with the way things were:

During the past weeks the Senate has been the scene of a David and Goliath drama that isn’t quite working out the way the Bible has it. The David role was played by Senator Proxmire … Goliath by Lyndon Johnson. Contrary to the Bible story, when the dust had settled, it appeared that instead of Goliath being slain, it was David who was slain … after Proxmire spoke, only a few daring Senators came to his support and in the end his crusade was a one man battle that ended in apparent failure.⁷

In short, the Democratic majority accepted Johnson’s direction because they believed it was best for the Senate and for themselves. Leader and followers were bound in a relationship that served their common interest. And even though the belief was generally sincere, Johnson, as we have seen, had also created some tangible motives to support and accept his leadership. He had been able to acquire great power and from that power to construct a brilliant and complicated system of governing, which his subjects would accept, even welcome, because it also satisfied their own needs.

Widespread support and praise for his leadership did not lessen—perhaps it strengthened—Johnson’s intransigent refusal, perhaps his inability, to pay any attention to the complaints of a minority: that he had extinguished debate in a chamber that had long prided itself on providing a forum for public debate without imposed limits and often of high quality; that although it was not a requirement of senatorial democracy that every member take part in every decision at every stage, it was essential, at least, that members be provided with access to the determinative legislative negotiations at some stage. Nor could Johnson see any difference of basic principle between a process that depended on one man to produce consensus through individual agreements and one that provided a procedure for collective discussion and consideration. To Johnson debate could involve issues of principle—to assist the blacks or restrain the unions—but not the method used to achieve results. That was a practical question—one of effectiveness and of comparative utility. Nevertheless, problems of process and procedure were to become important issues during the 1960s when the demand for participation spread and grew in intensity, influencing and reflecting movements for change far beyond both the Senate and the party system. But during the 1950s there was no possibility of a basic change in the decision-making structure. The essential condition for change—widespread dissatisfaction with current procedures—simply did not exist.⁸

Johnson’s critics, who eventually included Senator Joseph Clark and Senator Patrick McNamara, Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler and ADA Chairman Joseph Rauh, fared little better in their second goal—to reshape the party so that it would “raise all the great issues, confront the Executive and educate the general public.” This conflict also reflected basically different conceptions: in this case, the nature of the relationship between executive and legislature, along with the preferences and expectations of the American public.

In Johnson’s view—which many shared—the Presidency was the only institution in the American system capable of consistently initiating major legislation. It was up to the President to identify problems, first bring them to public attention, and to draft bills designed to solve them. The executive must provide the agenda for congressional action and set forth the subject matter and priorities for debate and decision. Congress itself was not, in his view, equipped with the expertise, the time, or the type of coherent organizational structure needed to formulate and initiate programs of action on a regular and systematically related basis. “Whenever my critics in the Congress talked to me about the responsibility of creating issues, I came back to the question of where in the hell they expected the issues to come from—from our heads? If an issue is not included in the presidential agenda, it is almost impossible—short of crisis—to get the Congress to focus on it. That’s the way our system works; but these fellows never understood that. They didn’t understand—with all their calls for Congress to have all sorts of expertise and classified information, in order to act in foreign affairs—that the congressional role in national security is not to act but to respond to the executive.”⁹

Johnson was annoyed and upset when, in 1958, the Democratic National Committee created an Advisory Committee “to coordinate and advance efforts in behalf of Democratic programs and principles.” He was convinced that the Advisory Committee, chaired by Paul Butler, would hamper his continual effort to construct ad hoc majorities for particular legislation—majorities which, in many cases, must necessarily be composed of both Republicans and Democrats. The Advisory Committee’s stamp of approval would be “a kiss of death” with many Republicans who might normally have been willing to support a bill but would find it difficult, often impossible, to help enact that same legislation once it had been labeled a “Democratic priority.” Moreover, the liberal cast of the Advisory Committee made it likely that its recommendations would arouse the suspicion of conservative Democrats. Though “completely powerless to produce any votes,” the Advisory Committee would be “completely capable of deepening divisions within the Democratic Party,” and of polarizing Senate members along party lines, making the Majority Leader’s task infinitely more difficult.

Undoubtedly, Johnson also apprehended that the committee might become a threat to his own power since it was presuming to participate in decisions that had been largely within his authority; trying to exercise from the outside those functions that he had not allowed the Senate’s own Democratic Policy Committee to perform. Moreover, as Johnson would later suggest: “The idea that the congressional Democrats have a responsibility for taking the national Democratic platform and program and trying to push it through the Congress is simply crazy. A political party at a national convention draws up a program to present to the voters. The voters can either accept it by giving the party full power, reject it by taking the party completely out of power, or give it qualified approval by giving one party the Congress and the other party the Presidency. And when we in the Congress have been given a qualified mandate, as we were in 1956, it means that we have a solemn responsibility to cooperate with the President and produce a program that is neither his blueprint nor our blueprint but a combination of the two. It is the politician’s task to pass legislation, not to sit around saying principled things.”¹⁰

Johnson’s general view that there was a natural division of functions and prerogatives between President and Congress was applied with special insistency to the area of foreign policy and national security. In 1958 Senator Joseph Clark suggested legislation requiring the President to submit to the Congress an annual report on the state of national security. “The Congress and the public,” Clark argued, “cannot make intelligent decisions without authoritative information, yet public information on military matters consists mainly of leaks from the Pentagon and piecemeal bits of information put out in press releases or submitted to Congressional committees.”¹¹ Johnson was swift to reject the Clark proposal. Conforming to the gentlemanly customs of Senate debate, his language was gentle, the terms a bit equivocal, but those familiar with the code of Senate debate understood that he was taking a firm and unappealable position. “I would be somewhat inclined against such a new report,” he told the Senate, “since the subject matter involves at all times a substantial quantity of classified data.… I would be a little fearful that we might be inviting through this the establishment of a custom through which the President might feel compelled to present to the public a rosier picture than the facts would warrant. It is my judgment that the basic information necessary for an appraisal of the nation’s security is available to the Members of Congress through existing channels in just about the best fashion, even though it has its imperfections.”¹²

Nor did Johnson restrict his insistence on his concept of the proper relations between President and Congress to infringements proposed by liberal Democrats. In 1955 the conservative Republicans sponsored a resolution that would put the Senate on record against President Eisenhower’s participation in the Big Four summit meeting unless he first obtained a commitment from the Soviets to include the status of the Eastern European satellites as part of the agenda. “This resolution,” Johnson argued on the floor, “would make Congress the controlling factor instead of a partner in the field of foreign affairs. It would place a loaded gun at the President’s temple.… In our dealings with other nations, only one man can speak for our country. He cannot speak clearly if his words must be strained through a Congressional gag. When he sits down to negotiate with the chiefs of foreign states, I want them to know he is backed to the hilt by every loyal American.”¹³

Johnson believed that the prevalent mood of the American people about questions of foreign policy was one of “indifference and passivity.” He perceived the public as “not only peaceful, but apathetic,” concerned primarily with domestic prosperity and with the private values of family, home, and work. Yet he was also convinced that beneath this tranquillity was concealed the possibility of “a mass stampede, a violent overreaction to fear, an explosion of panic” such as, he thought, had occurred in the heyday of Joseph McCarthy.¹⁴

Johnson, like most of his colleagues in Washington at the time, believed McCarthyism was a mass movement, a reaction by great numbers of people to the loss of China and to the stalemate in Korea. Though later studies have suggested that McCarthy’s support lay more in the political needs of different groups in Washington than in the fears of the masses, the perception that McCarthy had enormous popular influence restrained the men in Congress from moving against him.¹⁵ So McCarthy was able to continue his ravaging assaults until, undone by his own extravagant excesses, perhaps intoxicated by his enormous success and deluded by a growing conviction of his invulnerability, he chose to direct his accusations at the institution of the military. The inevitable showdown came in the Army-McCarthy hearings, where his performance was viewed by nationwide television audiences. The result was to virtually destroy the perception that McCarthy was a believing crusader and to create a widespread criticism and dislike of his personal qualities. The hearings themselves—with their revelation of how little support there was for McCarthy’s accusations—along with their impact on public opinion, opened the way for a select committee and then the Senate itself to censure McCarthy’s conduct. As a result, his effectiveness diminished rapidly and soon disappeared entirely. And, not long thereafter, McCarthy died.

But long after McCarthy’s death, Johnson continued to fear that a demagogue might rise to power by unscrupulously exploiting and intensifying popular fears and suspicions of Communism and the aggressive intentions of Communist power. That fear, seemingly justified by the McCarthy precedent, helped to provide Johnson and many others with a reason and rationalization for cooperation between Democrats and Republicans in the conduct of foreign policy. Bipartisanship was one means of keeping control in responsible hands, and permitting a reasonable and solidly designed foreign policy. “The more the two parties could agree,” Johnson argued, “the smaller the area of conflict shown to the American public and the less I worried about the public’s tendency to go off on a jag, paralyzing itself in the endless debate or stampeding us in panic.”¹⁶ “We’ve junked the old Taft practice,” Johnson said in 1953, “that the duty of the opposition is to oppose. As a result some people say I’ve been petticoatin’ around with Eisenhower. Well, that’s not true … but I want to make absolutely sure that the Communists don’t play one branch of the government against the other, or one party against the other as happened in the Korean War. I’ve read the Constitution. I know where the basic responsibility for foreign policy lies … the real danger is that the other side is going to underestimate us. It’s happened before. The danger is they’ll think we’re fat and fifty and fighting among ourselves about free enterprise and socialism and all that. We might mislead them so they’ll think these Americans are just the country club crowd. That’s a mistake our enemies have made before. If you’re in an airplane, and you’re flying somewhere, you don’t run up to the cockpit and attack the pilot. Mr. Eisenhower is the only President we’ve got.”¹⁷

There is implied in this statement an excessive reliance on expert knowledge and experience, along with an equally implicit belief that the possession of presidential authority included possession of unequaled information, understanding, and skill. This assumption was to guide Johnson during his own Presidency and contribute to the rise of popular opposition and the erosion of his own leadership. Johnson’s statement excludes a possibility on which many would finally insist—the possibility that the passengers might be entitled to consult with, even instruct, the pilot about where they wanted to go. But in the 1950s, to Lyndon Johnson, the concept that the people or even the Congress should be permitted to determine the basic direction of foreign policy seemed “just plain wrong.”

None of this is meant to suggest that as Majority Leader Johnson simply rubber-stamped the actions of the President. On the contrary, he evolved a clever balancing act: support for Eisenhower on some bills and opposition on others; a stern anti-Communist line, but not so hard or rigid that he was joined in common cause with the Republican conservatives; help for Eisenhower’s programs, but not enough help to anger the more partisan Democrats; occasional attacks on Eisenhower’s foreign policy, but not the frequent and fundamental attacks that could open him to an accusation that he had abandoned bipartisanship.¹⁸ Having taken the “hard line” by adamantly opposing the admission of Communist China to the United Nations in 1953, Johnson took the “soft line” during the Indochina crisis of 1954, and argued against Dulles’ proposal that America provide air support for the French at Dienbienphu. Quick to support Eisenhower against charges by conservatives that inviting Khrushchev to visit the United States was an act of appeasement, Johnson consistently questioned the adequacy of our military preparedness. Although these alternations of support and opposition undoubtedly evince careful political calculation, Johnson’s choice of issues and positions also reflects a consistency of outlook that he later described as his basic position in international relations: “the belief in holding your hand out while keeping your guard up, opening your lines of communication while keeping your powder dry.”¹⁹

Nor does Johnson’s insistence that Congress could not take the lead on many matters mean that he believed Congress could never lead. On the contrary, he asserted that there were many circumstances—especially when an administration fails to act during conditions of crisis—under which Congress could and should take the initiative, exercising what one scholar has called its “reserve capacity” for leadership.²⁰ This is precisely how the Congress of the late 1950s behaved in the areas of civil rights and space exploration under Johnson’s leadership. The development and conduct of national policy toward issues of civil rights and space technology had been neglected, virtually immobilized, by presidential inaction and by division within the administration. Then dramatic and momentous events—the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik—created a vastly enlarged public awareness and a new sense of urgency. It became clear that action was necessary. Yet the same events had severely weakened the natural impulse to rely on presidential leadership by helping to illuminate past inadequacies, while the feeble ambiguity of the administration’s response further undermined public confidence in the administration’s intentions and capacities. Thus the way was open for Congress to take the initiative, and the legislative branch assumed the task of determining national policy and action. And when the process was complete, the major credit for the results—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Civil Rights Act of 1957—was given to Lyndon Johnson.

On the night of October 4, 1957, as Johnson later described it, he was at his ranch when the news of Sputnik came across the television. He remembered taking “a walk … with eyes lifted skyward, straining to catch a glimpse of that alien object which had been thrust into the outer reaches of our world”; he remembered “the profound shock of realizing that it might be possible for another nation to achieve technological superiority over this great country of ours”; and in response, he decided that very night that somehow something had to be done.²¹

The Subcommittee on Preparedness immediately launched a series of investigations into the American space effort which was to result in the establishment of NASA the following year, and lead to the Apollo program and man’s landing on the moon in the next decade. Johnson knew that no large and long-term public enterprise could be sustained without popular support. From the start, he felt it was necessary to make the American people realize the importance of the struggle for space. The first step involved the preparation and delivery of a series of public statements such as the one he presented to the Democratic Caucus in 1958. “Control of space,” Johnson argued, “means control of the world.… From space the masters of infinity would have the power to control the earth’s weather, to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, to divert the gulf stream and change temperate climates to frigid.… There is something more important than the ultimate weapon. That is the ultimate position—the position of total control over earth that lies somewhere in outer space … and if there is this ultimate position, then our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position.”²²

Johnson knew that his Senate hearings could also be used to dramatize the issue. Yet there was also a danger that if his hearings conducted an overly aggressive and accusatorial effort to assign blame for the Soviet Union’s dramatic triumph, or magnified the significance and danger of the Soviet accomplishment, the result might be to provoke panic or fear, leading to an angry and self-destructive search for scapegoats or conspirators. The middle course was to arouse both the public and the President by coupling shame with possibility for the restoration of pride. He would conduct the hearings so as to persuade them that with Sputnik we had suffered a defeat as serious as Pearl Harbor, but, at the same time, prevent a kind of resigned desperation with reassuring evidence that the struggle could still be won if we had the will and endurance to fight it all the way. Just as the young college editor told his fellow students that Lindbergh’s success was due not to luck but to pluck, so now the Majority Leader told his fellow Americans that the Soviet success was due not to magic or superior resources but to determination—a determination we could match and surpass. “Our people are slow to start,” Johnson later said in analyzing why America had originally lagged in the space effort, “but once they start they are hard to stop.”²³

Johnson’s display of leadership in the creation of a national effort to acquire a superiority in all the varied possibilities of space exploration was surpassed only by his role in the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.²⁴ In the 1940s and the early 1950s, six different civil rights bills were defeated on the floor of the House and the Senate. The structure of power in the Congress, where Southerners and conservatives had disproportionate authority, coupled with a mood of public complacency, had created a situation where legislative action seemed very unlikely if not wholly impossible. However, between 1954 and 1957 three events dramatically altered the context within which the issue of civil rights would be considered: first, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which provided constitutional sanction for some black claims and which catalyzed the nascent civil rights movement; second, the defiant and often violent refusal of the South to comply with Brown, which generated mounting support in other parts of the country for some form of protective legislation; and third, the elections of 1954 and 1956, which made it clear to Republicans and Democrats alike that increasing numbers of blacks were willing to desert candidates of the Democratic Party for Republicans who seemed likely to better serve their interests. Without these events, it is hard to imagine any action by Lyndon Johnson, or anyone else, that could have reversed the regular pattern of congressional defeat.

In 1956, in response to mounting political pressures, Attorney General Herbert Brownell convinced Eisenhower that a civil rights bill should be submitted to the Congress. The administration bill included three provisions: the creation of a Civil Rights Division within the Justice Department; authority for the Justice Department to intervene on behalf of individuals whose civil rights were being violated—in housing, education, voting, or law enforcement; and the appointment of a Civil Rights Commission to recommend further legislation.

Just as external events modified the situation within the administration, the actions of the administration changed the situation within the Senate. The administration’s civil rights bill failed to pass that first year, but this failure prepared the way for success a year later. For the position of the administration had joined the issue, opened it to public debate. The issue of civil rights could no longer be quietly shelved. There was no longer any way for members to evade public and personal responsibility for choice. By 1957, Johnson later observed, “One thing had become absolutely certain: the Senate simply had to act, the Democratic Party simply had to act, and I simply had to act; the issue could wait no longer.”²⁵ As leader of the Senate, Johnson was concerned that a continuing stalemate would seriously damage the Senate’s prestige in the nation. As a leader of the Democratic Party, Johnson felt that the failure of a Democratic Congress to approve a civil rights bill proposed by a Republican administration would erode Negro support for the Democratic Party. As a man with presidential dreams, Johnson recognized that it would be almost impossible for him to escape all responsibility for the failure of the Senate to act, that failure on this issue at this time would brand him forever as sectional and therefore unpresidential.

In these circumstances, it is possible to imagine persons of quite different temperaments deciding, as Lyndon Johnson did, that “something had to be done.” But the situation was so complicated and the chances for success so small that the course of events might well have been different if the Majority Leader’s capacity had been more typical or less extraordinary. “Although,” Riesman and Glazer wrote, “different kinds of characters can be used for the same work within an institution, a ‘price’ is paid by the character types that fit badly as against the release of energy provided by the congruence of character and task.”²⁶

What elements of this problem made for congruence? Most important was the fact that the civil rights issue intensified and brought to focus Johnson’s recurrent fear that “the whole thing”—his leadership, the Senate, the world—would fall apart if he lost control even for a moment, thus permitting the forces of violent division to “get loose.” “One real slip and we’re done for,” he would say again and again, as if both his power and the future of America were fragilely suspended by a gossamer thread. Fearing that the issues of the civil rights question would be “taken over” by the “extremists”—denned as a choice between the irreconcilable views of Southern segregationists and Northern liberals—Johnson felt “driven” to seek a middle course, a legislative formula, that would represent some real progress—enough to moderate liberal passions, but not so unacceptable that it would provoke an open break with the party and its leadership. “I knew,” he later said, “that if I failed to produce on this one, my leadership would be broken into a hundred pieces; everything I had built up over the years would be completely undone.”²⁷

Less significant than the revelation of personal fear is the fact that Johnson exhibited the prescience to recognize that this issue had dimensions far greater than the difficulties of formulating practicable legislation. He seemed to understand that the issue of civil rights had created a crisis of legitimacy for both the Senate and the Democratic Party. Perhaps it was this understanding that helped Johnson not only to surmount his fears during this struggle but to transform them into instruments of leadership—influencing the action of others by persuading them to share in his apprehension of dangerous possibilities.

Johnson determined that his first task must be to persuade the “reasonable” Southerners to abandon their support for a filibuster, by demonstrating that even if it was successful the only result would be a Pyrrhic victory for the South. Northern passions were rising, becoming “hysterical,” and would no longer accept defeat by filibuster; instead, the attack would focus on the filibuster rule itself. He began with Russell: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don’t move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there’ll be no way of stopping them, we’ll lose the filibuster and there’ll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It’ll be Reconstruction all over again.”²⁸

Worse, Johnson said, an attempt to kill the bill would plunge the Senate and the South into the paralysis that results when issues of status or morality remain unresolved and are the object of constant challenge, making it impossible for Senators or the South itself to act on its most fundamental problem—economic growth. Johnson argued, and he probably believed, that the South was on the verge of new possibilities for rapid expansion. However, the realization of these possibilities was far from certain. Decisions made by the leadership and people of the South could determine whether it would become one of the most prosperous areas of the country or whether it would remain an economic backwater, subsisting on hominy grits. Among the most significant determinants of Southern prospects would be the willingness of Southern leadership to accept the inevitability of some progress on civil rights and get on with the business of the future, or its continued insistence on conjuring the ghost of Thaddeus Stevens.

Johnson assured Russell that if the Southerners discontinued the filibuster, he would personally take responsibility for revising the bill to eliminate its most objectionable feature—Title III, which authorized the federal government to dispatch agents into the South to protect a wide variety of civil rights—and he would add an amendment requiring a jury trial for all civil cases arising under the new statute. The jury-trial amendment provided Southerners with a face-saving explanation of their willingness to permit the first civil rights bill to pass without a filibuster. How, they could ask, could a Southerner fear a Southern jury?

Having secured Russell’s agreement to let debate proceed, Johnson turned his attention to the North, where, as he put it, “the liberals could be divided into three classes,” only one of which could be mobilized for his purpose. “First, there were the emotional liberals outside the Congress—the groups like the ADA that were held together only by a desire to create trouble. They believed in controversy and could never reconcile themselves with anyone who believed in achievement. To such men, the words ‘compromise’ and ‘betrayal’ are exactly the same. They cared less about delivering results than they did about the purity of their route to a nonexistent accomplishment.

“Second, there were the emotional liberals inside the Congress who were similar in psychology to the woolly ADAs, but at least they were checked to some extent by the responsibilities of office and the desire to be re-elected. This meant they would charge a brick wall but stop the charge just short of physical contact with the wall. The only workable approach to this group was the clipped-wing technique—accomplished by pushing forward the ‘good moderate liberals,’ who were outside the emotional camp, and identifying them with the leadership.

“Third, there were the good liberals or what I would call the true liberals, the men with specific programs they desired to put across, the men who were satisfied with achieving objectives. These men represented the best leverage for taking care of the emotional liberals since, no matter how irresponsible they got, they couldn’t afford to be completely isolated and identified in the public mind as a crackpot outfit.”²⁹

Johnson saw an opening in the possibility of persuading moderate liberals from the mountain states that if they did not help him to eliminate Title III, then the Southerners would be forced to filibuster and the issue would become insoluble—with terrible consequences for the Democratic Party, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S.A. But Johnson did not rely solely on appeals to reason and the national welfare. “I began with the assumption that most of the Senators from the mountain states had never seen a Negro and simply couldn’t care all that much about the whole civil rights issue. But if they didn’t care about the Negro, I knew what they did care about and that was the Hell’s Canyon issue. So I went to a few key Southerners and persuaded them to back the Western liberals on Hell’s Canyon. And then, in return, I got the Western liberals to back the Southerners in cutting out Title III, and then, with Title III gone, I was able to show the reasonable Southerners that some progress was necessary and that as long as they trusted me the progress would be slow and easy.”³⁰

Withholding any expressing of his own judgments until all points of view had been heard and their relative strength had been measured, Johnson moved from one side of the cloakroom to the other, assuring one side, then the other. He’d tell Senator Douglas to ready his troops and arguments so “we can make sure this long-overdue bill for the benefit of the Negro-Americans will pass.” Later, in another corner, he would whisper a warning to Senator Sam Ervin that the worst part of “the nigger bill” was coming up.³¹Throughout the long debate he remained on the floor, correcting extreme statements from both sides, continually striving to prevent the conflict from being defined in irreconcilable terms, trying to prevent a variety of publics from forming impressions of the issue that would make them unwilling to accept any achievable results.

On August 7, 1957, when the bill was finally approved by the Senate—the first civil rights bill enacted by that body in eighty-seven years—it was not Eisenhower’s bill or the Democrats’ or the liberals’; it was Lyndon Johnson’s. Assessed by Dean Acheson as “among the great achievements since the war,” and by the New York Times as “incomparably the most significant domestic action of any Congress in this century,”³² passage of the bill was a wondrous victory for Johnson. It gave him what he most valued, a significant achievement that could be described to each of his constituent groups in terms they would accept and even applaud.

To his conservative voters in Texas, he could boast of his leadership role in “cutting out Title III, the notorious troops in the South provision,” which would have permitted the federal courts to move into any field categorized as “civil rights.” Thus, by securing Senate approval of the substitute bill, he had prevented “a punitive sectional monstrosity.” “We were faced with a combination of forces capable of ramming down the throat of the South vicious, punitive legislation,” he told Texas voters. “The bill could not be blocked. The only alternative was to convince reasonable minded men to pass instead a reasonable measure … and we succeeded in doing so. No better results could have been obtained for Texas.” Indeed, it would be, as Johnson told his constituents, “a serious mistake to regard this legislation as a civil rights bill—all the objectionable features were eliminated. It is more proper to call what was passed a voting rights bill.”³³

To other Democrats, Johnson could boast that the party, which seemed on the verge of an irreparable rupture, had, instead, achieved its greatest unity in two decades. “The real story of the Civil Rights Act is that five states left the Confederacy voluntarily—the healthiest thing that could have happened to this country in years. The ultra-liberal position would have left eleven states solid—cut off from the rest of the country, dividing the Nation in an hour of peril. But now—by opening a division between those Southerners who have always been uncomfortable at the denial of so basic a right as the right to vote, and those who are determined from unshakable habit and prejudice to stand against everything for the Negro, we have passed a bill and have bought for ourselves needed time—time to reconcile the North and the South so we can present a united front in 1960.”³⁴

To his colleagues in the Senate, he could argue that the moderate and dignified manner in which the issue had been resolved had reflected the best and most honored qualities of representative institutions and had recovered the national respect for the Senate that had been impaired during the McCarthy days. “We’ve shown the Nation and the world that this legislative body really works even on the toughest issue of all time, and that’s a critical thing to prove. It’ll give us a reputation for many years to come.”³⁵

And finally, to the nation, he could explain that the bill was a historic turning point. For once the right to vote, the most fundamental of all rights, had been secured, everything else was possible. “A man without a vote,” he said, “is a man without protection … he is virtually helpless. A man with a vote has his destiny in his own hands. We’ve started something. Now, don’t worry, it’s only the first. We know we can do it now, we know the ropes.”³⁶

Was Johnson’s leadership—his unique abilities and the power he had gradually accumulated—essential to passage of the Civil Rights Act? Admittedly, a wide variety of forces were already moving in the same direction. Nevertheless, there was no inevitability about the passage of this bill at this time. The forces were closely matched and fragmented among themselves. The manner in which the issue was conducted was vital in adding support and moderating opposition. And it was Johnson’s leadership that determined the manner and terms of conduct, which alone made it possible for the Democratic Party to pass a bill and still remain intact.

There were a few who disagreed with the overwhelmingly favorable assessment of Johnson’s leadership in producing the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Wayne Morse spelled out his own dissent on the floor of the Senate: “I disagree with my Majority leader on the nature of the bill. I consider it a corpse. I think this so-called Civil Rights Bill shows that civil rights for the time being for millions of colored people are dead, so far as effective protection of their right to vote is concerned.”³⁷ But he stood virtually alone.

Naturally, no one expected Johnson to produce answers for all the important problems of the country. But he occupied the highest and most powerful office held by any Democrat. And there were some who argued that his position imposed an obligation to make a commitment for himself and his party—to an ideal and comprehensive program of goals, which he would then set forth in order to stimulate a national debate about values and priorities. Johnson totally disagreed. “What the man in the street wants,” he responded, “is not a big debate on fundamental issues; he wants a little medical care, a rug on the floor, a picture on the wall, a little music in the house, and a place to take Molly and the grandchildren when he retires.”³⁸

Johnson’s response contained a reiteration of his basic belief that ultimate values and goals could be taken for granted, that the essential wants of all Americans were the same. The logical consequence of this assumption was his conviction that disputes which divided the country resulted from misperceptions or lack of understanding rather than from genuine clashes of conflicting interests. Thus Johnson could always believe that “in time, the underlying consensus will have to emerge.… So long as men try conscientiously to resolve their differences by negotiation, so long as they follow the prophet Isaiah to ‘come now let us reason together,’ there is always a chance.”³⁹ Johnson insisted that most of the country’s troubles came from defective methods and organizations, from people’s failure to understand how best to achieve their goals. It rarely occurred to him that conflicts might arise from differences in the ends themselves. Much of his effectiveness is due to the fact that the pragmatism and consensus that were the key to his successful style of leadership were also important elements of his belief. And in the 1950s his style, not that of Stevensonian confrontation, also matched the belief and temper of the times.

“Just look at the election results,” Johnson said, “and you’ve got the perfect way to measure the success of my leadership against that of all those intellectual liberals who supported Paul Butler and Adlai Stevenson. After all, their method of campaigning—with their search for big issues and big fights with the Republicans—was tried twice and it failed twice, producing the greatest defeat ever suffered by the Democratic Party. Now you put that dismal record beside my method of campaigning for a Democratic Congress on the basis of the positive achievement of the Democratic Party, striving all the time to work out solutions rather than merely creating electoral issues, and what do you see but an unbroken string of successes for me and an unbroken string of failures for them? I was winning Democratic seats in the Congress while they were losing the Presidency.”⁴⁰

In his avoidance of ideological questions, Johnson was in harmony with the emerging pluralism of the decade. A variety of historical experiences—such as World War II, a frustrating cold war, fear of Communist intentions, dazzling advances in technology, and the advent of a seemingly irreversible prosperity—combined to produce a general distaste for ideology, an unwillingness even to consider that there were problems which might require changes in basic beliefs or social structures, and a widespread commitment to the almost ideal nature of American institutions. It seemed that if the magical, emotional, and traditional elements of life could be replaced by systematic, rational, and instrumental modes of action, then society could work effectively and rationally to benefit all its members. When Daniel Bell wrote of “the end of ideology” in 1959, he was providing a systematic and illuminating expression of dominant moods and convictions.⁴¹

This description of dominant American attitudes and convictions is also, of course, a description of Lyndon Johnson, elements of his thought and behavior for decades. The pluralist theory, which denied the authority of ideological systems, found concrete expression in Johnson’s practice of seeking political ends by trying to establish agreement among a variety of concerned groups, usually organized on the basis of some common interest. Once the process of trying to reconcile these interests had begun, it committed the groups that were involved to at least some effort to achieve a result. This meant bargaining, perhaps through an intermediary like Johnson—and bargaining among organized groups, which are far less likely than individuals to act on the basis of transient impulses or irrational decisions. Thus the procedures and nature of “group politics” tend to decrease the intensity of political and personal emotions and to produce conflict which, even if not resolved, is conducted in an orderly manner. “The biggest danger to American stability,” Johnson argued, “is the politics of principle, which brings out the masses in irrational fights for unlimited goals, for once the masses begin to move, then the whole thing begins to explode. Thus it is for the sake of nothing less than stability that I consider myself a consensus man.”⁴²

Johnson’s detractors believed that unless it took a position on important issues, the Democratic Party would have no chance of capturing the White House in 1960. The most effective way of establishing a Democratic position, and drawing clear and credible lines, would be for the party to use its congressional majorities to pass the entire Democratic program, even though the President was certain to veto such legislation. Indeed, the veto itself would dramatize and clarify the differences between the Democratic and the Republican parties, thus helping to persuade the voters that the country would be better served by returning the Democrats to the White House.

Johnson had a different view of political conditions and possibilities. To him, the fundamental political fact was that “America loved Ike.”⁴³ He understood the appeal of Eisenhower’s values. Of course, there had been many reasons for Eisenhower’s election—the Korean War, a desire for change after two decades of Democratic rule, etc. But Eisenhower had not really been elected on the strength of his platform or because of objection to specific acts or policies of the Democrats. He had been chosen most of all as a symbol of the nation’s longing for tranquillity. Johnson saw the attraction of the Eisenhower optimism: the appeal of a President who limited his statements to the enunciation of lofty principles that seemed to purge his leadership of partisanship; the respect for a leader who followed—slowly and with calm deliberation—when the people moved. Johnson felt that to attack Eisenhower would be “like telling children that their father was a bad man”—an exercise in self-defeating politics. So Johnson refused to involve himself or the Senate in what he denned as “gallant operations”—doomed to defeat by presidential veto—designed to dramatize Republican deficiencies. “I have never believed,” he said in 1956, in a tone reminiscent of his critique of the debunkers thirty years before, “that a political party should ask for votes because its opponent has shortcomings.” (Especially, he might have added, when the target must be an extremely popular President who might be more than a match for Johnson and the Senate.)

“The American people,” Johnson continued, “are tired of wrecking crews. They want builders—people who construct. They will entrust their affairs to the party that is constructive. They will turn their backs on the party that is destructive.… If we go forward as positive Americans and not negative oppositionists I am convinced that the time is not too far distant when the Democratic Party will again be in the majority. The party that can produce a record of service to the people … the party that is the least partisan and the most patriotic … that party will win. A party that is overly partisan, overly quarrelsome and obsessed solely with politics will lose.”⁴⁴

Johnson rejected with equal vigor the liberals’ demand that the parties should offer the nation a clear-cut choice between fundamental principles. In his opinion, “the phantom of the big choice,” if such a choice were actually made and acted on, would result in only one thing: a nation grinding to a halt, consumed by irreconcilable argument, powerless to produce anything for anyone. He was convinced that an insistence on “principled platforms” would wreck the two-party system by making impossible an alliance between men of disparate convictions, and encourage the emergence of many single-issue parties. Against those who called for cohesive parties and crusading leaders, Johnson advocated “loose parties and unifying leaders.” It is easy, he argued, for a party representing only one group or one section to produce a consistent program, but it is far more difficult to keep such parties alive. And effective government is not possible without relatively stable political parties: “They come and go,” and “once they go, we are left with the same need we’ve always had—the need for large, unifying parties that unite us rather than divide us.”⁴⁵

“With few rare exceptions,” Johnson contended, “the great political leaders of our country have been men of reconciliation—men who could hold their parties together. Lincoln never permitted the radical Republicans to drive more moderate elements out of the party. Woodrow Wilson appealed to elements throughout the nation and only went down to failure when he became too doctrinaire and too arbitrary. FDR successfully maintained a coalition that ranged all the way from Jimmy Byrnes to Leon Henderson. Theodore Roosevelt was a great political figure up to the point that he split his own party.… A true leader is a man who can get people to work together on the points on which they agree and who can persuade others that when they disagree there are peaceful methods to settle their differences.”⁴⁶

To Johnson, the merits of the party system were tested not by its forthright advocacy of virtuous ideals but by its actual contribution to the creation of tangible and beneficial conditions—by results and consequences. And, he claimed, by this test the American party system had proven itself not only valuable but indispensable; with one exception (the Civil War), it had provided stability and unity without the sacrifice of diversity. Indeed, what the critics saw as “defects” in the party system—its fuzziness and its fragmentation—he saw as virtues. That fuzziness, he contended, was not simply a political expedient, but an authentic reflection of the American people’s own ambiguities of conviction and purpose, their refusal to act consistently within categories that purport to characterize attitudes and conduct in relationship to public questions. “I am,” he announced in 1958, “a free man, a U.S. Senator, and a Democrat, in that order. I am also a liberal, a conservative, a Texan, a taxpayer, a rancher, a businessman, a consumer, a parent, a voter, and not as young as I used to be nor as old as I expect to be—and I am all these things in no fixed order.… At the heart of my own beliefs is a rebellion against this very process of classifying, labeling and filing Americans under headings.”⁴⁷

To require precision is to create division: “The people of this country,” Johnson asserted, “are tired of the kind of political thought that divides Americans into blocs.… I doubt whether the carpenter who built this rostrum thinks of himself only as a laboring class. And I doubt equally whether the man who paid his wages thinks of himself only as part of the managerial class. They think of themselves first as American men and their wives think of themselves as American women. And they are perfectly right in doing so.”⁴⁸

These statements of belief are consonant with the assumption of pluralist thought that if people do not exclusively identify themselves with a single category—such as class, occupation, or system of belief—political cleavages will be limited in intensity. Thus it is likely that successive disputes will draw different lines of separation: in the absence of such unitary identifications, positions are likely to be determined more by the content of particular disputes than by the characterizing identity of other participants. Thus it is likely that successive disputes will draw different lines of separation. And when politicians or other representatives of groups or interests contend within a system in which today’s opponents may be tomorrow’s allies, where they confront an adversary who was yesterday’s supporter, conflicts are almost certain to be less severe. Those on all sides will tend to seek solutions that do not create irrevocable ruptures and endanger the possibility of changed relationships under different circumstances of need and interest. Once this was understood, Johnson thought, it became clear that the very imprecision and ambiguity that many censured was, in fact, the “balance wheel” of American politics. Failure to perceive this came from viewing the process not in terms of its consequences but as an end in itself. From this perspective the Senate would seem to consist of the continual satisfaction of special interests and personal needs. “That is the way the Senate works”—and so, Johnson might have added, does the marketplace. Each Senator calculates the preferences and vulnerabilities of others who share in authority; politicians act in their self-interest. The task of leadership is to unite these fragmented intentions into some more general agreement. That is, the leader’s own interest lay in effective leadership which can make the Senate function by assembling support for interests that are larger and more general than those which compose the alliance.

Thus the process of bargaining, the continual interplay of individual ambitions and concerns, results in actions that benefit the “public interest.” Of course, the opposite can happen. The consequence can be opposed to the public interest. Nevertheless, the fundamental principle is the same: a process of fragmented bargaining in a body like the Senate where authority is widely dispersed must always have more general consequences. It is the essence of Johnson’s argument that it is by these consequences that the institution is measured. Of course, the process is flawed, vulnerable to a variety of corruptions. But if one accepts Johnson’s assumption, then those who advocate a changed process—one closer in operation to some principle of democracy or virtue—have the burden of proving that it would result in actions of greater benefit to the country.

Johnson’s concept of politics and leadership can be supported by an ample body of argument and theory, but only if, in fact, no legitimate interests are excluded from the process. However, as some critics of pluralist politics have pointed out, access is limited to those interests categorized as “legitimate,” and not all interests are considered legitimate.⁴⁹ Business, labor, agriculture—these groups are; but the poor, the minorities, and the migrant workers—in other words, the people with the least resources—are not. And a refusal to acknowledge legitimacy is equivalent to imposing exile. Consequently, these critics have argued, the territory of American politics is like a plateau with steep, insurmountable cliffs on all sides. On the plateau are the interest groups considered legitimate who can at least be heard; far below are the outsiders, marginal and impotent, ignored and sometimes scorned, their claims inaudible.

Johnson’s description and justification of the varied elements of the political system that he inhabited and helped to lead—the Senate, the party, relationships between governing institutions—contained no acknowledgment of this reality. The greatest flaw in his argument is not a weakness of concept or theory, but a distortion of realities. Ironically, this most practical of men accepted an assumption contradicted by the facts. Of course, he knew the facts, he had experienced the reality. If he did not acknowledge them, it was probably because, in the 1950s, there was nothing he could do about it. The times were inauspicious; there could be no reasonable expectation of support for programs to elevate the status and improve the life of the excluded. Moreover, such an effort was beyond the Senate’s capacity. It would require the determined use of presidential power. And that would not come—at least not then.

There can be no doubt that Lyndon Johnson was among the most effective and powerful leaders in the history of the United States Senate. He had his critics, but at any time during his leadership he would have received, had he asked for it, an overwhelming vote of confidence and approval from his colleagues, the press, and the public. As a result of this impressive support combined with his own formidable personality and record of accomplishments, few bothered to consider or evaluate the criticisms of his conduct, yet they raise troubling questions. Lyndon Johnson was an impressive leader responsible for some of the most significant achievements of his time. And the current incapacities and failures of Congress demonstrate that there are many virtues in strong leadership. Still, there is a significant difference between the political leader who mediates among existing structures and forces and the leader who sets out to reshape the circumstances amid which he operates, not only to enhance his power, but to make it possible to pursue new purposes.⁵⁰

Lyndon Johnson was a brilliant mediator within the established order, but the possibilities of his leadership were confined by the same traits, experiences, and values that made his mediation so successful: his insistence on face-to-face relations, his secrecy, and his pragmatism. As a result of his preference for private negotiations and his penchant, even need, for concealment, he virtually abolished debate in an institution where debate, although frequently frivolous and often ignored, had also served to publicly expose problems and warn of error. His insistence on subordination to the executive on all issues of national security—denying even Congress’ right to information—seriously reduced the Senate’s ability to participate in decisions on foreign policy. By insisting that the Senate yield to the President, he reduced the right to share in foreign policy that had been established by custom. Now the body whose support had been cultivated and considered indispensable to significant presidential action only a few years before—in the days of Arthur Vandenberg—could be ignored or limited to the forms but not the substance of authority. By conceding the right of defining national goals to the White House, he eliminated a forum that might have revealed those important national problems which were to remain concealed and untended until they erupted in the 1960s. At least partly, his final failure was the bitter fruit of his earlier success, for in the Senate his was the success of power more than of purpose.