Master of the Senate (101 page)

“When I was a young fella,” Lyndon Johnson would say, “the Crider boys were just about my best friends. Ben was the older one. He was kind of strong and self-reliant—always goin’ off somewhere. Otto—well, he was more shy and retiring. One day I was over there at the Crider house. Ben was away somewhere, and I was playing with Otto, and it was the weekend and no school the next day, and we asked Miz Crider if Otto could come sleep over at my house for a couple of nights. And Miz Crider, when we asked her, she said, ‘No.’ No reason. Just ‘No.’

“Well, Otto, he was real upset. And you know what he said? He said, ‘Mama, why can’t I go? Ben, he’s already been twowheres, and I ain’t never been nowheres!’”

The new senators had to be given at least one place, Lyndon Johnson said, before more senior senators, who already had one good committee seat, got to go “twowheres.” To do otherwise, Lyndon Johnson said, wouldn’t be good for the party, wouldn’t be good for the Senate, wouldn’t be good for the country.

He sold with whatever he thought might work. The self-interest of the southerners who had been committee chairmen dovetailed with the larger interests of the South, and he made sure they understood that: the South’s last stronghold, the last and best defense of its peculiar, and sacred, institution, was those chairmanships; the South had to get them back. The best way to accomplish that was to make a strong Democratic record, which required unifying and strengthening the Senate Democrats. And, he pointed out, since no senator was being required to give up a committee seat he already held, the major committees would still be stocked, three or four deep, with southerners.

Another argument he never mentioned to the southern senators—but he didn’t have to. Some of them had become aware of Russell’s grand design, to make Lyndon Johnson President, a plan that required that Johnson be made acceptable to the North. “While he didn’t say it in so many words, LBJ very early, in private conversations, started taking advantage of a growing belief that he might be a presidential candidate,” Reedy says. “I think it started right there. And what he was saying is that he had some northern senators who were Democrats and he just had to get them on something besides the Capitol committee on roofs, domes and skylights…. I think the primary thrust was their [southern senators’] recognition that LBJ had to have some leeway in order to
get national recognition….” When Lyndon Johnson told Harry Byrd or Walter George or Jim Eastland, “I’ve just got to give those damned red-hots something to get them off my back,” they understood what he was
really
saying.

And, of course, over and over again Johnson emphasized that since no one was being forced to give up anything, nothing fundamental was really being changed. Everyone would be able to stay right where they were if they wanted to, he said. Southerners could still control every major committee, he said. Years later, during his retirement, Lyndon Johnson would explain his maneuvers to Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Ms. Goodwin, summarizing his explanation, would write that although the seniority system “was the foundation of power and the principal determinant of the conduct of Senate business,” in seeking to change that system, “Johnson dissembled his aim in such a way that his request for change seemed more like a trivial departure which did not threaten the governing mores of the Senate.”

T
HE FIRST SENATOR
he had to persuade, of course, was Russell; if he didn’t persuade Russell, there was no sense in going on. Johnson appealed to the qualities in Russell that were as noble as his racial feelings were ignoble, to his loyalties not only to his beloved country (“You’re a patriot, Dick”), which couldn’t afford to have America’s international commitments voided, but also to his beloved party, to his beloved Southland—and to his beloved Senate. Giving freshmen who already had expertise in particular fields seats on the important committees that had jurisdiction in those fields would make the Senate a stronger, more effective institution, and would start them early on the road to being, in the highest sense of the title,
Senators of the United States.
“We’ll be making real
senators
out of them,” he told Russell. And Russell proved much easier to persuade than might have been anticipated, in part perhaps because of his plans for Lyndon Johnson, in part perhaps, as John Steele was to speculate, because his own early experience as a brand-new senator (that fortuitous, immediate assignment to Appropriations) had taught him “that a leg up in committee could help a new senator’s career tremendously.” In fact, Evans and Novak relate, “when Johnson broached his revolutionary idea, Russell surprised him by replying that he, too, had always favored giving new senators one good committee assignment.” While warning Johnson of the risks in what he was planning (“You’re dealing with the most sensitive thing in the Senate,” he told him. “[You’re] playing with dynamite”), Russell did not forbid him to make the attempt. While he would not actively support Johnson’s plan, Russell said, he would not oppose it, either. If Lyndon could persuade the other senators to go along, he would go along.

G
ETTING THEM TO GO ALONG
was a problem of such difficulty that it seemed all but insoluble.

If the problem before him resembled a chessboard—with the spaces representing committee seats, the chessmen the senators who moved among those spaces—the seven vacant spaces available to him, only four of them on major committees, were not nearly enough to allow him to make the moves necessary to accomplish his purposes. The senators who now occupied the other desirable spaces would not want to move off them. And senior senators had already filed with Walter Jenkins their claims to the four desirable seats. Their appointment to those committees did not fit into Lyndon Johnson’s plan, but they were entitled to those seats by seniority—and would not be at all inclined to surrender their claims.

Foreign Relations was a particular sticking point. Getting Humphrey and Mansfield onto it required first of all the approval of the Committee’s former chairman (now its ranking Democrat member) Walter George, who never wanted liberals on his committees, and of other elders of the conservative coalition. Johnson gave his explanations of the strategic importance Foreign Relations would have in the months ahead, how Mansfield could “out-think” Taft and Humphrey could “out-talk” him. He received, from these elders, as he had from Russell, at least tacit permission to go ahead with his plans for the two empty seats on Foreign Relations—if, of course, and only if, the senior senators who had prior, higher, claims to those spaces agreed to surrender their claims.

One of these senior senators was Harry Byrd, whose surrender was easy to obtain, for his interest in a Foreign Relations seat was not passionate. It was made easier by his fondness for Johnson—a fondness that had begun when he had looked up at his daughter’s funeral and seen the Texan there. When Johnson explained why he needed the Foreign Relations seat, Byrd said he could have it. That, however, was not the case with the three senators with the greatest seniority who had formally applied for those seats, whose names Lyndon Johnson had written in the “Requests for Assignments” column on the papers on the desk in front of him. Warren Magnuson, Spessard Holland, and Matt Neely wanted those prestigious seats, wanted them badly, and expected that, in the order of seniority, they would be given them.

Magnuson, first in seniority for one of the two seats, not only Johnson’s Senate ally but a power in the Senate, had been unmoved by the “out-talk, out-think” arguments, in part because he felt that he himself possessed those qualifications, in part because he felt that under the seniority system he was entitled to a seat on the most desirable committee available whether he possessed them or not. He had entered his name for two committees, Foreign Relations and Appropriations (the only committee more desirable than Foreign Relations), but since there were no vacancies on Appropriations, he was demanding Foreign Relations. Warren Magnuson was not a man ever to give up something he was entitled to. He wanted Foreign Relations, and he intended to have it. No matter how many times Johnson had approached him, he had been very firm, so firm that on his lists Johnson, surrendering, had scrawled the name
Magnuson
on one of the blank lines under “Foreign Relations.” And on the other line he
was going to have to write
Holland
or
Neely.
There seemed no way to get Humphrey or Mansfield where they were needed.

Then he got a break. The GOP’s new leader, Taft, had a problem: Wayne Morse, disillusioned with Eisenhower, had bolted the Republicans during the campaign, and was listing his party affiliation as “Independent.” He had agreed to vote with the Republicans on organizing the Senate, so the Republicans would still hold a 49–47 edge on those votes. But thereafter Morse would be voting as an Independent. With the party ratio so close, the Republicans would only have a one-vote majority on the committees on which Morse sat, so if Morse didn’t vote with them, they wouldn’t have a majority. And they would have this problem no matter which of the fifteen committees they put Morse on.

To solve their problem, the Republicans had proposed a simple solution: that a Republican be added to each committee to which Morse might be assigned. But Johnson didn’t want a simple solution.
For other men, nights were for sleeping
…. It was at four o’clock one morning, Lyndon Johnson was to recall, that he had suddenly seen that the Republican problem could solve his, that if he handled things right, he might even come out of the situation with the only thing that could persuade Warren Magnuson to give up his claim to a seat on Foreign Relations—a seat on Appropriations. He told Taft that if these new extra seats the Republicans wanted were added, the Democrats should get some seats
they
wanted. And he had the leverage to make the argument stick: the old Senate leverage. The number of seats on a committee could be changed only by changing the official Senate rules, and such a change could easily be blocked. A series of very complicated negotiations ensued. At one point, on January 7, Taft asked unanimous consent for a new rule. Johnson did not consent. Reserving the right to object, he said he wanted to sit down with the distinguished Majority Leader for further discussions, and when the discussions were over, there was a new, even more complicated fomula, under which the membership of nine committees had been enlarged, and four had been reduced, by either two or four members. (The size of two committees remained the same.) Johnson kept the negotiations friendly. Taft felt he had gotten what he wanted. So impressed was he with Johnson’s cooperation that on Inauguration Day, he would write a friend, “So far everything has gone well in the Senate, with an amount of harmony which is almost unprecedented.” But under the new formula, the number of spaces on the chessboard had been increased from 203 to 209, and the Democrats had gotten three of the six new seats, and among the new seats was one on Appropriations. Johnson offered the seat to Magnuson, and Magnuson accepted. What Johnson said to Holland and Neely we do not know—he appears to have promised Holland that if he would surrender his claim to Foreign Relations, he would be given the
next
empty seat on Appropriations; he may have placated Neely by allowing him to continue to be one of only three Democrats who would be allowed to sit on three committees, although his ranking membership on one of them would normally have disqualified
him from three assignments—but both senators agreed to step aside, and he could recommend to the Steering Committee that Humphrey and Mansfield be moved into the empty spaces on Foreign Relations.

L
YNDON
J
OHNSON WAS VIEWING
the chessboard as a whole now, and since the pieces on the board were men, he knew all the moves. He didn’t want to make any move merely for the sake of that move alone: he wanted one of those Foreign Relations moves to make possible other moves—to give him more of those strategic vacancies that he had to have. And the reader of men, having read Hubert Humphrey, knew how to do it. Johnson didn’t tell Humphrey he could have a seat on Foreign Relations, he told Humphrey he could have a seat on Foreign Relations if he gave up his seats on Agriculture and Labor. (He could retain his seat on the Government Operations Committee, Johnson said.)

While Humphrey wanted Foreign Relations, he didn’t want to make the sacrifice that Johnson was demanding. The price, he said, was too high. After all, he said, he had to run for re-election in Minnesota in two years. In his oral history recollections—recollections confirmed in essence by Johnson aides—Humphrey was to write that he told Johnson: “Mr. Leader, you know at home my constituency is Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. You’re asking me to give up Labor.” That, Humphrey said, he might be able to do because “I’ve got strong support in the labor movement.” But “Our farmers, they need me on that Committee on Agriculture. There isn’t anybody from my part of the country on the Democratic side on … Agriculture…. For me to back off now, the Farmers Union and the people out there that are the liberals in the agriculture area would never understand it.”

But Lyndon Johnson knew what Hubert Humphrey really wanted. The Foreign Relations seat would, Bobby Baker was to say, give Humphrey “a forum from which to bolster his national ambitions.” Johnson couched his appeal in terms of duty, telling Humphrey, “You can fight for the farmers down here on this floor and you can fight for the laboring man, but we’ve got some serious foreign policy issues coming up, and they’re going to be major.” Ticking the issues off on his fingers, he added, “This is one time where you’re going to serve your country and your party. You’re going to have to drop those two other committees.” And when Humphrey agreed—he exacted one condition: that should, in future years, another seat open up on Agriculture, he would get it—Johnson had not only shored up the Democratic position on Foreign Relations, he had also created two new vacancies, two new open squares, one on Agriculture and one on Labor. Suddenly, the chessboard was beginning to open up. Earle Clements of Kentucky wanted Agriculture badly. There hadn’t been a vacancy on Agriculture, but there was now; Johnson told Clements he could have it—if
he
gave up two committees, Public Works and Rules. That opened up two more squares.