Master of the Senate (104 page)

Other issues—virtually every issue, in fact, that came before the Democratic Policy Committee during Lyndon Johnson’s time as the Democratic Leader—were handled the same way.

The committee’s meetings, held every other Tuesday over lunch in the inner room of the G-18 suite, were the epitome of the traditional senatorial
bonhomie and clubbiness. Its nine members were all members of the Senate “club,” and they were easy with each other. They would stroll into the staff room, “usually late, with the air of a man dropping into another’s office to have a drink and, having nothing better to do at the moment, to pass the time of day,” William White was to say, and head toward the tall open door in the rear where the courtly Skeeter stood to welcome them. Nothing could have been more pleasant than to see the youngest member of the committee, the youngest by half a dozen years, who happened to be its chairman, walk through the room with a gently guiding hand on the elbow of Murray, whose gait seemed more unsteady at each meeting, or stand listening deferentially and appreciatively to Green or Russell. Just inside the door there would be the hand-shaking, the backslapping, the “Glad to see ya’s,” the “Those were great remarks you made down there,” the rough, masculine joking before, with Skeeter firmly closing the door against any eavesdropping, the senators sat down, beneath the glittering senatorial chandelier, to the fruit cocktails embedded in ice and the thick sirloins served on the starched white tablecloth that had been spread over the long table flanked by the tall senatorial bookcase and the elegant senatorial fireplace and gilt mirror. Unless Russell brought up some matter he felt required lengthy discussion, the talk wouldn’t touch on serious matters until dessert (usually ice cream), when the chairman would turn to the agenda. Since the Democrats were in the minority, they had no responsibility for the scheduling of bills to be brought to the floor; Johnson might say that Taft or Knowland was planning to place a particular piece of legislation on the Calendar, and ask, “Does anybody have any objection?” and if one of the committee members did, the matter would be discussed.

The Republicans were, in 1953, issuing statements of purpose for their Policy Committee, rules for its operation. Johnson wanted no statements and no rules—nothing in writing. Political scientists who attempted to analyze its activities found themselves baffled. “Nowhere have the Democrats set down the functions for their Policy Committee,” Professor Hugh Bone of the University of Washington was to note in 1958. Journalists were baffled, too. “From that committee there were no leaks, none at all,” one recalls. Reporters would be reduced to waiting in the corridor outside G-18 in the hope that Johnson would emerge at the end of the meeting to tell them what Democratic “policy” had evolved. And often there was no policy to report at all. Nothing could have been more informal, more relaxed—more in the traditional Senate way—than the operation of the Democratic Policy Committee.

Under the bonhomie and the backslapping, however, behind those tall doors where nine men met seemingly as friends, developments were taking place that would have deep significance for the party, for the Senate, and, it would turn out, for the United States. Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic Policy Committee was not reconciling but ignoring conflicts among Democrats, not clarifying party policy but blurring it. The committee was being turned into a
device to discourage the discussion of issues. Liberals were angered by that turn, as Bobby Baker was to say. They “saw the Democratic Policy Committee as Johnson’s private rubber stamp—which it was—and they accused LBJ of using the [committee] as a ploy to place on the back burner those bills he did not want called up. They were not entirely wrong. ‘I don’t see any profit,’ LBJ told me, ‘in calling up bills so that Jim Eastland and Herbert Lehman can insult each other, or so that Paul Douglas and Albert Gore can exercise their lungs. Why should we cut ourselves up and then lose …?’”

And it was a very effective device. Democratic Party councils—notably, the caucus—and the Democratic side of the Senate floor had always been platforms for the liberals’ demand for social justice, for social change, for the calls for equality from Douglas and Humphrey and Lehman. There were no liberal orators on the Democratic Policy Committee. Of the many impressive liberal senatorial voices in the party, not one was on the committee that enunciated the party’s policy. Room G-18 was an ideal place in which to kill an issue quietly; behind its closed doors there was no voice to keep the issue alive. As a result, the Democratic Party now appeared far more unified than it had in the recent past, but the unity was a unity that was, for the first time, imposed by the Democratic Leader. The transformation of the Policy Committee therefore had the same side effect as did the transformation of the seniority system: an increase in Lyndon Johnson’s power. Moreover, since the committee was supposedly setting party policy, he could say there was less need for party caucuses. During the first four years that he had been in the Senate—before he was Democratic Leader—the Democratic Caucus had met twenty-one times, or about five times a year. Under his leadership, that changed. For six of the first seven years that he was Leader, the caucus met only once a year. During the other year—1956—it did not meet at all. In only one year that he was Leader—1960—did the caucus meet more frequently—four times—and then only because of political considerations relating to Johnson’s run for the 1960 presidential nomination. After Johnson left the leadership, Democratic Caucuses were again held more frequently: five times each in 1961 and 1962, four in 1963, eight in both 1964 and 1965.

A
ND
L
YNDON
J
OHNSON
was making other changes that involved the Policy Committee, changes more subtle—and more far-reaching.

The first two topics raised by the committee’s new chairman at the committee’s initial, February 3, luncheon meeting were the schedule of future meetings (twelve-thirty every Tuesday) and the method of paying for them (“A fund was established, to be financed by a $25 contribution from each member,” the minutes reported. “You know Dick,” Lyndon Johnson joked. “Dick wants to know who’s paying for these steaks.”) The third topic was presented just as casually—although a great deal of not-at-all-casual thought had gone into it.

“Senator Johnson (Tex.) … explained that there was a need for liaison between the Policy Committee and the Democratic members of [Standing] Committees,” the minutes reported. He “presented a draft of a letter to be sent by him to each of the ranking Democratic members on standing committees, requesting that they work out an arrangement whereby either some senator on the committee or some minority staff member keep the Policy Committee staff advised as to what is going on in the various committees.”

Johnson had, of course, “counseled” with his Policy colleagues beforehand, and as soon as he made the suggestion, Senator Hill said at once “that he thought it an excellent idea.” Senator Russell agreed, but suggested, possibly by prearrangement, that the liaison be kept on the staff level. “There being no objection, Senator Johnson (Tex.) stated that the letter would be redrafted, in accordance with the suggestions,” and the next day the ranking Democrat on each of the fifteen Standing Committees received the letter:

No suggestion could on its face have been more logical, simply more conducive to the efficient operation of the Senate and to the unity of the Democrats in the Senate. If a single senator glimpsed the possibility of further implications behind the seemingly innocuous request, there was no indication of it. By Policy’s next meeting, Johnson could report that “replies furnishing the names of committee staff members” were coming in at a rapid rate.

But there
were
further implications. In the past, each of the Senate’s Standing Committees had operated as a totally independent barony, generally advancing its bills without more than cursory reference to other committees’ bills—not infrequently, in fact, advancing bills whose contents conflicted with other committees’ bills. Some of the more irascible chairmen were, in fact, prone to give notably short shrift to inquiries about schedules, or bill content, from the party leadership. This lack of coordination contributed to the Senate’s inefficiency: it was one of the primary reasons for the traditional end-of-session
logjam in which major bills from many different committees arrived on the floor at the same time. It also contributed to the committees’ independence, to their almost absolute freedom from any outside control—and therefore to the power of their chairmen. Now, with that February 4 letter, the situation was changed. An outside entity, the Democratic Policy Committee, would henceforth be advised weekly on the status of bills within the Standing Committees. The Policy Committee could notify the committees’ ranking members (the same senators who would be the chairmen again when the Democrats took back the majority) of potential scheduling conflicts, could suggest that a bill be moved forward or held back, could by doing so intervene in the all-important strategic timing of action on legislation. The Policy Committee would, after that letter, also be regularly apprised of the content of proposed legislation, including legislation that was still under discussion by a Standing Committee or one of its subcommittees—legislation that was still in the early stages of being formulated or reshaped. Policy staffers Reedy and Siegel and Bibolet—and their boss—would be much better able to analyze the legislation, to “call individual senators, explore their thinking,” mediate between opposing points of view; to perform, in short, a role hitherto performed only by the mighty chairmen, and
their
staffers.

The chairmen had, in fact, been to some degree removed from this new arrangement. It was not they with whom the Policy Committee—and that Leader who controlled the Policy Committee so absolutely—was communicating, but rather a member of their committee’s staff.

And while the degree was small, it was to become larger. Lyndon Johnson made it larger. By the mid-1950s, after Bobby Baker had been promoted to being Skeeter Johnston’s assistant, Baker had begun meeting, on behalf of the Policy Committee, with the fifteen committee staff directors
as a group
, ostensibly to encourage them, urge them forward, but in those meetings he of course not only inevitably learned more about the inner workings of their committees but also made them feel more comfortable about answering his specific, more detailed, more pointed questions when he would call them later on the phone. By the mid-1950s, in fact,
Lyndon Johnson
would be taking the unprecedented step of meeting himself with the staff directors as a group. The fifteen men were invited from their rooms in the Senate Office Building to the Capitol, where, over coffee, in the words of one staff director, “he came in and massaged us, about how important we were and how we should get back and get our chairmen cracking and get those bills out of committee.” “Of course it helped him to deal directly with the staff,” Bibolet says. “Sure it did. He couldn’t control chairmen. He could control staff. And he dealt with staff, or Baker and Reedy did, more and more.”

The change was gradual—very gradual during 1953 and 1954, because the Democrats had only a minority party’s input into legislative scheduling and content. But even in 1953 and 1954 the change was taking place. One of the
constants in the Senate of the United States had always been the total independence of the chairmen barons. In 1953 and 1954, these senators still thought they were totally independent, but in reality a bit had been gently slipped into their mouths, a bit attached to a checkrein. Committee schedules—the chairmen’s schedules—had never been coordinated before. Their schedules were being coordinated now. In the past, discussions with the Policy Committee about the content of “their” bills, the bills before their committees, had been held, when a chairman deigned to allow the holding of them at all, only by them. Now the content of their bills was being discussed with the Policy Committee by members of their staffs. These staffs were consulting not just with them but with George Reedy, and with Reedy’s boss. In 1953 and ’54 the bit was hardly noticeable. The reins were still loose.

But they would be tightened.

L
YNDON
J
OHNSON’S TRANSFORMATION
of the seniority rule and the Policy Committee combined to give him so much new power that the entire old order of affairs on the Democratic side of the Senate was substantially altered, both for liberals and for conservatives.

This alteration had greater implications for the conservatives, of course, for in the old power structure the power had been theirs. During the days in which the alteration was occurring—during the earliest weeks of Lyndon Johnson’s leadership, in January and February, 1953—had there arisen an understanding among any of the party’s “Big Bulls” of its implications, it could have been easily stopped. Had even one of the mighty chairmen realized the long-term effect of what Lyndon Johnson was doing, and explained it to others, Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to do it.

If, however, even a glimmer of any such understanding arose, there is no evidence of it. On the contrary, the reaction of the Senate’s barons to the changes that would eventually drastically reduce their cherished power and independence was only praise: “Excellent,” said Walter George, “Excellent,” said Lister Hill. The southern conservatives were loudest in their praise. They saw the changes Johnson had made in the Policy Committee as a means of muffling the liberal firebrands. They appear not to have realized the implications of those changes for
them.