The Path to Power (98 page)

As striking as the paucity of such bills was their sponsor’s effort on their behalf. With a single exception, there was no effort. During his eleven years in the House, only once did Lyndon Johnson appear in support of a national bill he had introduced before the committee to which it had been referred—and, with that one exception, no national bill he introduced received serious (or, indeed, even
pro forma
) consideration from any House committee. Of the five pieces of legislation of interest to more than his own district which, in eleven years, he placed in the House hopper, four were pieces of paper introduced
pro forma
—without genuine interest and enthusiasm from their sponsor. The one fight he made, for a 1943 bill aimed at curbing absenteeism in war plants by requiring the drafting of any worker absent too often, ended in fiasco; he apparently introduced it, in his own Naval Affairs Committee, without the courtesy of consulting with the chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction over such measures, the House Labor Committee. The Naval Affairs Committee reported the measure out favorably, but the angry chairman of the Labor Committee asked the Rules Committee, which controls the flow of legislation to the floor, not to let this bill reach the floor; an embarrassed Carl Vinson had to admit that he had assumed—incorrectly—that the Labor Committee had surrendered jurisdiction; and the bill died in the Rules Committee. During his eleven years as a Congressman, therefore, no national bill introduced by Lyndon Johnson that would have affected the people of the United States became a law of the United States.

He didn’t introduce legislation himself—and he wouldn’t fight for legislation introduced by others.

He wouldn’t fight publicly. He didn’t write laws—and he didn’t write speeches, at least not speeches to be delivered in Washington. The speeches that the brilliant Henderson kept turning out were delivered only on Johnson’s trips home to the district. This was a dramatic departure from the usual practice among Congressmen, who were allowed merely to insert their speeches into the
Congressional Record
without bothering to read them on the floor of the House. All that was required—under the House rule allowing members virtually unlimited freedom to “revise and extend” their remarks in the
Record
—was that a member read the opening words of a speech, and hand it to a clerk for reprinting in the
Record
. Because anything printed in the
Record
can be reprinted at government expense, and then mailed at government expense under the franking privilege, Congressmen used the right to “revise and extend” to have tens of thousands of copies of their statements reprinted and mailed to their constituents, thereby gaining free publicity
and creating the impression of deep involvement in national issues. The
Record
was crammed with speeches never spoken on the floor. But, although Johnson made maximum use of other avenues of publicity, very few of the remarks “extended” were extended by him. Entire years went by in which he did not use the device even once.
*

His record in regard to “real” speeches—talks of more than a paragraph or two in length that were actually delivered in the House—was even more striking.

On August 8, 1941, after weeks of prodding by Sam Rayburn, who felt it was time, and more than time, for Johnson to raise his voice in the House, Johnson stepped into the well of the House to advocate the extension of the Selective Service Act. The date was noteworthy. He had been a Congressman for four years. With the exception of a brief memorial tribute to Albert Sidney Burleson when Burleson died in November, 1937, this was the first speech he had made.

He didn’t make another one for eighteen months. Rising then to argue for his absenteeism bill, he could say, “Mr. Speaker, in the four terms that I have served in this House I have seldom asked your indulgence.” After the absenteeism fight, he didn’t make another speech for almost another three years. Entire years went by without Lyndon Johnson addressing the House even once.
†
In fact, until 1948, when the necessities of his campaign for the United States Senate changed his methods, he had, during eleven years in Congress, delivered a total of ten speeches—less than one a year.

He wouldn’t fight in the well of the House—and he wouldn’t fight on the floor. His demeanor during debates—during the give-and-take argumentation about legislation—was noteworthy. Imitating it, his colleague Helen Gahagan Douglas of California depicts a person sitting slouched far down in a chair, his head in one hand; “He looked the picture of boredom, slumped in his chair with his eyes half-closed,” she says. And he seldom stayed long. “He never spoke in the House, you know, except on rare, rare occasions.” And, Mrs. Douglas adds, “He didn’t spend much time listening to others in the House.” He might sit for a while, “the picture of boredom,” and “then suddenly he’d jump to his feet, nervous … restless, as if he couldn’t bear it another minute. He might stop to speak to some member on the floor of the House or to the Speaker. … Then he’d leave.” As he departed, “loping off the floor with that great stride of his as though he was on some Texas plain,” she says, “he always gave the impression of someone in a hurry.”

The “Mavericks” did a lot of fighting on the floor. When Johnson arrived in Washington, they expected him to enroll in their ranks—a not unnatural expectation, since they had read about this man who had “shouted Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt,” and had won by supporting the President on the Supreme Court-packing issue. Roosevelt was their hero and the President’s causes their causes, and Maverick had assured them that this young man whom he said he knew well held the same views as they. In fact, Johnson enrolled for a time—for several weeks, he attended the dinners at Renkel’s. But then he stopped attending, and the Mavericks found that if he held their views, he would not argue for them. Not that he would argue against them. Says one of them, Edouard V. M. Izac of California: “He just simply was not especially interested in general legislation that came to the floor of the House. Some of us were on the floor all the time, fighting for liberal causes. But he stayed away from the floor, and while he was there, he was very, very silent.” And Izac’s evaluation—which is echoed by others among Johnson’s colleagues—is documented, quite dramatically, by the record of Johnson’s participation in House discussions and debates. The record is almost non-existent. Whole years went by in which Johnson did not rise even once to make a point of order, or any other point, not to ask or answer a question, not to support or attack a bill under discussion, not to participate, by so much as a single word, in an entire year’s worth of floor proceedings in the House.
*

His attitude toward comments that would be made public through the press was equally notable. He was not one of the Congressmen who sought out reporters to comment on some national issue. On the contrary, he would go to unusual lengths to avoid having to reveal his opinion. A reporter would be standing in a corridor, soliciting comments from passing Congressmen. Johnson would start to turn into that corridor, see the reporter, whirl on his heel, and hastily walk back the way he had come.

If he didn’t fight in public, would he fight in private? Some of the most effective Congressmen, while rather silent in the well of the House or on the floor (although the
Congressional
Record indicates that few were as silent as Johnson), are active in the aisle at the rear of the House Chamber, or in its cloakrooms. Standing in that aisle, one foot up on the brass rail that separates the aisle from the members’ seats, these “brass-railers” quietly buttonhole fellow members to argue for or against legislation.

Lyndon Johnson was not one of these Congressmen. Not that he was silent in the rear aisle or in the cloakrooms. He was friendly, gregarious—could, his fellow members agree, even be said to talk a lot.

But he didn’t say anything. Congressmen now observed what classmates had once observed: that, while he might be speaking very volubly during a conversation on a controversial issue, he wouldn’t take a position on the issue—or, indeed, say anything of a substantive nature. He tried to avoid specifics, and if pinned down, would say what the other person wanted to hear. He did it very well—as discussions with his congressional colleagues reveal. If the Congressman was a liberal, he believes that Lyndon Johnson, as a Congressman, was a liberal. Says the staunchly liberal Mrs. Douglas: “We agreed on so many of the big issues. He basically agreed with the liberals.” But if the Congressman was a conservative, he says that Lyndon Johnson, as a Congressman, was a conservative. Says the reactionary upstate New York Republican Sterling Cole: “Politically, if we disagreed, it wasn’t apparent to me. Not at all.” Great issues came before the House in these years; 1938, for example, was the year in which it was embroiled in bitter battles over President Roosevelt’s proposal to reorganize the executive branch and create new Cabinet departments to facilitate the meeting of new social needs—“the dictator bill,” angry Congressmen called it. 1938 was also the year of the great battle over the wages-and-hours bill, the proposal to free American workers from the bondage of the early industrial age. It was the year of the battle over the proposal to extend and make more meaningful Social Security benefits. And, most significantly of all, 1938, the year in which the New Deal had to face its own recession, was the year of the great debate in Washington over whether to fight that recession with mammoth new spending programs, or whether a balanced budget—the balanced budget which the President himself so devoutly wished for—was more important: an issue whose resolution was to affect the fundamentals of American life for years, if not decades, to come. Lyndon Johnson did not participate—neither with legislation nor with debate, not on the well of the House or on the floor or in its cloakrooms or committees—in these battles. He had shouted “Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt” to get to Congress; in Congress, he shouted nothing, said nothing—stood for nothing. Not only was he not in the van of any cause, he was not in the ranks, either. Lyndon Johnson would later be called a legislative genius. A legislator is a maker of laws. During the eleven years that Lyndon Johnson served in the law-making body that is the House of Representatives, few of its 435 members had less to do with the making of its laws than he.

Some of the more astute of his colleagues felt that they understood the reason for his silence. Mrs. Douglas, who spent a lot of time with him, speculates on his reasons for acting this way. One that she suggests is “caution”: “Was it just caution? Just that he didn’t want to have a lot of his words come back at him—a more cautious way of working in the Congress than that of many others? … He was witty, he would tell stories, he was humorous. But he was always aware of being responsible for what he said. He was always aware that what he said might be repeated or remembered—
even years later. And he didn’t want someone to come back years later, and say, ‘I remember when you said …’” Watching him talk so much—and say so little—Mrs. Douglas began to realize, she says, that Lyndon Johnson was “strong.” In Washington, she says, “everyone tried to find out where you stood. But he had great inner control. He could talk so much—and no one ever knew exactly where he stood.”

Even years later
. By keeping silent, Johnson might, of course, simply be following a proven path to power in the House of Representatives. It was the path that Rayburn had taken—and Rayburn was in power now.

But they were not on the same path. Power in the House was the power Rayburn wanted; the lone chair atop the triple dais was the goal that iron-willed man had set for himself as a boy in a barn. That was his only goal; he had been asked once to run for the Senate, all but assured of success. He had refused to make the race. Although the immense power he wielded as Majority Leader and, after September, 1940, as Speaker, would have allowed him, had he wished to do so, to wield considerable statewide power in Texas, he declined every opportunity to do so. The only interest he ever displayed in the NYA was to obtain Lyndon Johnson’s appointment as its head; the only interest he ever displayed in the PWA was to have it build a dam—the Denison Dam—in his own district; he displayed no interest at all in other statewide organizations the New Deal was creating in Texas—the WPA, for example, or the Rural Electrification Administration; most of the big businessmen who wielded so much statewide power in Texas couldn’t even get an appointment with him on their trips to Washington. Only the House itself mattered.

But power in the House was not the power at which Johnson was aiming; the triple dais was not high enough for him. The difference between the aims of the older man and the younger had been demonstrated even before Johnson became a Congressman, when, as Kleberg’s secretary, he had placed himself at the service of businessmen who were not from Kleberg’s district. Had not practically his first move as Congressman—made while he was still in his hospital bed—been to keep the statewide NYA under his control? And now were not the letters from his office going out not just to addresses in his district but to addresses in Houston, and Dallas, and El Paso as well? A House seat had been an indispensable staging area on the long road he saw before him; he had no choice but to come back a Congressman. But the House seat was only a staging area; it was not the destination at the end of that long road. He had needed the seat; he didn’t want to stay in it long. So his silence was not for the sake of power in the House; if he was keeping deliberately silent, it was for a different reason. Who could foresee the turnings of so long a road? No matter how safe a particular stand might seem now, no matter how politically wise, that stand might come back to haunt him someday. No matter what he said now, no
matter how intelligent a remark might now seem, he might one day be sorry he had made it.

And so he said nothing.

H
IS STANDING
on Capitol Hill—outside the Texas delegation—was, moreover, not improving.

For a while, he was very popular with his fellow Congressmen, for the same reasons he was popular with the young New Dealers: not only because of his charm, his storytelling ability, his desire to ingratiate and his skill in doing so, but because, in George Brown’s words, “He was a leader of men. Johnson had the knack of always appealing to a fellow about someone he didn’t like. If he was talking to Joe, and Joe didn’t like Jim, he’d say he didn’t like Jim, too—that was his leadership, that was his knack.” And, of course, for a while, congressional liberals thought he was one of them, while congressional conservatives thought he was one of
them
.