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LBJ III pg. 592

 

"Steinberg recalls, “was outraged when he learned he would be only one of four men featured in the article.” Wheeling his chair so close to Steinberg’s that their knees touched, and leaning forward so that their noses were only inches apart, he pressed the reporter back at an uncomfortable angle, seized one of his lapels to hold him steady, and asked loudly, “Why don’t you do a whole big article on me alone?” "

 

"Steinberg recalls that when “I smiled at the obvious impossibility of Johnson’s ever becoming President,” Johnson said, “You can build up to it by saying how I run both houses of Congress right now.” 

 

"Other journalists were aware of the same ambition. After an off-the-record conversation with Johnson, a member of Time magazine’s Washington bureau informed his editors in New York that “despite his Southern origins,” Johnson “is interested in the Number 1 spot.”"

 

"The South’s great stronghold was Capitol Hill, the keys to the stronghold were the House and Senate committee chairmanships, the southerners would hold those chairmanships so long as the Democrats held the majority in Congress—but holding the majority wasn’t going to be easy."

 

"“He had the look of an eagle. There was strength there. When he walked into a room, instantly you knew here was a man you could trust. You knew from his demeanor, the way he moved: that quiet projection of authority, authority in the sense of knowing what they’re about, who they are. And when he spoke—Russell’s intellect was very impressive.”

 

“It’s one thing to know something academically; it’s another to have it hit you in the face.”

 

 

LBJ III pg. 601

 

"This bitterness was to have a significant effect on Lyndon Johnson’s career. It made Russell more determined"

 

"But by the end of 1952, it was becoming clear to a number of these people that Richard Russell had settled on the southerner it was to be.
Russell’s growing affection for Lyndon Johnson had now been cemented by gratitude—gratitude for Johnson’s help in his campaign. “He [Johnson] worked very earnestly in my behalf,” Russell would say. “He did everything in the world—everything he could…. He really meant it when he supported me in ’52.”

 

"In order to attain his great goal, Johnson would have to make the party and the nation stop thinking of him as a southerner."

 

And so did the personality of the Republican candidate, about whom British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, no fan, had once remarked: “He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once.”

 

"But Dwight Eisenhower, America’s greatest military hero, who had smiled at the American people—and promised them “I shall go to Korea”—was swept into office with 55 percent of the vote, and 442 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 89. "

 

And this hard fact created for Johnson the most difficult of dilemmas. Being linked with the South would keep him from rising beyond the Senate. Yet being linked with the South was the only way in which he could rise within the Senate."

 

"DURING THE 1952 CAMPAIGN, the Red Scare and the inability to win in Korea stirred up the class and ethnic resentments that were never far below the surface of the American electorate. Republican charges that the Democrats were “soft on Communism” and that in fact the Roosevelt-Truman years had been “twenty years of treason,”"

 

“The guy must never sleep,” Kennedy said. Kennedy’s puzzlement over the call disappeared when, a few hours later, the final Arizona results were reported. With the Democratic leadership suddenly vacant, “Johnson wasn’t wasting any time in courting Kennedy’s support,” O’Brien was to explain"

 

"A MERE MAJORITY was not what Lyndon Johnson had in mind, however. Becoming Leader with purely conservative support and the liberals solidly opposed to him would exacerbate the hostility between the two factions which had hamstrung past Democratic Leaders. Only by creating a new unity among the party’s senators could he avoid the fate of McFarland and Lucas and Barkley. Besides, were he to win the leadership almost entirely with southern votes, the press would identify him as the candidate of the South. Lyndon Johnson needed not a simple majority, but a big majority—one that included enough liberals so that he would not be tagged with that label so destructive to his future hopes.
Such a majority was going to be very difficult to achieve, Johnson saw"

 

As many as twenty senators might line up behind a liberal candidate for Leader. So Lyndon Johnson began campaigning himself, telephoning other senators, listening, trading, selling.
Some of the selling was on philosophical grounds—"

 

And some was done on grounds more pragmatic. 

LBJ III pg. 613

 

"To every senator who telephoned Russell to ask him to take the leadership, Russell replied that he didn’t want it, and that he wanted Johnson to have it. And these calls did not come only from southern senators, for Russell’s influence was not confined to them. "

 

"Murray had long been a courageous fighter for the New Deal, but his mind was no longer as strong as his heart, and more and more it dwelt in the past. “He had perfect memory of everything that took place under Franklin Roosevelt, but not as much more recent,” an aide says. But he was still capable, at least on most occasions, of holding his own on the Senate floor. And he was still a great favorite with the press, a noted New Deal “name.”"

 

"But Johnson did not want any vote at the caucus at all. A vote was a fight, and a fight not only meant newspaper stories, in which he would be labeled the southern candidate, but also an increase in tensions that would later make unity harder to achieve. And of course it meant there would not be unanimity, the unanimity that was psychologically so important to him that “anything less than one hundred percent was a great blow.”

 

So he made more calls. What Lyndon Johnson said during these calls we don’t know. Was he appealing to these men on personal grounds—playing on their affection for him or on their admiration for his abilities? Was his approach more pragmatic: was he delicately or forthrightly reminding them—with the help of Jenkins’ files—of favors he had done them in the past, hinting—or speaking bluntly—about favors he could do for them in the future? We don’t know. We only know that some of the calls were to senators"

 

"But Humphrey was trying to bargain with a Lyndon Johnson who now, for the first time in their relationship, held all the cards. He had little patience with them. After letting them talk—“briefly,” to use Humphrey’s word—he told them he wasn’t going to bargain with them. “He wasn’t in the mood to make concessions.” In fact, he said, the talking was over. “I’ve got the votes in the caucus, and I’m not going to talk to you.” And then, “politely but curtly,” he “dismissed us.” And then, as soon as Humphrey had returned to his own office from “that awful meeting,” Johnson telephoned him and told him to come back alone—and when he returned, Humphrey found himself in the presence of a different Lyndon Johnson from any he had seen before, not “quiet and gentle” but,in a take-charge, no-nonsense mood,” a Johnson whose tone was “stern” as he showed Humphrey that he had not yet fully absorbed the political lessons he had given him, and that he had still more lessons to learn."

 

"Russell’s notes indicate the points he wished to make about Johnson. “Courage,” the notes say. “Character. Ability. Experience. Tolerance. LJ is Democrat. Record of party loyalty in Congress. In elections tried by fire. FDR. Supported party programs not slavishly but because believed. High degree of courage. Tempered with judgment. Against rash decisions. Patience and tolerance. No secret differences. No peer as conciliator. Complete confidence in his ability both to serve the party to which we adhere and the country and people we seek to serve.”

 

He had seen that Johnson was not a man to forgive and forget, to let bygones be bygones, to tolerate opposition. He had seen in Johnson a determination to make opponents pay for their opposition, and pay dearly. And that last, “stern,” interview—in that new, “take-charge,” tone—had reinforced that insight; he had seen a side of Lyndon Johnson he had not seen previously, and an element of fear, of intimidation, had been added to their relationship, as is revealed by the rest of Humphrey’s explanation for wanting to dispense with a formal vote: “Number Two, I knew that Johnson would keep book. I mean, when that roll call came he’d watch to see who each one of them was.” Whatever the explanation for Humphrey’s motion, however, it gave Johnson not merely unity but unanimity.
After the caucus, Johnson summoned Humphrey to 231, and told him to come alone: “Don’t come down here with any committees.”

 

But, the new Leader said, “I don’t want you bringing in a lot of these other fellows. When you’ve got something that your people want, you come see me. I’ll talk to you. I don’t want to talk to these other fellows. Now you go back and tell your liberal friends that you’re the one to talk to me and that if they’ll talk through you as their leader we can get some things done.”

What Johnson was offering Humphrey now was power—the first power Humphrey had had in the Senate. Those “other fellows” would be told that if they wanted something from their party’s Leader (and of course they would all, at one time or another, want something from the Leader), they would have to ask Humphrey to approach him on their behalf.

Humphrey understood the offer, and its significance for him. “I would be the bridge from Johnson to my liberal colleagues.” He would hold the power only at Johnson’s pleasure. “I had become his conduit and their spokesman not by their election, but by his appointment.” As long as he and Johnson got along—but only as long as he and Johnson got along—he would keep that power

 

 “I knew clearly by then that I had no chance of influencing legislation in any major way without the help of the … Leader. With his influence, I might get the necessary votes for legislation I was interested in.” But, as time would make clear, he had accepted it also in his own interest. For whatever reason, the offer was accepted, and in accepting it, Humphrey was in effect pledging his allegiance to Lyndon Johnson.
The significance of this pledge for Johnson’s prospects as Leader can hardly be exaggerated. He had needed to unify his party, which meant bringing the liberals to his side. Now he had succeeded in bringing the liberals’ leader to his side, in binding him there quite firmly."

 

And publicity had not in fact been a major factor in his advancement within the Senate. If the Douglases and Humphreys had chosen the outside route, he had chosen the inside route: the Senate route. And the key to his advancement had fit the pattern of his entire life: as he had done at San Marcos and in the House of Representatives, he had identified the one man who had the power that could best help him, had courted that man, had won his support, and through that support, had been given the opportunity to attain the position he sought. But if that was how he had been given the opportunity in the Senate, he had made the most of the opportunity, by following not the pattern of his previous life—the pushing, the grabbing—but rather the pattern of the Senate. The work that had been most significant in his Senate advancement had been quiet chats behind closed office doors; he had concentrated not on the podium but on the cloakroom and the Marble Room. It was in these private precincts of the Senate that he spent most of his time and energy."

 

"Now that he had the leadership, there were, also with remarkable speed, hints of new mannerisms. Hubert Humphrey had noticed a new tone: “take-charge, no-nonsense, stern.”"

 

"The next day, the Senate convened before the usual packed galleries of opening day, and reporters in the Press Gallery, looking down at the new Democratic Leader at the front-row center-aisle desk, saw a new Lyndon Johnson. He wasn’t so much sitting in his chair as sprawling in it, sprawling, as Evans and Novak were to write, “almost full length … legs crossed, laughing and joking … the picture of self-satisfaction.”"

LBJ III p. 614

 

"NOW THAT LYNDON JOHNSON had become the Leader of the Democratic senators, his personal ambitions were bound up with that divided and disorganized band. The bond was unbreakable: for him to use the leadership as a stepping-stone to his real goal, he would have to be an effective Leader—and he could be an effective Leader only to the extent that his Senate Democrats were an effective party"

 

"every recent Democratic Leader had been humiliated, made a figure of public ridicule. And this institution had been insulated against change. Not only did a Senate Leader have little power—“nothing to promise them, nothing to threaten them with”—to cajole or force his party’s senators into line behind him, the Senate’s rules and customs had been designed to prevent him from acquiring any."

 

"The natural human reluctance to surrender power would be reinforced in the southerners’ case by their devotion to the institution and the region that were both sacred to them. Since their power was derived from the Senate’s rules and precedents and constitutional prerogatives, bound up in the body’s very fabric, any reduction in their power would entail drastic change in an institution they were determined to keep unchanged. "

 

"And reinforcing that determination also was the fact that it was their power that made the Senate the South’s stronghold, so that any reduction would also weaken the South. They would never give up their power voluntarily. Nor could they be forced to give it up—it was fortified far too strongly for any Leader to take it away. Lyndon Johnson’s only hope of obtaining the power that the southerners now held was to persuade them to give it to him, and he would be able to do that only if they didn’t realize that they were giving it to him—if he was able to conceal from them the implications of what he was doing.

Difficult though this would be, however, what would be even harder than getting the power would be what he would have to do with it once he got it. Power in the Senate might be in southern hands, but it was northern hands that held the prize at which he was really aiming. He could reach it only with northern support, and to get that support, he would have to make the Democratic Party in the Senate more responsive to northern wishes, would have to advance liberal causes. He would have to use the power that he took from the South on behalf of causes that the South hated."

LBJ III pg. 614

 

"But if senatorial power was the South’s to give, the South also had the power to take it back. Even if he succeeded in enlarging a Leader’s powers, the South not only would still hold its committee chairmanships but would still command a majority in the Democratic caucus. The South had made a Leader; the South would be able to unmake a Leader. If in furthering the causes of the North, he antagonized the South, the South could, in a very few minutes—in the time it took to take a vote in a caucus—make sure that he had no power to further anybody’s causes, including his own. So he couldn’t antagonize the South. Not only would he have to take power from the southern senators without them realizing what he was taking, he would have to use that power without them realizing how he was using it.

This would be very difficult, for deceiving the southern senators meant deceiving men who were expert parliamentarians, expert legislators, masters of their craft."

 

 

LBJ III pg. 617

 

"Of all the barriers between a Senate Leader and genuine power the highest was the seniority system. The committee seats so vital to senators’ careers were assigned according to that fixed rule, so a Leader had no discretion over the assigning, no power to use committee seats as instruments of threat or reward. And because the system enabled the southern senators, with their greater seniority, to monopolize seats on the better committees, it exacerbated the resentment of excluded northerners and thus sharpened the hostility between the party’s two wings and made it all but impossible for a Democratic Leader to unite the party behind him. In addition, not only did the seniority system keep the Democratic Leader from being as strong as he might be, it kept the Democratic Party in the Senate from being as strong as it might be: filling vacant seats on the basis of longevity rather than expertise or ability meant that the party didn’t make full use of that expertise or ability. But no Senate custom was more sacred than the seniority system, the system that “the Senate would no more abandon than it would abandon its name.” Behind that door, over that telephone, Lyndon Johnson, in his first act as Leader, was trying to change the seniority system."

 

"By tradition, moves on the chessboard would be governed almost entirely by seniority. Into the four major committee seats would move the most senior of the senators desiring them. Their moves would vacate four places."

 

"But for generation after generation, seniority had almost invariably been the governing factor. If more than one senator wanted to move into a vacant space, the one with the most seniority was the one who was allowed to move."

 

"Often, for long minutes, the only words Lyndon Johnson spoke were words to encourage the man on the other end of the wire to keep talking—so that he could better determine what might bend the man to his purpose, what arguments might work."

 

"Lyndon Johnson would stand or sit that way for a long time, motionless, intent, listening—pouring himself into that listening, all his being focused on what the other man was saying, and what the man wasn’t saying; on what he knew about the other man, and on what he didn’t know and was trying to find out.
And then, when he had decided what arguments might work, Lyndon Johnson would begin to talk, and as he did so, he would begin to circle the desk, prowling restlessly around it in front of the fireplace that was so delicate alongside his tall, burly frame. His voice would be soft, calm, rational, reasonable, warm, intimate, friendly, telling the stories, explaining the strategy, shoving in his whole stack. And whether he was listening or talking, the room was filled with Lyndon Johnson’s determination, with the passion and purpose radiating from him. Then the call would be over. "

 

"HE SOLD WITH LOGIC—some very unpleasant logic"

 

Excellent demonstration of an average day on the Eastern Front: Winter 43/44, southern fronts

 

- Assault reserves deployed Elite Jager Infantry (Mountain), crack Flak/Artillery, Assault Gun battalion/Brigade

 

-Possibilty: Short range attack secures position through coup de' main.  Assault Guns, Artillery, and heavy Flak guns blast and disorient enemy.  Jager  Infantry moves in and occupies.  Soviet prisoners sent the rear.

 

 

 

 

LBJ III p.g 672

 

"“I sat there and watched one of those really stellar performances of persuasion that he was so capable of with the dean of the Senate…. Walter George was still a formidable guy. He was getting a little old but…
“I sat there and witnessed Johnson … persuade Walter George that he should not… favor the Bricker Amendment. It was a rapid-fire, almost uninterrupted monologue. It wasn’t a give-and-take discussion. It was the Senator expressing just about every point of view that he thought would be effective…. Finally, after long discussion, Senator George … agreed to introduce a substitute for the Bricker Amendment.”"

 

" In these matters, the defeat of the Old Guard was accomplished at least in part—and not in small part—through Johnson’s maneuvers. Through them, he increased his party’s popularity and his personal power. But through them also, he helped defend and make possible a continuation of a foreign policy that had produced the United Nations, the Greek and Turkish alliances, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the strategy of containment—the policy that had shaped the postwar world. "

LBJ III pg, 691

 

 

William White wrote: “There was a time, only a few months ago,” when many Republican senators “snubbed” McCarthy—when they “quietly arranged matters in their daily routine so as never to pass close to the desk of their colleague, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. With a seeming casualness they avoided any public friendliness…. The desk of Senator McCarthy oWisconsin is not, these days, avoided very often by his Republican associates. Senator McCarthy is, by any standards, the most politically powerful first-term senator in this Congress."

 

The fight was also one for which he had little stomach—for Lyndon Johnson had read not only the polls but the man, and he was very, very wary of the man. “Joe will go that extra mile to destroy you,” he said privately." 

 

. While Johnson did not have to worry about re-election, however, he had to worry about losing the future support of the oil barons, many of whom were his financial supporters as well as McCarthy’s—and whose financial support he would need for a presidential bid; in moving against McCarthy, he had to walk a very thin line so as not to alienate them"

 

"What Johnson said he was waiting for began to occur in April, 1952, in George Reedy’s opinion because McCarthy failed “to realize the fundamental toughness of the senior members of the establishment. It had never occurred to him that politicians who had survived two or more Senate contests must know something about political warfare. They had said nothing about him and he thought they were keeping silent out of fear. That was a serious misunderstanding.”"

 

" “the Hayden episode really sealed Joe McCarthy’s doom although it did not come until many many months later.”

 

Despite the mounting toll of McCarthy victims month after month, Johnson had waited to move against him until it suited his purposes to do so. He had acted not as a mobilizer or enunciator of opinion against the unprincipled demagogue who was using the Senate as his platform, but only as a coordinator by which that opinion, already formed, could be expressed.He had had his reasons. If he had moved against McCarthy too early, he might have lost—and increased McCarthy’s strength. 

 

" Feeling, moreover, that “Joe will go that extra mile to destroy you,” and that McCarthy might have been made aware, through the Texas oilmen who were his allies, of damaging information about his finances, he was very wary about taking him on until he had been sufficiently discredited that an attack from him would not cause as much damage as it had previously. If he had played too prominent a role in the opposition to McCarthy he might have alienated the oil barons who were McCarthy’s principal financial supporters, and thus jeopardized the future financial support he himself would need. For all these reasons, Lyndon Johnson didn’t move against Joe McCarthy until the time had come when moving wouldn’t hurt him, and when he did move, he stayed sufficiently behind the scenes so that his own alliance with the Texas reactionaries would not be weakened. Johnson biographer Robert Dallek acknowledges that “Johnson’s role in ending McCarthy’s influence should not be exaggerated.” In the McCarthy affair, Lyndon Johnson had demonstrated his legislative skill—and had demonstrated how this skill was subordinated to pragmatism."

 

 

 

*The Great speed and shameless manner in which people change their behavior towards a person once they have something of great value to them.

 

Bullies transform into boot lickers, asking for favors.

 

For two years, Johnson had had the power of a Minority Leader—but only of a Minority Leader—over scheduling: over determining the order of business on the floor, over deciding when a bill vital to a senator’s career would be allowed to come to the floor, over deciding if the bill would come to the floor. He had been able to make suggestions or requests—but only suggestions or requests—to the Majority Leader about holding back one bill or speeding up another, about coordinating, and making rational, the arrival of legislation on the Calendar and on the floor. His party’s minority status had restricted him to monitoring bills’ progress; he couldn’t direct it. Now he had the power of a Majority Leader, who had the privilege of first recognition, who could use that privilege to schedule, who alone could say, and have his words assented to: “I move that the Senate proceed to the consideration of…”

 

He would be able to play a role greater than any previous Majority Leader in determining the schedule on which bills emerged from committee, the schedule on which they were placed on the Calendar, the schedule on which they were called off the Calendar and brought to the floor. Awareness of this new reality came quickly, as is shown by the new tone in the letters he began receiving from his colleagues almost from the moment that he became Majority Leader:

 

"He would be able to play a role greater than any previous Majority Leader not merely over the scheduling of legislation but over its content."

LBJ III pg. 700

 

" His three aides would ask a committee’s staff about Democratic bills—who was objecting? why were they objecting? Then Johnson’s aides would go to the senators involved: ask what would satisfy them, work out possible compromises. Then Johnson himself would telephone or visit, or summon, the senators: reason with them, cajole or threaten them in private—persuade them to accept the compromise.

 

The content of legislation still before the Standing Committees was therefore being altered—altered sometimes in extremely subtle ways—not only by those committees but by the Leader. More and more, during those two years, proposed Democratic legislation had become the product of bargains, trade-offs, rewordings, of additions, excisions, that had been made not by a committee or subcommittee chairman but by him. More and more, it had become the product of temporary alliances—often very complex alliances—that he had woven together. And, more and more, since the bargaining process was not only so complex and detailed but so private only the Leader knew the trade-offs between senators which had been made, or rejected—and the reasons why they had been made or rejected.

 

Sometimes, the persuasion used involved some other, unrelated issue; in exchange for a senator’s agreement on one bill, Johnson might have promised the senator something he wanted on a different measure—perhaps one that was being considered not by his committee but by some other committee. Previously, the committees had been separate, proudly independent baronies; there were threads—slender but strong—between them now. And only the Leader knew all of those threads, and how they had been tied together. Only he knew the promises that had been made, the threats that had been withdrawn.

 

The myriad legislative matters of a single Senate session made up a vast tapestry in which a thousand threads were interwoven in a complex, intricate pattern; only Lyndon Johnson knew that pattern. When a senator demanded a change in a bill, only Johnson could tell him why such a change was possible or not possible. And often, since the reasons might be very private to the other senators involved, the senator demanding the change could not even learn if what Lyndon Johnson was telling him was true."

 

"“Now, for the first time, you had a Leader who’s going to keep it [a bill] intact…. They [the chairmen] went along [with letting Johnson manage their bills] because by letting him take over the management of the bills, they knew they would get what they wanted,” Riddick says. “Out of loose consideration of legislation was emerging leadership control [of legislation]—control by Lyndon Johnson. Johnson just gradually pulled the management [of bills] out of the hands of the chairmen. They were surrendering their powers—not intentionally, but it was a growth process. There was gradually growing an attitude, ‘Let Lyndon do it.’ You don’t realize you’re losing power, you don’t realize that things are changing. You think the Leader is only helping you. But the first thing you know, he’s integrating everything. He knows everything about every bill, he can change one thing for another with different senators. Things were changing.”"

 

"He praised them publicly at every opportunity, telling one reporter, “We have the master craftsmen in the legislative field in the Democratic Party,” noting to another that these chairmen “have been twenty-five years in Congress, on the average. Hell, every one of ’em’s an old pro.” In private, he was as obsequious, as fawning, as ever. “He didn’t rant and rave at the Harry Byrds of the world,” Senator George Smathers of Florida would say. “Oh no, he was passive, and so submissive, and so condescending, you couldn’t believe it! I’ve seen him kiss Harry Byrd’s ass until it was disgusting: ‘Senator, how about so-and-so? wouldn’t you like to do this? can’t we do this for you?’”"

 

"But with the Big Bulls solidly behind him, the addition of his new powers made the support of the rest of the Democrats less important to him; they needed him much more than he needed any one of them. For the first time since college and the NYA, Lyndon Johnson had direct power over other men. "

 

" Throughout his two years as Minority Leader, despite the power over committee assignments that had been ceded to him by the Steering Committee, he had, in making and explaining controversial assignments, hidden behind that committee, telling disappointed or angry colleagues that it was the committee that decided, that he was only one of its members. Though that veil had become increasingly transparent, he had nonetheless kept it in place, and to some extent it had softened the harsh reality of his wielding of power. Now the veil was allowed to fall.

 

A number of younger senators had accumulated sufficient seniority to expect seats on major committees, seats for which they were well qualified—in some cases, extremely well qualified. But their committee assignments were not going to be made on the basis of seniority or of qualifications. Their assignments were going to be made on the basis of their personal allegiance to Lyndon Johnson. And Johnson let them know it

LBJ III pg. 714

 

"Because of Lyndon Johnson’s unprecedented intervention in committee work, the wording of the bills was often to an unprecedented extent a creation of the Majority Leader. He would previously have acted as a mediator between individual senators, or between blocs of senators, who were in conflict over an issue. Once the conflict would have been thrashed out on the Senate floor, but now Johnson would meet alone with each of the senators, or get them together privately, explore their differences to find areas of agreement, and finally would ask, and if asking did not work, would urge, and if urging did not work, would demand, and, finally, if all else failed, would use his raw power to threaten the senators to force them to consent (and to produce the consent of their allies) to the compromise he proposed—would, one way or another, arrange some wording on which they could agree, and for which he felt he could line up a majority of the Senate for passage. He would have been able to do this because of the power—the power of Ray burn, the power of campaign funds, the power of scheduling, the power of office space—with which he had previously surrounded himself. "

 

"The unanimous consent agreements were a culmination of all the powers that Lyndon Johnson had created over scheduling, over the content of bills, over the managing of bills, over committee assignments. The agreements were made possible—senators had no choice but to accept them—because of the combining of these internal powers with the powers he brought to bear from outside the Senate: the power of Rayburn, the power of money. And the agreements cemented his power, made it formal, as formal as the wordings of the Senate orders in which the agreements were embodied. "

 

 

LBJ III pg. 719

 

"MAJORITY LEADER LYNDON JOHNSON may have been limiting debate on the Senate floor; he was not eliminating speeches. He wanted speeches, and he wanted plenty of them, the longer the better. Speeches—which he, and his aides, and most journalists persisted in calling “debate”—had their uses for him. The Lyndon Johnson version of “debate,” however, was not at all what the Founding Fathers had intended."

 

"The Founders had envisioned debate—thoughtful discussion—as an indispensable part of the Senate’s main work. For Johnson, “debate” was a device to divert attention from the main work, and to buy time for him to do it. As George Reedy explains, “As long as somebody on the Senate floor is talking, the Senate cannot vote.” From the time he became Majority Leader, therefore, Johnson began using talk on the floor as what Reedy calls “a diversionary device, which enabled him to stay out of the spotlight while horse-trading,” as a smoke screen for the maneuvering that was taking place in the cloakrooms, or, more and more, in his top-floor Capitol office, as a method of stalling the Senate to give him time to work out his deals.
There were of course senators who liked—loved—to talk, and he used them."

 

“Under Johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy,” Paul Douglas was to say. “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."

 

THIS CHANGE IN THE NATURE of the Senate had a further implication. It was offstage, of course—in secret—that Lyndon Johnson himself liked to work. Debate was about goals, issues, about “principled things.” “It is the politician’s task to pass legislation, not to sit around saying principled things,” he said, repeating that credo over and over. "

 

“He [Johnson] regarded public discussion as dangerous to the conduct of government…. He was absolutely convinced that achievement was possible only through careful negotiations in quiet backrooms where public passions did not intrude.”

 

"Some of his assistants understood this fact. “Discussions of goals and ethics were merely exercises in posturing, and he had no patience with such goings-on,” Reedy was to write."

 

, “he had zero tolerance for disagreement.” He abhorred dissent. He had no patience with discussions of goals and ethics. Even the loyal McPherson was to acknowledge that “His constant pressure for unanimous consent agreements…often came close to harassment.”

 

"During his first six years in the Senate, he had concealed certain aspects of his character, adapting his personality to the institutional personality of the Senate, but now, in the seventh year, he was forcing the Senate to adapt its personality to his."

LBJ III pg. 723

 

 “You didn’t get any more than Lyndon Johnson wanted to tell you,” a journalist says. “Never. I don’t think, in all those years, he ever slipped up. He knew exactly what he wanted to say—and that was what he said. Period. I never felt in all those years that he ever lost control [of one of those press conferences in the well]. He was always in charge.”

 

Part of the aura that surrounded Johnson as he stood front-row center in the Senate Chamber was, as some of the reporters acknowledge, “the buildup, the accrual—the knowledge we had of what this guy had done, of what this guy could do. Of what he wanted to be.” It was an aura of triumphs won, of triumphs anticipated. But the aura was more than reputation. “Power just emanated from him,” another of the reporters says. “There was that look he gave. There was the way he held his head. Even if you didn’t know who he was, you would know this was a guy to be reckoned with. You would feel: don’t cross this guy. He was so big! And he would look around the Chamber—it was like he was saying, ‘This is my turf.’” 

 

"And it was Lyndon Johnson who gave the Senate its schedule—in a tone of authority that let the Senate know that it was he, and he alone, who was establishing that schedule."

 

"But at the slightest hint that some other member of the Senate was daring to interject himself, no matter how slightly, in the process, Johnson reminded him who was in charge."

 

 

LBJ III pg. 772

 

"Now Lyndon Johnson was in charge of that floor. One moment he would be sitting down beside Kerr or Anderson on one of the couches in the rear of the Chamber, the next, he was up buttonholing a senator who had just entered, joking with him, draping an arm around his shoulders, and then talking confidentially to him, bending close to his ear. Then, seeing another senator come in, he would be off to greet him, crossing the long Chamber. He would be throwing himself into the chair next to Richard Russell and talking with him out of the side of his mouth, or sitting down next to Walter George, and, leaning forward, be bringing him up to date on the activities of the day, or, jumping up, would be heading across to another senator.

 

Sometimes he would throw himself down in his own chair, and, stretching his long legs out into the center aisle, or crossing them, would lean far back into the chair and slouch down until he seemed to be resting on the nape of his neck and the small of his back. He might sit like that, lost in thought, for several minutes. And then, having arrived at some decision, he would lunge up out of the chair and stride rapidly over to some senator and begin talking to him.

 

Even standing still, Lyndon Johnson was somehow always in motion, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, restlessly shifting his shoulders, one big hand plunging into a pants pocket to jingle coins or the keys on his big key ring"

 

"“And even if he was just standing there jingling the coins, you couldn’t take your eyes off him,” says Robert Barr of U.S. News & World Report. “If you were a spectator and you didn’t know who he was, you would wonder [who he was]—because of this unbelievable restless energy that emanated from him.” The Senate Chamber which had been so sleepy and slow, was now, suddenly, a room filled with energy and passion."

 

"SOME OF THE TOUCHES that Johnson brought to the role of Leader were merely for dramatic effect. “Often these shows were carefully orchestrated and perhaps even a shade melodramatic,” Bobby Baker was to recall. “He [Johnson] was not only a fine actor but a fine director and producer as well. He delighted in striding about the Senate floor, conferring and frowning and giving the impression of great anxiety, while the packed press gallery and the visitors’ galleries buzzed and hummed with tensions, even though he knew—and I was one of the few people who knew—that he had three decisive votes hidden in some Capitol nook and would produce them at the most effective moment.

 

The Republicans would snort at losing another cliff-hanger, the newspapers would trumpet a new Johnson miracle, and Lyndon Johnson would go off to a fresh Cutty Sark and soda to laugh and laugh.” But, Baker was also to say, “I see nothing wrong” in such “trickeries…. Lyndon Johnson knew that the illusion of power was almost as important as real power itself, that, simply, the more powerful you appeared to be, the more powerful you became. It was one of the reasons for his great success.”"

 

"Lyndon Johnson didn’t wait until the bill reached the floor, or even until it reached the full Labor Committee. He began working instead on the subcommittee, where he had only seven senators to persuade, and he convinced them to report out a moderate bill calling for a one-dollar minimum wage and no broadening of coverage"

 

"

LBJ III pg. 784

 

*Work Habits

 

"Often the long black limousine would be pulling away from Thirtieth Place by eight o’clock, with Johnson in the back seat dictating to Mary Rather and leafing through the morning newspapers at the same time. And no matter how early he arrived in 231, the morning was never long enough for all the private meetings that senators had requested, for all the telephone calls that had to be made or answered. Every time Walter Jenkins appeared in the doorway of the inner office, more pages of the yellow legal pad he held in his hand would be filled with urgent requests for a moment of the Leader’s time. There were committee meetings at which he had to put in appearances. Afternoons were spent in the unremitting tension of the Chamber and the cloakroom, every minute seemingly filled with a task that couldn’t be postponed. Lunch would often be a hamburger, placed on his office desk by Mary or Ashton as he was talking to someone in person or on the telephone. "

 

Trying to cram everything in, he would run from place to place. 

 

"When the Senate recessed, at 6 p.m. or later, it was across the Capitol—often at a dogtrot—to the Board of Education, and then back to G-14, to put on the day’s events the spin he wanted for the voracious journalists waiting there. And before he went home, there would be the next day’s session to arrange. “It has become almost a commonplace for friends to receive telephone calls from him as late as ten o’clock at night and to find that he was still at his Capitol Office,” Robert Albright was to write. "

 

"And the nights were not for sleeping; in Walter Jenkins’ recollection, there was hardly one now during which his telephone did not ring at least once. And in other houses in quiet Washington neighborhoods, too, in the homes of senators as well as staffers, a phone would ring in the early-morning darkness and a man, jolted out of sleep, would reach groggily for the phone, to hear the Leader’s voice on the line.
The antidotes with which he tried to relieve the tension he took with a frenzied compulsiveness."

 

" He gave Baker a lecture. “Speechmaking didn’t count for anything when it came to passing bills, he said. What mattered was who had the votes…. ‘You want to hear a speech? I can get somebody to make any kind of speech you want to hear. What kind of speech do you want?…You want to hear a great speech about suffering humanity? I’ve got Hubert Humphrey back in the cloakroom. I’ve got Herbert Lehman. I’ve got Paul Douglas…. You want to hear about government waste? I can give you Harry Byrd….’”"

 

" Rayburn became worried. “He [Johnson] seemed very tense, seemed to want to talk politics all during dinner,” Symington was to say. “He was uptight.” Rayburn took the two senators home in his limousine, and after they dropped Johnson off, said to Symington, “He just can’t think, eat or drink anything except the problems he has as Majority Leader. He won’t relax.”

LBJ III pg. 809

 

"Can you find anything in the Preparedness Committee files that I could slip to Jack in a hurry and that would make him a pretty good story? … I think that we could make some real ‘hay’ with Jack”), and other means of influencing the press, including the orchestration of a “spontaneous” letter-writing campaign to try (unsuccessfully) to persuade Time magazine that Lyndon Johnson should be its “Man of the Year.” The planted stories began again"

 

"he advised her to allow them on the ranch instead of letting them “use their imaginations as to what happened."

 

The speech announced his program—he called it “A Program with a Heart” (get it?)—for the upcoming congressional session, a list of thirteen proposals which he said would be submitted to the Democratic Policy Committee “in the hope that they can be brought before the Senate, considered and acted upon by the Senate.” Twelve of the proposals were acceptable to liberals—broadening of Social Security coverage, increased federal funding of medical research, school construction, highways and housing, for example—including the one civil rights proposal that southerners would tolerate: a constitutional amendment to eliminate the poll tax. The thirteenth, listed as Number 7 because Johnson believed that if it was buried smack in the middle of the list it had its best chance to escape notice, was the price he was paying for the Texas conservatives’ support: “A natural gas bill that will preserve free enterprise.” 

 

"The private maneuvering behind the Senate scenes intensified, too. In late November, Estes Kefauver arrived at the ranch, where, on a hunting trip with Johnson, the Tennessean got a ten-point buck “right through the heart” at about three hundred paces with a rifle with a telescopic lens. Outwardly, all was friendliness but, unknown to Kefauver, Johnson was taking steps to deny him the position from which he was hoping to garner publicity during the upcoming Senate session."

 

"So caught up was Johnson in the race he was running now that, once again, as for most of his life, dates meant nothing to him; trying to set up a conference with Adlai Stevenson or his campaign manager, Tom Finnegan, he scribbled a note to Stevenson: “I’d like to see you or Finnegan [on] Dec. 25th.” If there was a reason that the December 25 page in his appointment book had been blank, the reason didn’t seem to cross Lyndon Johnson’s mind."

 

"he seemed bursting with energy and confidence. Edward J. Milne of the Providence Bulletin, who interviewed him in G-14, described how Johnson sat “with his feet crossed on the desk top as if to prove how relaxed he is, but with a frequent tapping of fingers on chair arm hinting at all the old, restless tension.”"

 

"“I never saw a woman more obviously in love with a man and more obviously grateful that he had been rescued,” George Reedy says. “In her face, you could see it. I remember once when we were walking down the path, she just reached over and gave him a quick hug. You could almost feel the joy bubbling in her veins that he was still alive. I think she forgot and forgave all the times that he’d made life miserable for her, which he did very often.” Among the hundreds of letters from strangers to Lady Bird was one from a woman who wrote that “Some of the happiest days of our lives were after my husband’s heart attack.” At the time she first read the letter, Lady Bird was to recall, she was “puzzled” by what the woman had written. But later, she was to recall, “I came to understand.”"

 

 

LBJ III pg. 814

 

"Lyndon Johnson, who had spent his life searching for affection and a sense of security, was back in a place where he had found as much of those commodities as he was ever likely to find anywhere. He had just spent five months in the valley in which he had been born and raised, but he was back in a place, on a hill, that was much more a home to him than the Pedernales had ever been."

 

"James H. Rowe, the highly respected lawyer and political insider, who had known Lyndon Johnson for almost twenty years, was aware that, as he was to say, Johnson would always use “whatever he could” to “make people feel sorry for him” because “that helped him get what he wanted from them.”

 

" Harry Truman’s 1948 victory on a memorandum written to the President before the campaign, at a time when his chances appeared hopeless. The memo proposed a campaign strategy, and it did so with great specificity and pragmatism; every one of its recommendations was based not on ideology but on what the memo called “the politically advantageous thing to do.” Truman had reputedly kept the document—thirty-two single-spaced typewritten pages—in the bottom drawer of his desk all during the campaign, using it as a blueprint for his come-from-behind victory. "

 

" He felt that Rowe could do the same for him: could give him, too, a blueprint for reaching the goal that flickered always before him. He had, George Reedy was to say with more than a touch of envy, “an almost mystical belief in Jim’s powers. He thought Jim might make him Pope or God knows what.” But while Rowe had always been available to help Johnson with advice, having observed how Johnson treated people on his payroll, he had always rejected Johnson’s offers to join his staff."

 

" Johnson straightened up, and his tone changed instantly from one of pleading to one of cold command.
“Just remember,” he said. “I make the decisions. You don’t.”

 

"he suave Floridian knew Johnson the senator, but he didn’t know Johnson the boss, and he quickly found out that, as he was to put it, Johnson “was very, very difficult to work for.” Senator though he might be, Smathers found himself treated as if he were a member of Johnson’s staff, and he learned that when Johnson gave an assignment, no excuses were accepted. “He used to say, ‘I want only can do people.’ That was one of his favorite expressions. "

 

 

LBJ III pg. 820

 

"The executive director of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, Claude Wild Jr., a very canny young political string-puller, was the son of Claude Wild Sr., the canny old pol who had pulled strings for Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. And all these men knew that this battle would be remembered in years to come. Talking with the author decades later, some of them tried to ensure that their participation in it would be recorded for history. Claude Wild Jr. was discussing another matter when he interrupted himself to say, “You know, I was in charge of counting the votes for the natural gas bill.” After a pause, he added, “You’re not writing that down.” And he waited until the author had made the desired note before continuing."

 

" The glue for part of that alliance was social: “He had Styles [Bridges] down [to Huntlands] during the natural gas fight,” Oltorf recalls. Part was philosophical—to Bridges, of course, any assault on business had to be Communist-inspired—and part, as always in the Johnson-Bridges relationship, was pragmatic."

 

"Whatever terrain he picked for his battle, Lyndon Johnson fought well. “I was worried,” Claude Wild recalls. “It [natural gas deregulation] was not a popular issue. If you don’t have a good champion there—well, it’s awful easy for a senator to vote against it.” But, Wild says, natural gas had “a real champion”: not Rayburn (“I doubt he had any impression [of the stakes]. He had no idea what money was”) but Johnson. “In Lyndon, we really had one.” "

 

"The captain had devised a devastatingly effective strategy. Northern newspapers and magazines were already seething with outrage. The New York Times called the bill wrong “socially, economically and politically.” The Nation called it a “gouge,” saying that “the producers are convinced they will get away with it because of their power over Congress” (and reminding its readers that “oil interests helped to finance McCarthy’s four-year anti-Democratic crusade”)."

 

"). The New Republic said that “the contention that natural gas ought to sell in a free market, like coal or wheat, loses some force when one notes that buyers of natural gas can never buy in a free market.” 

 

"What he didn’t give them was arguments, or opposition, or even an audience—anything that would furnish grist for the journalistic mill. "

 

LBJ III pg. 822

 

"By thus arranging for the liberals to be ignored rather than answered, he had ensured that their speeches received less attention than would have been the case had there been controversy—newsmaking controversy—on the floor. And since many liberals had a natural reluctance to sit at their desks listening to someone else give a long speech, and they had no leader strong enough to ensure that they stayed on the floor anyway, liberals often found themselves speaking to a very small audience indeed."

 

". “For the sake of appearances it would seem that Senator Lyndon Johnson, who cleverly stage-managed this puppet show, would have arranged for more senators to…attend to make it look good from the galleries,” Thomas Stokes said. As it was, Stokes said, the “farce gives itself away. Too slick was his careful arrangement of ‘full debate.’…

 

The scene in the Senate reflecting the apathy and cynicism of the elected servants…carries me back to the 1920s when big money was moving the pawns about here in Washington.”

 

But the strategy worked. While some of the arguments against the bill were eloquent—“the concentrated power of the great oil companies, wielded today to influence the decision of national Government by contributions to both parties in many parts of the United States, is a menace to the proper functioning of free government within this country,” Hennings said—the arguments were delivered before galleries that were almost as empty as the floor.

 

Writing angrily that “perhaps the most cynical aspect of Johnson’s management of the issue was his pious decree that the debate must be ‘gentlemanly,’” Doris Fleeson had to admit that the decree, “of course, had the effect of dampening tension and excitement, emotions that do sometimes communicate themselves to the Senate and the public and affect the outcome of debate.” The Washington Post could only observe helplessly that because “senators have stayed away from the Senate in droves,” the “arguments on the floor have attracted far less attention than they deserved.” “Never in the many years I have covered Washington have I seen such a skillful job of backstage manipulation,”

 

 

LBJ III pg. 846

 

*Attempt to conceal the corruption, then when discovered turn the tables around and lead the war against corruption..

 

"President Eisenhower numbered many titans of the oil industry among his friends. He was as indebted to the industry for past campaign contributions as was Johnson—and, as he prepared for his re-election campaign, he was as hopeful of future contributions. He was philosophically committed to reducing, not increasing, government regulation of industry in general, and he was particularly committed to reduction in the case of this industry,"

 

"The day after the Reston column appeared, the Majority Leader took the floor. Declaring that he had been “unfairly, unjustly and almost unmercifully” portrayed as blocking a Senate inquiry, he said his whole purpose from the start of the controversy had been to have a full inquiry and not one confined to the Case contribution. “You senators and reporters—you better saddle your horse and put on your spurs if you’re going to keep up with Johnson on the flag, mother and corruption,” he said. Then he introduced a resolution, endorsed by Knowland and quickly passed, to create a new Special Committee that would conduct, he promised, a “far-reaching and thorough” investigation dedicated “to uncovering any wrong-doing of any kind and accomplishing something constructive.” Instead of having the customary Democratic majority, half of its eight members would be Republican, which, he said, would “give no unfair advantage to either party”; it would have a full-size—$350,000—budget; it was assumed that its chairman would be Albert Gore, who, as the Times put it, lauding his appointment, “has been insisting on an intensive investigation” which he had intended to carry out through the Elections Subcommittee but which Johnson had now persuaded him could be better conducted by the Special Committee. The resolution was greeted enthusiastically by the press. “The lobbying investigation” promises “to become the year’s liveliest,” Time said."

 

" It was like a family atmosphere, and he was the Big Daddy. He controlled everything. He ruled with fear—like a heavy-duty parent. Fear permeated the whole staff. Lyndon would jump on someone. Just make mincemeat of him. Tongue-lashing people. Walter was just always on pins and needles. I’ve seen Walter shake, just literally shake, when Lyndon was asking him questions. Walter was just stripped of any human dignity.” Mrs. Brammer was to leave the staff the next year. “I just couldn’t understand how they [the staff members] put up with it.” Another new member of the staff wouldn’t put up with it. Within a month after Jim Rowe, whom Johnson had recruited so ardently, came on board, he told Johnson he was leaving. He finally agreed to remain until the end of the 1956 session, and left then. But no aspect of Johnson was more striking to new staffers than his energy. “He worked us, he worked us,” Mrs. Brammer says. “And he worked himself, worked himself. He had made up his mind to be President, and he was demonic in his drive.”"

 

" the program that was the longtime dream of liberals and labor and the longtime nightmare of many doctors: Social Security-financed federal health insurance. Seeing the House bill as the thin end of the wedge for socialized medicine, the doctors’ lobby, the immensely powerful American Medical Association (AMA), mobilized against it—confident of success: annoying though the House action may have been, there was still that firmer body that had been created to stand against radical innovations. And, thanks in part to its Majority Leader, the Senate had indeed stood firm in 1955. With Johnson declining to fight for the House bill, it had never even reached the Senate floor that year. By the time it came up in 1956, therefore, the AMA would have had “over a year to pressure fence-sitting senators—particularly those facing re-election” that year, "