The Fierce Urgency of Now

by Julian E. Zelizer

  This was as true for Johnson as it has been for all other presidents. In November 1963, the committee process defined Congress. Johnson knew that the conservative committee leaders in the House and the Senate had the power to set the congressional agenda, to put certain issues on the front burner and ignore others, regardless of what opinion polls or grassroots activists were saying the American people wanted, to say nothing of what the president of the United States wanted. Senior committee chairmen could prevent bills from being debated or voted on; they could attach rules to legislation that would make floor debates unmanageable and susceptible to tricks and tactics that would subvert legislation. The secretive nature of Congress in this period, when television cameras were still prohibited from the chambers and when most hearings were conducted behind closed doors, gave elected officials the liberty to subvert legislation without being subject to public scrutiny. Senators had the right to engage in filibusters, speeches of unlimited length on any topic that stopped the normal progress toward a vote and could not be ended except by a virtually impossible supermajority of sixty-seven senators.

  Johnson often complained of the limits of his power and scoffed at the perception that he had extraordinary human skills that enabled him to move his colleagues. Indeed, he had lost some of his ability to directly shape this process as he wanted when he moved from Capitol Hill to the White House. As president, he had to rely on legislators to do for him much of the legislative work he had once done for himself. About his power, President Johnson once complained, “The only power I’ve got is nuclear . . . and I can’t use that.”9

  The key to the success of the Great Society had less to do with the overwhelming popularity of liberalism or the presidential power of Johnson than with the specific changes between the summer of 1964 and the November elections that created unusually good conditions in Congress for passing domestic bills. In other words, we need a less Johnson-centric view to understand how this historic burst of liberal domestic legislation happened. We need to ask not only what Lyndon Johnson did that was so special but what legislative conditions existed that allowed someone with Johnson’s skills to succeed.

  During this critical period, the power of the conservative coalition was diminished, first by the actions of the civil rights movement, which in 1963 and 1964 placed immense pressure on legislators in both parties to pass laws that would benefit African Americans, and subsequently by the 1964 elections, which gave liberals the huge majorities they needed to prevent conservative committee chairmen from thwarting their domestic policy aims in Congress. Not only did liberal Democrats have the votes necessary to pass bills and kill filibusters, but Republican moderates, a sizable force in their party, were running as fast as they could from all positions that might allow Democrats to brand them as right-wing extremists in the wake of the ultraconservative senator Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss in the presidential election.

  Johnson deserves his share of credit, but less for being an especially skilled politician who could steamroll a recalcitrant Congress than for taking advantage of extremely good legislative conditions when they emerged. Moreover, Johnson’s success with domestic programs resulted from a risky political maneuver he undertook in 1964 and 1965 to maintain momentum for his legislation. Resisting all the opposition he faced from White House advisers and legislators, including hawks like the Georgia senator Richard Russell, Johnson escalated American involvement in the war in Vietnam. There were many reasons why he ended up listening to the hawks and embarking on a disastrous war in Southeast Asia, including his general agreement with the domino theory of communism, but one of the most important was a political calculation that a liberal Democratic president had to be hawkish on foreign policy in order to be successful. Otherwise, Johnson believed, he would give conservatives—who had thrived on foreign and domestic anticommunist crusades in the early 1950s—too much ammunition with which to attack his administration as weak on defense.

  Johnson was forced to deal with the consequences of this decision when legislative conditions deteriorated after the 1966 midterm elections. The ability of Republicans to play on concerns about inflation and Vietnam, and a brewing racial backlash among northern Democratic constituencies in response to urban riots and the black power movement, significantly reduced the size of the Democratic congressional majority. The conservative coalition rebounded after its losses in 1964, and when Johnson once again had to face a strong conservative coalition, all the Treatment and parliamentary tricks in the world had little practical effect on Congress. Johnson spent his final two years as president contending with the politics of austerity as he pushed for a desperately needed tax hike and congressional conservatives pushed back for steep cuts in domestic spending, all of which, combined with the protests over Vietnam, virtually crippled his ability to secure more big legislation.

  Although this period of liberalism was much more fragile, contested, and transitory than we have usually remembered, the programs that came out of it have endured. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Great Society is how much still lives with us today, fifty years later, so much so that most Americans regard its programs as essential manifestations of the national government’s responsibility to its citizens.

  This is a book about how the work of grassroots activists and changes in the power structure of Congress enabled a liberal president to fulfill his grand legislative ambition—the creation of a second New Deal that would complete the work of Franklin Roosevelt, expand the welfare state, and extend the full rights of citizenship to African Americans and the poor. The conditions in which these achievements were possible existed only for a short time. When those conditions changed, the great period of liberal legislation was ended by a resurgent opposition, but the achievements of the period were never overturned and have remained irrevocable.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DEADLOCKED DEMOCRACY

  When John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, over twenty thousand Americans gathered in bitter-cold weather at the east front of the U.S. Capitol to watch the new leader take over from his Republican predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, a military hero who had been extremely popular throughout his two terms in office, times of relative peace and prosperity. Though Kennedy had barely defeated Vice President Richard Nixon, those who voted for the Massachusetts senator were delighted with their choice. He had had a thoroughly mediocre record in Congress, but his enthusiasm, his charisma, and his youthful energy, all of which had been emphasized by television, led many Democrats to believe that Kennedy could be a transformative president.

  In his speech, Kennedy offered tough words for the Soviet Union. He warned that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” But the words that inspired liberals were his challenge to “my fellow Americans” to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” In this phrase liberals heard a president demanding that citizens take action to improve conditions in their country. They were desperate to see in Kennedy a leader who would move their domestic agenda forward after two long terms of standpat Republican rule in the White House. The inauguration also offered at least one symbol that confirmed liberal hopes about the true intentions of this cold warrior from Massachusetts. Kennedy had invited Marian Anderson, the African American singer who had once been barred by the Daughters of the American Revolution from singing at Constitution Hall, to sing the national anthem, a choice that displeased southern Democrats opposed to civil rights. Here Kennedy, the centrist Democrat, who during his eight years in the Senate had been tepid toward organized labor and a tough anticommunist, gave a hint that some observers took to mean that things could be different for African Americans during his presidency. The editors of the New York Times went so far as to say that “President Kennedy’s Administration opens a new chapter in the history of the American peop
le.”1

  Yet even if the president turned out to be on their side, the chances of success were not great for liberals whose outlook and aspirations had been tempered by the events of the post–World War II era. Despite the expansion of presidential power that had taken place since the early twentieth century, most political veterans understood that the shift from one administration to the next frequently produced more limited results than voters expected at the height of the campaign. This was because of the immense power of a legislative branch in which conservative southern Democrats still ruled by virtue of their tight hold on most of the major committees and their voting alliance with the GOP.

  For years, Congress had been the chief obstacle to liberalism. While congressional conservatives didn’t have enough power to dismantle the New Deal, much of which their constituencies supported, they were able to prevent liberals from expanding the domestic role of government any further. When liberals had proposed measures to expand FDR’s New Deal—legislation to deal with racial discrimination, workers’ rights, housing conditions, or health care—conservatives had always struck them down. The brief grace period to come would be defined by Kennedy’s efforts to navigate the growing tensions between the ambitions and demands of postwar liberals and the determination of a powerful and entrenched conservative coalition to prevent them from achieving any progress whatsoever.

  Liberals, who had been shut down for years by the conservative coalition, were hoping in January 1961 that this time things would be different. They anticipated, without much justification other than what they had observed on the campaign trail and a few signals during the inauguration ceremony, that they would get energy and support from Kennedy. They hoped that the charismatic young Democratic president would have the ability to deliver legislation and get their agenda moving in a Democratic Congress.

  CONGRESSIONAL CONSERVATISM

  Though conservatism had many sources of support in the decades prior to 1960—including business leaders who funded anti–New Deal Republicans and grassroots activists who railed against Franklin Roosevelt’s liberalism—the primary base of power for the Right was Congress, dominated by a coalition of powerful southern Democratic and midwestern Republican representatives and senators. The southern Democrats represented primarily rural constituencies of farmers, agribusiness, poor whites, poor African Americans, and individuals involved in military contracting. Most of the Republicans in the coalition represented rural interests, fiscally conservative small-town voters, and small- and midsize-business leaders. Members of this coalition were not united on everything, but they were united in opposing most legislative proposals that could benefit African Americans, immigrants, organized labor, and other disadvantaged groups and in supporting benefits for farmers, small businesses, poor whites, and military contractors.

  The conservative coalition had taken form in 1937 in reaction to President Roosevelt’s landslide reelection victory, which seemed at first to have cemented a productive future for New Deal liberalism. FDR had trounced his Republican opponent, Alf Landon, and Democrats had gained huge majorities, but in the year after the election Roosevelt overreached. He had been deeply frustrated in 1935 and 1936 when the Supreme Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional. So now, without consulting any legislators, he proposed adding up to six new justices to the Court, in a transparent effort to dilute judicial opposition to his policies. There was furious opposition to this proposal. Conservatives said it would destroy the constitutional separation of powers, and they compared FDR to certain European dictators. Many liberals and moderates, who had been totally unprepared for FDR’s request, were publicly critical of the president as well. They worried that expanding the Supreme Court would set a precedent that some future conservative president might use against them and their interests. Roosevelt aggravated the situation by proposing a reorganization of the executive branch that conservatives saw as a further attempt to usurp congressional power. They defeated the court-packing plan and watered down the executive branch reorganization bill. During the 1938 Democratic primaries, a defiant Roosevelt campaigned against five congressional opponents in his own party. Unfortunately for Roosevelt, four of the candidates won and returned to Capitol Hill to oppose him in 1939.2

  FDR died in 1945, but the conservative coalition lived on. President Truman watched helplessly as the coalition stripped away everything it could of FDR’s achievements, notably the price controls that had been put in place during World War II and a federal commission to combat racial discrimination in wartime employment. When Truman called on Congress to pass national health insurance in 1949 and 1950, the coalition, allied with the American Medical Association, labeled the plan “socialized medicine” and made sure the bill was defeated. The coalition was also a driving force behind anticommunist legislation in the 1950s; its members insisted that the government use the most stringent measures possible in pursuing alleged communists. While anticommunism had a powerful hold on politicians of both parties in this period, the conservative wing of each party generally wanted to take ever more aggressive steps in hunting alleged communists, in making allegations about who might be a fellow traveler or sympathizer, and in flouting civil liberties protections. Whenever President Eisenhower veered to the center on polices aimed at rooting out communists at home, the coalition pushed him back toward the right.

  The conservative coalition was able to maintain its power in Congress because each of the major parties was fractured. Unlike today’s parties, which are ideologically united with virtually no overlap at their extremes—no Republican is more liberal than the most conservative Democrat; no Democrat is more conservative than the most liberal Republican—then there was notable cross-party overlap and frequent breaking off of factions from each side of the aisle. Democrats were divided between a conservative southern and a liberal northern faction at odds over civil rights and unionization, Republicans between midwestern conservatives who wanted to constrain the government on most economic matters and liberal northeasterners who were sometimes more progressive—on civil rights, for example—than many Democrats.

  The coalition’s operations were informal and ad hoc. Conservative Democrats met in one building and conservative Republicans in another. Each group would send one member to the other group as a liaison. Representative Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, who was the leader of the House Republicans from 1939 to 1958, later explained that “when an issue of spending or of new powers for the President came along, I would go to Representative Howard Smith of Virginia, for example, and say, ‘Howard, see if you can’t get me a few Democratic votes here.’ Or I would seek out Representative Eugene Cox of Georgia, and ask, ‘Gene, why don’t you and John Rankin [of Mississippi] and some of your men get me some votes on this?’”3

  The practice of organizing and sharing votes was important, but the coalition exercised its power primarily through members who held key positions in the congressional hierarchies.4 All members of Congress served on committees that debated proposals and drafted bills to be sent to the House or Senate floor for general debate and a vote; each committee focused on legislation in its assigned policy areas. The House Ways and Means Committee, for example, handled taxation, trade, and Social Security and unemployment compensation. In 1960, conservative southern Democrats chaired almost half the major committees in the House and the Senate, including Ways and Means. The committees determined what bills would reach the House and Senate floors—no bills could make it there without a majority vote of one committee or more—and the committee chairmen exercised total control over their committees. After a committee passed a bill in the House, the bill also had to make it through the House Rules Committee, which determined the schedule and rules for debate on the floor, before it could be voted on by the entire chamber.

  In the early twentieth century, as a result of reforms that decentralized power in response to a series of ruthless House Spe
akers and a strong desire to spread the workload in Congress as the government grew in size, formal rules were established and informal rules evolved that gave committee chairmen significant autonomy from the Speaker of the House, the Senate majority leader, and other party leaders. Chairmen controlled the agendas for their committees, they decided which bills would be discussed and which would be ignored, and they managed the bills—they planned the strategy and the rounding up of votes necessary to pass the bills—after their committees sent them to the floor.

  A large number of the major committee chairmen, who by the rules had a virtual veto on all legislation, were southern members of the conservative coalition. This was because promotion on committees depended entirely on seniority, rather than on any assessment of ability, knowledge, or even party loyalty. When a member entered Congress, the party assigned him or her to one or more committees. Naturally, a legislator would ask to be assigned to a committee where he could implement benefits to his constituents—or, in common Washington parlance, deliver pork. A legislator elected by a largely urban constituency would have little interest in being placed on the Agriculture Committee.

  A member well positioned to provide benefits to his constituents was likely to win reelection, move up in committee rank by virtue of his accumulated seniority, and in time reach a position of leadership—chairman, if his party was in the majority, or ranking minority member. The longer a member stayed in office, the higher he rose in rank, whether or not he voted as the president or his party leadership wanted him to. Theoretically, party leaders could make new committee assignments at the start of each Congress, but in the 1950s and 1960s the parties followed the norm of seniority as if it were law. Committee members were never punished for disloyalty or disobedience. When each new Congress began, the party caucuses in the House and the Senate automatically voted to approve the most senior committee members of the majority party as chairmen. To amass enormous power, a legislator had only to be reelected by his constituents and remain conscious some of the time at committee meetings. Senator James Murray of Montana, who became senile in the 1950s, continued nonetheless to chair the Interior Committee, while the more junior Washington senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson ran things behind the scenes. Between 1946, when legislative reorganization consolidated the committee system, and the late 1960s, the norm of seniority advancement was violated only on rare occasions.5 One was in 1953, when the Oregon senator Wayne Morse switched parties.