The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  The story of this book begins in January 1977, as Senators Robert Byrd and Howard Baker become the new majority and minority leader, and the Senate prepares to deal with the newly elected president, Jimmy Carter. Some of the most iconic figures in the Senate—Sam Ervin, J. William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield, Philip Hart, George Aiken—are gone: retired, defeated, or passed away. But the core of the Great Senate, the liberal Democrats and moderate to progressive Republicans who created a legacy of bipartisan accomplishment, seems to remain intact. Moreover, the veteran senators have been joined by talented new arrivals in both parties such as Gary Hart, Dale Bumpers, John Danforth, John Chafee, Paul Sarbanes, Richard Lugar, Joe Biden, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

  Reacting to the “imperial presidency” of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the Senate and the House have reasserted Congressional prerogatives and given themselves powerful new weapons for holding the executive branch accountable, such as the War Powers Act, the Budget Control and Impoundment Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Privacy Act. There are good reasons to believe that this would be a workmanlike period for the Senate, and a period of renewal for America, which had come through the crisis years of Vietnam and Watergate to celebrate a joyful bicentennial, despite the economic challenges looming since the 1973 OPEC oil embargo.

  Within three years, America has plunged back into crisis. The economy has been savaged by a combination of inflation and stagnation, prompted by soaring oil prices and a surge of foreign competition that catches our industries unready. A tax revolt, starting in California, has swept across the country. A series of disasters—Love Canal, Mt. St. Helens, Three Mile Island—has rocked the country. Americans are being held hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Soviet tanks have rolled into Afghanistan, setting relations between the United States and the Soviet Union back to the darker days of the Cold War.

  Ronald Reagan rides the tide of anger and rising conservatism to a landslide victory in the presidential election, winning forty-four states. The Reagan landslide is probably worth five to seven points to every Republican challenger in the country, bringing in a dozen new Republican senators, and with them, an end to the Great Senate.

  An important part of the story will be, as it must, the transformation of the Republican Party. Looking back, it is evident that what made the Great Senate possible was a bipartisanism that is no longer present in our political system. That bipartisan spirit came in part from senators exercising independent judgment and being devoted to making the institution work. They loved the Senate, and they recognized the need to reconcile diverse viewpoints in order for collective action to be possible. But bipartisanship was also possible because many Republican senators were at least moderates, or even progressives. In the search for a working majority, the leaders of the great Senate had a large field of Republican senators who were willing to come together with their liberal Democratic colleagues, to overcome the opposition of the southern Democrats opposed to civil rights and Republican conservatives generally opposed to federal spending and social legislation.

  In the late 1970’s, most of the Senate Democrats remained progressive (even “liberal”!) although they trimmed their sails somewhat, moving toward the center, as the economy weakened and antigovernment sentiment crested. The Senate Republicans, however, began their inexorable move to the right, particularly the newly elected senators from the mountain west and the south. Some of the leading Republican progressives or moderates retired, but others, such as Clifford Case (R-NJ) and Javits (R-NY), were defeated by right-wing challengers in Republican primaries. The rightward movement continued and accelerated through the 1980’s, 1990’s, and the last decade. Today, too often, the field of Republican moderates seems to begin with the senior senator from Maine, Olympia Snowe, and end with the junior senator from Maine, Susan Collins, although Richard Lugar continues to show the foreign policy leadership and vision that has characterized his long career.

  During most of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the Senate, although a political institution, was surprisingly free from partisanship. The herculean effort to give civil rights to black Americans, the tragedy of Vietnam, the crisis of Watergate, checking the imperial presidencies of Johnson and Nixon—these were not partisan issues, and the Senate responded in a bipartisan way. Moreover, a commitment to pursuing the national interest and making the Senate work acted as powerful constraints on partisanship.

  Of course, elections came every two years, and political campaigns went on around the country, but the Senate stayed somehow separate, almost a demilitarized zone where partisan politics were concerned. That began to change in the late 1970’s, with the rise of the New Right and single-issue politics, marked by negative advertising and fiery grassroots campaigns around emotional issues such as abortion, guns, and the Panama Canal. The Great Senate, in those last years, held together, still capable of subordinating partisanship to accomplish the nation’s business. But the seeds of destruction were being planted. The high walls that separated the Senate from raw, endless partisan politics started to come down thirty years ago; today, the Senate often appears to be just another arena for what has been called the permanent campaign, where the Democrats and Republicans struggle for advantage, more like scorched earth than hallowed ground.

  I began working on this book in the spring of 2008. The excitement of the presidential campaign had caused a group of old friends from the Senate thirty years before to get together monthly for breakfast to talk politics. Inevitably, the talk also turned nostalgically to the great days when we worked in the Senate. We were amazed at how the Senate had been missing in action throughout the presidency of George W. Bush: rolling over for the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and the Supreme Court nominations that had cemented the conservative majority that had been the goal of the right wing for forty years. We reflected on how the Senate had become so partisan and ineffectual that it was barely recognizable to us.

  All of that was before 2009. Any hope that a new president, a wave of public excitement and interest in politics, and an unprecedented economic crisis would prompt the Senate to rise to the occasion was quickly dashed. By the end of 2009, senators still went on the Sunday talk shows in great numbers, but the once-proud Senate, a crown jewel of our Constitutional system, had become the clearest example that our political system had broken down. As Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), one of the most serious and capable legislators, put it sadly: “We have been miniaturized.”

  The Senate’s deterioration affects all of us, but it has a special poignancy for those who worked there during its great period. I came to the Senate as a summer intern in 1969, one day after graduating from college. That summer changed my life, causing me to go to law school in the hope of returning to work in the Senate. I came back in 1975 and worked there through 1987, in a range of senior positions—personal staff, committee staff, leadership staff. I worked for veteran senators Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Tom Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and then a newly elected senator, Jay Rockefeller. I participated in many legislative accomplishments—domestic and international—and made lasting friends on both sides of the aisle. Every staffer’s career is unique, but what many men and women shared during that period was a sense of joyous excitement, purpose, and fulfillment.

  I anticipate that some readers will conclude that the author thought the Senate was great when it was Democratic and progressive, because he himself is a progressive Democrat. It is undoubtedly true that as a progressive, believing in the necessity of a positive government action in many areas, I am more concerned about the decline of the Senate than someone whose objective is to stop the government in its tracks. But I have a long record of working successfully with Republicans while in the Senate and in the Clinton administration and have great admiration for many Republican senators, including several currently in the Senate. Readers will make their judgments about my analysis, but it is a fact that many distinguished Republicans put the blame for the condition of the current Senate squarely o
n their party.

  As far back as 1996, several notable Republican senators chose to retire from the Senate, because of the increasingly strident right-wing position of the Republican caucus and the insistence on party unity by the Republican leader. Former Senator John Danforth has written that the Republican Party was completely taken over by the Christian right. Former senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, still prominent because of his co-chairmanship of the National Commission on Deficit Reduction, has said that the Senate changed when “the battered children from the House came over, led by Trent Lott.” The current Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has said that his overriding objective is to defeat Barack Obama, rather than making the Senate work for the good of the country.

  This book attempts to help fill a large void in understanding of the Senate. Those writing critically about today’s Senate often jump back to Lyndon Johnson’s time as majority leader to show how the Senate worked in its best days. In truth, and in spite of Robert Caro’s brilliant portrayal of Johnson’s career, the Senate’s most consequential period came after Johnson left to become vice president in 1961. As Gould has written: “For the Senate, Lyndon Johnson was a noisy summer storm that rattled the windows of the upper chamber and then moved on, leaving few traces of its passing. . . . He seemed a towering figure at the time, but his essential lack of vision about the Senate limited his impact.”

  The Senate’s most historic legislative accomplishments—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—certainly could not have occurred without Lyndon Johnson’s inspired leadership from the White House. But 2011 marks a half century since Johnson left the Senate, and it seems timely to recognize that the Senate became great only after he departed. Mike Mansfield, who followed LBJ as Senate majority leader, served much longer (sixteen years, as compared to Johnson’s six), accomplished much more, and left behind the legacy of a democratized Senate, in which every senator could potentially play an important part. Robert Byrd and Howard Baker, the new leaders who play a central part in this book, were working with the opportunities and challenges of the democratized Senate that Mansfield created.

  In my epilogue, I attempt to connect with the current debate about the Senate by offering a view of what has happened in the thirty years since the Senate shattered in 1980. In essence, although the Senate made a seemingly solid comeback in the mid-to-late 1980’s, after that, the continuous movement to the right by the Republican Party caused a downward spiral for the Senate that has lasted twenty years, accelerating over time. But this book is, first and foremost, my effort to recapture and celebrate the accomplishments of the great senators and the Great Senate of the 1960’s and 1970’s. I hope that the book will remind readers what they should expect from, and demand of, their Senate. I also hope that it will help inspire the new generation of senators and their staff members about what they can accomplish in Washington.

  In his recent memoir, former vice president and senator Walter Mondale described the Senate as the “national mediator,” debating issues at length, educating itself and the country, balancing and resolving ideological and regional differences. To be sure, today’s intensely vitriolic political culture makes being a senator harder than ever before. The endless demands for fund-raising required for increasingly expensive campaigns drain the time and energy of senators and expose them to the ceaseless demands of a vast corps of organized interests and lobbyists. The air travel that makes regular trips home routinely possible diminishes the time that senators and their families once spent together. The impact of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the blogosphere, and the tendency of Americans to choose the news they want to hear has changed the public debate profoundly.

  But these changes in our political culture make it even more imperative that we have a Senate of wise men and women, bringing experience, wisdom, and independent judgment in their collective responsibility to determine the national interest. Commentators now focus on the possible changes in the Senate rules, and some changes are indeed needed, particularly with respect to the pernicious impact of “holds,” by which one determined member can paralyze the Senate. However, what is most urgently needed is for senators to act like senators, not partisan operatives. They should not mirror, and even exacerbate, the nation’s divisions. They were sent to Washington to overcome them. In another difficult era, this is how the Senate worked to do so.

  1977

  chapter 1

  THE GRIND

  EXCITEMENT AND HAPPINESS PERMEATED THE COLD AIR ON CAPITOL Hill on January 4, 1977, the day that the 95th Congress would be sworn in. With the holiday season over, members of Congress were gathering in Washington, D.C., from all over the country. Most were returning veterans, but there were also seventeen new senators and sixty-seven new House members among the crowd on what was always a festive day. Those who had lost their seats or retired were long gone; only the winners remained.

  At 2:00 p.m., they would enter their separate chambers to take the oath of office. In the House chamber, all the members had been elected for a two-year term. They would take the oath of office together. In the Senate, only one-third of the seats are contested every two years, so a third of the members had just been elected for a six-year term. They would be sworn in, usually four at a time. Accompanied by their wives and children (for the crowd of new Senators and Representatives was overwhelmingly male), the first-timers would stand, speak their vows, and then accept the congratulations of returning members. It was the one day on Capitol Hill that traditionally blended pomp and circumstance with informality and family joy. The ceremony would last less than an hour, to be followed by celebrations with friends and supporters in the Senate and House office buildings on the opposite sides of Capitol Hill.

  Many of those swarming toward Capitol Hill came from Union Station. The long-awaited Washington Metrorail system had finally opened the previous March, with Union Station being one of the first five stations in operation. A ride on the beautiful, futuristic system was an attraction that none of the out-of-town visitors wanted to miss. Even the jaded K Street lobbyists flocking to the Hill were still excited about riding Metro. Those who emerged from Union Station could see the Capitol, the most familiar and iconic symbol of American democracy, looming in the distance.

  As they approached the Senate office buildings on foot along Constitution Avenue, they could also see workers constructing a platform off the east side of the Capitol for the inauguration of Jimmy Carter as president on January 20. Carter would take the oath of office in the same place as every president elected since Andrew Jackson. The continuity of the peaceful transfer of power was one more reminder that America, having celebrated its bicentennial the previous July, had been a democracy for two centuries. But it also served as a reminder of the volatility of American politics. Just four years before, Richard Nixon had been on that same platform after winning reelection by a historic margin but only nineteen months later he became the first American president to resign from office.

  It was a singular moment in Washington. The polls said that the American public wanted change; the election of Carter, a virtual unknown when 1976 began, dramatically signaled that desire. But Congress faced major changes of its own. For the first time in the twentieth century, there would be new leadership on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on Capitol Hill: a new president, new Senate leaders, and a new Speaker of the House. Whether the new leaders could make the executive and legislative branches work together effectively after the celebrating was done was an open question.

  Before the afternoon ceremonies, important work remained to be done. In his Capitol office, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, was taking the last steps to ensure that he would become the new majority leader by acclamation. A dedicated and meticulous vote counter, Byrd had long ago locked up enough support within the Democratic conference to become majority leader. Weeks before, his elevation already seemed so inevitable that two potentially formidable challengers, Ed
mund Muskie of Maine and Ernest “Fritz” Hollings of South Carolina, had withdrawn in the face of Byrd’s overwhelming strength. But as the moment of his triumph drew near, Byrd faced a delicate political conundrum: what to do about Hubert Humphrey.

  Ranking among the most brilliant of senators between 1949 and 1964, and one of the best loved, Humphrey had been a liberal icon before he became Lyndon Johnson’s vice president in 1965. But the war in Vietnam took its toll on his reputation, just as surely as it consumed Johnson, the Democratic Party, and the country. Humphrey had offered up his unstinting support for Johnson’s course in Vietnam, thereby winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. But that support cost him the respect of millions of Americans, and ultimately, the presidency itself.

  Humphrey regained his Senate seat from Minnesota in the 1970 election. But when he returned to the Senate in January 1971, it was a different place. The Senate’s central focus was now on ending U.S. involvement in the war he had supported. His colleagues no longer responded to him with their customary warmth. They treated him like a freshman, rather than restoring him to senior positions on his committees. Undaunted, Humphrey had run again for president in 1972. But with antiwar sentiment cresting in the Democratic Party, Humphrey failed to win the nomination, managing only to damage George McGovern, the eventual nominee, in a bitter California primary.

  With the Vietnam War now over, some of the wounds between the liberals and Humphrey had healed—and Humphrey sought to reclaim his leadership position in the Democratic Party by ascending to majority leader. However, Byrd knew, even if Humphrey didn’t, that Hubert could count on only a handful of votes in the Democratic conference. Byrd had been seeking and locking up commitments from Democratic senators since the previous summer. As if that were not enough, Humphrey was battling a recurrence of the cancer that had been in remission for several years. Despite his jaunty spirit and customary enthusiasm, Humphrey was visibly weak and frail.