by Ira Shapiro
JAMES SCHLESINGER HAD COMPLETED his work to formulate a comprehensive energy package, and Jimmy Carter was prepared to stake his presidency to the issue that threatened the security and economic prosperity of the United States. On April 18, in a twenty-minute televised talk, President Carter described the energy crisis as “the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetime. . . . If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.” He set forth new goals for the nation: reduce gas consumption by 10 percent; cut oil imports to 6 million barrels a day; establish a 1 billion barrel strategic petroleum reserve; increase coal production by two-thirds; insulate 90 percent of American homes; and expand solar energy to 2.5 million homes.
It was only the beginning of what would be a sustained campaign for a signature issue. On April 20, Carter sought the largest audience possible, going before a joint session of Congress to propose a response to the energy crisis. The pomp and ceremony were briefly disrupted at precisely 9 p.m. when the great doors of the House chamber opened, but instead of President Carter, a confused and somewhat disheveled Schlesinger rushed in, looking for his seat. The address itself, however, contained no levity.
Carter called the United States “the most wasteful nation on earth,” wasting more energy than we import. Without the ability to substantially increase production domestically, Carter warned that the United States was on track to becoming perilously dependent on imported oil. Carter also predicted that without immediate action, there would be pressure “to plunder the environment” in a crash program to expand nuclear plants, strip mining, and drilling offshore wells. Regions within the United States would compete with each other for supplies; “inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs.”
He set forth his plan: let domestic oil prices rise to world levels, increase prices of newly discovered natural gas by 20 percent (to approach oil prices), place a 5 cents per gallon tax on gasoline each year if conservation goals were not met, and use tax penalties on gas guzzlers and rebates on small cars to encourage purchasers to select energy-efficient autos. He held out the possibility of gasoline rationing as an alternative solution if conservation goals could not be met. The president also noted that he had the authority to impose rationing without congressional approval by declaring a national economic emergency.
Jimmy Carter’s address to Congress laying out his energy program brought his sometimes rocky first one hundred days to an extraordinary conclusion. He had challenged the nation in a way that it had seldom been challenged before, certainly not since Sputnik, and perhaps not since World War II.
Some critics suggested that the magnitude of his program did not approach the magnitude of the crisis that he described. Humorist Russell Baker noted that Carter’s “moral equivalent of war” equaled MEOW. Tom Quinn, special assistant to California Governor Jerry Brown, said that “large Chevy owners will have to switch to small Chevies . . . not much of a sacrifice.”
But polls showed that Americans were responding positively: 69 percent of Americans approved of Carter’s presidency; 86 percent agreed with him that the energy situation was serious. By large margins, Americans supported most of the proposals in his plan. But there were dark clouds as well. The public disapproved of the standby gas tax by 54 percent to 39 percent, and 62 percent of those polled said the program lacked “equality of sacrifice” because people feared it would have a disproportionate impact on the poor.
Congressional leaders recognized the difficulties ahead. Setting aside their gripes about the abortive rebate, they expressed admiration for Carter’s courage and determination to see his legislation through. Byrd said, “This is a supreme test and it requires a supreme effort. Yet I think that there is a reservoir of courage and strength and patriotism here that will respond.” House Speaker Tip O’Neill predicted that the passage of the president’s program would involve “the toughest fight this Congress has ever had.” Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic senator from Texas, expressed admiration: “The president is doing what has to be done. He has proposed a broad national energy program.” Anticipating the problems ahead, Bentsen added: “It should be given a fair hearing, not nibbled to death.”
O’Neill quickly announced the formation of a thirty-seven-member, special ad hoc committee to handle the energy legislation. Byrd made it clear that the Senate would use its regular committee process, which had been recently reformed.
The real question now would be: was Congress capable of considering a comprehensive energy program, without nibbling it to death?
THE ENERGY LEGISLATION WOULD pose the first serious test of the committee reorganization that had been completed by Byrd and Baker in the first weeks of the session. They had moved quickly to address a festering problem that had produced increasing frustration in the Senate through the 1970’s. In the old Senate, dominated by the southern barons, senior senators chaired the committees, held the disproportionate number of slots on the most powerful committees, and limited the number of subcommittees to ensure that there would be no competing power centers. Mansfield’s democratized Senate had gone the other way, and had eventually—perhaps inevitably—produced a proliferation of subcommittees.
Mansfield’s Senate also saw a rapid expansion of staff. The Senate would grow from 4,100 employees in 1971 to more than 6,900 a decade later. Burned by its experience with the imperial presidencies of Johnson and Nixon, the Senate felt the need to “staff up,” arming itself with additional expertise needed to deal effectively with the executive branch. A larger staff expanded a senator’s reach, enabling him to get involved in more issues. But it also required a senator to spend more time supervising his staff members, or, more likely, giving many of them broader discretion than previously given. Senators often complained about the size and hyperactivity of their staffs, but almost all of them maximized the size of their staffs to the fullest extent possible.
The explosion of staff in the 1970’s opened the Senate, for the first time, to professional women. Traditionally, the Senate had been, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “a male preserve,” and that extended from the senators themselves to the most influential committee and personal staff members. There were plenty of women staffers, but virtually all of them performed clerical or administrative tasks. Many were chosen on the basis of physical attractiveness, rather than professional competence. By the 1970’s, it undoubtedly occurred to senators who were advocating the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that they were working in an environment where women had been largely deprived of equal opportunities. Beginning in that decade, some of Washington’s talented women would make their mark in the Senate.
There were some awkward moments as the Senate adjusted to a changed environment. Joseph Biden, the thirty-year-old senator from Delaware who had taken office immediately after the tragic death of his wife and daughter in a car accident, interviewed Paula Stern for a position as his foreign policy adviser. Biden was impressed by Stern’s academic and journalistic credentials. But he reluctantly decided against hiring her, telling her that he was afraid that there would be rumors about them if they traveled together. Stern took a job with Gaylord Nelson.
Robert Byrd was horrified when Mary Jane Checchi, the staff director of the Democratic Policy Committee, rushed into the Democratic cloakroom looking for a member. “Mary Jane,” Byrd said, “women aren’t allowed in the cloakroom.” “Senator,” Checchi responded, “I can’t do my job if I can’t go into the cloakroom.” Byrd relented, accepting that times had changed.
Ed Muskie hired Madeleine Albright, a Georgetown professor, to be his senior legislative assistant. Several years later, Albright left his staff to work in the White House for National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. At her farewell party, Muskie expressed pride that “Madeleine brought sex into the office.” As those attending the party roared with laughter, Albright drily corrected him—“I think you mean ‘gende
r,’ Senator.”
In contrast, Scoop Jackson had been far ahead of his time, entrusting Dorothy Fosdick with great authority in the area of defense and foreign policy beginning in 1954. In 1978, Jackson and Fosdick traveled to Saudi Arabia with a group of senators including Ted Stevens, and Susan Alvarado, a young legislative assistant. When the Saudis informed Stevens that the women would not be allowed in their meetings, Stevens shrugged his shoulders and told Alvarado: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” When Jackson heard the Saudi position, he told Stevens that if the women were not allowed in the meetings, there would be no meetings. The meetings took place, with Fosdick and Alvarado included.
Even Lyndon Johnson’s Senate had been slow-moving, quiet, often sleepy. The new arrivals—men and women—transformed the pace. Mostly young, ambitious, and policy-oriented, they were determined to serve the country and make their mark. The Senate office buildings grew crowded and crackled with energy, as the young lawyers, economists, and reporters who arrived competed to advance the interest of their bosses through new policy initiatives, and press releases and floor statements on the business of the day.
Useful as the expanded staff was, the Senatorial apparatus was becoming unwieldy. New senators, such as John Culver, who moved from the House in January 1975, were amazed by the chaos that greeted them. Starting in 1971, senators, led by Adlai Stevenson III of Illinois and Charles McC. Mathias Jr. of Maryland, had begun to complain about the proliferation of committee and subcommittee assignments, the irrationality of the committees’ jurisdiction, and the bias against newer members. Stevenson pointed out that the lack of jurisdictional realignment meant that “we sometimes end up reinventing the wheel simultaneously in different subcommittees. And we often end up dealing with parts of an issue with no mechanism to put the parts together.” Mansfield and Scott had established a select committee to study the problem, chaired by Stevenson, with Bill Brock of Tennessee as the ranking member. Hammering away at jurisdictional overlap, wasteful scheduling, and poor organization, Stevenson and Brock emphasized the fact that the average senator served on twenty committees, subcommittees, boards, and commissions.
In July 1976, the Stevenson Committee set forth recommendations for a major reorganization of the committee system. By prior arrangement, the recommendations would go to the Rules Committee, rather than directly to the full Senate, and it was in the Rules Committee that the ambitious proposals would collide with the realities of the Senate. While senators constantly complained about the committee system and their schedules being out of control, they also hated to lose power and influence over issues in which they were deeply invested, intellectually and emotionally.
For example, the fiercest fight within the Rules Committee broke out over who would have jurisdiction over the oceans. In recent years the crisis conditions of the oceans had emerged as a huge issue. Jacques Cousteau, the famed ocean explorer, had testified in 1971 that life in the sea had diminished by 30 to 50 percent over the last twenty years. Cousteau argued passionately that unless action was taken to combat pollution, the oceans would be dead in the next thirty to fifty years.
The Stevenson Committee had recommended that oceans be shifted from the Commerce Committee to a new Environment and Public Works Committee. That might make sense on an organizational chart. But Fritz Hollings had spent the summers of 1939 and 1940 when he was in college working with the Army Corps of Engineers on a project in Charleston Harbor. Thirty years later, as a senator, he had become chairman of the Oceans and Atmosphere Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee. In eight years in that position, he had become an expert on the problems of the oceans. He had spearheaded such landmark legislation as the Ocean Dumping Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Marine Mammals Protection Act, and the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Along with the popular and powerful Warren Magnuson, who chaired the full Commerce Committee, Hollings pushed back fiercely, and the Rules Committee reversed Stevenson’s recommendation, leaving oceans in Commerce. For good measure, the Commerce Committee also expanded its reach by acquiring jurisdiction over the science and technology functions of the government, including the space program, which had previously been handled by a separate committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.
The new Energy and Natural Resources Committee was intended to have the broad jurisdiction needed over production and conservation needed to address the nation’s problems. The Post Office and Civil Service Committee would be abolished, its functions to be handed over to an enhanced Governmental Affairs Committee. George McGovern’s high-profile Select Committee on Hunger and Nutrition would be folded into the Agriculture Committee, which would become Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Gaylord Nelson, chair of the Small Business Committee, indicated a willingness to support his own committee being abolished—but the small business community pushed back so hard that the Senate reversed Stevenson’s recommendation and preserved it.
Finally, reorganization had been talked about long enough. Byrd and Baker had made it the first order of business for the new Senate. On February 4, the Senate approved S. Res. 4, the reorganization that had been negotiated by the Stevenson Committee, the Rules Committee, and the Senate leadership. The number of committees did decrease by 23 percent and the number of subcommittees decreased by 33 percent. Senators would have fewer assignments by about one-third. Younger senators were major winners; they would be able to serve on two major committees plus a minor committee if desired; they would receive improved choice of subcommittees and more and better chairmanships. The minority party would be guaranteed a bigger share of the committees’ budgets. Stevenson described the result as “incremental idealism.” The new leaders Byrd and Baker could take satisfaction in the fact that they had delivered quickly on the promise to reorganize, without much blood being spilled. Far more difficult battles still loomed, however.
JIMMY CARTER’S ENERGY PROGRAM would have to be shepherded through the Senate by Scoop Jackson, the chairman of the new Energy Committee. Jackson was a masterful legislator who shared Carter’s belief that America’s energy dependency was an urgent problem. Jackson also had a strong relationship with Schlesinger, whom he greatly respected. But the personal chemistry between Carter and Jackson was terrible. Carter had crushed Jackson’s hopes of being president, and he and his people had gone on to rub salt in Jackson’s wounds. (Hamilton Jordan, one of Carter’s closest aides, had observed that they didn’t need to cultivate Jackson because “we whipped his ass in the Pennsylvania primary.”) Jackson also disliked Carter’s penchant for wearing religion on his sleeve and maintained grave doubts about his capacity to govern.
The relationship was fraught with danger, and it would have to carry a lot of weight if Carter’s presidency was to succeed. Carter’s best hope was that Jackson was a patriot who could rise above his personal feelings. The energy challenges would be hard enough—but in the end, Henry Jackson had another overriding priority. He planned to be Jimmy Carter’s most formidable adversary on issues of national security.
chapter 4
HAWK AND DOVE
WHEN GERALD FORD ASSUMED THE PRESIDENCY AFTER RICHARD NIXON’S resignation, his first words to the nation were his most memorable: “Our long national nightmare is over.” And yet, eloquent as Ford’s formulation may have been, it was fundamentally inaccurate—at least from the Senate’s perspective. For the senators, nothing had ever been more intriguing, enthralling, dramatic, and ultimately satisfying than Watergate. The Senate Watergate Committee played an extraordinary role in holding Nixon accountable. Its hearings revealing the sordid nature of the Nixon White House captivated the nation in the summer of 1973. The press, courts, special prosecutor, and the House Judiciary Committee also played key parts in exposing Nixon’s abuses of power and ushering him offstage. With the stakes very high, the American system of government came through with flying colors.
In contrast, for the Senate and for America, Vietnam had been the true national night
mare.
The Senate had focused on the unfolding debacle in Vietnam since 1965. Many had to live down the mistake of putting their trust in Lyndon Johnson when they gave him the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August 1964, which he twisted into a virtual declaration of war, justifying a rapid and open-ended escalation that put more than 500,000 American military men in Vietnam and tore the country apart.
Numerous senators, among them Mike Mansfield, Frank Church, Wayne Morse, Albert Gore Sr., Stuart Symington, Richard Russell, John McClellan, and J. William Fulbright, all tried privately to convince Johnson that he was pursuing a disastrous course. Although haunted by doubts about the course he had chosen, Johnson rejected the senators’ advice. He mocked Mansfield as a weak-kneed professor and described Fulbright as a racist who didn’t care about Vietnam because the people were not white.
Fulbright would never forget the day in late July 1965 when he brought an impressive group of senators to the White House to implore Johnson to stop the escalation. Johnson coldly told the senators that the situation in Vietnam was deteriorating, the decision had been made, the war would last six or seven years, and there was no turning back.
Democratic senators soon became increasingly public in their opposition to the president of their own party. As chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Fulbright convened a major set of hearings in February 1966, which laid bare the weakness of the rationale for the Vietnam War. The hearings produced an indelible image: Fulbright had to wear sunglasses to shield his eyes from the phalanx of television lights. And Fulbright’s hearings marked the moment that opposition to the war began to move from the students on college campuses to their parents in middle-class America. But Johnson’s escalation continued.