The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  BY LATE 1977, FRITZ Mondale could fairly be described as the most successful and luckiest member of the Great Senate. Ever since John Kennedy had pointed the way to the White House from the Senate, many senators had sought the presidency; all had gone down in flames. Only two senators had made it to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue as vice president: Mondale and his friend and mentor, Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was elevated by Lyndon Johnson, a man he had known well and worked with closely since 1949, when they first entered the Senate together. Mondale had been chosen by Carter, a man he barely knew but greatly impressed in his two-hour interview. Johnson humiliated Humphrey, and his vice presidency proved to be the death knell of his presidential hopes, although it helped him get the 1968 presidential nomination. In contrast, Carter accepted Mondale’s vision of a vice president as a senior adviser, gave him an office in the West Wing, and made him probably the most influential vice president in history up to that time and a model for future vice presidents.

  It was one more piece of good fortune for Fritz Mondale. His meteoric political rise had combined hard work and keen intelligence with an uncommon ability to win the respect and affection of other politicians, while always managing to be at the right place at the right time. Mondale had been appointed attorney general of Minnesota at the age of thirty-two, appointed to the Senate (to fill Humphrey’s seat) at the age of thirty-six, and chosen to be vice president at forty-eight, after dropping his own presidential campaign in late 1974. His often-quoted observation that he “didn’t want to spend two years of his life living in Holiday Inns” had allowed him to make an early and classy exit from the 1976 Democratic race. If he’d stayed in, the contest would have pitted him against four other senators and certainly would have ended as badly for him as it did for his colleagues.

  Other politicians envied his rapid rise, his timing, and his luck. But it had come with a price. Mondale had co-chaired Humphrey’s presidential campaign in 1968, even though he harbored grave and growing doubts about the Vietnam War policy that Humphrey continued to support. It was agonizing for Mondale to find himself defending the Johnson-Humphrey policy on the war against a new generation of Democrats energized by their opposition to the war. Mondale had advised Humphrey to break with Johnson on the war and was gratified that Humphrey did eventually call for a pause in bombing and a negotiated settlement.

  Mondale had been an impressive senator in his own right. He had a fine legal mind, loved to legislate, and got along well with colleagues in both parties. He spearheaded the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, legislation designed to end discrimination in housing, an extraordinary legislative achievement for the Great Senate during a year when American cities were in flames and the politics of the country had shifted sharply to the right. Mondale had worked with Robert Kennedy and Cesar Chavez to protest the terrible conditions of migrant workers. After RFK’s death, Mondale had become the most visible senator addressing the plight of the underprivileged. In 1975 and 1976, outraged by the FBI’s domestic surveillance program, Mondale played a powerful role on the Church Committee, rolling up his sleeves and working “like a staff member” to hammer out guidelines that would constrain the bureau’s rampant wiretapping and infiltration of domestic groups.

  Now, as Vice President, Mondale was the administration’s natural liaison with the Senate. Starting in the very early weeks of the presidency he frequently fielded complaints about Carter’s political ineptitude and tendency to overload the legislative circuits. Moreover, labor and the other liberal interest groups saw Mondale as their man in the White House, and given his background and political philosophy, they were not mistaken. Mondale frequently raised concerns with Carter that his focus on balancing the budget was inflicting collateral harm on the people who could least afford it, who also happened to be the political constituencies most important to the Democratic party. Carter listened intently and respected Mondale’s views, though he did not usually follow them.

  So Mondale’s charmed political career came with its own challenges, which were about to intensify. On October 3, Mondale arrived at the Senate at 11 a.m. In Byrd’s office he learned what the senators had in mind. It must have been a painful moment—Mondale had thought he had succeeded in disciplining the use of filibusters less than three years before by lowering the requirement for cloture to sixty votes. But the need for further action was clear, and he voiced no objection.

  Abourezk had gotten wind of a rumor that the vice president was going to crush the filibuster. He brushed it off saying, “Nah, he wouldn’t do that.” Ted Kennedy, who had known Mondale much longer, assured him that it was not possible. Mondale understood the traditions and rhythms of the Senate; he would recognize the anger that such an action would produce. They would soon find out otherwise.

  When the Senate convened, Byrd took the floor, sought recognition, and read from a prepared script. He announced that the chair was “required to take the initiative under Rule 22 to rule out of order all amendments which are dilatory or which are on their face out of order.” The vice president, also plainly reading from a script, responded that “the point is well taken, and the chair will take the initiative.” Byrd moved in for the kill, calling up amendment after amendment, and Mondale, just as rapidly, ruled each amendment out of order. In nine minutes, thirty-three amendments were rejected.

  Instantly, the Senate turned to bedlam. Dozens of senators leaped to their feet to protest this unprecedented procedure. Mondale continued to recognize only Byrd. When Ed Muskie finally got recognition, he charged that the vice president was arbitrarily creating “a new order of things, a change in the rules.” Gary Hart charged that “the Senate has seen an outrageous act.” Jacob Javits had to be dissuaded from offering a resolution condemning Byrd’s action. John Culver criticized Byrd himself in harsh, personal terms.

  Byrd, flushed with anger at the criticism, responded furiously: “I have not abused the leadership’s prerogatives. I am trying to keep senators from abusing the Senate.” He acknowledged that he had taken advantage of his leadership position but insisted that “one has to fight fire with fire where necessary.” He noted with some bitterness that he had done many favors for those who were criticizing him.

  At that point, Byrd backed off. The filibuster could have been resumed, but Abourezk and Metzenbaum, shocked by Mondale’s involvement, concluded that the Carter administration had sold them out, even after tacitly encouraging them to mount the filibuster. They lost heart and ended their effort. The next day, by a vote of 50–46, the Senate passed legislation deregulating natural gas within two years. In Ribicoff’s words, the Carter administration energy program was “in shambles.”

  Publicly, Byrd was philosophical about what had happened. “The Senate is very much like a violin,” he noted. “The sound will change with the weather, the dampness, the humidity. The Senate is a place of great moods. It can shift quickly, very quickly.” But it had been a searing experience, with disturbing implications going forward.

  Filibustering senators had found new methods to paralyze the Senate. The leadership, in turn, had acquired a new tool for suppressing dissent. Most of the Senate had been angry at Abourezk and Metzenbaum for abusing the Senate rules and exhausting them. But when Byrd took strong action to end the filibuster, the Senate had turned its wrath on him. As much as the senators were frustrated by the filibuster, they disliked Byrd’s power play even more. Mondale would always contend that after cloture had been voted, he was obligated to rule dilatory amendments out of order. But Carter, not known for his concern about congressional sensibilities, thought that Byrd and Mondale “had used the wrong tactics; a little too abrasive. The Senate’s not accustomed to that.”

  Byrd’s mistake was not parliamentary, but political. Abourezk and Metzenbaum believed they were protecting Carter’s energy agenda. Rather than passing a watered-down bill, they had chosen to snarl Senate business and enrage the deregulators. It would have been natural for Byrd to seek White House help in lobb
ying Abourezk and Metzenbaum, but he had shown excessive pride and exercised bad judgment. As a result, he had ended up with nothing. In attempting to reassert leadership he had simultaneously failed to get Carter’s energy program through the Senate and made the Senate itself look ridiculous.

  Even so, Byrd had taken precautions that protected him from lasting damage. He had enlisted the support of Republican leadership, moved against two of his own Democratic members, and made it crystal clear that his overriding interest was ensuring that the Senate could conduct the nation’s business. It all went with the responsibility for being the Senate leader, and ultimately, most of the senators would accept it and respect him for it. And most important, his observation about the Senate was completely accurate. It was a place of great moods, which often changed quite rapidly.

  ALL YEAR, JIMMY CARTER had made energy legislation the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. Now, he raised the stakes again. Barnstorming through Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, and California, Carter put his prestige on the line, saying: “I have equated the energy policy legislation with either success or failure of my first year in office.” It was a bold statement that proved very costly. The Senate’s vote on the natural gas legislation came on October 4. In most cases, that would have left enough time for a conference to resolve differences between the House and Senate so that final legislation could be written, approved by both houses, and sent to the president for signature. But the differences between the Senate- and House-passed energy legislation were truly monumental. It soon became clear that the issue would not be resolved until the next year.

  The American public had taken Carter at his word, and now passed negative judgment on his presidency. His approval ratings, which had been astronomical after one hundred days and very respectable after six months, came crashing down with the failure of the energy legislation and the Lance debacle. Other substantial achievements, such as an increase in the minimum wage, creation of the Energy Department, halting production of the B-1 bomber, and new curbs on strip mining, were swiftly forgotten. Although Carter had worked ceaselessly on efforts to further Middle East peace, he received no political benefit from the historic visit to Israel by Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat in November. Even relatively robust economic growth did not seem to matter. Overall, barely 50 percent of the American people approved of his performance as president. The bright promise of his unique presidency seemed to be slipping away.

  Most presidents stayed close to home for the holiday season, either in the White House or Camp David. Jimmy Carter certainly deserved some down time, but that wasn’t his nature. He ended the first year of his presidency with a whirlwind foreign trip. New Year’s Eve found him in Tehran, where he toasted the shah for making Iran “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.” No one could not have anticipated that Carter would finish each year of his presidency consumed by events in Iran.

  It would have been difficult for the Democratic Senate to look good at a time when the Democratic president was staggering. Sure enough, on December 18, David Broder, one of Washington’s most respected political columnists, offered a withering indictment of the Senate. Broder rejected the widely held notion that “Congress is the lion act and the President’s job, as the lion-tamer, is to turn those brawling ‘cats’ into a disciplined troupe of performers.” He pointed out that the members of Congress “collectively had thousands of years of working experience in the federal government” and should be helping educate Carter on how to get things done.

  After giving Tip O’Neill conditioned praise for his efforts, Broder sharply criticized Byrd for his constant “one note warning of dire catastrophe around the legislative bend.” Noting that several of the senators were “tinged with bitterness” that Carter, not they, were in the White House, Broder slammed the Senate for a series of failures: rejecting the Sorensen nomination, nearly sabotaging the Warnke nomination, reacting like “Tammany aldermen” to Carter’s threat to cut off dam projects, and for demonstrating, for eight months “that it lacked the will, the skill or the expertise to resolve its own differences on the energy issues.”

  “Carter and his aides bear full responsibility for the many errors of judgment and tactics they made in dealing with Congress,” Broder concluded. “But they were acknowledged novices. The Senate has no such excuse.”

  For Robert Byrd, a man both proud and sensitive, Broder’s judgment would come as a painful holiday greeting. The Senate had demonstrated its ability to act as a check on imperial presidents, particularly Nixon, in the crisis times of Vietnam and Watergate. But now the Senate still had to demonstrate that it could work with a nonimperial president to accomplish things in the national interest. The Senate’s second session in the Ninety-fifth Congress would have to be far different, and far more productive, than its first.

  1978

  chapter 7

  A YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY

  FOR THE SENATE, 1978 BEGAN WITH THE LOSS OF AN ICON. ON JANUARY 13, Hubert Humphrey, aged sixty-six, died after a valiant battle against cancer. Humphrey had fought the disease with characteristic energy, courage, and optimism since its initial appearance in 1973, and then its reappearance, in invasive form, in September 1976. While battling the disease, he had introduced the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment act, become chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, issued a major assessment of China’s future, fended off supporters who wanted him to run for president for a fourth time, and sought the position of majority leader, before concluding that he had no chance against Byrd. His friend and protégé, Vice President Mondale, spoke memorable words at Humphrey’s funeral service in the Capitol Rotunda: “He taught us how to hope and how to love, how to win and how to lose. He taught us how to live and, finally, he taught us how to die.”

  For two generations of Americans, it was impossible to remember politics without Humphrey, the Happy Warrior. He would always be associated with the greatest triumph of his generation, the battle for civil rights. His brilliant speech at the 1948 Democratic convention stirred the nation and lifted him to national prominence, and his superb leadership in the Senate helped bring about the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, he would also always be associated with the greatest tragedy of his era, the Vietnam War, which prevented him from becoming president just as surely as it destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s presidency and his dream of a Great Society.

  In late 1977, the Washington Post had asked a thousand people on Capitol Hill to name the greatest members of Congress. Their choice for greatest House member was Speaker Sam Rayburn; the greatest senator was Hubert Humphrey. As political scientist Nelson Polsby observed: “Humphrey, more or less, invented the modern senator as we know him: creator, innovator, educator, using his place and prominence to define issues for the wider public—and, ultimately, through mastery of the interminable process of committee, cloakroom, and floor maneuver, translating those issues into law.” Humphrey might advise new senators, like young Joe Biden of Delaware, that he should pick an issue and become an expert—he suggested housing for Biden—but the range of his interests, the depth of his understanding, and the wellspring of his energy and creativity were astonishing. “I like every subject!” Humphrey once exclaimed.

  When he first came to the Senate in 1949, the southern club, led by Richard Russell, shunned him for his passionate commitment to civil rights and for his exuberant, talkative style. Close enough so Humphrey could hear him, Russell once asked caustically: “Can you believe that Minnesota would send such a fool to the Senate?” Virtually ostracized during his first years in the Senate, which he described as the worst of his life, Humphrey decided that he would learn to do it the Senate way. He became a pragmatic progressive and served as Lyndon Johnson’s bridge to the liberals. Through the warmth of his personality, his commitment to poor and working people, and his willingness to learn, he won over those who had opposed him.

  Russell came to describe Humphrey as one of the most attractive personalities he had ever m
et. One evening in the late 1950’s, as he was leaving the Senate, Russell heard Humphrey speaking passionately about the hard lives that farmers faced, given the harsh agriculture policies of the Eisenhower administration. Riveted, Russell stayed, and with two other southern senators, became a virtual “amen chorus” for Humphrey, beating out a rhythm on their Senate desks. Humphrey once said: “I knew every senator better than I knew anybody in my family,” and they were deep, friendly relationships, animated by humor. Barry Goldwater liked to joke about Humphrey’s rapid-fire speaking style, 250 words per minute with occasional gusts up to 300. Humphrey would respond by telling Goldwater that he was handsome enough to be a movie star—for Nineteenth Century Fox.

  But there was Vietnam: the tragedy for Humphrey, Johnson, the Democrats, and America. When Johnson finally offered Humphrey the vice presidency in 1964, after dangling it in front of him for weeks, he warned Humphrey that he would not have the independence that he had as a senator; he would have to be a loyal soldier. Nonetheless, Humphrey jumped at the vice presidency. After Johnson trounced Goldwater in the 1964 election, Humphrey wrote Johnson a private memo, giving the president his best advice that the administration was on the wrong course in Vietnam. Johnson promptly froze Humphrey out for nearly a year. Humphrey regained the president’s confidence only when he showed a willingness to travel to Vietnam and become a leading cheerleader for the war. It reduced Humphrey in the eyes of millions of Democrats and contributed to his defeat by Nixon in 1968.

  For the senators, Vietnam had taught other lessons. Watching Johnson misuse the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, they learned that no president could be fully trusted. Seeing him ignore the prescient, private counsel of Humphrey, Mansfield, Russell, and Fulbright, they decided that it was necessary to go public with their opposition to a president’s foreign policy. They concluded that because of World War II and the constant threat of the Cold War, the balance of power in the constitutional system had shifted too much power to the “imperial presidency.” Because of Vietnam, the Senate enacted the War Powers Act, created the Intelligence Committee, and adopted the Budget Control and Impoundment Act and the Freedom of Information Act.