by Ira Shapiro
INTERVIEWS
Asterisks denote those people who went from the Senate to serve in the Carter administration as well.
SENATORS, FORMER AND CURRENT
Howard Baker
Birch Bayh
Dick Clark*
William Cohen
Susan Collins
John Culver
John Danforth
Tom Daschle
Gary Hart
Ted Kaufman
Paul Kirk
Carl Levin
Richard Lugar
George McGovern
Walter Mondale*
Bob Packwood
Don Riegle
Jim Sasser
Alan Simpson
Joe Tydings
Lowell Weicker
FORMER SENATE STAFF MEMBERS
David Aaron*
Mark Abels
Ken Ackerman
Madeleine Albright*
Susan Alvarado
Marcia Aronoff
Brian Atwood*
Elinor Bachrach
Richard Baker
Alan Bennett
Jay Berman
Michael Berman*
Leon Billings
Stephen Breyer
Sheila Burke
Bert Carp*
Kay Casstevens
Mary Jane Checchi
Bill Cherkasky
Ed Cohen*
Brian Conboy
Peter Connolly
Dick D’Amato
Jim Davidson
Robert Dove
Ken Duberstein
John Duncan
Ken Feinberg
Peter Fenn
Bruce Freed
Al From
Mark Gitenstein
Pat Griffin
Linda Gustitis
Alan Holmer
Keith Kennedy
Michael Levy
Rob Liberatore
Chuck Ludlam*
Tamera Luzzatto
Chris Matthews
Marshall Matz
Michael McCurry
Harry McPherson
Ed Merlis
Neil Messick
Richard Moe*
Ralph Neas
Jeff Nedelman
Carey Parker
Howard Paster
John Podesta
Hoyt Purvis
Ed Quick
Bill Reinsch
Mark Robertson
John Rother
David Schaefer
Wayne Schley
Sally Shelton*
Bill Shore
Hannah Sistare
Paula Stern*
Joe Stewart
Tom Susman
Bob Szabo
Dan Tate Sr.
Pam Turner
Robert Tyrer
Richard Wegman
Claudia Weicker
Harrison Wellford*
Burt Wides*
OTHERS INTERVIEWED
Jim Blanchard
David Cohen
Stuart Eizenstat
Peter Hart
Joshua Javits
Carrie Lee Nelson
Don Terry
NOTES
PROLOGUE
ix one of the three people most seriously considered: Carl Hulse, “Indiana Senator Offers Obama Risks and Rewards,” New York Times, August 11, 2008.
ix Evan Bayh made it clear: Chris Cillizza, “Evan Bayh Won’t Seek Re-election, Senate Majority in Play?” Washington Post, February 15, 2010.
ix “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress”: Ibid. Increasing concern about the Senate’s diminishing appeal had been expressed the previous year. Carl Hulse, “Despite Prestige, the Senate’s Allure Seems to Be Fading,” New York Times, February 5, 2009.
ix He battled Richard Nixon: John W. Dean, The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment That Redefined the Supreme Court (New York: Touchstone, 2001), pp. 21, 61, 266. Dean’s book is probably the most revealing of many sources that credit Bayh’s leadership in opposing three of Nixon’s Supreme Court nominees.
x “perhaps the most inspired piece of legislation”: “Innovation’s Golden Goose,” Economist Technology Quarterly, December 14, 2002.
xi “a profound sense of crisis”: Lewis L. Gould, The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. xiv.
xi “the empty chamber”: George Packer, “The Empty Chamber: Just How Broken Is the Senate?,” New Yorker, August 9, 2010, pp. 38–50.
xii wanted him to look strong: Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2003), p. 246; Randall Bennett Woods, Fulbright: A Biography (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 353.
xii tired of fighting with President Nixon: Dean, Rehnquist Choice, p. 278.
xii “To cool it”: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, p. 7, is one of many places this famous anecdote is noted.
xiii “For protracted periods”: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, pp. ix–x.
xiv “their hearts were touched by fire”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, address delivered for Memorial Day, May 30, 1884, in Keene, New Hampshire.
xv “It is the Senate as one of the rocks of the Republic”: Francis R. Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader: A Different Kind of Senate, 1961–1976 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 85. Mansfield’s speech appears in the Congressional Record on November 25, 1963, but was never delivered because of President Kennedy’s assassination.
xvii began to change in the late 1970’s: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, pp. 274–275; Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), pp. 106–163; Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right: The “New Right” and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 272–289; Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), pp. 307–311.
xviii “We have been miniaturized”: Carl Hulse, “Policy Agenda Poses Test for Rusty Legislative Machinery,” New York Times, April 5, 2009.
xix completely taken over by the Christian right: John Danforth, Faith and Politics: How the “Moral Values” Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together (New York: Viking, 2006), pp. 69, 75, 77.
xix “the battered children from the House”: Interview with former senator Alan Simpson, February 2, 2010.
xix his overriding objective is to defeat Barack Obama: Matt Schneider, “Senator McConnell: Making Obama a One-Term President Is My Single Most Important Political Goal,” MediaIte, July 10, 2011.
xix brilliant portrayal of Johnson’s career: Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002).
xix “Johnson was a noisy summer storm”: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, p. 232.
xx the legacy of a democratized Senate: Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 31–47, 83–88; Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 171–174; Gould, Most Exclusive Club, pp. 233–235. The theme that Mansfield democratized the Senate was voiced in many interviews with former senators, such as Gary Hart and Dick Clark, who remembered being early beneficiaries of important assignments because of Mansfield’s view of the Senate.
xx “the “national mediator”: Walter F. Mondale, with David Hage, The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics (New York: Scribner, 2010), p. 116; interview with Vice President Mondale, September 11, 2009.
CHAPTER 1: THE GRIND
3 seventeen new senators and sixty-seven new House members: Mildred Amer, “Freshmen in the House of Representatives and Senate by Political Party, 1913–2008,” Congressional Research Service, August 20, 2008.
4 a singular moment: 1953 was the only almost comparable moment of change in political leadership, bringing in a new president (Dwight Eisenhower), new Senate leaders (Robert Taft and Lyndon Johnson), and new Speaker of the Ho
use (Joseph Martin). Martin, however, had been Speaker previously, unlike Tip O’Neill in 1977.
4 Edmund Muskie of Maine and Ernest “Fritz” Hollings of South Carolina: Robert C. Byrd, The Senate 1789–1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), pp. 570–572.
4 a delicate political conundrum: Byrd, Senate Addresses, vol. 2, p. 570; Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), p. 454; interview with former senator John Culver, April 15, 2010.
5 no longer responded to him with their customary warmth: Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, pp. 423–424. The biographer notes: “Humphrey found the new Senate less to his liking. The club-like intimacy in which he had basked . . . seemed to have vanished with the passage of men such as Richard Russell.”
5 Byrd took a call from Humphrey: Byrd, Senate Addresses, vol. 2, pp. 571–572.
6 None of these senators had come further: Byrd, Senate Addresses, vol. 2, pp. 541–555, and Robert C. Byrd, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2005) are two of the many sources recounting Byrd’s remarkable rise from poverty.
7 channeled money to his impoverished state: In Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Byrd recounts numerous examples of his legendary ability to bring federal funds to West Virginia. A humorist once remarked that Byrd would have moved the entire federal government to West Virginia if the Washington Monument could have fit under the bridges on the highway. In 1989, after thirty years in the Senate, Byrd further enhanced his influence by stepping down as Senate majority leader to become chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
8 Byrd saw an opening: Byrd noted that “ideology probably played a bigger role in that race than any subsequent race” he was ever in (Byrd, Senate Addresses , vol. 2, p. 563).
8 a swift and stealthy campaign to defeat Kennedy: Byrd, Senate Addresses, vol. 2, p. 567; Adam Clymer, Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography (New York: William Morrow, 1999), pp. 171–173.
8 Byrd chafed at the widespread idea: Byrd, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields , p. 385.
9 Nixon gave serious thought to nominating Byrd: Dean, Rehnquist Choice, pp. 133–149. Byrd took the possibility seriously as well. Byrd, Senate Addresses , vol. 2, pp. 565–566; Byrd, Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, pp. 306–308.
9 His views on civil rights became muted: Sanford J. Ungar, “The Man Who Runs the Senate: Bobby Byrd: An Upstart Comes to Power,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1975, pp. 29–35; Clayton Fritchey, “Senator Byrd’s Emergence as a Senate Leader,” Washington Post, June 2, 1973; Vera Glazer, “Senator Byrd’s Political Star Rising,” Charleston Daily Mail, January 15, 1974.
9 “the Southerners’ time had passed”: G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960’s (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), p. 165.
9 selfless, unending efforts to make the Senate work: Political reporters have commented frequently on Byrd’s rise in the Senate, his mastery of Senate procedures and rules, and his dedication to the institution. For example, “New Congress—Younger, but Less Brash—Convenes, Pick Leaders, Organizes,” Congressional Quarterly, January 8, 1977, p. 41; “A Bold and Balky Congress,” Time, January 23, 1978. Nothing captures Senator Byrd’s love of the Senate better than his Addresses on the History of the United States Senate , noted above.
9 the idea of Robert Byrd as majority leader: “Profile: Robert C. Byrd,” Congressional Quarterly, January 8, 1977, p. 33; Ungar, “Man Who Runs the Senate.”
9 preferred to be called “Robert”: Interview with Joseph Stewart, June 14, 2010.
9 his hands frequently trembled: Byrd conveyed his embarrassment about his tremor to me when I worked for him in 1979.
9 unexpected discourse on the inevitability of death: In 1985, while serving as chief of staff to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, I attended a meeting where Senator Byrd surprised a visiting West Virginia delegation by veering suddenly into a vivid and gloomy rumination on the inevitability of death.
10 “Turkey in the Straw”: I had the completely unexpected pleasure of hearing Senator Byrd play the fiddle on one of the first Friday afternoons after I joined his leadership staff at the Democratic Policy Committee in February 1979.
10 his presidential bid was not taken seriously: Byrd, Senate Addresses, vol. 2, p. 569.
10 “the South’s unending revenge upon the North”: William S. White, Citadel: The Story of the U.S. Senate (New York: Harper & Bros., 1957), p. 68.
11 He transformed the role of Senate leader: Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, pp. 562–580; Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 17–18; Randall B. Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 263–264.
11 Using Hubert Humphrey as his liaison: Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, pp. 452–462; Robert Mann, The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell and the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1996), pp. 142–148; Woods, LBJ, p. 233.
11 bullied, badgered, and cajoled the Senate: Johnson’s biographers, including Caro, Woods, and Robert Dallek, provide many examples of his abusive treatment of those Democratic senators he disfavored. Paul Douglas was one of his leading targets. Roger Biles, Crusading Liberal: Paul H. Douglas of Illinois (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002), pp. 130–131, 170. Unsurprisingly, Douglas was sharply critical of Johnson as majority leader. “As a deliberative body, the Senate degenerated under Johnson’s leadership.” Paul H. Douglas, In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 234.
12 The 1958 election was a rout: Mann, Walls of Jericho, pp. 236–237, is one of many sources that emphasize the importance of that off-year election as a turning point for the Senate. The 1958 off-year election began the transformation of the Senate into a liberal institution, but during the first two years of John Kennedy’s presidency, Congress was still closely divided between liberal Democrats and progressive Republicans on the one hand, and conservative Republicans and southern Democrats on the other. Consequently, Kennedy’s legislative accomplishments in 1961–1962 were modest. The 1962 off-year election, however, shifted the balance to the liberals, particularly in the Senate.
12 a new challenge from restive liberals: Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, pp. 1015–1017; Woods, LBJ, p. 344; Mann, Walls of Jericho, p. 241.
12 “He told me to go to hell”: Booth Mooney, LBJ: An Irreverent Chronicle (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), p. 106.
12 “We were Cuber-ized”: John G. Tower, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 163.
13 the Senate’s most towering accomplishment: Many historians and observers of American politics believe that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the greatest legislative accomplishment in the history of the country and the Senate’s greatest moment. These include Mann, Walls of Jericho; Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Woods, LBJ; Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield.
14 polar opposite of his flamboyant predecessor: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 170–176, 206–207; Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 19–23.
15 believed in a democratic, small-d, Senate: Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 37–42; Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 171–173.
15 a virtual rebellion inside the Senate: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 205–206; Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, 79–82.
16 “have ranged from a benign Mr. Chips”: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 206–207; Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 82–85.
17 the “liberal moment” of 1963 through 1966: my description of the very brief period of explosive liberal legislative activity from 1963 through 1966.
17 the “liberal hour” of the 1960’s: Mackenzie and Weisbrot, Liberal Hour,
sets forth the argument that liberal progress through the 1960’s was driven from the top down, by the federal government, with the Senate playing a key role.
17 “awesome patience”: Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, p. 36.
17 His numerous memos were heartbreakingly prescient: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 185–186,192–193, 198–199 (to President Kennedy), 213–214, 218, 237–241, 254–255, 267–269, 282–283, 290–291, 314 (to President Johnson); 373–374 (to President Nixon, with whom Mansfield met privately twenty-seven times during Nixon’s presidency).
17 gave up on Nixon’s commitment to ending the Vietnam War: “Cambodia tore it”: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, pp. 376, 380–383.
17 angered at the evidence of “dirty tricks”: Ibid., pp. 432–433.
17 Only Mansfield could have picked Sam Ervin: Valeo, Mike Mansfield, Majority Leader, pp. 233–234.
17 stronger oversight of the intelligence community: Loch K. Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), pp. 10–13, 229–230; LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer, Fighting the Odds: The Life of Senator Frank Church (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1994), pp. 471–472.
17 “There is a time to stay and a time to go”: Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, p. 453.
17 “a kind of controlled madhouse”: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, p. 293.
18 a new reluctance to support “big government” programs: Michael Pertschuk, Revolt Against Regulation: The Rise and Fall of the Consumer Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 49–60; Report to Leadership Participants on 1980 Findings of Corporate Priorities (New York: Yankelovich, Skelly and White, 1980): p. 13.
18 “not just a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys”: David S. Broder, “Hart’s Theme,” Washington Post, February 29, 1984.
18 genuinely uncertain about what Jimmy Carter cared about: Steven M. Gillon, The Democrats’Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 184–185.
19 Byrd was determined to get out ahead of the issue: “Senators Nearer Ethics Code and Pay Raise,” Associated Press, January 19, 1977.
19 The 1974 New Hampshire Senate election: Gould, Most Exclusive Club, p. 265.