And this hard fact created for Johnson the most difficult of dilemmas. Being linked with the South would keep him from rising beyond the Senate. Yet being linked with the South was the only way in which he could rise within the Senate.
DURING THE 1952 CAMPAIGN, the Red Scare and the inability to win in Korea stirred up the class and ethnic resentments that were never far below the surface of the American electorate. Republican charges that the Democrats were “soft on Communism” and that in fact the Roosevelt-Truman years had been “twenty years of treason,” and Joe McCarthy’s references to “Alger—I mean Adlai” and his statement that if he got onto the Democrat’s campaign train with a baseball bat, he would “teach patriotism to little Ad-lie,” resonated with the electorate. And so did the personality of the Republican candidate, about whom British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, no fan, had once remarked: “He merely has to smile at you, and you trust him at once.” Journalists, attracted by Stevenson’s wit and dignified, issue-oriented campaign, were slow to understand this, and polling was not as exact a science as it would later become (and pollsters, burned in 1948, may have been hedging a bit), so that the predictions were summed up in the New York Times headline the morning before the balloting: “ELECTION OUTCOME HIGHLY UNCERTAIN.” But Dwight Eisenhower, America’s greatest military hero, who had smiled at the American people—and promised them “I shall go to Korea”—was swept into office with 55 percent of the vote, and 442 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 89. Stevenson retained his sense of humor (after the election, he asked a friend, “Who did I think I was, running against George Washington?” and said of the results, “I’m too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh”), but Eisenhower’s overwhelming victory pulled so many Republican candidates into office with him that the GOP won control of both houses of Congress, the Senate by a single vote; over the Christmas holidays, Capitol maintenance men unscrewed Senate desks from the floor of the Chamber and rearranged them, so that there were only forty-seven on the Democratic side of the center aisle.
Among the missing Democrats would be Ernest McFarland. Once, McFarland had been a fixture in the Senate, a sure bet for re-election. Then he became Leader—and identified in Arizona with the unpopular Truman Administration. Scant his leadership responsibilities though he would, moreover, they had nonetheless cut into the time he could spend back home campaigning. He had been defeated by a forty-three-year-old Phoenix city councilman, Barry Goldwater.
His loss had re-emphasized the perils posed to a Democratic Leader, particularly one who would be up for re-election in less than two years: Scott Lucas had accepted the leadership in 1949 and been defeated in 1950; McFarland had accepted it in 1951, and been defeated in 1952. The job had cost both men their careers. With a Republican in the White House, the Democratic Leader would no longer be forced to support unpopular presidential programs, and, as the party’s highest elected official, he and the Speaker would assume a larger importance in national affairs, so that the leadership became in some respects more desirable. But during the campaign, liberals had been so infuriated by the refusal of southern Democratic senators (including, notably, Lyndon Johnson) to campaign enthusiastically for Adlai Stevenson that the old hostility between the liberal and conservative wings in the Senate had been dramatically inflamed, and on balance the problems that would confront the next Democratic Leader loomed more menacingly than ever. But although Johnson’s senatorial term would be up in two years, he wanted the job. One Democratic senatorial aide recalls that when McFarland lost, “the liberals began musing on what they would do when they got back to Washington, whom they were going to support.” But long before they got back, Johnson had begun to move. The dawn had just broken in Boston, and after a long, tense night, young John Fitzgerald Kennedy had just learned that he had defeated Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., when he got a call and Kennedy aide Lawrence F. O’Brien heard him say, “Well, thank you, Senator, thank you very much.” Putting down the phone, he told O’Brien, with what O’Brien described as “a puzzled expression”: “That was Lyndon Johnson in Texas. He said he just wanted to congratulate me.” It was an hour earlier in Texas. “The guy must never sleep,” Kennedy said. Kennedy’s puzzlement over the call disappeared when, a few hours later, the final Arizona results were reported. With the Democratic leadership suddenly vacant, “Johnson wasn’t wasting any time in courting Kennedy’s support,” O’Brien was to explain.
Richard Russell could either become Leader himself, or decide who would. According to some sources, the Arizona results had hardly been tallied when the Brown & Root DC-3 was in the air, carrying Johnson to Winder. According to others, the two senators met in Washington, on November 9. Evans and Novak, who interviewed the two men that month, reported that Johnson, in his first telephone call that morning after Election Day, suggested that Russell be Leader, and volunteered his support, saying, “I’ll do the work and you’ll be the boss.” Russell declined; since the Georgian had been turning down the job for years, “Johnson,” they wrote, “must have had a strong suspicion that this was precisely what Russell would do.” Russell then suggested that Johnson himself should take the job. Quickly agreeing, Johnson set one “condition”: since he would be constantly needing the Old Master’s advice, he said, Russell would have to change his desk in the Senate Chamber so that he would be sitting directly behind the Leader’s desk.
Matters were settled quickly. Bobby Baker was called out of class at the American University law school to take a telephone call from Texas, and when he told Johnson, “All you’ve got to do is convince one man and you’re home free,” Johnson told him that that man had already been convinced, and that Bobby should let his sponsor, Burnet Maybank, know it. When the South Carolina Senator told Baker, “I’m a Dick Russell man first, last, and always, if he wants it,” Baker assured him that Russell didn’t want it, and was supporting Johnson, and Maybank agreed to send a telegram to Johnson pledging to support him unless Russell became a candidate. When Johnson telephoned John Stennis in Mississippi to ask for his support, the conversation was a reprise of the one that had occurred between the two senators two years earlier, when the topic had been the assistant leadership. “I very frankly told him that if Senator Russell was interested at all, that I would support him, Senator Russell,” but Johnson said “he had already checked it out with Senator Russell,” so “I told him I’d support him gladly.” North Carolina’s Clyde Hoey, who had already publicly suggested Russell for the job, now wrote the Georgian that while “I was strong for you, as I would be for you for anything,” in deference to his wishes “I shall do all I can for Lyndon Johnson.” To every senator who telephoned Russell to ask him to take the leadership, Russell replied that he didn’t want it, and that he wanted Johnson to have it. And these calls did not come only from southern senators, for Russell’s influence was not confined to them. The eighty-five-year-old Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island was one caller, and when he said, “A southerner should be the Leader,” Russell told him who he would like the southerner to be. Some senators who didn’t telephone Russell were telephoned by him instead, and on November 10, he wrote on his desk calendar in the Senate Office Building: “Saw L. Johnson—buttoned up leadership for him.” That afternoon, in a very rare gesture, he invited reporters into his office so that he could make the stamp of approval public. “A number of senators have highly honored me by suggesting me for the post,” he said, but “Senator Johnson is my choice for the place and I shall support him…. In my opinion, he will be chosen.” Johnson’s selection “is practically certain,” the astute James L. McConaughy wired his editors at Time. “Dick Russell’s endorsement means that it is as good as in the bag already.” In fact, by November 10, just eight days after the election, Johnson was assured of the support of a majority of the forty-seven Democrats.
A MERE MAJORITY was not what Lyndon Johnson had in mind, however. Becoming Leader with purely conservative support and the liberals solidly opposed to him would exacerbate the hostili
ty between the two factions which had hamstrung past Democratic Leaders. Only by creating a new unity among the party’s senators could he avoid the fate of McFarland and Lucas and Barkley. Besides, were he to win the leadership almost entirely with southern votes, the press would identify him as the candidate of the South. Lyndon Johnson needed not a simple majority, but a big majority—one that included enough liberals so that he would not be tagged with that label so destructive to his future hopes.
Such a majority was going to be very difficult to achieve, Johnson saw. Russell couldn’t help him get it—couldn’t help him with Douglas or Lehman or Hennings or Kefauver or Murray or Monroney, or with newly elected liberals such as Kennedy, or Jackson or Mike Mansfield or Albert Gore. In fact, although Green had at first told Russell he would be guided by his wishes, the elderly Rhode Islander was now under pressure from his fellow liberals—and was declining to make a public statement of his preference. As many as twenty senators might line up behind a liberal candidate for Leader. So Lyndon Johnson began campaigning himself, telephoning other senators, listening, trading, selling.
Some of the selling was on philosophical grounds—to Hayden, for example, who wanted assurances that a new Leader would support the cherished right of unlimited debate. And some was done on grounds more pragmatic. The question of committee assignments for the newly elected senator from Massachusetts was being handled at what was, for the Kennedys, the highest level. Jim Rowe had been contacted by Joe Kennedy himself about “a good assignment for Jack.” Rowe contacted Johnson. What was said—or promised—is not known, but on November 13 Jack Kennedy wrote Johnson that “I want you to know that you will have my full support.”
In the case of Pat McCarran the grounds may have been more pragmatic still, for Nevada’s Silver Fox had a problem that went beyond the political. His long-rumored ties to Las Vegas and Reno underworld gambling syndicates had recently been noted in legal papers, in which the Senator was named, along with several prominent mafiosi, in a suit brought by Hank M. Greenspun, the crusading editor of the Las Vegas Sun, who charged them with attempting to drive him out of business because of his criticism of the “McCarran Machine.” If the suit escalated into criminal proceedings against the underworld figures, not only would McCarran’s re-election prospects be threatened but a whole new group of legal and public relations problems would be opened up, and the pre-trial hearings were not going well for him.
The solution to many of the senator’s problems might lie in the appointment of his protégé, James W. Johnson Jr., whom McCarran had previously installed as Nevada’s Democratic state chairman, as the state’s United States Attorney. In the lawsuit, Greenspun’s attorney had implied that McCarran had urged James Johnson’s nomination “to get a more friendly United States Attorney in Nevada.”
President Truman hated McCarran, but through an oversight had sent James Johnson’s appointment to the Senate in a large group of nominations. While McCarran was rushing it through the Judiciary Committee, the White House was made aware of the situation, and when the commission, approved by the Senate, had been sent back to Truman in July, 1952, for the normally pro forma signature, Truman had refused to sign, and had made it clear he never would. McCarran was one Senate elder who had never been particularly charmed by Lyndon Johnson, but now he apparently asked Johnson if he would intervene with the President if he was elected Leader; Johnson said he would, and McCarran agreed to support him.
As he was making the calls, Johnson was counting votes and making lists. The first lists were drawn up, as it happened, on a notepad from the Carlton Hotel, where Brown & Root maintained a suite, with Johnson making a large, firm checkmark next to a senator’s name when he was sure of his vote. The later lists—of the names of all forty-seven Democratic senators, from “Anderson” to “Symington,” typed in two double-spaced columns in alphabetical order—were on plain white paper.
This was vote-counting by the son of a man who had fooled himself with wishful thinking. On the typed list Johnson would write a number to the left of the name of each senator who was for him, to the right of the name of each senator who was against him, and no number was put on the left until Lyndon Johnson was absolutely sure he could count on that senator’s vote. Senators about whom he had any doubts—even senators who had promised him their vote but about whom he still had some trace of uneasiness—were put in the “against” column. Optimistic though he may have been that Harry Byrd would support him, a number “i” was written against Byrd—to the right, to the right along with Douglas and Lehman and Humphrey. Russell may have assured him that Theodore Francis Green would be for him, but he himself had not heard from Green, and against Green the number “7” was written, on the right. He had been told that Willis Robertson of Virginia was certain, but after listening very carefully to Robertson on the phone, he felt that Robertson was not certain enough. He marked an “L” for “leaning” on the right of Robertson’s name, not on the left.
The first of the lists—they are undated, but this first one was apparently made on November 11—had twenty numbers or marks to the right; the numbers on the left (including, by this time, McCarran’s) ran only up to twenty-seven. About noon on that day, Johnson talked again to Robertson, and afterwards wrote a “28” to the left of the Virginian’s name, but there were still nineteen names with numbers on the right—too many—and among them were names whose opposition would not look good in the newspapers: Matt Neely, for example, and, still, Green. The oldest senator was staying at the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York. On November 12, Johnson took the train to New York, returning the same day, and went to 231 to clean up some work. A few minutes after he had disappeared into his inner office, Green’s administrative assistant, Eddie Higgins, came through the door of the outer office carrying a press release. Walter Jenkins snatched it from his hand, and read its first sentence even as he buzzed in to Johnson, “I am happy to join … in endorsing Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas for Minority Leader.” Attached was a note to Johnson that Higgins had written: “At the direction of Senator Green, I am releasing the attached statement to the papers immediately.” Johnson dictated a wire to the Vanderbilt: “THANKS FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.” Scratching out the negative number to the right of Green’s name, he wrote instead a “29.” He not only had another vote, but a vote which was, as the New York Times noted the next day, from a senator “identified with the Fair Deal wing of the party in the North.” And another piece of good news had been waiting for him when he got back to Washington, a memo from Jenkins telling him that “Senator Clements tried to page you on the train to tell you that he had talked to Albert Gore and that Albert Gore is going to be for you.” And John Pastore and Neely were, at last, firm in their support. “30,” Johnson wrote. “31.” “32.”
THIS LEFT A POSSIBLE FIFTEEN VOTES against him—fifteen liberal votes, still too many. And the opposition was hardening. Analyzing the upcoming selections of Rayburn and Johnson, William White wrote in the New York Times that both were southerners and their selection therefore “suggests … the almost indestructible power of the Southerners” in the Democratic Party; Ray-burn’s selection, however, “will be hailed with fervor by the ‘regular’ [liberal] Democrats because in the recent presidential election Mr. Rayburn risked forty years of political prestige in a vain effort to hold Texas for the Democrats.” Johnson’s selection, White wrote, “will not [be hailed] for the reason that he is [too] close to the intransigent southerners…. The Democrats of the Senate are about to choose as their Leader … not only a Southerner but a Southerner whose state went to General Dwight D. Eisenhower….” Liberal senators, as Hubert Humphrey was to recall, were “upset” by that prospect. They were also, as a memo from Time’s Washington bureau put it, “worried about their own problems back home, if they were being led in Washington by such a person.” On November 13, Jim Rowe telephoned Johnson’s office to warn him that “some of the liberals are getting ready to try to knife you” by nominating their own cand
idate when the Democratic caucus met on January 2 to formally select a Leader.
“Humphrey wanted it, but he couldn’t get the votes,” Bobby Baker was to recall. Fond though some of the southern senators had become of him personally, that fondness would obviously not extend to supporting a civil rights champion for Leader, so, as he himself realized, his candidacy was unfeasible. Humphrey was therefore asked to organize the liberals and find a candidate to block Johnson.
The liberal effort was a study in ineptitude. When, in mid-November, eighteen or nineteen senators finally got around to meeting—at Drew Pearson’s home in Georgetown—they decided that since no militant liberal could win southern votes in the caucus, “their only hope of success was to support Lister Hill, the most moderate southerner,” as Doris Kearns Goodwin put it. They telephoned Hill at his home in Alabama, only to be told that he was already committed to Johnson. They finally settled on seventy-six-year-old James Murray.
The Montanan’s frailness, which had just begun making itself apparent at the time of Johnson’s arrival in the Senate in 1949, was more marked now. His step was increasingly uncertain; at moments he seemed almost to totter. Murray had long been a courageous fighter for the New Deal, but his mind was no longer as strong as his heart, and more and more it dwelt in the past. “He had perfect memory of everything that took place under Franklin Roosevelt, but not as much more recent,” an aide says. But he was still capable, at least on most occasions, of holding his own on the Senate floor. And he was still a great favorite with the press, a noted New Deal “name.” While his candidacy was not a genuine threat—twenty-four votes were needed for election as Leader, and Johnson had thirty-two commitments—it could receive publicity, publicity that would work against Johnson’s objective.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 77