It wasn’t merely praise that Lyndon Johnson had obtained in just two weeks. He had obtained power, too.
THESE DEVELOPMENTS HAD implications for the Southern Caucus that might become quite profound indeed. In the past, it had been the southerners—through the Democratic Steering Committee they controlled and through their leader Russell—who decided on committee assignments. Freshmen had been told that if they wanted a certain committee, they had to “see Russell.” Now, in those first two weeks of 1953, freshmen had been told that it was Lyndon Johnson they should see.
The southerners, in particular Russell, had been consulted at every step, of course. Lyndon Johnson had, day after day, run back and forth to their offices to clear with them what he proposed to do. No step had been taken without their approval—without, in particular, Russell’s approval. Lyndon Johnson had done this so diligently, and with so much deference, that neither Russell nor any other southerner appears to have realized that a great change had occurred. But it had.
AND, DURING HIS FIRST WEEKS AS LEADER, it was not only the seniority system that Lyndon Johnson was changing.
The two party “policy committees” created in 1946 in the hope—political scientists’ hope—of narrowing the rifts within both parties that contributed so greatly to the Senate’s paralysis, and of creating more clear-cut party ideologies and positions, thereby defining issues and giving voters a “definite choice” between parties, had not fulfilled that purpose—or, indeed, any significant purpose. Since the Republicans were somewhat more cohesive in their views, their Policy Committee, which had a staff of twelve, at least met fairly frequently, after which Taft or Knowland “would,” as one writer puts it, “emerge to announce Republican opposition to the latest Democratic spending program” or to some other New Dealish proposal. The main function of the three-person staff of the Democratic Policy Committee, housed in Capitol Office G-18, a small two-room suite next to the Press Gallery, was to record senators’ voting records on index cards. “All we got out of the Policy Committee in those days were the little white cards,” George Reedy would recall. “No one quite knew what to do with it.”
But no one had known what to do with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, either.
Assembling a new staff for the Policy Committee wasn’t easy. Johnson wanted Donald Cook to head its legal activities, but Cook, having worked for Johnson before, wouldn’t work for him again. (Cook would never work for Johnson again; he kept finding excuses to turn down Johnson’s repeated job offers; in 1964, Johnson, now President, would offer the brilliant attorney, by then president of a major utility company, the post of Secretary of the Treasury, but Cook declined.) Now, in 1953, leaving the Securities and Exchange Commission to make room for Eisenhower’s choice, he excused himself by saying, disingenuously, that he had made a commitment, impossible to break, to join a private company. Johnson wanted Bryce Harlow to head the committee’s non-legal side, but Harlow was still unwilling to accept the “blacksnake.” (He would remain unwilling; he, too, would turn down repeated job offers from Johnson.) Johnson then offered the post to Jim Rowe, only to be turned down again. Nonetheless a staff was assembled—a competent staff, if not an outstanding one. George Reedy and Cook’s self-effacing, mild but diligent deputy, Gerald Siegel, were brought over from the Preparedness Committee, and Johnson also hired Roland Bibolet, who had been McFarland’s aide. Suddenly there were six desks crammed into G-18’s outer room, and the Senate’s Democratic Party had a staff capable of performing the new functions that the Democratic Leader had in mind for it.
These functions were not at all what the political scientists had envisioned, for Lyndon Johnson didn’t want clear-cut positions or issues, or a “definite choice.”
His reasons were partly personal—that deep aversion to issues that had manifested itself throughout his entire political life; and that desire for unanimity which Gerry Siegel had observed on the Preparedness Subcommittee and which he was now to see again. His reasons were partly strategic. Raising issues could only divide the party, Johnson felt. How could a Douglas and an Eastland, a Lehman and a Stennis, ever be reconciled?—the gap was simply too wide to be bridged. The mere raising of many issues would spotlight the Democratic schism, would foster dissension and the disunity that would undermine a Leader’s authority, and ultimately make him an object of derision. He wanted unity, and he made clear to his newly formed Policy Committee staff that it was their job to take the preliminary steps necessary to produce it.
The lawyerly Siegel would analyze the drafts of legislation that senators were planning to introduce, and he or Reedy would solicit comments from the other senators interested in the same subject. “We’d call individual senators who were objecting to something in a bill, and we’d explore their thinking and determine what would meet their objections.” Then Siegel would set to work, to, as he puts it, “make the changes … necessary to adjust to the reality….” The staff’s job, in other words, was to devise compromises within the party, to see that dissent was muffled before it became open. Then Lyndon Johnson would confer—in person or over the phone—with the senators involved, and try to win their agreement to the compromise.
This procedure, of course, had profound significance for the Senate. The Senate had always been the citadel of individualists, of independents, of ambassadors from sovereign states negotiating with each other—from positions of sovereignty. Although there had always been exceptions, senators had to a considerable extent negotiated, either in person or through their assistants, directly with each other—had negotiated among themselves. Now, gradually—very gradually at first, almost imperceptibly—a change was taking place. Senators were still negotiating with each other, of course, but now they were also negotiating through Lyndon Johnson. He—or his Policy Committee staffers—were representing senators’ opinions to other senators. He was telling one senator what an opposing senator was asking for—and what he would really settle for. He was telling Gerry Siegel what wording to put in the next draft of a senator’s bill. The beginning of this change can be dated precisely: the first meeting of the transformed and revitalized Democratic Policy Committee—the Lyndon Johnson Policy Committee—on February 3, 1953. Its evolution and growth would for some time be unnoticed by those—the Democratic senators—whom it was most directly affecting. But it had begun.
• • •
DISSENT ON THE POLICY COMMITTEE was muffled also by his selection of its nine members. On this committee, seniority was followed, for its four holdovers—Russell (of course), Green, Hill and Kerr—were allies on whose support he could count. He and his compliant Assistant Leader Earle Clements of Kentucky were ex officio members, and he filled the seventh seat with “Mr. Wisdom.” That left only two seats. To fulfill his pledge to Humphrey, Johnson had to fill them with liberals, but the infirmities of the liberal Humphrey had named, Jim Murray, were worsening so badly that Bobby Baker would describe him as “an echo who would do Johnson’s slightest bidding”; his vote could be counted on “to solidify Johnson’s control in party matters.” And if Murray was dependent on Johnson because of age, the other liberal he selected, Tom Hennings, was in a similar position because of alcohol.
Johnson wanted, in fact, unanimity on the Policy Committee. He didn’t want it to recommend a Democratic policy, throw its weight behind any Democratic bill or resolution, or issue any statement unless the stand was endorsed by, in Bobby Baker’s words, “one hundred percent—or at least ninety percent—of the Committee.” Exercising such caution “makes sense,” he explained to Baker. “If we can get our team solidly behind a bill and pick up scattered Republicans, we’ll win. Otherwise, we’ll lose. We’re a minority party, remember.” One hundred percent was the figure on which Johnson insisted in practice. “Unless there were no real serious objections, he wouldn’t come out of the Policy Committee with any decision,” Siegel says. But often, thanks to his selection of the committee’s members, there were no serious objections; the nine se
nators voted as one. Asked to describe the committee, George Smathers of Florida, who joined it in 1955, replied, “Lyndon Johnson … was really it. He ran it.”
Johnson’s use of the committee also muffled dissent. Practically the first piece of substantive legislation that it discussed—at its second meeting, on Tuesday, February 17, 1953—was the Hawaiian Statehood Bill, which Johnson reported would soon be brought to the floor by the GOP. Liberals were anxious to make the bill a party issue, believing that it was clear-cut. But the South saw the bill differently, feeling that admission to the Union of racially mixed Hawaii would mean another two votes in the Senate for cloture, and Russell raised objections in the Policy Committee, which, as the minutes tersely reported, finally took a position that blurred the issue: “The Committee discussed the Hawaiian Statehood Bill, and generally agreed that an effort should be made to amend that bill by granting statehood to Alaska as well.”
Other issues—virtually every issue, in fact, that came before the Democratic Policy Committee during Lyndon Johnson’s time as the Democratic Leader—were handled the same way.
The committee’s meetings, held every other Tuesday over lunch in the inner room of the G-18 suite, were the epitome of the traditional senatorial bonhomie and clubbiness. Its nine members were all members of the Senate “club,” and they were easy with each other. They would stroll into the staff room, “usually late, with the air of a man dropping into another’s office to have a drink and, having nothing better to do at the moment, to pass the time of day,” William White was to say, and head toward the tall open door in the rear where the courtly Skeeter stood to welcome them. Nothing could have been more pleasant than to see the youngest member of the committee, the youngest by half a dozen years, who happened to be its chairman, walk through the room with a gently guiding hand on the elbow of Murray, whose gait seemed more unsteady at each meeting, or stand listening deferentially and appreciatively to Green or Russell. Just inside the door there would be the hand-shaking, the backslapping, the “Glad to see ya’s,” the “Those were great remarks you made down there,” the rough, masculine joking before, with Skeeter firmly closing the door against any eavesdropping, the senators sat down, beneath the glittering senatorial chandelier, to the fruit cocktails embedded in ice and the thick sirloins served on the starched white tablecloth that had been spread over the long table flanked by the tall senatorial bookcase and the elegant senatorial fireplace and gilt mirror. Unless Russell brought up some matter he felt required lengthy discussion, the talk wouldn’t touch on serious matters until dessert (usually ice cream), when the chairman would turn to the agenda. Since the Democrats were in the minority, they had no responsibility for the scheduling of bills to be brought to the floor; Johnson might say that Taft or Knowland was planning to place a particular piece of legislation on the Calendar, and ask, “Does anybody have any objection?” and if one of the committee members did, the matter would be discussed.
The Republicans were, in 1953, issuing statements of purpose for their Policy Committee, rules for its operation. Johnson wanted no statements and no rules—nothing in writing. Political scientists who attempted to analyze its activities found themselves baffled. “Nowhere have the Democrats set down the functions for their Policy Committee,” Professor Hugh Bone of the University of Washington was to note in 1958. Journalists were baffled, too. “From that committee there were no leaks, none at all,” one recalls. Reporters would be reduced to waiting in the corridor outside G-18 in the hope that Johnson would emerge at the end of the meeting to tell them what Democratic “policy” had evolved. And often there was no policy to report at all. Nothing could have been more informal, more relaxed—more in the traditional Senate way—than the operation of the Democratic Policy Committee.
Under the bonhomie and the backslapping, however, behind those tall doors where nine men met seemingly as friends, developments were taking place that would have deep significance for the party, for the Senate, and, it would turn out, for the United States. Lyndon Johnson’s Democratic Policy Committee was not reconciling but ignoring conflicts among Democrats, not clarifying party policy but blurring it. The committee was being turned into a device to discourage the discussion of issues. Liberals were angered by that turn, as Bobby Baker was to say. They “saw the Democratic Policy Committee as Johnson’s private rubber stamp—which it was—and they accused LBJ of using the [committee] as a ploy to place on the back burner those bills he did not want called up. They were not entirely wrong. ‘I don’t see any profit,’ LBJ told me, ‘in calling up bills so that Jim Eastland and Herbert Lehman can insult each other, or so that Paul Douglas and Albert Gore can exercise their lungs. Why should we cut ourselves up and then lose …?’”
And it was a very effective device. Democratic Party councils—notably, the caucus—and the Democratic side of the Senate floor had always been platforms for the liberals’ demand for social justice, for social change, for the calls for equality from Douglas and Humphrey and Lehman. There were no liberal orators on the Democratic Policy Committee. Of the many impressive liberal senatorial voices in the party, not one was on the committee that enunciated the party’s policy. Room G-18 was an ideal place in which to kill an issue quietly; behind its closed doors there was no voice to keep the issue alive. As a result, the Democratic Party now appeared far more unified than it had in the recent past, but the unity was a unity that was, for the first time, imposed by the Democratic Leader. The transformation of the Policy Committee therefore had the same side effect as did the transformation of the seniority system: an increase in Lyndon Johnson’s power. Moreover, since the committee was supposedly setting party policy, he could say there was less need for party caucuses. During the first four years that he had been in the Senate—before he was Democratic Leader—the Democratic Caucus had met twenty-one times, or about five times a year. Under his leadership, that changed. For six of the first seven years that he was Leader, the caucus met only once a year. During the other year—1956—it did not meet at all. In only one year that he was Leader—1960—did the caucus meet more frequently—four times—and then only because of political considerations relating to Johnson’s run for the 1960 presidential nomination. After Johnson left the leadership, Democratic Caucuses were again held more frequently: five times each in 1961 and 1962, four in 1963, eight in both 1964 and 1965.
AND LYNDON JOHNSON was making other changes that involved the Policy Committee, changes more subtle—and more far-reaching.
The first two topics raised by the committee’s new chairman at the committee’s initial, February 3, luncheon meeting were the schedule of future meetings (twelve-thirty every Tuesday) and the method of paying for them (“A fund was established, to be financed by a $25 contribution from each member,” the minutes reported. “You know Dick,” Lyndon Johnson joked. “Dick wants to know who’s paying for these steaks.”) The third topic was presented just as casually—although a great deal of not-at-all-casual thought had gone into it.
“Senator Johnson (Tex.) … explained that there was a need for liaison between the Policy Committee and the Democratic members of [Standing] Committees,” the minutes reported. He “presented a draft of a letter to be sent by him to each of the ranking Democratic members on standing committees, requesting that they work out an arrangement whereby either some senator on the committee or some minority staff member keep the Policy Committee staff advised as to what is going on in the various committees.”
Johnson had, of course, “counseled” with his Policy colleagues beforehand, and as soon as he made the suggestion, Senator Hill said at once “that he thought it an excellent idea.” Senator Russell agreed, but suggested, possibly by prearrangement, that the liaison be kept on the staff level. “There being no objection, Senator Johnson (Tex.) stated that the letter would be redrafted, in accordance with the suggestions,” and the next day the ranking Democrat on each of the fifteen Standing Committees received the letter:
The Senate Democratic Pol
icy Committee is in need of regular information upon the activities of the various Legislative Committees of the Senate. I have been requested by the Policy Committee to ask your help in meeting this problem.
If you could designate a staff member of [your] Committee … who could contact Roland Bibolet… on a weekly basis, it would be greatly appreciated. Bill analyses are not requested, but a report upon the status of legislation pending in your Committee that affects the Senate Democrats as a whole and the probable timetable for action on this legislation would be of great value.
With assurances of high esteem and respect, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Lyndon B. Johnson
No suggestion could on its face have been more logical, simply more conducive to the efficient operation of the Senate and to the unity of the Democrats in the Senate. If a single senator glimpsed the possibility of further implications behind the seemingly innocuous request, there was no indication of it. By Policy’s next meeting, Johnson could report that “replies furnishing the names of committee staff members” were coming in at a rapid rate.
But there were further implications. In the past, each of the Senate’s Standing Committees had operated as a totally independent barony, generally advancing its bills without more than cursory reference to other committees’ bills—not infrequently, in fact, advancing bills whose contents conflicted with other committees’ bills. Some of the more irascible chairmen were, in fact, prone to give notably short shrift to inquiries about schedules, or bill content, from the party leadership. This lack of coordination contributed to the Senate’s inefficiency: it was one of the primary reasons for the traditional end-of-session logjam in which major bills from many different committees arrived on the floor at the same time. It also contributed to the committees’ independence, to their almost absolute freedom from any outside control—and therefore to the power of their chairmen. Now, with that February 4 letter, the situation was changed. An outside entity, the Democratic Policy Committee, would henceforth be advised weekly on the status of bills within the Standing Committees. The Policy Committee could notify the committees’ ranking members (the same senators who would be the chairmen again when the Democrats took back the majority) of potential scheduling conflicts, could suggest that a bill be moved forward or held back, could by doing so intervene in the all-important strategic timing of action on legislation. The Policy Committee would, after that letter, also be regularly apprised of the content of proposed legislation, including legislation that was still under discussion by a Standing Committee or one of its subcommittees—legislation that was still in the early stages of being formulated or reshaped. Policy staffers Reedy and Siegel and Bibolet—and their boss—would be much better able to analyze the legislation, to “call individual senators, explore their thinking,” mediate between opposing points of view; to perform, in short, a role hitherto performed only by the mighty chairmen, and their staffers.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 82