Johnson would stand by his desk, in the center of that broad semi-circle of shining mahogany. Since he was on the first step, six inches higher than the floor of the well where the journalists were standing, he would be looking down at them from a height even greater than his own, and he also looked even taller than he was because the desk was so small. His thinning black hair was slicked down smooth, so that as his face turned to one side, there was nothing to soften that massive skull, or the sharp jut of the big jaw and the big nose, and when the face turned back, his eyes, under the heavy eyebrows, were those intent, intense dark eyes, always wary, that could in an instant narrow into slits and become so intimidating. And under the eyes was the grim tough line of Lyndon Johnson’s mouth. “He would stand there very erect, so tall and confident, just the model of a take-charge man,” recalls one of the journalists. “There was a nervous vitality that just poured out of him, almost an animal energy.”
And his physical presence wasn’t the only reason he seemed so big.
Other Majority Leaders who had met with reporters before each day’s Senate session had traditionally been accompanied by assistants to fill in the details of the answers to the reporters’ questions. No assistant accompanied Lyndon Johnson: he didn’t need any; he knew the details himself. The file folder that Siegel had prepared contained the day’s agenda, the Calendar of Bills, with notes on senators’ views about various bills, and brief statements Johnson was to give. In the memory of the reporters who met with him regularly, Lyndon Johnson never—not once—opened that folder. “Somebody might ask him about some minor bill,” one reporter says. “He’d say, ‘Oh, that’s Calendar Number so-and-so.’ He knew the numbers without looking. Or he’d say, ‘That’s not been discussed in committee yet. Looks like it might be coming out of the subcommittee this week.’ He knew where each bill was—exactly where it was.” He knew the activities that had occurred in the various committee and subcommittee hearing rooms that morning—the arguments that had been made, the actions that had been taken—as if he had been present in every room. “If you said, ‘Look, such-and-such committee just amended that amendment,’ he would say, ‘That new amendment is there because …’ He seemed to know every aspect of everything the Senate had done or was going to do.” Says another reporter: “He knew the Republican strategy, too—how we didn’t know. He might say, ‘Now, we’re going to debate an hour on this. However, the other side will try to amend the amendment.…’”
He knew exactly what he wanted to say—what he wanted the journalists to know—and he said nothing more. As the journalists looked up at him, the clock over the double doors at the rear of the center aisle was in their line of vision, so they were constantly reminded that the bell would ring, bringing the Senate to order and their time to ask questions to an end, precisely at noon. “He not only had his physical, dominating presence, but the clock behind him,” one of the reporters recalls. Not that he needed that assistance—or any assistance. “There would be little time for questions,” Booth Mooney would recall. “Nor any need for them, in Johnson’s opinion. The Majority Leader of the Senate had given them a basis for their stories. What more could they ask?” If there was a question that annoyed him, recalls one of the journalists, “he would answer the question. But he would put a spin on it, so he would be saying it his way.” That was the only way he answered any question. “You didn’t get any more than Lyndon Johnson wanted to tell you,” a journalist says. “Never. I don’t think, in all those years, he ever slipped up. He knew exactly what he wanted to say—and that was what he said. Period. I never felt in all those years that he ever lost control [of one of those press conferences in the well]. He was always in charge.”
Part of the aura that surrounded Johnson as he stood front-row center in the Senate Chamber was, as some of the reporters acknowledge, “the buildup, the accrual—the knowledge we had of what this guy had done, of what this guy could do. Of what he wanted to be.” It was an aura of triumphs won, of triumphs anticipated. But the aura was more than reputation. “Power just emanated from him,” another of the reporters says. “There was that look he gave. There was the way he held his head. Even if you didn’t know who he was, you would know this was a guy to be reckoned with. You would feel: don’t cross this guy. He was so big! And he would look around the Chamber—it was like he was saying, ‘This is my turf.’” More than a century before, a rider encountering big-eared, blazing-eyed John Wheeler Bunton on the Texas plains wrote of his unusual “bearing,” others spoke of his “towering form” and “commanding presence.” For more than a century, those words and phrases had been applied to generation after generation of Buntons. Now they were being applied to the Bunton who had become Majority Leader of the Senate. “He had the bearing of a man on a pedestal,” one of the reporters in the well recalls. “He had the bearing of a man in command.”
Then, at noon, the bells would ring, and the gavel of the senator in the chair—the senator Lyndon Johnson had put in the chair—would rap, and the Senate would convene. And Lyndon Johnson would still be in command.
The first words from Richard Nixon or Walter George, or whoever was presiding in their place—after the chaplain’s prayer and the ritualistic “The Senate will be in order”—were “The chair recognizes the Senator from Texas,” and for some time thereafter, Johnson, standing at his desk in the center of the first row, would be the only senator recognized. It would be he who, after disposing of the parliamentary preliminaries (“On request of Mr. Johnson of Texas, and by unanimous consent, the reading of the Journal of the Proceedings of May 25, 1955, was dispensed with”), made the requests—the requests that only he could make—for permission for committees or subcommittees to meet although the Senate was in session. (“On request of Mr. Johnson of Texas, and by unanimous consent, the Subcommittee on Judicial Improvements of the Committee on the Judiciary was authorized to meet during the session today”), the requests that had once been automatic but that were no longer so automatic, that were an exercise of his power. It was he who ordered up the executive session (“Mr. President, I move that the Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business.” “Without objection, so ordered”), and it was he who, during that session, shepherded the Senate through the Advise and Consent functions on nominations (“The Chief Clerk read the nomination of Admiral Arthur William Radford to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff…. The Chief Clerk read the nomination of General Maxwell Davenport Taylor to be Chief of Staff, United States Army…. The Chief Clerk read the nomination of General Nathan Farragut Twining to be Chief of Staff, United States Air Force…MR. JOHNSON of Texas: “Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc.” “Without objection, so ordered”) and on treaties as well (“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these treaties be considered as having passed through their various parliamentary stages up to and including the presentation of the resolutions of ratification, that the Senate take one vote on the treaties, and that President Eisenhower be notified of the Senate’s action.” “All those in favor of ratification, please stand and be counted…. Two-thirds of those senators present having voted in the affirmative, the resolutions of ratification are agreed to”). It was he who ended the executive session, and moved that the Senate return to legislative business. It was he who ordered up the morning hour, with its speeches, “subject to the usual two-minute limitation,” and it was he who ended the morning hour. And it was he who, after the morning hour, stood again at his desk to recite the formula—the formula that, by Senate custom, only he could recite—that was so vital to senators: “Mr. President, I move that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 394, Senate Bill 2080, a bill for the relief of Oakley F. Dodd”; “Mr. President I move that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2083, a bill to authorize a preliminary examination and survey of the channel leading from Indian River Bay to Assawaman Canal, Delaware.” After each of these Calendar Calls, the legi
slative clerk had to participate in the ritual, stating the bill by its full title (“A bill [S. 2083] to amend the Water Pollution Control Act in order to …”), and if the clerk was not reading fast enough, Johnson would become impatient. As he stood beside his desk, he was separated from the clerks on the second level of the dais only by the few feet of the well, and his eyes were on a level with theirs. “C’mon, c’mon, let’s get going,” he would say to the clerk facing him across the well, and a few bills later, “C’mon, GET GOING!” Senators watching Lyndon Johnson intone the ritualistic words that called a bill off the Calendar would know that they had bills over which they wanted—needed—that ritual intoned, and that only Lyndon Johnson could intone it.
It was Lyndon Johnson who called up the non-controversial bills that had been reported out of committees, moved their consideration and shepherded them efficiently through the process of passage. After the presiding officer had ordered a clerk to “state the bill by title for the information of the Senate,” and had then said, “The question is on agreeing to the motion of the Senator from Texas,” Johnson would either have the committee chairman briefly explain the measure—“I call the motion to the attention of the distinguished senator from Oklahoma”—or would briefly explain it himself.
And it was Lyndon Johnson who gave the Senate its schedule—in a tone of authority that let the Senate know that it was he, and he alone, who was establishing that schedule.
“Mr. President,” he would say, “I wish the Senate to be on notice that the Senate will consider on next Tuesday the State Department Appropriation Bill. The mutual security bill probably will be reported to the Senate by then and be available for consideration on that day. It is my understanding that the Committee on Banking and Currency hopes to report a housing bill. If it is reported as expected, it is my hope that the housing bill be considered sometime next week. If action can be had on the minimum wage bill, it is my plan to schedule it for consideration by the Senate as soon as it is reported out of committee.” He would make verbal gestures toward those who presumably were also involved in the scheduling process—“If the committees will report the bills—and I do not urge them to do so until they have thoroughly considered them and have reached full accord on them—the Policy Committee, and I am sure the Minority Leader will cooperate as he has in the past, will schedule the bills quickly.” But at the slightest hint that some other member of the Senate was daring to interject himself, no matter how slightly, in the process, Johnson reminded him who was in charge. In May, 1955, for example, Republican Charles Potter of Michigan, whose state was vitally interested in an early vote on the Great Lakes Fisheries Convention, a treaty with Canada, ventured to press Johnson a bit too hard on when the vote might be taken.
“When did [the Majority Leader] say he would call up the Convention?” Potter asked.
“The distinguished senator from Michigan has spoken with me on several occasions about the Fisheries Convention,” Johnson replied. “I am anxious to cooperate with him, as he has always cooperated with the Democratic side of the aisle, particularly with the leadership. If it is possible to call up the Convention on next Tuesday, it will be done.” On such occasions, Johnson’s tone indicated clearly that if it wasn’t possible, it wouldn’t be done. And senators hearing the exchange could hardly help being reminded of what might have happened to Potter’s cherished treaty if he had not “always cooperated with… the leadership.”
THESE MATTERS OF SCHEDULING were mostly routine, on non-controversial bills. But there were also the controversial bills, the major legislation. Passage of such legislation—winning on the major bills—was as difficult for Lyndon Johnson as it had always been for Majority Leaders, for he was in as precarious a position as any of his predecessors; what position, indeed, could be more precarious than that of a Leader with a one-vote margin, particularly when the party that was supposed to provide that margin was divided as deeply as his was divided? The Senate as a whole was divided on almost every major issue; with blocs of senators—Mountain States senators, Prairie States senators, Northeast urban votes, Southern Caucus votes—certain to oppose one issue or another, there were few proposals on which a majority vote was certain.
Because of these divisions, passage of most significant legislation required putting together, for each bill, a new, unique, collection of votes, and the margin would always be narrow—every vote counted. And Lyndon Johnson needed on each separate major bill votes not only for the bill but for the unanimous consent agreement that alone could insure that the bill could be brought to a vote, and that the differences between voting blocs and between individual senators had been sufficiently bridged so that when the votes were counted he would have a majority. So each major bill was the subject of countless negotiations.
Some took place in the Chamber, on the Senate floor—on that floor on which, for generations, the prevailing pace had been the slow, hesitant steps of old men, on which the prevailing attitude had been the extremely dignified, or overdignified, senatorial pomposity, on which the prevailing parliamentary procedure had often seemed to be the quorum call, the prevailing sound the drone of insignificant rituals.
Now Lyndon Johnson was in charge of that floor. One moment he would be sitting down beside Kerr or Anderson on one of the couches in the rear of the Chamber, the next, he was up buttonholing a senator who had just entered, joking with him, draping an arm around his shoulders, and then talking confidentially to him, bending close to his ear. Then, seeing another senator come in, he would be off to greet him, crossing the long Chamber. He would be throwing himself into the chair next to Richard Russell and talking with him out of the side of his mouth, or sitting down next to Walter George, and, leaning forward, be bringing him up to date on the activities of the day, or, jumping up, would be heading across to another senator. Sometimes he would throw himself down in his own chair, and, stretching his long legs out into the center aisle, or crossing them, would lean far back into the chair and slouch down until he seemed to be resting on the nape of his neck and the small of his back. He might sit like that, lost in thought, for several minutes. And then, having arrived at some decision, he would lunge up out of the chair and stride rapidly over to some senator and begin talking to him.
Even standing still, Lyndon Johnson was somehow always in motion, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, restlessly shifting his shoulders, one big hand plunging into a pants pocket to jingle coins or the keys on his big key ring, the other scratching his back—or scratching other parts of his body, too, for some of the motions Lyndon Johnson made front-row center on the great stage of the Senate floor were those intimate motions that embarrassed other men even in the relative privacy of Johnson’s office. The reporters in the Press Gallery would nudge each other and giggle when, jamming a hand into a side pocket of his pants, the Leader quite openly scratched his crotch, bending one leg and leaning far over as he did so, one shoulder much lower than the other, the better to reach hard-to-reach recesses of his body; sometimes, taking out his inhaler, he would tilt his head so far back that he was staring straight up at the ceiling, and shoving the inhaler far up his nose, he would snort so vigorously as he inhaled that the snorts were clearly audible up in the Gallery. Sometimes, standing there, he might jam both hands into his pockets and rise up on his toes as he glanced around the Chamber with that air of command.
As the day wore on and the routine business was disposed of, and the crucial votes began to loom closer, his conversations would take on more intensity. Grasping a senator’s arm, he would take him off to the side of the Chamber for a quiet talk. One of his arms would be firmly around his colleague’s shoulders, and after a while, his other hand would begin to jab, jab toward the other senator as he made his points. The jabs would no longer stop in midair; Lyndon Johnson’s long forefinger would begin to poke into the other senator’s chest. Or that hand—the other arm would still be around the shoulders, lest the senator try to get away—would reach out and take the s
enator’s lapel, gently at first, but then harder, grabbing the lapel, pulling the senator closer or pushing him back. And Lyndon Johnson’s big head would be down in the other senator’s face, or, twisting and cocking, coming up into that face from below.
And he would be moving faster and faster, throwing himself down into a chair beside one senator to whisper urgently to him for a moment, then bounding up the steps to talk to another at the rear of the Chamber, then, seeing another on the far side of the Chamber, crossing the center aisle, hurrying through the Republican desks with those long strides, leaning forward in his haste. Or he would beckon Bobby Baker over to him, lean far down to whisper right in Baker’s ear so that no one else could possibly hear, and Baker would dart away. Or Baker would rush out of the cloakroom and over to Johnson and whisper up into his ear, and Johnson would rush up to the cloakroom. “And even if he was just standing there jingling the coins, you couldn’t take your eyes off him,” says Robert Barr of U.S. News & World Report. “If you were a spectator and you didn’t know who he was, you would wonder [who he was]—because of this unbelievable restless energy that emanated from him.” The Senate Chamber which had been so sleepy and slow, was now, suddenly, a room filled with energy and passion.
THEN THE UNANIMOUS CONSENT AGREEMENT would be almost finalized—almost but not completely. Or, if the agreement was finalized, the times fixed in writing at which the roll would be called on the amendments and the final bill, he might have almost enough votes for passage—almost but not enough. And all too often in that divided and stubborn Senate, it seemed as if he would not be able, despite all his efforts, to get enough. And he had to have enough, had to win.
Striding up the aisle, Lyndon Johnson would push open the double doors to the Democratic cloakroom. Bobby Baker would hold out a tally sheet; Johnson would snatch it out of his hand. And Baker, who had been trying to make sure that all Johnson’s votes would be on the floor when they needed to be, would also have lists of the senators whom he had been unable to locate, or who had other commitments and had said they couldn’t be present, or who, for one reason or another, did not want to vote “with the leadership” on the upcoming bill. And he would have information for Johnson about disputes between two senators, or about the bill—amendments on which there was still no acceptable compromise.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 93