Master of the Senate
Review 5: Master of the System
"Master of the Senate" is the third book in Robert A. Caro's series, "The Years of Lyndon Johnson." It is more than 1,000 pages long. For the next five Fridays, Flak will follow Caro's work as it unfolds across a critical period in Senate history: 1949 to 1960. This was an era when Lyndon Johnson catapulted himself to the rank of majority leader after a single term, grabbed the Senate by the balls, and started winning the battle for the civil rights.
Caro's cunning roadmap emerges in the middle of "Master of the Senate." Lyndon Johnson did three things to achieve dominance of the Senate and real national prominence. Each was difficult to accomplish, but not impossible. And together, united like pieces of the Triforce, they created an unstoppable political force that Johnson wielded with enormous skill. Caro renders these ideas with crystal clarity. He puts Johnson's political machinations into a context so deeply dramatic and personally meaningful that the reader turns pages like a snakebite victim consulting a first aid manual.
To lock up his hold on the Senate, Johnson courted, seduced and maintained the favor of Georgia Senator Richard Russell, the Senate's dominant Democrat and one of the most powerful men in American politics. This gave him a line to the leader of his own faction, the Senate's conservative southern Democrats, who wielded influence far beyond their numbers.
Second, Johnson obtained the friendly ear of Sam Rayburn, the one man keeping the House from degenerating into the chamber of gibbering, chest-thumping baboons that was its natural state.
And — as revealed by the heart of the book's fifth hundred pages — Johnson made sure to find an ally in the camp of the liberal (mostly Northern) Democrats.
With Russell's support, Johnson didn't need to worry about Democrats getting in the way of his schemes — in fact, he could generally count on Russell's aid. With access to the House, his colleagues came to him when their bills were facing problems passing through the other chamber of Congress. And by opening dialogue with a leader of the liberal Democrats, Johnson was able to make his party present a united front.
The key was Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.
On the face of it, Senators Humphrey and Johnson couldn't be more different. Humphrey was from Minnesota, a raging liberal whose courageous championing of a civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic National Convention split the party and fired the hopes of blacks across the country. But his impassioned views and air of self-righteous combativeness were precisely wrong for the collegial Senate, where he found himself scorned and isolated by much of its membership.
Caro documents the many snubs and slights directed against Humphrey, who was at the nadir of his time in the Senate.
Hubert Humphrey, the youngest, and perhaps the best, mayor in the history of Minneapolis, elected to the Senate at the age of thirty-seven in a landslide, Hubert Humphrey who had brought a Democratic convention to its feet with the greatest speech since the Cross of Gold, Hubert Humphrey, as brave as any David who ever faced a Goliath, driving up Connecticut Avenue in the stream of rush-hour cars, with tears running down his face.
And so it's no wonder that Lyndon Johnson — already supremely well connected, and able to charm almost anyone — was able to befriend Humphrey, convince Humphrey that the two of them really weren't so different at heart and start to introduce Humphrey around to the other senators.
Johnson convinced Humphrey that he was his true friend, and that, more importantly, Johnson would help him achieve his life's dream: becoming president. Humphrey, who never hid his ambition, bought Johnson's line: No Southern Democrat was ever going to be elected president. The failed bid of Richard Russell in 1952 would later be seen as proof of exactly that — you couldn't win a nomination without states like Illinois, New York and California. Caro's description of the courtship of Humphrey, as meticulously described as Johnson's efforts with Rayburn and Russell, gives testimony to his biographical thoroughness — by the time the relationship has become a bond, readers understand fully who Hubert Humphrey is, and why he would form an alliance with a man whose political outlook could hardly seem more different.
As the new minority leader, Johnson would need the alliance with Humphrey, and the help of all his Democratic allies, to face one of the greatest challenges of his time in the Senate: the post-election assignment of vacant Senate seats of 1953. The Republicans, feeling strong after the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, had prepared themselves for an assault on the Senate Democrats. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become chairman of the Government Operations Committee. Government Operations was always seen as a minor committee, but it was a perfect platform for McCarthy to raise holy hell from, in a crusade to paint his political opponents — and Democrats in general — as "soft" on communism.
Elsewhere on the front lines, Senator Robert Taft, the GOP's leader and senatorial war chieftain, had moved from Labor to Foreign Relations, bringing with him three Old Guard Republicans known for their hatred of the Marshall Plan, their ire that the Korean War hadn't been accelerated into China and their general disdain for foreign aid in general. The appearance of Taft meant that a legislative assault on US internationalism was about to begin.
But though he was the Senate leader for the Democrats, Johnson's hands were tied by Senate history. The seniority system meant that while there were two vacant seats on Foreign Relations, they would be filled by the senators who applied for them — sorted by the number of years they'd served in the Senate.
But to Johnson, stopping McCarthy's anti-communist rants and preserving the future of American foreign policy were goals too important to leave to the seniority system — despite the fact that it was the ironclad code that the Senate lived and died by. He decided to put Humphrey (a world-class orator and ardent internationalist) and Senator Mike Mansfield (a former professor and foreign relations expert) onto the Foreign Relations Committee, to stop Republican mischief.
This was next to impossible. Johnson did it. What follows is a brief — partial and abbreviated — catalog of what Johnson did to get Humphrey and Mansfield on Foreign Relations, ahead of four more senior senators.
1) he sought and received Richard Russell's permission to try to circumvent the seniority system;
2) he convinced Foreign Relations chairman Walter George, a staunch conservative, to let two liberals on his committee;
3) he went after the other four Senators who wanted to get onto the committee, by
a) using a friendship with Senator Harry Byrd established when Johnson was one of only two Senators to attend the funeral of Byrd's daughter;
b) getting Senator Warren Magnuson a seat on the powerful Appropriations committee that had opened up after Johnson cut a deal with Robert Taft to put more seats into the system as a whole;
c) promising Senator Spessard Holland the next open Appropriations seat and;
d) allowing Senator Matt Neely to retain seats on three other committees (most Senators only sat on two).
The story with the Government Operations Committee is only slightly less involved. But when Caro tells both these convoluted tales, they're clear as glass — the reader gets a sense both of Johnson's incredible personal drive, and the true scope and complexity of government at the national level.
The important details of history are numerous. Real legislative power is the marshalling of a hundred careful political courtships, a thousand roll-call votes, ten thousand phone calls. Somehow, amazingly, Caro brings out the patterns, and makes their comprehension simple — and entertaining as hell.
— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)
— Juliette Crane (cran0066 at hotmail dot com)
