Master of the Senate (98 page)

T
HIS 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 candidate 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.

The possibility of the press focusing on the leadership fight would of course be increased if speculation arose about the attitude of the Democratic standard-bearer in the recent election, and in mid-November, Adlai Stevenson, speaking to several Democratic senators—not Johnson—from Chicago said he was planning a trip to Washington to discuss party policy in a meeting with Democratic congressional leaders.

Johnson did not want that. Who knew where a Stevenson visit to Washington might lead? It might revitalize the Senate liberals. It had to be headed off. Although Lady Bird Johnson was in the Scott and White Clinic in Temple, Texas, for a gynecological procedure, her husband did not leave Washington until the Stevenson visit
was
headed off—which was accomplished in a telephone conversation with Stevenson at 4:10 p.m. on November 20, with Mary Rather on an extension, without Stevenson’s knowledge, taking down every word.

“I was hoping to get a chance to see you some time and talk to you a little bit,” Stevenson said, and when Johnson said he would shortly be leaving for Texas, Stevenson asked if “you couldn’t stop off here on your way.” Or, he said, he would be in New Jersey on December 3 and in Washington on December 4. Perhaps they could meet there.

Johnson was very diplomatic. He gently let Stevenson know that the leaders had already met. He, Russell, Clements, and Kerr “all had a very fine discussion the other night,” he said. They were all “very much in agreement.” And, he said, one thing they had agreed on was that there should not be any public meeting “until after we get this Senate organization behind us, because some of the speculators might attempt to inject you into it and we know that would be an embarrassing thing…. They would be saying that you were injecting yourself into it.” “We kinda concluded that probably we would get that behind us on January 2.” After it was behind them, he said, we “would try to work out a meeting….”

When Stevenson responded that he had thought the matter of the leadership had been settled (“I was under the impression … that there wasn’t any question but what the Democrats would elect you”), a warning, still diplomatic
but slightly firmer, was delivered. “There is not any [question],” Johnson said. But, he said, “there are some pretty strong feelings on the other side.” And “up until the time they actually make the decision, you know, you are taking a little chance in having conferences. The first thing the press says is that the Governor is telling the Senate what to do. Or that I was asking the Governor to get these boys in line.”

Stevenson seemed to take the point. “That is that,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is to get in any way entangled with the selection …” and Johnson then assured him, “You are the head of the Democratic Party. You must remain so. You are our leader. You are the most popular one we have had. You made a great campaign….” But, it turned out, Stevenson had not yet grasped Johnson’s feeling that there should be no meeting at all, not even on general party policy, before the leadership election. “I would like to talk to you off the record in Springfield rather than Washington,” he said. “They always know in Washington.” Johnson replied that “I’m afraid that if I go to Springfield they will [know] too. I am afraid the construction will be placed on it that I am seeking Governor Stevenson’s intervention. I think that would be bad. The denial would never catch up with the original stories. I think if we do it early in the year that would be better.” And when Stevenson persisted—“I don’t want to cause any commotion, but if I could talk to you a bit. And I think I would like to talk to Dick Russell”—the warning became firmer still. “I know he [Russell] feels very much that we should talk and he would be very glad to participate, I feel sure. I feel sure, too, that we oughtn’t to endanger a possible division in the Senate and get you involved.” Finally, after several other exchanges, Stevenson acceded. “Maybe it would be better if we didn’t try to have any further talks for the present,” he said.

T
HE NEUTRALIZATION OF
S
TEVENSON
quashed the liberals’ last hope of blocking Johnson. Even some of the senators who had met at Pearson’s home had not agreed to vote for Murray. The liberals were not giving up, however, as was revealed by their spokesman, Humphrey, when, on December 15, 1952, he appeared on a radio show,
Reporters’ Roundup
, and was asked if he was supporting Johnson for Leader. Humphrey said he was not, “although I do have a great respect for Lyndon Johnson as a person.” “For the good of the Democratic Party,” he said, “it would be better to have someone that wasn’t so clearly identified with a sectional group.” Pressed on the point, he said he believed that “if the Democratic Party … intends to be the great national liberal party … it must emphasize the broad national program on a liberal basis.”

But Johnson did not want any vote at the caucus at all. A vote was a fight, and a fight not only meant newspaper stories, in which he would be labeled the southern candidate, but also an increase in tensions that would later make unity harder to achieve. And of course it meant there would not be unanimity, the
unanimity that was psychologically so important to him that “anything less than one hundred percent was a great blow.”

So he made more calls. What Lyndon Johnson said during these calls we don’t know. Was he appealing to these men on personal grounds—playing on their affection for him or on their admiration for his abilities? Was his approach more pragmatic: was he delicately or forthrightly reminding them—with the help of Jenkins’ files—of favors he had done them in the past, hinting—or speaking bluntly—about favors he could do for them in the future? We don’t know. We only know that some of the calls were to senators and senators-elect—men like Tom Hennings and Stu Symington and Scoop Jackson—who in the past would have been firmly in the liberal column, on Lyndon Johnson’s lists with the numbers on the right side of their name, but who had been recipients, during their election campaigns, of financial assistance from Lyndon Johnson. And we know that on Lyndon Johnson’s lists, there were fewer and fewer numbers on the right side.

B
UT
J
OHNSON
didn’t want any numbers there at all.

The key to the unanimous vote he wanted was the liberal who was organizing the liberal forces, and who was giving no indication of quitting just because the fight was hopeless. “Hubert can’t win,” Johnson told Bobby Baker, “but I don’t want him gumming up the works for me. If he fights to the bitter end, then I won’t have a cut dog’s chance to be an effective Leader. The Republicans will eat our lunch and the sack it came in.”

Johnson sent Baker to “promise” Humphrey what Baker was to call “candy”—the candy that, from his reading of Humphrey, Johnson knew would be sweetest to his taste. “I know that Senator Johnson will be looking to you as the spokesman for the Senate liberals, and for the national constituency you’re building,” Baker told him. And, knowing also Humphrey’s desire to be a member of the Senate “club,” he offered him that candy, too. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought you into the leadership circle,” Baker said. And when that somewhat vague offer didn’t produce the desired effect, Johnson made a more direct one himself. Telephoning Humphrey at home, he asked for his support and, Humphrey relates, “When I said I had already made a commitment and couldn’t support him, he said he was sorry, in part because he was considering me for the minority whip job.”

Charmed and awed though he may have been by Johnson, eager though he was for his friendship, Humphrey would not abandon his fellow liberals. Despite this “exhilarating” offer, he tried to bargain with Johnson, telling him that the only way for him to obtain liberal support was to offer liberals additional seats on the Democratic Policy and Steering Committees. And the next day, he and fellow liberals Hunt of Wyoming, Lehman of New York, and Paul Douglas came to Johnson’s office “prepared to trade our support.”

But Humphrey was trying to bargain with a Lyndon Johnson who now, for the first time in their relationship, held all the cards. He had little patience with them. After letting them talk—“briefly,” to use Humphrey’s word—he told them he wasn’t going to bargain with them. “He wasn’t in the mood to make concessions.” In fact, he said, the talking was over. “I’ve got the votes in the caucus, and I’m not going to talk to you.” And then, “politely but curtly,” he “dismissed us.” And then, as soon as Humphrey had returned to his own office from “that awful meeting,” Johnson telephoned him and told him to come back alone—and when he returned, Humphrey found himself in the presence of a different Lyndon Johnson from any he had seen before, not “quiet and gentle” but, in Humphrey’s euphemistic phrase, “in a take-charge, no-nonsense mood,” a Johnson whose tone was “stern” as he showed Humphrey that he had not yet fully absorbed the political lessons he had given him, and that he had still more lessons to learn.

“How many votes [for Murray] do you think you have?” Johnson asked, and when Humphrey replied, “Well, I think we have anywhere from thirteen to seventeen,” Johnson “stared at me for a quiet moment and said, ‘First of all, you ought to be sure of your count. That’s too much of a spread. But you don’t have them anyway.
Who
do you think you have?’”

Humphrey handed him a list of names, and Lyndon Johnson looked at it.
“He
isn’t going to vote for him,” he said.
“He
isn’t, and
he
isn’t. These fellows are going to vote for me.”

“I can’t believe that,” Humphrey said, saying that the senators Johnson named had already promised him or Douglas that they would vote for Murray.

“Well, you’ll find out,” Lyndon Johnson said. And then he said, “As a matter of fact, Senator Hunt, who was just in here with you, is going to vote for me.”

A
T ABOUT TEN O’CLOCK
in the morning on Friday, January 2, 1953, the forty-seven Democrats in the Senate of the United States began filing into Room 201 of the Senate Office Building, on whose door a painter had, the previous day, changed the gold lettering from “Majority Conference” to “Minority Conference.” Ernest McFarland called the caucus to order and said that the first order of business would be to elect his replacement as Leader, and Richard Russell rose to nominate Lyndon Johnson of Texas.

Russell’s notes indicate the points he wished to make about Johnson. “Courage,” the notes say. “Character. Ability. Experience. Tolerance. LJ is Democrat. Record of party loyalty in Congress. In elections tried by fire. FDR. Supported party programs not slavishly but because believed. High degree of courage. Tempered with judgment. Against rash decisions. Patience and tolerance. No secret differences. No peer as conciliator. Complete confidence in his ability both to serve the party to which we adhere and the country and people
we seek to serve.” Mary Rather, who heard about the speech from Johnson, was later to call it “very wonderful.” The seconding speeches were given by Chavez of New Mexico, speaking for the West, and Green of Rhode Island, speaking for the East.