The Path to Power (112 page)

Rayburn did not, moreover, understand—perhaps because he was a man who could not be bought, and this reputation, and the fear in which he was held, kept anyone from explaining his position to him—how important he was to the wildcatters, how the protection he had extended to them in the past, and the protection they were hoping he would continue to extend to them in the future, was one of the most significant factors in the accumulation of their wealth. The Speaker, according to the unanimous opinion not only of his allies of this period, but of his opponents, had not the slightest idea of the potential of his position for political fund-raising for Congressmen on a national level.

But Lyndon Johnson saw the potential.
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Henry Morgenthau and the demands of justice had persuaded Franklin Roosevelt that the oil-depletion allowance should be reduced or eliminated; it was only Congress which had kept it intact. The administration had wanted federal control of Texas oil; it was Congress which had kept that control in the hands of Texas. The wildcatters’ strength in Washington was in Congress, yet these men were not acquainted with many Congressmen. The one they did know well enough to talk to frankly, to explain their problems to, was Sam Rayburn; their strength in Washington was, in the final analysis, that one man. Now, as Speaker, Rayburn was the single most powerful Congressman. It was in their interest to keep him in power, to keep him Speaker. And that meant keeping the Congress Democratic. Johnson realized that money could be raised in Texas to keep Congress Democratic. And because Johnson realized the stakes involved, he realized that the money available was big money.

B
UT CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS
from contractors (from, that is, all contractors but one) and from the wildcatters would have to be obtained through others. Since they had not previously contributed to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an element of uncertainty existed as to whether they could be persuaded to give now. More important, there was an element of uncertainty as to whether they could be persuaded quickly; with the
November election day approaching, it would be difficult to get their money in time. Because of Herman Brown, however, Johnson possessed a source of funds—substantial funds—about which there existed neither uncertainty nor delay. He knew that if he could obtain the position he wanted, he would have—instantly; at his command—substantial sums of money to use in it. If he were put in charge of the Congressional Campaign Committee, he could guarantee that it would have funds. He asked Sam Rayburn to put him in charge.
*

Rayburn did not do so.

The relationship between him and Lyndon Johnson during the year and a half following the July, 1939, confrontation over the Texas delegation’s resolution on the Garner-John L. Lewis explosion will probably never be charted definitively. Around the Speaker’s personal feelings had been erected a wall as impenetrable as the wall with which Lyndon Johnson surrounded himself. But there were hints as to its course.

The confrontation itself had not angered him; if anything, he seemed rather proud of the way Lyndon had stood up to him. “Lyndon is a damned independent boy, independent as a hog on ice,” he said when someone asked him about the incident. But despite Lyndon’s attempts to conceal the fact that it was really he who was turning Roosevelt and the New Dealers against Rayburn, the Majority Leader may have realized at the last moment the role being played by this young man of whom he was so fond. On the very day on which his secret campaign to undermine Rayburn in Roosevelt’s eyes had triumphed—on April 29, 1940, the day the President had forced the Majority Leader to accept as co-signer on the “harmony” telegram “kid Congressman” Lyndon Johnson—Johnson attempted to act as if no reason for a break between them existed. A
Washington Post
article stated that Johnson “praised the work done by Rayburn in achieving the compromise” and “predicted he would lead the Garner-pledged Texas delegation ‘with other men of liberal makeup.’” A week later, he made a private overture. Rayburn’s roommate during his first year in the Texas Legislature, R. Bouna Ridgway, wrote Johnson a note advocating Rayburn’s nomination as Vice President at the upcoming Democratic National Convention (and recalling his roommate’s character: “He was so quiet and reserved. Honorable, honest and 100% true to a friend”). Johnson had not written to Rayburn for a year—since the time, in fact, that he had begun his career as the New Deal spy in Rayburn’s meetings. Now, perhaps using the Ridgway note as an excuse to resume communications, he sent it to Rayburn with a covering note of his own (“Here is a letter from one of the rank and file boys who I am happy to know is a great admirer of yours …”) signed, “Your friend,
Lyndon.” Previously, when Johnson had written Rayburn, the Majority Leader’s replies had been warm; the three lines of his reply to Johnson this time spoke volumes:

As part of the compromise that had ended the Roosevelt-Garner fight in Texas, the White House had insisted that Johnson be made vice chairman of the state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Rayburn was chairman, so at the convention the two men were frequently thrown together, and often heard together of candidates’ financial problems. But when Johnson (who of course was himself unopposed for re-election) raised the possibility that the solution to the problems was his appointment as head of the Congressional Campaign Committee, Rayburn gave him no encouragement.

Then Johnson attempted to gain a role in the financing of Congressmen’s campaigns by another method. He tried to become the liaison between the Congressional Committee and the Democratic National Committee which furnished much of its funds. Rayburn was not amenable to this suggestion, either. On August 20, Rayburn told a Flynn aide that there would indeed be a congressional liaison man, but neither of the names he mentioned was that of Lyndon Johnson. “I think it will be John McCormack and probably Charlie West,” he said.

Johnson continued maneuvering. The young New Dealers who were his friends received from him continuing stories of the desperate straits of Democratic Congressmen, of the likelihood that the Democrats would lose the House, of Drewry’s inefficiency, of Drewry’s lack of enthusiasm for the candidacies of New Deal Congressmen. These stories were reported at the White House—along with Johnson’s interest in being of help in an overall effort to elect Democratic Congressmen—and the suggestion was made, according to some sources, by the President himself, that Johnson should in some vague way be attached to the Congressional Campaign Committee, or to the Democratic National Committee itself, to assist them.

Johnson, however, appears to have had in mind not an assistantship but independent, formal, authority of his own. His next attempt to get it may have been an attempt to circumvent Rayburn: an approach directly to the President, through the malleable Agriculture Committee chairman, Marvin Jones. On September 14, Jones went to see Roosevelt and then sent a letter, drafted by Johnson, suggesting that “If we are to get the results that we desire, Lyndon’s work should be supplementary to the regular work done by both the Democratic Congressional Committee and the National Committee
rather than an assignment to aid them with their regular functions.” A letter drafted by Johnson for Flynn’s signature—to be sent out by Flynn to all Democratic members of the House of Representatives—further spelled out the authority he had in mind, and in addition included a reference to the President, which might have thrown the weight of at least a hint of presidential authority behind Johnson’s efforts. Had Johnson’s draft been sent out by Flynn, Flynn would have been saying:

This would, of course, have made Johnson the arm of the Democratic National Committee in dealing with Congressmen.

Roosevelt, however, did not want to give him such formal authority. He eliminated the reference to “liaison officer.” All the letter, as edited by Roosevelt, says is that, in order that the Democratic National Committee “may work most effectively with you” in your campaign, Johnson will “assist me [Flynn] and the Democratic National Committee in aiding the congressional candidates.”

Roosevelt told Johnson he would give the letter to Flynn, and asked Flynn to see the young Congressman, but Flynn balked at giving Johnson even the informal post. Meeting with Johnson in his room at the Carlton Hotel on September 19, he said he would be glad to send out the letter—if it met with Rayburn’s approval.

Rayburn’s approval was not forthcoming.

Then Johnson thought he saw an even better opening. On September 23, the National Committee’s secretary, Chip Robert, resigned. Johnson pulled strings to obtain this post, using the argument that in it he could serve as a liaison with the Congressional Committee. Influential Democrats such as Claude Pepper, a Longlea visitor, wrote or telephoned the White House to urge the appointment. Johnson persuaded Drewry to write Roosevelt that he would have “no objection” to it. Roosevelt may have considered making it; the possibility was raised with Rayburn, who had become Speaker the week before, but Rayburn’s response was that the appointment would be satisfactory to him if it was satisfactory to Flynn—which, of course, Ray-burn knew it wasn’t. Flynn, who had been less than enthusiastic about Johnson’s
appointment even to an informal liaison role with the committee, had stronger objections to his being made its secretary. He said, in fact, that if Johnson was appointed, he would resign.

With or without formal appointment, Johnson saw no way around Flynn’s opposition, particularly without Rayburn in his corner. He drafted a letter to Roosevelt saying that after discussing

He redrafted the letter before sending it to Roosevelt, in the reworking revealing some of his techniques, for the missive’s five brief paragraphs contain subtle denigration of the work of the man he wanted to replace (“Certainly the job is there to be done. My own youth and inexperience may be in error, but I feel tonight that we do stand in danger in the lower House”); flattery (“I know in your wisdom you will work it out”); subtle pointing out why he was well suited for the job (the campaign, he said, was “effective in cities” but not “in the fifty per cent remaining”—which, of course, was in rural areas such as the one he represented); and a personal touch (noting that “we lost eighty-two seats in 1938,” he said that the present forty-five margin “gives me the night-sweats at three a.m.”).

Despite the letter, Roosevelt would agree to Johnson’s participation only on the original, very informal, basis. A note from FDR to McIntyre on October 4 said: “In the morning will you call up Congressman Lyndon Johnson and tell him that Flynn strongly recommends that we proceed on the original basis as worked out between him and Congressman Drewry which will give Johnson a chance at once to send out the letters which were agreed on, but which made no reference to the President, and that he should do this right away. …” Johnson, however, was still reluctant to accept so informal a role, particularly without Rayburn’s support, and that support was still not forthcoming.

But Sam Rayburn was becoming desperate.

If the Democrats lost control of the House, he would lose the Speakership he had just assumed after twenty-eight years of waiting—and every indication was that they were going to lose.

Since 1938, when the Republicans had almost doubled their House holding, from 88 seats to 170, every special election necessitated by the death of a member had confirmed the trend toward the GOP. In 1940, the trend had been accelerating. In the seven special elections held since the first
of the year, the Republican share of the vote had risen an average of 6 percent. Democrats had hoped that that trend would be reversed in a presidential election year, but those hopes had been dealt a body blow just three days before Rayburn had become Speaker, for on September 13, in congressional voting in Maine, the Democratic vote in the three Maine congressional districts was down—by the same 6 percent. That 6 percent figure was especially ominous because, in 1938, no fewer than 100 of the 265 Democratic seats had been won by less than 6 percent of the vote. The Republicans needed to gain only forty-eight seats to take control of the House in 1940—and elect their own Speaker. Democrats and Republicans alike felt that the GOP would gain more than that number. “Regardless of the outcome of the Presidential election,” the
New York Herald Tribune
reported on September 15, “Republicans are confident and Democrats fearful that the next House of Representatives will be organized and controlled by the Republican Party for the first time in ten years. … Those who deal with figures cannot avoid the ‘trend’ which set in in the congressional elections of 1938 and its continuation in all congressional off-year elections since then. …” Democrats couldn’t even get back home to campaign. Deepening crisis in Europe and the Far East, and the need for new crisis legislation—the Selective Service Act, funding for new military bases—forced Congress to remain in session all Summer and into September. September drew to a close, and no major new legislation was before Congress, and the gleeful Republicans, backed by the press (“In such a time of crisis the institution through which the will of the American people is expressed ought not to leave Washington,” editorialized the
New York Times
), insisted that it stay in session. As Arthur Krock wrote on September 24: