THE ANGRY SHOUTING MATCHES on a relatively crowded Senate floor were, for the next month, to be succeeded by day after day of the more familiar Senate tableau, with only a handful of senators present while negotiations went on behind the scenes. The political reality, however, was not what was happening on the floor but what the press said about it, and as James Reston noted, “The headlines make it appear that an exciting debate is in process here. The papers are full of well-argued charge and countercharge, and it is easy for the reader to imagine 96 Senators all in their places and crowded galleries listening to an eloquent debate….” For an entire month, the “Bricker Debate” was on the front pages day after day—in the light Lyndon Johnson wanted it portrayed, as an exciting story of a no-holds-barred battle between a beleaguered President and his party, a battle in which the Democrats were coming to the President’s aid.
And when, on February 26, the day of voting finally arrived, the rest of Lyndon Johnson’s objectives were attained.
THE FLOOR OF THE SENATE CHAMBER wasn’t empty that day, and neither were the cloakrooms, for this was the showdown.
In the Republican cloakroom were more than a normal complement of representatives from the White House, for so great was the importance the Administration attached to the preservation of executive power that seven or eight of its congressional liaison men had divided the forty-eight Republican senators among them, and each was keeping an eye on his charges until the moment they pushed through the swinging cloakroom doors and went out on the floor to vote. Every few minutes, it seemed, the liaison men huddled and counted votes together.
In the Democratic cloakroom only one man was counting. Few counts that he had made in his life were more crucial.
Three proposals for a constitutional amendment were scheduled to be brought to the floor: the first was Bricker’s; the second was a brand-new proposal cobbled together at the last minute by Knowland and Ferguson with limits on the presidential power so minor that Eisenhower had privately agreed he could accept it; and the third was Walter George’s.
The first two were Republican, and Johnson didn’t want either of them to receive the necessary two-thirds vote. He wanted the final vote to be on a Democratic bill, the George Amendment, so that it would remain clear to press and public which party had taken the initiative. He had arranged therefore that when the Knowland-Ferguson Amendment was called, a Democratic senator would make a motion to substitute the George Amendment for it. That substitution motion required only a majority vote, and Johnson wanted the motion passed, to give Walter George the necessary pride-saving victory. Johnson didn’t want the George Amendment itself to pass, however, since it would reduce presidential powers that he wanted to keep unreduced. He wanted the amendment to win on that first vote, but lose on the last vote: the vote on passage of the amendment itself. Passage required not merely a majority but a two-thirds majority. Johnson didn’t want it to get the two-thirds.
Counting the Bricker Amendment vote was relatively simple, for many conservatives who had once supported it now preferred Walter George’s bill. When S.J. Res. 1 had initially been introduced a year before, nineteen of its sixty-four co-sponsors had been Democrats; Johnson and George between them had persuaded thirteen of those Democrats to defect, and there were enough additional Republican defections so that when, after the year’s delay that Johnson had arranged, the clerk finally called the roll on the measure, it failed of passage, 42 votes to 50; not only did the Bricker Amendment, once seemingly so certain of passage, not receive the necessary two-thirds of those voting, it did not receive even a simple majority.
The rest of the counting was much harder.
The vote to substitute the George Amendment for the Knowland-Ferguson Amendment had to be favorable, and it had to be favorable by a big margin—that was necessary for the party, to cement the Democratic initiative, and it was necessary for Walter George’s pride. But if the George Amendment had to be substituted, it then had to be defeated, by failing to get the necessary two-thirds vote.
Johnson had, as Newsweek later put it, “passed the word to all party members: Vote for the George Amendment as a substitute, whether you are for or against the idea of changing the Constitution. Then after this gambit has succeeded in shunting aside … the Knowland substitute, do what you wish….” This, Lyndon Johnson felt, would ensure enough defections from Democratic liberals and moderates on the final vote—the vote on passage of the George Amendment itself—so that the measure would not receive the necessary two-thirds. But that final count was going to be uncomfortably close to two-thirds, and he couldn’t be certain which way some Republicans would vote—he tried to prepare for every eventuality, to guard against any unforeseen development. Although they personally disapproved of the George Amendment, a number of liberals from states in which opinion strongly favored a curb on presidential power were reluctant to vote against it. Johnson had obtained commitments from three such senators, Lister Hill of Alabama and Washington’s two senators, Magnuson and Jackson—all of whose seats were safe enough, and whose next election was far enough off—that although they would vote in favor of the George measure as a substitute, should their votes be needed to defeat it on the final vote, they would then switch and vote against it. A number of southerners personally opposed to the George Bill did not believe they could survive the next election if they were ever recorded voting against it. Johnson had persuaded Alabama’s John Sparkman and one or two other southerners that if necessary, they would absent themselves from the floor on the final vote so that, while not actually voting against George, their votes could not be part of the necessary two-thirds. But he was still worried. Standing in the center of the crowded Democratic cloakroom, senators milling around him, Bobby Baker darting to his side and away again, he kept nervously pulling the long tally sheet from his pocket and studying it through his glasses, counting and recounting. There were so many switches back and forth that he wasn’t putting numbers next to the senators’ names, since each switch would mean renumbering; he was using checkmarks instead. And sometimes, as a senator spoke to him, or Baker whispered something in his ear, or a piece of intelligence came to him from the Republican side, he would take a pen from his pocket and scratch out a checkmark on one side of the list, and make one on the other side, and then count again.
And, as it turned out, his caution was not unwarranted. Although Eisenhower’s aides, as one historian of the event has written, “continued, right up to the final vote” to lobby against the substitution of the George Amendment for the Knowland-Ferguson Amendment because the Administration wanted the final vote to be on a Republican bill, the substitution was approved, 61 to 30, and the only constitutional amendment left before the Senate was then the Democratic amendment. But the substitution vote showed the threat to Johnson’s ultimate objective to be quite grave. The sixty-one votes George had received was, with ninety-one senators voting, the necessary two-thirds. As the vote was announced, wire service reporters ran up the steps of the Press Gallery and teletype machines began clattering out the prediction that on the next roll call the Senate would almost certainly approve the George Amendment as a constitutional amendment.
A switch of a single vote would block the George Amendment, and Johnson, in his caution, had those three liberal votes available to switch. That had seemed like enough, but as senators were milling around the well of the Chamber waiting for the final vote, there was a development that no one had predicted or even considered. Red-faced and waving his arms, William Knowland was suddenly standing at his desk—the front-row, center-aisle Majority Leader’s desk—shouting for recognition from Vice President Nixon, above him in the presiding officer’s chair. And when Knowland got it, he strode to a desk in the third row, and said, “Mr. President, I have left the desk of Majority Leader because I wish to make it very clear that what I say is not said as Majority Leader, but is said in my capacity as an individual Senator”—and what he said was that he had just decided, “because of the ve
ry real need for some steps to be taken to curb … the gradual encroachment by the Executive on the legislative power of the Congress,” and because the only amendment left on the floor was George’s, that he would not vote against the George Amendment, as he had done on the first vote, but instead would switch sides and vote for it. Tumult erupted on the floor—not only would Knowland’s vote, added to the sixty-one votes that the George Amendment had received on the previous roll call, raise its total to sixty-two, but other Republican conservatives would probably follow their leader into the pro-George camp.
Herbert Lehman, who earnestly believed that “if we are not to accept a position of isolation,” the President must have the same freedom to conduct foreign affairs as he had had in the past, and who believed that the amendment to end that freedom was on the verge of passage, said, “Mr. President, what we are doing is one of the most dangerous and inexcusable things that any great legislative body can do.” Infuriated southerners and members of the Republican Old Guard started shouting, “Vote! Vote! Vote!” to drown him out, but Lehman said, “This is an important matter, and I will have my say on it.” Wringing his hands in his distress, the stocky little New Yorker began to speak again, wandering up and down the center aisle. A furious Burnet Maybank demanded a point of order. “The Senator who is speaking must stand at his desk,” he shouted. Lehman returned to his desk, but a moment later, carried away by his emotions as he spoke, he forgot himself and stepped away again—to be admonished again. As he continued speaking, flushed and angry, he was interrupted repeatedly by the shouts of “Vote! Vote!” but he refused to yield until he had finished his statement. Walter George, rising to make a final plea—“Mark my words, now, gentlemen: you are going to [pass] a constitutional amendment…. You will do it now, or you will do it later. This is the best amendment which can be worked out”—was saluted by Bricker, and saluted Bricker in return, weeping, so emotional had he become, and Nixon finally called for the yeas and nays.
The Minority Leader’s desk was vacant. Lyndon Johnson was in the cloakroom, calling in his commitments. Hill, Magnuson, and Jackson lived up to them, switching to vote against the bill. There was also an unexpected Republican switch—by Ralph Flanders—against it. But two Republicans, Millikin and Robert Hendrickson, did indeed follow Knowland and switched to vote for it, so that there were still only thirty votes against it—and sixty for it. The margin was precisely the two-thirds necessary for passage. Johnson was standing just inside the cloakroom doors with Sparkman, who had voted for the bill, ready to throw him against it; he was gripping Sparkman’s arm, on the verge of pushing him through the doors to vote; Sparkman would remember for a long time how hard Johnson’s big fingers grasped his biceps. But Johnson had another card to play before it would be necessary to play that one, reluctant as it was. Harley Kilgore of West Virginia, a Democratic opponent of restrictions on the President who had voted against the George Amendment on the previous ballot, had not voted on this one because he wasn’t present. Because of the effects of either alcohol or influenza, he had fallen into a very deep sleep on a couch in his office. Men had run to get him, and had finally, with difficulty, brought him to the Chamber, and the oak and bronze doors in the rear swung open, and there he was. Nixon looked at him expectantly, but all Kilgore did was stare groggily back. He said nothing, Nixon said nothing. For a long moment, the Chamber was still, staring at Kilgore. Johnson was in the Chamber now, moving fast. Grabbing Magnuson, he whispered: “Stall.” “Mr. President,” Magnuson shouted, “how am I recorded voting?” A clerk studied the voting list, and of course said what everyone already knew, that Magnuson had been recorded against the resolution. While that charade was being enacted, Kilgore was pulling himself together and finally he nodded at Nixon. “The Senator from West Virginia,” Nixon said.
“Mr. Kilgore,” the clerk said.
“No,” Kilgore said. He walked slowly and deliberately down the center aisle and sank into a seat in the front row, as the clerk turned and handed the tally sheet up to Nixon. “On this roll call,” the Vice President said, “the yeas are sixty, the nays are thirty-one. Two-thirds of the Senators present not having voted in the affirmative, the joint resolution is rejected.”
THE CASTING OF THE DECISIVE VOTE by a Democrat emphasized the crucial role the Democrats had played in defeating the amendment that would have curbed Dwight Eisenhower’s power. They had supplied more of the “nay” votes that had kept the George Amendment from passing than the Republicans: sixteen Democratic nays, only fourteen Republican (Independent Morse had also voted nay). Republicans had, in fact, voted for the amendment—and against their own President—by a margin of 32 to 14. Eisenhower had won a big victory in the battle that had begun with Bricker’s introduction of S.J. Res. I, for he had defeated the Old Guard isolationists. But Lyndon Johnson had won a bigger victory.
Johnson had hit, in fact, every target at which he had aimed in the battle. Wanting to show the public a hero President, unparalleled in his knowledge of foreign affairs, being opposed in foreign affairs by his own party, and being rescued from that party by the Democrats, he had succeeded in doing exactly that. Wanting to demonstrate that despite GOP control of both White House and Senate, the Democrats had taken the initiative on the issue, he had, by arranging for the final vote to be not on a Republican but on a Democratic bill, done exactly that. He had wanted the Bricker Amendment defeated, and it had been defeated. He had wanted the George Amendment substituted, at first, and it had been substituted. He had wanted the George Amendment blocked at last, and at last it had been blocked.
Moreover, it had been blocked by a single vote. That was a feat dramatic in itself. But even more dramatic was the fact (which the public never learned) that had that single-vote margin not materialized—had, for example, Harley Kilgore not been able to make it to the Chamber—Lyndon Johnson would still have won. His hand had been on John Sparkman’s arm; he could have sent Sparkman out to switch. And if Sparkman’s vote had not been sufficient, Lyndon Johnson had had other votes ready. He had had almost no margin for error—and he hadn’t made any errors. The man who a long time before, when he had still been young, had won the reputation of being “the very best at counting” had shown that the reputation was deserved.
LYNDON JOHNSON WAS HAILED for the results of the fight on the Bricker Amendment, and for the other victories he had masterminded—on Yalta and on Bohlen—over the future shape of American foreign policy. The praise was justified. His initial overall decision not to oppose but to support a President of the rival party was political strategy of the highest order. It helped his party, and it helped himself.
But it was a masterstroke on levels higher than the political. As Stephen Ambrose has written, the Republican Old Guard “wanted major policy and structural changes … a flat repudiation of the Yalta agreements,” a constitutional amendment banning future executive agreements, action “to free the East European satellites…. For the nation and the world, these were matters of transcendent importance.” In these matters, the defeat of the Old Guard was accomplished at least in part—and not in small part—through Johnson’s maneuvers. Through them, he increased his party’s popularity and his personal power. But through them also, he helped defend and make possible a continuation of a foreign policy that had produced the United Nations, the Greek and Turkish alliances, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the strategy of containment—the policy that had shaped the postwar world. Anyone who believes that the history of that world would have been the same had the senatorial Old Guard triumphed in the aftermath of the Republicans’ 1952 election victory has only to look back to the time, after the first Great War, when the Senate was run not by Lyndon Johnson but by Henry Cabot Lodge. The isolationist Old Guard had felt sure that the 1950s would be their time, and liberals had felt uneasily that the Old Guard was right. Whatever the motives behind Lyndon Johnson’s strategy, that strategy had helped ensure that the 1950s would not be such a time.
The icing on this triumphal
cake was Johnson’s success in achieving his objectives without awareness of what he had done from supporters who disapproved of those objectives. He himself, of course, had voted for the George Amendment, and he told his reactionary bankrollers that he intended to keep on doing so. On March 3, he wrote Ed Clark, the attorney and lobbyist for many of them: “We had a mighty close one last week on the George Amendment, losing by one vote. It will be taken up again, and we hope the final result will be different.” And over dinner on St. Joe or at Falfurrias, or over drinks in 8-F, he assured Herman Brown, and Richardson and Murchison and Cullen and Hunt, that he had been fighting all along for some measure that would prevent further usurpation of power, and they believed him.
* A constitutional amendment requires passage by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, and ratification by three-quarters of the states.
23
Tail-Gunner Joe
WHILE LYNDON JOHNSON’S STRATEGY on foreign policy dovetailed with his country’s interests from his first days as Democratic Leader, on domestic issues, and in particular on the dominant domestic issue, his arrival on the side of the angels was delayed, and came only after there was little risk involved.
It had been in February, 1950, that Wisconsin’s junior senator told a women’s club in Wheeling, West Virginia, “I have here in my hand a list of 205” State Department employees “who have been named as members of the Communist Party … and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department,” words that touched off the decade’s Red Scare.
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Page 86
