Master of the Senate (118 page)

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 senator’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.

T
HEN 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.

“Get ’em on the line for me,” Johnson would say, and Baker would give the numbers to the telephone clerks, and the first call would go through into Booth Ten, the telephone booth closest to the clerks’ desks.

The matter to be discussed might be only one of attendance, and then Johnson might only say into the telephone: “Lister, we’re gonna motion up the District bill tonight, and Ah want you to be standin’ by. Ah’ll need you over here. Ah’m not even gonna tell the Republicans until Ah bring it up. And Ah want you guys to be ready.”

But the matter might be more delicate. Then the door to Booth Ten would close, and a senator or aide passing by would see Lyndon Johnson hunched over the phone inside. One hand would be holding a cigarette, from which he would take frequent deep drags. The other would be holding the receiver, and Johnson’s mouth would be very close to it. As he spoke into it, he would sometimes rise to his feet, his tall body filling the booth, or he might remain seated and hunched over on the little seat, but, standing or sitting, if he was having difficulty persuading the senator on the other end of the line to his way of thinking, Lyndon Johnson’s whole being would be poured into that persuasion. His head would be bowed low over the mouthpiece, and sometimes as he talked and he became more and more wound up in his effort, he would lower his head until it was beneath the receiver, and then it would cock to one side and come up under the receiver as if it was the senator’s face.

Sometimes Johnson would want to make sure that nobody could hear what he was saying. “If you stepped out of Booth Ten you could see the whole cloakroom,” one of the telephone clerks recalls, “and he would stand up, open the door [of the booth] and look around the corner to see if anyone could hear.” Then Lyndon Johnson would duck back into Booth Ten to say the things he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

What he said might have the desired result, and he would replace the receiver, step out of the booth, and snatch up the phone in the next booth, where the clerks had another senator waiting on the phone. Or it might not have the desired result. Then, as the conversation came to a close, Johnson, still inside the booth, door closed, might kick the booth as he hung up, or pound his fist into its wall. In the cloakroom, men would watch the booth shaking with the Leader’s rage. Or, stepping out of the booth after hanging up the phone, his face the “thundercloud” that men feared, he would kick the outside of the booth, “viciously,” as one Senate staffer puts it, or slam the door.

By this time, there would be lights, signals that senators were waiting for him on the line, over several booths. “He would go right down the row, getting his players lined up,” the telephone clerk says.

Often, while he was talking to one senator, a call he needed to take immediately
would come in on another line. A clerk would tap timidly on the door of the booth in which Johnson was talking, and tell him the other senator was ready. Stepping out of the booth, the telephone still in his hand, the cord stretching with him, Johnson would reach into the other booth and take that receiver, and then stand between the two booths, with the cords stretching out from them to his hands. Or he might want to talk to two or three or even four of his “players”—senators with disagreements about the same amendment—at the same time, and he talked to them at the same time, on two or three or four phones, standing in the narrow aisle between the two rows of phone booths with a receiver, or two receivers, grasped in each big hand, talking first into one receiver, then into another, long black cords stretching out from his tall figure in all directions.

Sometimes this telephone persuasion would be successful. Then, moving from booth to booth, Johnson would slam the receivers back into their cradles, a thin smile of satisfaction on his face. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Then, with a grimace of disgust and fury, Johnson would drop the receivers, or hurl them to the floor so hard that they bounced and their cords would still be quivering when a clerk scurried to pick them up. He would smash his foot into one of the booths so hard that it shook, and as he strode out of the cloakroom back entrance to collect himself in the corridor outside, the telephone area still vibrated with Lyndon Johnson’s rage.

“Or,” the clerk recalls, “he might look around the corner of Booth Ten to see if anyone was in the cloakroom that he wanted to work on.” If there was, Lyndon Johnson would go over to him, to persuade in person.

The quarry might be seated on one of the leather couches that lined the cloakroom walls. They were low and soft—ideal locales for persuasion, in the words of the clerk “good places for him to pin a senator into so that he couldn’t get away.”

Approaching the senator, Johnson would lean over him, perhaps chatting amiably for a moment or two about inconsequential matters, but with his weight resting on one hand that had been placed on the back of the couch, close by the senator’s shoulder. Then, switching to the real subject of the conversation, Johnson would sit down beside him. The hand would remain on the back of the couch, so that when Johnson, continuing to talk, leaned forward to look the senator more directly in the face, his arm would be stretched out beside the other man’s head. In the urgency of his appeal, Johnson would lean further forward, sliding to the edge of his seat, and twist his body so it was more in front of the senator. Then he would cross the leg furthest from the senator over the knee closest to the other man. Already faced with the difficulty of pushing up from those deep, soft cushions, the senator would find the difficulty increased by the fact that not only was there a big arm like a bar on one side of him, but also a big leg like a bar in front of him. If the senator exhibited signs of restlessness, Johnson would grab the ankle of that leg with his free hand, so that
there were in effect two bars in front of the senator, not to mention a size 11 shoe in front of his face; “the poor guy,” the clerk notes, “couldn’t get out.”

With the senator’s continued presence thus assured, the first Johnson arm, the one that had been resting on the back of the couch, would stretch along it, so that the senator was almost completely surrounded. And the trap would be tightened. As Johnson talked faster and faster, that heavy arm would come down around the senator’s shoulders, hugging them. His hand would grasp the senator’s shoulder firmly. He would lean further and further into him, the hand that had been on his own ankle now on the senator’s knee or thigh. “I can still see those big meaty hands,” the clerk would recall decades later. “One would be massaging the poor guy’s shoulder, and the other one would be grabbing his leg. I can still see Johnson leaning into him.” His face would be very close to the senator’s now, pushing closer and closer, his head coming up under his companion’s so that the senator’s head was often forced back against the back of the couch. No matter how much he may have wanted to retreat further, he couldn’t, and as he was held helpless, Johnson would talk faster and faster, pleading, cajoling, threatening.

Some of these sessions on the cloakroom couches—or in the deep, soft cloakroom armchairs, better even than the couches for Johnson’s purposes, since by sitting down on one armrest and stretching an arm across to the other, he could imprison its occupant more effectively—lasted quite a long time. He had to win, and to win he needed the senator’s vote. And he wasn’t going to get up until he got it. “I’ve seen him devote an hour to work on one senator,” the clerk says.

Then that vote would be secured. Lyndon Johnson would be up off the couch, standing in the center of the cloakroom, dispatching Humphrey or Molly Malone to hold the floor with a speech (“Don’t quit talkin’ ’til you see me back in there”), asking Russell or Eastland to exert his influence with one of their conservatives or Humphrey to exert his influence with one of his liberals, going over the tally sheets again, reading—quickly but with great care—the latest text of an amendment, ironing out the last details of the unanimous consent agreement, and then sending Baker on the run to have Floyd Riddick’s fastest typist type it up. And then he would have the agreement back, and, holding it in one hand, and shoving open the double doors with the other, Lyndon Johnson would come back out on the floor to announce it—or, if he had not been able to get an agreement, to push the Senate to a vote without it, with, in his hand, the tally sheet that almost invariably showed that the vote was going to be very close.

I
F HE HAD THE VOTES
, debate—even the limited debate permitted under the unanimous consent agreement—could only hurt, could allow opponents to realize what he was up to, could give Knowland time to get a more accurate count, could give men whose minds he had changed with his relentless persuasion
time to change their minds back, to think better of what they had agreed to. He wanted the question called, and called fast; although the unanimous consent agreement allowed a certain number of hours or minutes for debate, he wanted to be able to yield his time back, and have his opponents yield
their
time back.

“Don’t talk, we’ve got the votes. Don’t talk, we’ve got the votes,” Bobby Baker would whisper, standing at the corridor door to the cloakroom as the senators came through on the way to the Chamber—which, with a vote imminent, was beginning to fill up. Some senators didn’t get the idea and insisted on speaking. “I’d go up to him [Johnson] on the Senate floor and say Senator Lehman would like to have the floor as soon as possible,” Julius Edelstein recalls. “He’d say” (and as Edelstein shows Johnson’s response, his face twists into a snarl), “‘Well, he can have the goddamned floor!’” Rushing over to Edelstein, Gerry Siegel said: “I know Lehman has to talk for his constituents, but make it short. Make it short! Otherwise, it’ll make the Leader mad.”

As a supporter of a measure was rising to speak, Johnson would go over to the supporter’s desk and growl, “Make it short. I’ve got the votes for it.” The reminders would continue during the senator’s statement. Once, Richard Neuberger of Oregon was giving an impassioned statement at a moment Johnson considered propitious for a vote. Johnson whispered to him to stop, but Neuberger didn’t. Circling Neuberger’s desk—in John Steele’s words, “like a coon dog does a treed animal”—Johnson whispered to him “from in back and then to the right side to tell Neuberger to knock it off.” Olin Johnston’s southern drawl was so slow! “Olin,” Johnson whispered urgently, “get the lead out of your ass!” “Lyndon,” Johnston said calmly, “you know I always read slow.” Says a Senate staffer who was standing nearby, “Then Olin goes back to reading. I thought Lyndon was going to have a fit.” Looking on another occasion at a speech that Olin was insisting on reading, Johnson saw to his dismay that it covered quite a few pages. “Two minutes, that’s all I can give you,” he said. “You’ve got to hold it to two minutes.” Johnston kept refusing. “Olin,” Lyndon said, forcing a comradely smile to his face, “why don’t you speak for two minutes and tomorrow you can put your whole speech in the
Congressional Record
and you can mail it to all the folks in South Carolina, and they won’t know the difference.” “Well, I guess that’s all right, Lyndon,” Johnston said, and read only a small part of the text—“so quickly,” an observer said, “that he scarcely could be understood.”