Master of the Senate (82 page)

Pairing is strictly “a voluntary arrangement between individual senators,”
Senate Procedure
states. Pairs are not included in the official tabulation of roll-call votes. Neither the clerk calling the roll nor the presiding officer so much as mentions them during or after the roll call. The two senators are listed in neither the “yeas” nor “nays” column, but as “not voting.” But the Leader’s announcement of pairs is recorded in the
Congressional Record
, and a paired senator can therefore later excuse his absence by saying that he had balanced the loss of his vote by removing one from the other side. As Bobby Baker puts it:

Senate legend had it that some past Senate leaders had taken on themselves the responsibility for pairing, but for at least a decade, and probably for several decades, it had not been, as McFarland’s assistant Bibolet says, “a strategic thing.” Either “two fellows would arrange their pairs between themselves, or one could call Skeeter [Johnston], and say, ‘I’m going to be out of
town. Get a pair for me.’ Skeeter would call around and arrange the pair.” Or, although Bibolet does not say this, during McFarland’s careless regime, Skeeter might forget to arrange it, or find it too much trouble. On the long voting tabulation sheets that the Leader carried, the spaces beside some senators’ names—sometimes many senators’ names—would remain blank. No one would care, until, as his next re-election campaign drew closer, a senator would suddenly realize that his failure to vote on some bill might be used against him—in which case the
Congressional Record
would be “corrected” to show him not absent but paired. The awareness among senators that they could do this added to the laxness and confusion with which the Senate operated.

But now, whenever McFarland was back in Arizona, that practice was changing. Lyndon Johnson didn’t want blank spaces on the voting sheets; he wanted every vote accounted for. So, more and more, the job was turned over to Bobby Baker, Bobby who would “always have a phone number” even when a senator had left for someplace where he “didn’t want to be reached.”

Arranging pairs, arranging schedules, getting minor bills called off the Calendar—mundane chores that no one wanted to do, mundane chores that, left undone, clogged the schedule and slowed the Senate down, little chores that, for many years, no one had done with any diligence. They were being done with diligence now.

If you do everything
… The days were long days, and the nights were not just for sleeping. The counting didn’t stop then, the planning didn’t stop. On the night table beside Walter Jenkins’ bed, there lay, every night now, a yellow legal pad, so often did the telephone jangle in the bedroom’s darkness. And it was not only in the homes of Lyndon Johnson’s own assistants that the phone would ring in the night. More and more frequently, “sometimes at three a.m.” Bibolet would be jolted awake.
“Roland, I can’t find McFarland!”
No one could remember a whip ever really working at that “nothing job” before, but Lyndon Johnson was working at it now. And he was making it into something it had never been before.

A
ND THOUGH MOST
of Lyndon Johnson’s activities as his party’s Assistant Leader were matters merely of scheduling and vote-counting, there were, at times, signs that he was capable of doing more: flashes of something that was beyond just hard work or flattery—and beyond just talent, too.

One came in 1952, during the annual end-of-session struggle over foreign aid. The Administration was losing the struggle that year—losing in a year when losing would be particularly disastrous, since Western Europe, attempting to unite to meet the threat of Communist aggression, badly needed to feel that the United States was solidly behind NATO. President Truman had requested seven billion dollars for aid to NATO’s members. The House had reduced the amount to six billion. Dwight Eisenhower, now NATO commander,
had warned that the alliance might be able—barely able—to live with that lower figure, but that any further reductions would cripple it. Yet Senate isolationists and conservatives, led by Taft and Herman Welker, were determined to make further reductions—big ones. “We’ve already poured seventy-five billion dollars down a rathole and still are losing people by the millions to Communism,” Welker said. “Unless we call a halt to this crazy spending and these give-away programs … we will revert to the Dark Ages.” And the conservatives had the votes to make those reductions—partly because of what the
Herald Tribune
called “heavy absenteeism among northern Democrats and liberal Republicans” who, with the Senate on the verge of adjourning for the long summer vacation, had left Washington and were not willing to return; among the fifteen absent senators were eleven who might have supported the Administration. Welker, “sensing the weakness of his opponents,” in
Newsweek’s
words, offered an amendment to cut an additional half billion dollars from the House figure, Russell Long offered one to cut $400 million, and both amendments seemed certain to pass.

In the Senate Chamber, before galleries as full (of summer tourists) as the floor was empty, the famous internationalist orators raised their voices in support of the Western alliance, Walter George telling his colleagues in majestic, organ-like tones that “Nothing less is involved than the will of free men, especially in Western Europe, to stand up and integrate themselves in a federation which is the hope of the free world…. If we overcut here, it would discourage the very people in Europe we hope to encourage at the time of their greatest need.” Tom Connally, managing the bill in his swan song in the Senate, was making his final performance memorable. Thumping his chest, his voice quavering in imitation of old-fashioned stump speakers, he advised his opponents sarcastically to cut the entire appropriation—“Then you can go home and strut your stuff before your constituents and make Fourth of July speeches and tell them ‘I saved seven billion dollars and let the free world go to hell.’ Then go out and beat your breasts while war is breaking out in Europe,” and as he spoke his fellow senators laughed out loud in appreciation, and the galleries roared. Richard Russell, customarily in favor of cutting foreign aid, understood that this time the cutting had gone too far; he was talking privately, gravely judicious yet passionate in his conviction, to individual senators in the rear of the Chamber. But Welker, Taft, and William Jenner were pressing for a vote—and the Administration knew it didn’t have the votes. Of the eighty-one senators still in Washington, forty-one were committed to cutting foreign aid, and available to cast votes. Even if every one of the other forty senators was persuaded to be present, the Long and Welker amendments would still be passed. Standing at the Leader’s desk, McFarland was running his hands through his hair in frustration. Internationalists felt, as
Newsweek
reported, that “without a minor miracle, they could never muster enough votes to hold the line.”

Then the double doors to the Democratic cloakroom swung open and the
party’s tall young whip came through them. He said something to Russell, and Russell nodded, and Lyndon Johnson strode down the center aisle and spoke to McFarland, and McFarland walked over to old Matt Neely and asked him to hold the floor for the rest of the day’s session, and Neely did so for the full hour and a half—which gave Johnson eighteen hours to work with before the Senate convened the next day. And when the Senate adjourned, Lyndon Johnson went with McFarland to McFarland’s office, and told him what he thought they should do with those hours.

If there were too many votes against them, Johnson said, the only thing to do was to get rid of those votes. And that could be accomplished, he said, by using live pairs. If they could persuade isolationist senators who were still in Washington and who were planning to vote for the aid-cutting amendments to agree to pair with absent senators who would have voted against the amendments, each senator who agreed to do so would be depriving the amendments of one vote. And pro-amendment senators
would
agree, Johnson said, for the usual reason—to do a colleague a favor by saving him the embarrassment of being recorded as absent on an important vote. The only reason they wouldn’t agree, as Johnson was later to explain, was if they realized that the ordinarily routine pairing device was being used for a very unroutine reason. And, as he was to explain, they
wouldn’t
realize unless someone on the other side checked around and found that an awful lot of live pairs were being arranged. And this checking would have to be done in advance: once a senator had assured a colleague that he would pair with him, that assurance was considered an unbreakable promise.

The pair that Johnson focused on first was the absent internationalist Warren Magnuson, back home in the distant state of Washington and unwilling to return, and Joe McCarthy, an adamant opponent of foreign aid. The two bachelor senators were dating buddies. “If Magnuson wasn’t going to be present, you’ve lost his vote anyway,” McFarland’s assistant Bibolet explains. “So if you can get a live pair with Magnuson, you’ve cut out an opposite vote.” Johnson asked McCarthy to save his friend “Maggie” from embarrassment with a live pair, and McCarthy agreed. And then Johnson focused on Guy Gillette of Iowa and Kerr of Oklahoma, two other senators who didn’t want to return, and on McMahon of Connecticut, who couldn’t, because of illness.

The next day, the unsuspecting Russell Long called for the yeas and nays on his amendment, and the yeas and nays were ordered. But just before the clerk called the roll, a number of his amendment’s supporters asked to be recognized for brief statements.

“On this vote, I am paired with the senator from Washington,” Joe McCarthy said. “If he were present and voting, he would vote ‘nay.’ If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ‘yea.’ I withhold my vote.” Olin Johnston said: “I am paired on this vote with the senator from Iowa. If he were present and voting, he would vote ‘nay.’ If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ‘yea.’ I
withhold my vote.” John Stennis said: “On this vote I have a pair with the senior senator from Oklahoma, who if present would vote ‘nay.’ If I were permitted to vote I would vote ‘yea.’ I withhold my vote.” A. Willis Robertson said: “On this vote I have a pair with the senior senator from Connecticut. If he were present and voting he would vote ‘nay.’ If I were permitted to vote I would vote ‘yea.’ I withhold my vote.” The Long Amendment therefore received not the expected forty-one yeas, but only thirty-seven. There were forty nays, so it was defeated. It fell four votes short of passage—the four votes Lyndon Johnson had stripped from it by using live pairs.

All that day, other amendments to reduce foreign aid would be offered—and all that day Administration supporters fought them off, armed with live pairs. In the evening, Administration opponents finally passed an amendment, but only for a $200 million cut. And that was their only victory. At first, Welker had been puzzled. “I am concerned by the number of pairs,” he said at one point. “What is this—legislation by absenteeism?” Then, realizing that he had been outsmarted, he strode over to McCarthy, whom he had been defending against attempts to discipline him for breaches of Senate rules. “From now on, let Magnuson defend you,” he said, in a snarl that could be heard in the Press Gallery above. “McCarthy turned white,”
Newsweek
reported. But McCarthy’s reaction was the only satisfaction Welker could obtain from a day he had been confident would bring major victories. When he asked other pro-amendment senators to stop pairing, they told him they couldn’t do so—that they had given their promise. As Robert Albright was to report in the
Washington Post
, “By adroit ‘pairing’ of missing votes with a few ‘live’ (supporters of the amendment), the Democrats managed to stave off a serious cut.” Absenteeism had been crippling the Senate, and no one had seen a solution to the problem. And then suddenly someone
had
seen a solution—had seen a way, in fact, not only to solve the problem but to turn it to his party’s advantage. Within the clouds of legislative gloom that had shrouded the Senate for so many years, there had suddenly flickered, very brief but very bright, a bolt of legislative lightning.

A
ND OTHER CHANGES WERE
also taking place during Lyndon Johnson’s two years as his party’s Assistant Leader in the Senate.

These changes had no relationship to the Senate’s internal workings. They were, however, to have a very significant relationship to the Senate’s future. For their relationship was to power.

Leader after Leader, Democratic and Republican alike, had complained about their lack of anything to “threaten them with,” of anything to “promise them”; about the paucity of sources of intimidation or reward that would give a Leader enough power so that he could truly lead. Their frustration was understandable. Generations of gifted parliamentarians, determined that the Senate not be led, had done their best to ensure that it couldn’t be, designing an institution in which there existed few levers with which a Leader could move it.

But of all Lyndon Johnson’s political instincts, the strongest and most primal was his instinct for power. The man who was to say “I do understand power…. I know where to look for it” was looking for it now. There were few places within the Senate where a Leader could find it—so he looked for it outside the Senate.

One place he looked was not on the Senate side of the Capitol at all but on the House side, in the little hideaway room on the ground floor with an unmarked, unnumbered door—the room that journalists called Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education” but that Rayburn himself called simply “downstairs.”