Moving Up the Ladder
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA MOVING UP THE LADDER BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington Democrats filed into the House of Representatives on January 19 and shut the doors against the world for eight straight hours....
...While the glasses tinkled, Boggs' vivacious wife, Lindy, was on the phone with McCormack in South Boston...
...No real opposition developed...
...History indicates it is most unlikely that the Federal Treasury will be tapped soon again to subsidize a former Speaker: McCormack is the first to retire voluntarily (without going to another elected office) since Speaker James L. Orr (D.-S.C...
...On the form charts, the clear favorite should have been Hale Boggs of New Orleans, the eventual winner...
...He had held the Speakership for nine undistinguished years, having succeeded the powerful Sam Rayburn of Texas...
...But until the balloting began, Boggs' chances of victory were heavily discounted within the press corps, if not by his more knowledgeable colleagues...
...The glasses were adorned with the American flag in perfect keeping with Boggs' North-South duality: View him as a simple patriot or as a practitioner of high camp...
...During a period in 1969, he had held disjointed press conferences that stretched on for hours, found himself unable to sleep and otherwise behaved erratically...
...He let it be known that he would not endorse anyone to succeed him as majority leader...
...Meantime, the liberals who cluster around the Democratic Study Group also sought to give Boggs the ax while organized labor, unmindful of the secret ballot, worked over members who regularly sip at labor's trough...
...With the others out of the running, Boggs easily beat Udall on the second ballot...
...Furthermore, a legion of Democrats from the Northeast despised Udall for (a) having been born in Arizona and (b) having had the presumption to challenge McCormack for Speaker in 1969, an effort that gained him but 58 votes...
...By mid-November, anti-Boggs Southerners had counted noses (which they do very well) and found that he was ahead of the pack...
...The Southern patriarchs kept score...
...After all, once senior people are passed over (Boggs has been around the House for 26 years) there's no telling where things will end...
...Back in 1940, John W. McCormack of South Boston, blessed by Roosevelt, easily defeated a hapless Virginian to become House majority leader...
...Willful men have been known to buckle under Albert's relentless cajolery...
...Although in time this logic, whatever its merits, prevailed, it looked for a while like Hale Boggs had a most formidable enemy in Hale Boggs...
...So smoothly has this Democratic cartel functioned that three decades had elapsed without a contested election for a major position in the leadership...
...Albert's professed neutrality on such a vital matter was so alien a concept for most Congressmen to accept that until the balloting for majority leader took place many of them thought he would end up dealing his secret choice an ace from the bottom of the deck...
...left to await the Civil War in 1859...
...In addition, for reasons other than his state of mind, quite a few Southerners thought him unreliable...
...Conyers responded by challenging Albert for the Speakership...
...When death creates a vacancy in the leadership roster, the practice has been for the survivors to move up a notch...
...By this time, the Scotch was already flowing in Boggs' Capitol office...
...Unlike Teddy Kennedy, who held the comparable post in the Senate for two years before he was ousted on January 21 by Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Boggs diligently performed these favors, picking up chits along the way, due and collectable in full at the 1971 House Democratic Caucus...
...This produced a referendum of support for Albert and a humiliating defeat (20 votes) for Conyers...
...Boggs was the fall guy in the Sisk adventure," Chicago's Dan Rostenkowski observed shortly before he himself was toppled as chairman of the Democratic Cauous...
...The inner circle, otherwise known as the Establishment, meets and decides who goes on the lowest rung of the ladder...
...Barely had the Democrats recovered from McCormack's surprising announcement when Albert surprised them anew...
...Before leaving for Chicago, he voted for open housing...
...A case in point is Congressman John Conyers Jr...
...Those Southern guys," Rostenkowski said, "eat their own...
...Congressional aides, lobbyists and reporters, huddled by the door during the voting, got the news from a cop who had stopped shoving them up against the marbled walls long enough to find out what was going on...
...It is rare, however, for the selection process to consume a full day because the custom is to put whatever persons were in charge in the old Congress back in charge in the new Congress...
...This is how the majority party in the House traditionally picks its leaders...
...But Albert held on to his trumps and carefully kept out of the limelight...
...Albert's neutrality permitted the first genuinely open election for majority leader of the House for as long as anyone here can recall...
...Shouldn't Boggs have his chance too...
...When the gestation period ended last month, it was Albert who was seated beside Spiro Agnew and behind Richard Nixon for the State of the Union address...
...He did so because a lot of House Democrats, no matter how Leftward their lean on the war, on Nixon and on priority-shifting, are every bit as conservative as the Spaniards in the Sacred College of Cardinals when it comes to naming a new majority leader...
...Boggs succeeded in pulling himself together in the fall of 1969, but memories of that time lingered on the House floor and in the press gallery...
...Boggs sought to overcome his poor press clippings by becoming very cozy with nationally syndicated columnists...
...of Detroit, one of 13 Negroes in the 92nd Congress...
...He has a Phi Beta Kappa key and a law degree from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, but he is not known for bringing his intellectual talents to bear in winning points...
...Five contestants ran...
...Just before the caucus, Conyers demanded Albert's support for a move to strip the five Mississippi Democrats of their seniority because they ignored the integrated Democrats recognized by the 1968 national convention...
...As the majority whip, the No...
...In packing up, McCormack let it be known that he wanted Majority Leader Carl Albert of Oklahoma (whose congressional district lies across the Red River from Ray-burn's old district) to succeed him as Speaker...
...And if the South is against you, then you can't win.' " Anti-Boggs Northerners typically fielded two candidates against him: Morris K. Udall of Arizona and James G. O'Hara of Michigan...
...at age 79, with his ability to concentrate beginning to give way and with scandals touching his office, he was calling it quits...
...Instead, he is likely to look up at a colleague (at 5'4" he is the shortest man in the House) and say: "We sure would appreciate your vote on this bill and I can't see any reason why you can't let us have it...
...They both couldn't be happier...
...Udall had the more winning personality of the two, but labor had it in for him because he had once upheld right-to-work...
...According to Conyers, Albert was "extremely sympathetic" and said, "I will be back to you...
...In 1968, LBJ persuaded Boggs to preside over platform hearings at the national convention, where Boggs behaved like a national Democrat...
...More significantly, Conyers' move undermined talks aimed at winning Albert's support for really putting the Mississippians in the blocks two years hence...
...his most spectacular convert was Joseph Alsop, who later came by for the victory celebration...
...But the biennial pattern of reaffirmation was jolted last May when McCormack, now Speaker, announced he would return to South Boston in 1971...
...Boggs holds his liberal opponents in contempt, not so much for their ideology as for their ineptness...
...Boggs viewed his problem somewhat differently: "Jack Kennedy once told me, "Hale, the Southern thing works this way: If the South supports you, then you're a Dixiecrat...
...Albert is 62...
...3 position in the Democratic hierarchy, Boggs had been able to do lots of small favors for his fellow Congressmen...
...McCormack's colleagues were so grateful that they passed a bill providing him with an office in the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, a $27,00O-a-year assistant and a suitable clerical staff...
...Friends saw his physical and mental problems as a delayed reaction to the political suicide of Lyndon Johnson, who is a very dear friend of the Boggses, and to the burden of having to run the House Ways and Means Committee while its chairman, Congressman Wilbur D. Mills (D.-Ark...
...Moreover, Albert had also been the whip (having caught Ray-burn's eye from across the river in the mid-'50s) and hadn't he moved up...
...was ailing...
...They responded by putting up B. F. Sisk of California, an easygoing type whose congressional career has been largely devoted to not making enemies...
...In explaining his strategy to an insider, Albert said, "If I would have picked this guy, this guy would have had enemies and the other guys would have had friends and those friends would have gotten their feelings hurt...
...In the end, he didn't even vote, although the election, as is the custom, was held by secret ballot...
...As labor's choice, O'Hara succeeded only in poisoning the well for Udall in a way that Sisk and another establishment type, Wayne L. Hays of Ohio, never did for Boggs...
Vol. 54 • February 1971 • No. 3
