THE LEGEND OF LYNDON JOHNSON

...So, in 1952, he had the leadership sewed up before any other candidate could get off the starting mark, and before liberal and labor forces had had any chance to mobilize effective opposition...

...In fact, many observers still consider him little more than a pliant instrument of Senator Russell, who played a large part in his rapid advancement and who is still pictured as the power behind the throne...

...I have represented Texas to the best of my ability in the past, I shall continue to do my utmost to safeguard the interests of my native state in the future, and I don't think there is another Senator who will disagree with that thought...

...He ordered the special train taking him back to Washington to stop at Austin to pick up the new Congressman...

...It is true in the sense that Johnson himself is not the type of Southerner whose opposition to civil rights stems from the sincere depths of bigotry...

...He knows everyone's value—and knows even • better his price, if he has one...

...Early in his life, he taught classes of Mexican-Americans...

...He is too good a mathematician to ignore the fact that the Southerners and their camp-followers command jj| votes, a clear majority of the 49 Democratic Senators...

...The victory was a timely one, and F.D.R...

...And his acolytes in the press, far from apologizing for him, portrayed this as his finest hour...

...There will be occasion later to return to the complex and subtle rationalization of Johnson's taking leadership against his Party's platform...

...When the Democrats won the Senate in 1954, he became the youngest Majority Leader in history...

...Presently, it is oil and gas...

...For a man who had voted against an increase of $75,000 in the appropriations for the House Un-American Activities Committee as recently as May 17, 1946, this was a deplorable descent to McCarthyite tactics a year before the junior Senator from Wisconsin had given them the label...

...He had dared doubt the doctrine—by now widely accepted in Congress and in the press—of the infallibility of the Majority Leader...

...In this way he can bring his ample armory of persuasion to bear upon each individual Senator, unprotected by his staff and uncorrupted by consultation with his colleagues...

...But this came very late in the day, after less cautious Americans had long fought in the cause...

...His first tour of duty, as secretary of Congressman Richard Kleber (a friend and admirer of his father), overlapped the tumultuous first two years of the New Deal...

...Someone like Douglas, someone like Thurmond, and someone like Johnson...

...There was a time, not so long ago, when Senator Johnson spoke and acted like an ordinary mortal...

...It may be that, in some fleeting second of his crowded 12 to 16 hour day, Johnson finds occasion to read Browning's poem about the painter Andrea del Sarto (like Johnson, a superb technician who fell short of greatness) and to reflect with him: , "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for...

...Johnson points with great pride to the unanimous Democratic vote he mustered for the censure of the Wisconsin Senator...

...A master of the minutiae of politics, he tirelessly puts together the majorities in which he takes his greatest pride...

...Johnson immediately took his place as one of the bright young men whom the President would call in for an evening cocktail or Sunday morning breakfast...

...This is, indeed, one of the most plausible aspects of the Johnson myth—his alleged equi-distance between Thurmond and Douglas, between the Southerners and the liberals...

...He showed his devotion to them early in this new phase of his career by leading a brutal attack upon Leland Olds, a veteran New Dealer who had contributed able and devoted service as a member of the Federal Power Commission since 1939, and whose votes had antagonized the gas producers...

...Yet it was as late as the spring of 1946 that Johnson cast his final vote against the oil lobby...

...Johnson called on the staff of the Congressional Library to check how often a Senator's defeat had followed his elevation to leadership, since he himself faced a campaign in 1954...

...Johnson's campaign for the leadership in 1952 was typical both in its prudence and in its whirlwind speed...

...He had never, in fact, been really close to the oil men...

...Say> Johnson: "President Roosevelt was like a daddy to me...

...And he draws his maxim for effective action from the GOP's Teddy Roosevelt: "Speak softly but carry a big stick...

...Texan Congressmen found little difficulty in supporting the Rural Electrification Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority, public power development, tax relief for the low-income groups, measures to aid the small businessman and the farmer, and proposals to promote conservation...

...Johnson himself had made alliances with a section of the oil interests, including multi-millionaire Sid Richardson...

...Our candidates made mistakes— so did the Republican candidates— but the mistakes that really hurt were mistakes made in Congress during the three-and-a-half year period from the beginning of 1953 until the summer of 1956, and most devastat-ingly during the eighteen-month period beginning in January, 1955, until August, 1956—the period during which our party had control of Congress...

...His admirers tend now to view his selection as inevitable...

...At the time of Johnson's second try for the Senate, he was still not the majority choice of the oilmen...

...The hilly section of central Texas in which he grew up is as lily-white as rural Vermont, and he had no childhood prejudices to overcome...

...There are many indications (notably his extreme sensitivity to liberal criticism) that he does not feel altogether happy in his present role...

...He conceives of the Senate not as a forum for endless debate but as a place for wheeling and dealing, in which the cloakroom is more important than the floor...

...His loyalties are to his own vaulting ambitions rather than to any club, however sacrosanct, and to the new Texas of oil and gas rather than to the Old South...

...In no case was this clearer than on the occasion of the cloture debate in January...

...There are only three possible Democratic leaders," they maintain...

...Regarding him as a problem for the Republicans to solve, he strenuously urged Adlai Stevenson to remain silent on the subject— advice which, to his eternal credit, Stevenson ignored...

...Speaker Rayburn himself took the floor to support its passage...

...The special feature of the election from his point of view was that Johnson had campaigned in support of the President's then-pending court reform proposal...

...Unlike most Senators, Johnson is impatient of rhetoric, whether it be in a good or bad cause...

...We have all been sent here by our respective states and we all owe a primary loyalty to our constituents...

...While more typical Southerners profit from their sitting power, Johnson is a man constantly in motion...

...When McCarthy rose to prominence in the national scene, Johnson opposed him— but discreetly...

...The 1956 Democratic platform, for instance, calls for limitation of the filibuster—and, unlike some other Senators who attended the Chicago Convention, Johnson did not publicly make known his disagreement with the platform...

...Yet Senator Johnson's admirers continue to maintain that he did the liberals a great favor in allowing even seven hours for discussion...

...He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones...

...Four years ago, when on his acceptance of the post of Minority Leader in the 83rd Congress, he said: "There may be times when I will be in a minority—not just in the Senate but among the Senate Democrats themselves...

...Johnson, on the contrary, sought to make political capital out of the fact that he had voted for the Act...

...But this legislation was passed by maneuver rather than by debate...

...The nation as well as the Democratic Party would seem to be paying a high price for Johnson's leadership...

...Since this is a nation made up of states, I have never felt any conflict in loyalty between my state and my nation...

...It was a wild campaign, in which Johnson's liberalism was the target of much abuse by his opponents, Governor W. Lee ("Pass the Biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel and Representative Martin Dies...

...Instead, he declared that the question was of such importance that he would only make such a motion after ample debate...

...And do you really want Thurmond...

...It was quite a triumphal entry for a freshman...

...sought to make the most of it...

...Smith, Jones, and Zilch have gone along on this," he will say...

...Thus the proponents of the filibuster (absolutely unlimited debate) sharply and insolently limited debate upon the effort to attack it, and little opportunity was given for the essential process of public education on this vital subject...

...After a mere two years in the Senate, he was the Democratic Whip and after four years the Minority Leader—passing, on the way, many older Senators in this seniority-conscious body...

...One, backed by the oil lobbyists, would have had the effect of raising the ceiling price on oil by 25 cents a barrel...

...He has more than once told Texas labor leaders: "Once you guys have the votes, I'll be with you...

...Finding that the mishaps of Lucas and Mc-Farland were unique, he went full-steam ahead...

...In retrospect, there seems little doubt that Johnson was counted out...

...It may be that, privately, this is one of the acts for which Johnson may still feel some shame...

...Johnson is not the man to run the risk of getting in trouble with the "Inner Club" of the Senate...

...their support went mainly to his opponent, Coke Stevenson...

...As Senator Lehman observed in the speech previously quoted: "In all fairness, it must be said that the Democratic-controlled 84th Congress did pass some fairly good legislation in fields like social security and health research...

...The latter resurrected some radical articles Olds had written 20 years earlier, and hurled them against him...

...This time Johnson squeezed through by 79 votes, acquiring the nickname "Landslide" Lyndon...

...Will the Senator remain content with the adulation which surrounds him, or does he aspire to greater heights—say, to the Presidency...

...Douglas couldn't have made it—and even if he had, couldn't have swung the majority of Democrats with him upon any important issues...

...This I believe is unavoidable and would be unavoidable regardless of any selection that could be made by this conference...

...When the issue had last come up, in 1953, Senator Taft, then the Majority Leader, could have cut off debate immediately by offering a motion to table the matter...

...Here's how Robert C. Albright, Washington Post and Times-Herald correspondent, saw it: "Johnson's easy way out would have been to duck the responsibility by stepping temporarily out of the leadership post and letting nature take its course in the Senate...

...What is Johnson's own price...

...The reality is probably more complex...

...Yet, when Senator Clinton Anderson moved this JanuDAVID C. WIUIAMS, aditor of the ADA World, official publication of Amerlcant for Democratic Action, hat written widely on domestic and foreign affairs for American and European publications...

...The oil industry was in the doldrums, and natural gas was hardly more than a waste product...

...Once he had shed his New Deal trimmings and made his peace with the real power bloc in the Senate— the Southerners, led at that time by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia— his rise was rapid...

...His opposition to civil rights springs not from passion but from political calculation...

...Although the fight on Olds was not originally Johnson's idea, he did some skillful broken-field running on this muddy surface...

...The • tireless use of the telephone is, indeed, one of Johnson's most effective tactics...

...The New Deal's labor laws had little impact upon rural Texas, and civil rights had not yet become an issue...

...Texas was a largely agrarian state, with the traditional agrarian distrust of Wall Street capitalism and the traditional Southern internationalism, based solidly on the need of a world market for its farm products...

...The Truman Administration was making a last-ditch fight to maintain price controls...

...Special interests were tearing the bill to pieces with amendments...

...There is patent envy as well as malice in the tendency of his admirers to belittle men like Senator Lehman and Senator Douglas, who have taken a higher if lonelier road...

...ary to challenge the filibuster, John, son led the opposition, rejecting suggestions that he step down temporarily from his post of leadership (as Republican Senator William Knowland had done when he chose to oppose the Administration on aid to Yugoslavia...

...The AFL endorsed Stevenson, while the CIO stood aloof...

...In 1937, running on an all-out New Deal platform, he defeated nine opponents to win a special election to Congress...

...Nothing we did or were able to do in the campaign really made much critical difference...

...President Roosevelt was cruising off the Texas coast at the time...

...The myth of equi-distance, however, glosses over the more important fact that Johnson never strays far from his real power base in the Senate—his fellow-Southerners...

...The day after the election Johnson was leading by 4,000 votes...

...During all those long months, the Democrats in Congress failed to make the issues on which the Party and its candidates could appeal to the people in the course of the Presidential campaign of 1956...

...Nor did Johnson always have to wait for a call...

...This statement is not lacking in candor, and no one who heard it is entitled to profess surprise at Senator Johnson's conduct as the leader of the Senate Democrats...

...But it was far from being the straight liberal-conservative battle of 1941...

...The oil and gas interests were becoming increasingly dominant in Texas, and Sam Ray-burn is said to have remarked at this period: "I don't think it is possible for a man to be liberal and a Senator from Texas at the same time...

...It may have been then that he decided to be smarter and tougher the next time around...

...He announced his candidacy from the steps of the White House after an interview with Roosevelt, who endorsed him as a "very close and old friend...

...From then on, he was thoroughly orthodox on oil and gas issues...

...Indeed he has always had a strong following among Negro and Mexican-American voters in Texas, not because he has done anything tangible for them, but because he treats them like human-beings...

...But he is far from being a Senate "type" of the old bow-tie, side-winding oratory school...

...But as "corrections" began coming from the East Texas counties controlled by Pa and Ma Ferguson, both former governors, O'Daniel emerged the victor by 1,311 votes...

...He is a shrewd rather than a wise man...

...On the roll-call, only two Texas Congressmen voted against it—and one of them was Johnson...

...It showed most blatantly last year when he gave priority to the bill exempting gas producers from federal price regulation—and when he pressed remorselessly for its enactment despite Senator Case's dramatic revelation of the oil lobby's offer to him of a cash campaign contribution just as the decisive vote was looming ahead...

...At no point in his address did Lehman mention the name of his former colleague, Senator Lyndon Johnson...

...While others hold the floor, he darts everywhere, cajoling one man, pounding another's desk...

...We were constantly urged by the leadership to speak briefly and softly lest we wake sleeping dogs...

...Within hours after Mc-Farland's defeat, he was on the telephone speaking to every Democrat who would take a seat in the new Senate...

...A curious angel of the race had to do with the role of labor, which was growing in significance as the rapid industrialization of Texas altered the old agrarian patterns...

...In almost complete contrast to this statesmanlike precedent, Johnson gave the anti-filibuster forces the Hobson's choice of seven hours' debate or none at all...

...It is far from being the whole truth...

...The Legend of Lyndon Johnson by DAVID C. WILLIAMS IN New York City January 18 the grand old man of American liberalism, former Senator Herbert H. Lehman, had this to say about the reasons for the Democratic debacle in November: "In my judgment, by hindsight, the election of 1956 was lost before the campaign began—before the conventions were held...

...And he has made no pretense of taking seriously the adopted platform of the Democratic Party...

...But to the numerous acolytes of the Johnson cult, the smell of heresy was plain...

...Thanks to the patronage of Sam Ray-burn, another friend of his father, he became in 1935 head of the National Youth Administration in Texas...

...Hitherto, the Senate has performed an invaluable service in educating the public...

...Meanwhile, it may be useful and instructive to chart the successive steps in his ascension to his present Olympian role...

...In the face of what sounds like an irresistible trend, Senators have time and again, against their better and subsequent judgment, gone along with Johnson...

...Although many oil men continue to regard him as not quite "safe," this was to be his last act of open defiance...

...According to some observers, he used his positively lethal personal charm to good effect upon the White House secretaries, so that he seldom had to cool his heels in the anteroom of power...

...in his 1941 Senate bid, his financial backing had come from Brown and Root, a construction firm which had grown rich on federal contracts...

...No man of integrity can live constantly in the majority...

...He has consistently put first the interests of his state—or at least some of its leading citizens...

...Instead of ducking, Johnson squarely faced the leadership challenge and himself made the tabling motion...

...It has been the scene of historic debates which have sharpened and focused the issues, and helped the American people to make great decisions...

...Stevenson, a diehard conservative, made a demagogic appeal for labor support by pledging himself to vote for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act...

...Senator Scott Lucas and Ernest Mc-Farland, who had preceded him in the post, had gone down to defeat in their subsequent campaign for reelection to the Senate...

...Johnson's first appearance on the Washington scene was as a flaming young liberal and protege of the late President Roosevelt, of whom he still frequently speaks with affection and admiration...

...When Johnson first ran for the Senate, at a special election in 1941, it was again as an all-out New Dealer...

...There was at that time less conflict between the interests of Texas and the nation than there now is...

...How about you...

...Since his failure in 1952, Russell has become a more embittered and less effective Senator than in his 1951 heyday, when he played a considerable role in reducing General Douglas MacArthur to size...

...Senator Russell's influence has declined since his strenuous and ill-advised struggle for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1952—an ambition he took so seriously as to shock his friends by coming out for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act...

...Under the present dispensation, the big issues are swept under the rug, and this once-great institution is reduced to the status and behavior of a state legislature—say that of Texas...