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The Years of Lyndon Johnson
by Robert A. Caro
He knew exactly what he wanted to say---what he wanted the journalists to know---and he said nothing more. As the journalists looked up at him, the clock over the double doors at the rear of the center aisle was in their line of vision, so they were constantly reminded that the bell would ring, bringing the Senate to order and their time to ask questions to an end, precisely at noon. "He not only had his physical, dominating presence, but the clock behind him," one of the reporters recalls. Not that he needed that assistance---or any assistance. "There would be little time for questions," Booth Mooney would recall. "Nor any need for them, in Johnson's opinion. The Majority Leader of the Senate had given them a basis for their stories. What more could they ask?" If there was a question that annoyed him, recalls one of the journalists, "he would answer the question. But he would put a spin on it, so he would be saying it his way." That was the only way he answered any question. "You didn't get any more than Lyndon Johnson wanted to tell you," a journalist says. "Never. I don't think, in all those years, he ever slipped up. He knew exactly what he wanted to say---and that was what he said. Period. I never felt in all those years that he ever lost control [of one of those press conferences in the well]. He was always in charge."
Part of the aura that surrounded Johnson as he stood front-row center in the Senate Chamber was, as some of the reporters acknowledge, "the buildup, the accrual---the knowledge we had of what this guy had done, of what this guy could do. Of what he wanted to be." It was an aura of triumphs won, of triumphs anticipated. But the aura was more than reputation. "Power just emanated from him," another of the reporters says. "There was that look he gave. There was the way he held his head. Even if you didn't know who he was, you would know this was a guy to be reckoned with. You would feel: don't cross this guy. He was so big! And he would look around the Chamber---it was like he was saying, ‘This is my turf.' " More than a century before, a rider encountering big-eared, blazing-eyed John Wheeler Bunton on the Texas plains wrote of his unusual "bearing," others spoke of his "towering form" and "commanding presence." For more than a century, those words and phrases had been applied to generation after generation of Buntons. Now they were being applied to the Bunton who had become Majority Leader of the Senate. "He had the bearing of a man on a pedestal," one of the reporters in the well recalls. "He had the bearing of a man in command."
Then, at noon, the bells would ring, and the gavel of the senator in the chair---the senator Lyndon Johnson had put in the chair---would rap, and the Senate would convene. And Lyndon Johnson would still be in command.
The first words from Richard Nixon or Walter George, or whoever was presiding in their place---after the chaplain's prayer and the ritualistic "The Senate will be in order"---were "The chair recognizes the Senator from Texas," and for some time thereafter, Johnson, standing at his desk in the center of the first row, would be the only senator recognized. It would be he who, after disposing of the parliamentary preliminaries ("On request of Mr. Johnson of Texas, and by unanimous consent, the reading of the Journal of the Proceedings of May 25, 1955, was dispensed with"), made the requests---the requests that only he could make---for permission for committees or subcommittees to meet although the Senate was in session. ("On request of Mr. Johnson of Texas, and by unanimous consent, the Subcommittee on Judicial Improvements of the Committee on the Judiciary was authorized to meet during the session today"), the requests that had once been automatic but that were no longer so automatic, that were an exercise of his power. It was he who ordered up the executive session ("Mr. President, I move that the Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business." "Without objection, so ordered"), and it was he who, during that session, shepherded the Senate through the Advise and Consent functions on nominations ("The Chief Clerk read the nomination of Admiral Arthur William Radford to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. . . . The Chief Clerk read the nomination of General Maxwell Davenport Taylor to be Chief of Staff, United States Army. . . . The Chief Clerk read the nomination of General Nathan Farragut Twining to be Chief of Staff, United States Air Force . . . mr. johnson of Texas: "Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc." "Without objection, so ordered") and on treaties as well ("Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that these treaties be considered as having passed through their various parliamentary stages up to and including the presentation of the resolutions of ratification, that the Senate take one vote on the treaties, and that President Eisenhower be notified of the Senate's action." "All those in favor of ratification, please stand and be counted. . . . Two-thirds of those senators present having voted in the affirmative, the resolutions of ratification are agreed to"). It was he who ended the executive session, and moved that the Senate return to legislative business. It was he who ordered up the morning hour, with its speeches, "subject to the usual two-minute limitation," and it was he who ended the morning hour. And it was he who, after the morning hour, stood again at his desk to recite the formula---the formula that, by Senate custom, only he could recite---that was so vital to senators: "Mr. President, I move that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 394, Senate Bill 2080, a bill for the relief of Oakley F. Dodd"; "Mr. President I move that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2083, a bill to authorize a preliminary examination and survey of the channel leading from Indian River Bay to Assawaman Canal, Delaware." After each of these Calendar Calls, the legislative clerk had to participate in the ritual, stating the bill by its full title ("A bill [S. 2083] to amend the Water Pollution Control Act in order to . . ."), and if the clerk was not reading fast enough, Johnson would become impatient. As he stood beside his desk, he was separated from the clerks on the second level of the dais only by the few feet of the well, and his eyes were on a level with theirs. "C'mon, c'mon, let's get going," he would say to the clerk facing him across the well, and a few bills later, "C'mon, GET GOING!" Senators watching Lyndon Johnson intone the ritualistic words that called a bill off the Calendar would know that they had bills over which they wanted---needed---that ritual intoned, and that only Lyndon Johnson could intone it.
Excerpted from Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro Copyright 2002 by Robert A. Caro. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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