Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III by Robert A. Caro

Author:Robert A. Caro
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307422033
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-07-21T14:00:00+00:00

“ONE OF THE ADVANTAGES of dealing with the Southern Bloc in those days was that its members knew how to reach complete and binding agreement without any word of their intentions leaking to the outside,” George Reedy was to recall. No one—including Homer Capehart or William Knowland—had the slightest inkling of what was in store. That very Tuesday morning, Time’s John Steele had bumped into the Indianan in a corridor outside the Senate Chamber, and had asked if the eight-vote margin was still firm. It sure was, Capehart said. At that moment, Lyndon Johnson walked by. “Lyndon,” Capehart said loudly, with his customary gift for the elegant phrase, “Lyndon, this time I’m going to rub your nose in shit.” Johnson’s reply, delivered in a rueful tone, was, “Okay, I guess you’ve got me.”

The debate, which began at about one o’clock that afternoon, was enlivened by a touch of drama. There was no more ardent supporter of public housing, of course, than the onetime pioneering mayor of Minneapolis, but months earlier Hubert Humphrey had scheduled an important speech in Minnesota for Monday evening, and the earliest he could return to Washington was via a seven-thirty Tuesday morning plane scheduled to arrive in the capital at about two o’clock. Johnson had promised him to delay the vote until that time, and had obtained Knowland and Capehart’s agreement on the grounds of collegial courtesy. But now Johnson’s staff, checking with National Airport, was told that the flight, delayed by inclement weather in the Midwest, was running more than an hour behind schedule.

Otherwise, the debate proceeded along the expected lines. After Sparkman had introduced and explained the Banking Committee’s bill, Paul Douglas, who had been fighting for public housing for so many years, stated his position forcefully. “Anyone who walks into any city of any size in this country, away from the central business district, will find in nearly every case a slum—streets without trees, houses that are many years old and in disrepair, and children growing up in circumstances that are very difficult.” Some of those children, Douglas said, grow up into fine men. “All credit to men like that and all credit to families like that.” But, he said, “Most children growing up under those conditions swim against the tide.” Over and over again, since almost “my maiden speech in the Senate,” “I showed that the death rate in the slums was very much above the average of the community; that the sickness rate, particularly from tuberculosis and other diseases, was very much greater than the average for the whole community. I showed that the fire rate was high, that the crime rate was high, and that the juvenile delinquency rate was high.

“After all,” Paul Douglas said, looking around at the few senators who were on the floor, “juvenile delinquency is just a fancy name for kids getting into trouble.”

And, he said, “the slums are expanding.… The cities need help.… The people for whom we are speaking on the floor of the Senate this afternoon are the low-income people.

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