This is not Lyndon Johnson’s Senate

[ProSense]

This is not Lyndon Johnson’s Senate

Posted by Ezra Klein



When I think about the difference between Lyndon Johnson’s Senate and Barack Obama’s, I think of a memo — pictured above — that Mike Manatos, who served as Senate liaison for Johnson, sent to Larry O’Brien, who directed Johnson’s campaign. It was written on Dec. 8, 1964, just days after the election. Manatos is giving O’Brian an overview of how the Senate elections improved the chances of passing Medicare. Manatos wrote:

Of the 49 votes cast on behalf of Medicare (Gore amendment) on September 2, 1964, we lost two supporters in the last election -- Senators Keating and Salinger. However, we picked up five new supporters -- Senators Bass, Harris, Kennedy (Robt.), Montoya, and Tydings.

We also had three supporters who missed the vote this year -- Senators Bayh, Hartke, and Kennedy (Ted).

Thus if all our supporters are present and voting we would win by a vote of 55 to 45.

Of course, if we could persuade Senator Russell (who is on the brink) to support Medicare this year our margin should be even greater.

That letter would never be written today. Confidently asserting that any major piece of legislation could pass with 60 votes would be enough to get a political aide fired. The modern Senate requires 60 votes to pass pretty much anything. The exception are bills that can be passed through budget reconciliation, but that process comes with its own limitations and problems. If you don’t know that today, you are not qualified to work in politics.

In Johnson’s time, however, the Senate was not governed by the filibuster. This chart counts “cloture” votes, which are the votes you take to break a filibuster, and thus give us a way to count whether the majority is having to face down a lot of filibusters. Johnson was president during the 88th, 89th, and 90th sessions of Congress. And as you can see, there weren’t many filibusters:



- more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/this-is-not-lyndon-johnsons-senate/2012/05/08/gIQAPCOsAU_blog.html

http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/reference/cloture_motions/clotureCounts.htm

[Drunken Irishman]

1. This is not LBJ's America...

People forget that Johnson also oversaw a period of time where the country was still engrossed in liberal, New Deal politics. The Democrats had dominated the political landscape for 30 years and liberalism even longer when you go back to Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Era - which really realigned the country ideologically.

Johnson was the last Democratic president to really preside over a nation that hadn't yet accepted, or embraced, the Conservative Movement.

Since LBJ left office, the country has taken a a hard shift to the right and that all happened long before Pres. Obama took office. Yes, people like to mention that Nixon would be considered a moderate, or a liberal Republican, in today's world - but Nixon was to the right of Eisenhower, who, in some instances, was to the right of Wendell Willkie, who was fairly liberal when he ran for president in 1940. Politics evolves and the opposing party has to evolve right with them or they're priced right out of viability. Had the Republicans not evolved in the 40s and 50s, became more moderate, they would have never secured the presidency again. You would have seen more elections like 1964 and less elections like 1952, when the moderate Eisenhower defeated the liberal Stevenson.

So, the Republicans realized, to survive, especially at the national level, they needed to progress along with the Democrats. And they did. But that progression led to an evolving of their own. Willkie was more liberal than Dewey, who was more liberal, probably, than Nixon and certainly Goldwater. But, if you look at it, it's not like Republicans swept into power all that quickly. It was baby steps. It took electing a moderate to regain the White House for the first time in 20 years and that really helped lay the foundation for the modern conservative movement because it proved Republicans could be viable in presidential politics.

So, while many were laughing off Goldwater's extreme losses four years after the Republicans had lost control of the WH, it was setting up a period of remarkable conservative growth. Nixon's Southern Strategy helped secure the South for the Republicans, opening up a new avenue to electoral success and Goldwater's conservative firebrand helped lead to Reagan, who, obviously, was more conservative than Nixon.

What people fail to realize is that the Democrats saw their coalition collapse in the 1970s and it kept them out of the White House until a southern moderate, Jimmy Carter, won the White House in '76 - and only won the White House because the Republican name brand had been so badly damaged, any Democrat was going to win that election. Of course, he kept the seat for all of four years and because his presidency was so poorly received by the American people, it allowed an extremist like Reagan to step in and win - when, in 1979, no one thought that possible.

But what happened in the 70s and 80s is that the Democrats never wised up like the Republicans. They kept nominating New Deal liberals when America, rightfully or not, had soured on the ideology. It just helped push this narrative that Democrats, especially national Democrats, were so out of touch with Americans that even potentially successful Democrats couldn't shake it. McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis - they all were cut from the same cloth and while I don't doubt their ability to be successful presidents had they been elected, the fact is, all three were on the wrong end of some of the worst electoral routes in American history. To quote George McGovern, "I opened the doors of the Democratic Party – and twenty million people walked out."

Finally, in the 90s, the Democrats got it. You can't win by swimming against the tide. From 1968-1990, Americans had turned on liberalism. We can pretend they didn't, but the reality is, they did. So, it took the Democrats understanding this, nominating a moderate Democrat, Bill Clinton, to regain the power. Clinton should have been, and maybe he will prove to be, the Democratic version of Eisenhower - someone who proved Democrats could be good presidents. Until Clinton, the last good president in the eyes of Americans was JFK and that was 30 years prior.

Now the problem here, and why the liberal movement is still in progress instead of at its height, we followed Clinton with Bush the Miserable - who was even more conservative than Reagan. Had Gore taken office in '01, America would be a bit more progressive today than it is currently because we wouldn't have had eight years of conservative, Republican governing - warmongering, rights impeding, global warming denying, working class haters.

So, that puts Obama in the position to lead a nation that really hasn't had a liberal footing in almost 50 years and we expect him to be the incarnation of LBJ and FDR. It doesn't work that way. It's an evolving process. But I guarantee you if Obama wins reelection, we'll be far closer to the liberal ideal than at any point in the 70s, 80s and 90s - when it looked like liberalism was almost extinct in America.

People don't want to believe it, or admit it, but Obama is pretty liberal, especially when you consider the country he inherited.

No, this isn't LBJ's America. This is still Reagan-Bush's America. Hopefully, by 2016, we'll be finally calling it the Obama's America.

[ProSense]

2. Good points.

The move to the right began with Nixon: think Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John O'Neill.

[FarLeftFist]

3. Great post. Thanks for sharing.

[Art_from_Ark]

4. In the 1970s, American politics were still pretty liberal

Both the House and Senate were firmly in Democratic control throughout the decade.

McGovern lost in large part because he was running against an incumbent, but also that incumbent was a crook ("break-in at Democratic Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel&quot whose crimes were brushed aside in the months leading up to the 1972 election. Nixon also appealed to the basest emotions of many voters, especially in the South, and Reagan even further capitalized on that strategy. McGovern also hurt his own cause immensely by not completely vetting his first running mate, Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was later revealed to have been undergoing psychiatric treatment and consequently deemed unfit by the media to serve as a running mate. At first, McGovern stood by Eagleton, but later dumped him, and that really sealed his doom.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. I agree...

We started seeing the unraveling of it in the 70s, but you're right, it was still pretty strong. In the 80s, things radically shifted - not just with Reagan winning two terms but the Republicans taking control of the Senate for the first time since the 50s in 1981.

It's been a slow spiral, really, ever since LBJ. It will take time to get us back out of this and put the country on the right course. We were doing it in the 90s, but then turned around and regressed with Bush. And you know, without 9-11, Bush would have been the Republican's Carter - a one term president who gave way to another Democratic two-termer. So, we've got to make sure Obama is in office come 2013. If he goes, so goes the liberal movement and it's startling that so many liberal fighters don't get it - or don't care.

[Art_from_Ark]

7. Yeah, the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1981 was a big turning point

that was exacerbated by the "boll weevils", Congressional DINOs who sided with Reagan

[Allensm]

5. Thanks for sharing such an informative post.

Thanks for sharing such an informative post.

[ProSense]

13. You're welcome.

Welcome.

[eppur_se_muova]

8. In Caro's "Passage of Power", ch. 18 & 19 particularly, he describes how the filibuster ...

was used by conservatives to block almost any kind of progressive legislation. It didn't start in 2008, or 1994, but in FDR's last term in 1944. The Senate has been dysfunctional -- *deliberately* disfunctional -- for much of the 20th Century, and the filibuster is largely to blame.

The filibuster was NOT something created by the Founding Fathers:

In 1789, the first U.S. Senate adopted rules allowing the Senate "to move the previous question", ending debate and proceeding to a vote. Aaron Burr argued that the motion regarding the previous question was redundant, had only been exercised once in the preceding four years, and should be eliminated.[2] In 1806, the Senate agreed, recodifying its rules, and thus the potential for a filibuster sprang into being.[2] Because the Senate created no alternative mechanism for terminating debate, the filibuster became an option for delay and blocking of floor votes.

The filibuster remained a solely theoretical option until the late 1830s. The first Senate filibuster occurred in 1837.[citation needed] In 1841, a defining moment came during debate on a bill to charter the Second Bank of the United States. Senator Henry Clay tried to end debate via majority vote. Senator William R. King threatened a filibuster, saying that Clay "may make his arrangements at his boarding house for the winter". Other senators sided with King, and Clay backed down.[2]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate

[great white snark]

9. Thank you ProSense.

Very informative.

[madrchsod]

10. 1964 this was the turning point in america in civil rights

johnson needed one man to turn defeat into victory.that man was everett dirksen. today we have not one republican who would be willing or capable to do what dirksen did.

http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht319648.html


i guess in those days people stood up for what was right even though they knew it could cost them their career.

[spanone]

11. k&r...

[UTUSN]

12. R#7 & K for, the filibustering was corraled by LBJ's skills. Am 100 pp from the end of CARO's 4thVol

This year I just read the previous 3 volumes in time for the debut of this, and CARO's bottomline achievement was to provide the full context of the daunting gridlock that is BUILT IN to the very design of Congress, with the problems of staggered terms for senators, seniority as a means of leadership, and the coalitions of stagnation able to stifle generations of the country's readiness for change -- all as a backdrop for LBJ's knowledge of all the tricks, where all the bodies were buried, and sheer genius for governance.

Barring a total re-design of the mess, somebody with the special blend of personal characteristics who can break through it all develops as a peculiar and isolated mutation. Just scrapping it all or a strongman are the alternatives.

[Scurrilous]

14. K & R