The Year the Senate Fell

[elleng]

ON Wednesday, Senator Chris Dodd announced his retirement after 30 years in the Senate. As a Senate Democratic staffer in 1980, I remember Mr. Dodd’s election well — it was the only bright spot on the night that changed the Senate drastically, and in ways we still feel today.

In the 1960s and ’70s, a great Senate had occupied a unique place in our country. It was the Senate that broke the Southern filibuster to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964; became the arena for challenging, and ultimately ending, the Vietnam War; called Richard Nixon to account; spearheaded new environmental and consumer protections; and advanced equal treatment for women. In an era marked by war, assassinations and political scandal, the Senate provided continuity, gravitas and leadership.

The Senate’s fall was as swift as it was surprising. In 1977, the Senate greeted a new president, Jimmy Carter, with a new leadership team of its own, Robert Byrd as majority leader and Howard Baker as minority leader. Several iconic members — Sam Ervin, J. William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield, Philip Hart — were gone. But the core of the great Senate, the liberal Democrats elected in 1958 and 1962, and the moderate-to-progressive Republicans who had forged so many bipartisan alliances, was still intact.

The Russell and Dirksen Senate Office Buildings were filled with young, talented, ambitious staff members like Madeleine Albright, Tim Russert, Susan Collins and Tom Daschle. And after battling the imperial presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the Senate was armed with new legislative tools, including the War Powers Act, the Budget Control Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

There was every reason to think that the Senate would continue with a solid Democratic majority, operate in a bipartisan fashion, and have a powerful, positive influence in the country. But the assertive Senate Democrats and the new, outsider president clashed from the start. Republicans formed strong alliances with an energized business community and surging social conservatives. Jesse Helms, finishing his first term, and Orrin Hatch, newly elected, mastered and exploited the Senate rules; liberal senators retaliated in kind. The filibuster, previously a weapon of last resort, became increasingly commonplace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opinion/07shapiro.html?th&emc=th

[Goldstein1984]

Good history

Thanks for finding and posting this.

What do you think about the article?

[elleng]

3. Very interesting and informative.

We here could use more history lessons, imo.

[Goldstein1984]

4. I've written this in posts a lot lately, but "activism" seems to be

a bad word on DU, and maybe in the Democratic Party as a whole. Having grown up in the 60s, democratic and activism are synonyms to me. I think more history articles would made some difference.

But I also think that Democrats are so happy to have a president in the White House again that they are treating him as too fragil.

[regnaD kciN]

5. Indeed...

...although I found one thing very chilling: the mention of the first "progressive revival" of the Senate from the despondency of 1963 through the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- omitting the fact that the latter, really, probably only passed because the country rallied around LBJ after the JFK assassination. :-(

[Goldstein1984]

1. Deleted: Duplicate

[Ken Burch]

2. Of course, the Senate only "broke the Southern filubuster to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964"

Because the Senate had ALLOWED the freaking filibuster in the first place.

The Senate had also kept lynching legal for almost ninety years. And kept the Poll Tax in place until 1965.

Had the Senate been a majority rule body from the start, Jim Crow would have been ended by FDR in the Thirties, and repeal of the Electoral College would have happened long ago.

The breaking of the filibuster in '64 was a small, late act of repentance for a century of Senate support of segregation.