The Congress: Diet of Worms

For months, with all the rhetorical flourishes at his command, Everett Dirksen had trumpeted his implacable opposition to the Administration's 1966 civil rights bill. Even so, when Dirksen was ushered into the President's oval office last week, Lyndon Johnson clapped a hand on his shoulder and said plaintively: "Ev, I thought you were in my corner." "Mr. President," replied the Senate minority leader, "how long has it been since I told you that I wasn't in your corner?" Then Johnson asked: "Is the door absolutely closed?" Dirksen: "Absolutely." Next year too? "If...