Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, normally the mildest of men, was beside himself. "Outrageous!" he stormed. "We are, by our accomplishments, making the Senate look ridiculous, picayune and incompetent to handle the business of the people." The problem, really, was a lack of accomplishments. Repeatedly lacking a quorum, the upper chamber ground to a halt several times. At one point the Senate went into a 1-hour and 40-minute recess owing to what Mansfield testily termed "a complex development." That development: Senator Allen Ellender's 78th birthday, which he marked by whipping up his annual luncheon of Louisiana creole gumbo for Lady Bird Johnson, Lynda Johnson Robb and other noted local la dies. A minor piece of farm legislation was before the Senate, and it could not proceed without Agriculture Committee Chairman Ellender.
Duty Bound. After repeated delays, the Senate finally took on the week's principal business: President Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the U.S. A formal vote to, close off a filibuster will not come until this week, but it is foredoomed. Fortas' opponents, led by Michigan Republican Robert Griffin, have considerably more than enough votes to block cloture and keep the talkathon going until the Administration gives up.
If there had been any doubt about Fortas' fate, none remained after Minority Leader Everett Dirksen pulled a 180° switch and announced that he now felt "duty bound" to vote against cloture. Last summer Dirksen gave the President his approval of the appointment. But as opposition to Fortas swelled—22 of the Senate's 37 Republicans are now against him—Dirksen's leadership has grown shaky, and he is not unmindful that as a rambunctious Congressman in 1965, Griffin helped turn aging Charles Halleck out of the House minority leadership.
Belated Advice. During the debate, the charges raised repeatedly against Fortas in Judiciary Committee hearings were aired anew. No one questioned his legal brilliance. Fortas' opponents complained instead about his status as the appointee of a lame-duck President, and his role in enhancing the Warren Court's supposed softness on pornography and criminals. A typical objection came from Dirksen's son-in-law, Tennessee Senator Howard Baker: "In continuing to counsel the President on such matters as the Viet Nam war, the riots, legislative proposals and the 1966 State of the Union address, Justice Fortas not only has committed a judicial impropriety but also has flagrantly violated the traditional separation-of-powers concept."
Even Mansfield was less than ardent, though he favored confirmation. It was "unfortunate," he said, that Fortas accepted $15,000 for 18 hours of lecturing this summer at Washington's American University. "One would hope," Mansfield added gently, "that Mr. Fortas no less than any of the other members of the Court would henceforth bear these distinctions in mind." For Mr. Fortas, that advice may have come too late.