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It was Dick Russell who swung all his great Senate weight to make Lyndon Baines Johnson the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate in 1953. Yet it was against Russell's warning that Johnson made his first major move as leader: Johnson wanted to leapfrog promising freshman Senators ahead of their seniors onto the most sought-after committees, e.g., Montana's Mike Mansfield to Foreign Relations and Missouri's Stuart Symington to Armed Services. Cautioned Dick Russell: "You are dealing with the most sensitive thing in the Senate—seniority." But Russell was not quite right: the most sensitive thing in the Senate was Lyndon Johnson, and his instinct told him to go ahead. Says he: "I pushed in my stack." Not only did Johnson somehow make senior Democrats feel like statesmen in giving up their preferment, but he won the lasting gratitude of the younger Senators.* Says Mike Mansfield, now the assistant Democratic leader: "He gave us a chance to blossom."
At All Levels. Johnson solidified his control by almost every means except by trying to control anybody. The powerful senior Southerners trusted him because he seemed to be one of them. In spite of this, and despite his support for such Texas specialties as the oil-depletion allowance, the natural gas bill and the tidelands oil bill, he won the support of Northerners by astute trades. Example: although Oregon's left-leaning Richard Neuberger had crossed him in a key vote, Johnson got to work the next day to round up votes for Neuberger's special pride, the Hells Canyon Dam, got it passed. Today Neuberger is a Johnson man.
Johnson exercises Senate control at all levels; he is the party leader, runs the policy committee, the party caucus, everything. He even took over the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which helps elect liberals and conservatives alike, by wangling its directorship for Kentucky's ex-Senator Earle Clements.
"I Won't Forget." But the Senate balance is much too close and much too flexible for Lyndon Johnson to get anywhere just by confining his attentions to Democrats. "Cactus Jack" Garner of Texas once told him: "No leader is worth his salt unless he has friends on both sides of the aisle." Lyndon Johnson has.
He has had his differences with Republican Leader Bill Knowland (as minority leader in 1953, Johnson adjourned the Senate right out from under Knowland's nose, the worst insult that can befall a majority leader), but the two have come to work together in cooperation and mutual respect. One night during the recent debate on postal-rate increases, Frank Carlson, in charge of the bill for the Republican Administration, had an important appointment in home-state Kansas. He asked Johnson if the Senate could meet early and leave early so that he could catch his plane. Johnson agreed. "Thanks," said Frank Carlson. "I won't forget that." He won't, either.