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In 1951 the position of Senate majority whip opened, and Johnson had considerable backing for the post. Bobby, naturally, heard about it, and decided to help out. Said he, years later: "I kept leaking stories to the newspapers that Johnson had the inside track; that in a showdown he would have the votes." Obviously it is impossible to say today just how much Baker's affairs had to do with John son's election—but the Baker-sponsored bandwagon movement certainly did not impair Lyndon's chances. Johnson saw to it that Baker was named assistant Democratic Senate secretary.
The Democrats lost the Senate majority in 1952, but in that same election, Democratic Floor Leader Ernest McFarland of Arizona was defeated at home by Republican Barry Goldwater. The day after the elections, Baker was summoned to the telephone from law class at American University. It was Lyndon Johnson, calling from Texas. "He wanted to know what people in Washington were saying, how things looked up here," Baker once recalled. "I told him it looked like he was the leader. At the beginning of the next Congress, he was." Johnson eventually saw to it that Baker was named secretary to the Senate Democrats. Among Baker's perquisites was a long, black Government-owned Lincoln, a big Capitol office (even if it was in the basement) with a real crystal chandelier and gold draperies. Bobby Baker was now in his element.
As it happened, Johnson was one of the most effective—and most domineering—floor leaders in Senate history. He set right out to bridle the Senate, and he used Baker as the bit. Recalls a Senate veteran: "Bobby was Lyndon's bluntest instrument in running the show the way he wanted." For being such, Baker was rewarded with equal measures of prestige and praise.
Last & First. At the end of the 1957 congressional session, for example, Johnson rose in the Senate and lauded Bobby almost to the point of embarrassment. "The secretary to the majority is the most tireless and indefatigable man on this floor," said Lyndon. "Bobby Baker is a young man who already has gone much further in life than many others of far greater years. And it is my personal opinion that he is just getting started." Another time, during Johnson's 1960 vice-presidential campaign, he took the better part of an afternoon to go with Bobby into the mountains of South Carolina, to a place called Rocky Bottom, for a political rally. For Native Son Baker, it was a tremendous triumph to appear in such a place with such a man. Johnson took the opportunity to tell Baker's father that Bobby was "my strong right arm, the last man I see at night, the first one I see in the morning."