One-Man Show

As the Senate of the 86th Congress came to order, Illinois' liberal Democratic Senator Paul Douglas crouched, as though ready to spring, behind a desk piled high with books and papers. New York's liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits jittered at the edge of his chair. New Mexico's liberal Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson prepared to offer the first motion of the new session. This was to be the long-planned, highly touted liberal onslaught against Senate Rule XXII (TIME. Jan. 12) and the filibuster. But before Douglas. Javits, Anderson & Co. could utter a word, Texan Lyndon Johnson got the floor in his capacity as Senate majority leader. From that moment on, it was all over but the shouting--and there was plenty of that.

The liberal battle was based on the argument that the Senate, even though two-thirds of its membership holds over from Congress to Congress, is not a "continuing body'' with continuing rules. Clint Anderson, therefore, was ready to move that the Senate, by majority vote, adopt new rules. Key new rule: a revised Rule XXII that would permit a majority to cut off filibusters after 15 days, would allow two-thirds of the members present to cut off debate after two days. Vice President Richard Nixon was prepared to rule favorably to the liberals (in the actual event, he had no opportunity to render more than an advisory opinion). The Southern bloc, of course, was opposed to any change whatever in the filibuster rules. Cried South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond: "I cannot help but feel that the Senate itself, as an institution, is at this moment under attack and in peril of destruction."

Between the liberal and the Southern extremes stood Lyndon Johnson--and, as he had taken pains to ascertain, most of the Senate. And Johnson beat the liberals to the draw by winning first rights to the floor and presenting his own rules-changing motion, which would:

P: Permit two-thirds of the Senators "present and voting" to end filibusters instead of requiring two-thirds of the entire Senate membership.

P: Drop the part of Rule XXII that, in effect, sanctions unlimited filibuster on a change in the Senate rules.

P: Give a sop to the Southerners--and substance to the notion of the Senate as a continuing body--by specifying that "the rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress."

Actually, Lyndon Johnson's would be the strongest anti-filibuster rule the Senate has ever had. The Southerners knew this, but they also knew that it was the best they were likely to get, and they carefully avoided threatening to filibuster against it (although under old Rule XXII they could). The liberal forces fought the Johnson rule, mostly because they were instinctively suspicious of its continuing-rules provision. Cried Paul Douglas: "What we are afraid of is that by acquiescence or otherwise, we may, somewhere along the route, be construed as having accepted the existing rules of the Senate." But Lyndon had the votes--and everybody in the chamber knew it on the chamber's second meeting day. when he graciously allowed Clint Anderson's new-rules motion to take precedence over his own. The U.S. Senate voted down the liberal Anderson motion by a lopsided 60 to 36,* rolled on toward debate on the same terms this week on Johnson's Rule XXII--and left Pennsylvania's liberal Democratic

Senator Joe Clark (who voted against Johnson) muttering a passage from the Mikado:

I've got to take under my wing, Tra la,

A most unattractive old thing, Tra la.

* Of the 15 newly elected Democrats, Johnson corralled Alaska's Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening, West Virginia's Jennings Randolph and Robert Byrd (no kin to Virginia's Harry), Nevada's Howard Cannon, Connecticut's Tom Dodd, Indiana's Vance Hartke, Wyoming's Gale McGee.

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