An Adequate Number of Democrats

(See Cover) It was during the President's usual nap time, and it took a little while before the call was put through. Finally, Carl Albert, majority leader of the House of Representatives, was able to say: "Mr. President, I'm here with the new minority leader, Jerry Ford, and the dean of the House, Manny Celler, to report that the House is organized and ready for business." "That's fine," said Lyndon Johnson.

"I'm glad to know what's happening." Soon afterward, with the parliamentary pomp, the exhilaration and the confusion of the opening sessions over, Oklahoma's mite-sized (5 ft. 4 in.) Carl Albert was back on the House floor, ready for almost anything that might happen in the 89th Congress. Strolling among the desks, Albert sized up and greeted the neophytes. "Hi, how are you getting along?" he asked, extending his hand. "Come by and see me if I can help you in any way." One eager new comer asked when he could make a speech. Albert replied briskly: "When you feel ready and have something to say. Beyond that, there are no holds barred."

Enough for Two. All week long, the freshmen in both House and Senate moved uncertainly through their new surroundings. They were a diverse group, among them a machinist from Wisconsin, a mortician from New York, a spice merchant from Michigan, a labor leader from New Jersey, and a college dean of men from Iowa. Many have names that carry family echoes of one kind or another; in addition to Bobby Kennedy joining his brother Ted, they ranged from Maryland's Democratic Senator Joe Tydings, stepson of the late Millard Tydings, to California's Representative John Tunney, son of the former heavyweight champion. Many were symbols of political upheaval: a Democratic Congressman from Maine who won by 40,000 votes, a Republican from Mississippi who won by nearly 7,000, and a Democrat from New York's suburban Westchester County, the first of his party elected there in over 50 years. There were 20 Roman Catholics, 63 Protestants, six Jews and ten who professed no denomination among the 99 newcomers to the 89th (there are now 107 Roman Catholics in Congress, with 88 Methodists in second place). They were youngish, the average age being 44.

But mostly they were Democrats--71 in the House, six in the Senate. And they helped set the cast of Capitol Hill for the next two years--the most lopsided Democratic Congress since the one that convened in 1937. If Lyndon Johnson has anything to say about it, it will also be one of the hardest-working sessions in memory, for he means to use it as his springboard to the Great Society. Contemplating the President's legislative program, Senator Everett Dirksen remarked wearily that "there would easily be enough to engross the time and the attention not of one but of a number of Congresses."

Yet chances are that Johnson will get most of what he is asking for in this session.

Arranged for L.B.J. The numbers are with him. In the Senate, Democrats outnumber Republicans 68 to 32, and while Southern Democrats will continue to oppose many liberal measures, enough Northern Republicans are likely to line up with Lyndon to keep the Senate reasonably safe for his program. But the Senate has been fairly dependably Democratic for several sessions. Such has not been the case in the House --and it is in that volatile, unpredictable chamber that Johnson's Great Society bills will live or die. A muscular conservative coalition of Southern Democrats and rural Republicans had worked together to spoil or drastically slow down some favored bills of both John Kennedy's and Lyndon Johnson's Administrations. But now the Democrats have a 295-to-140 majority. Furthermore, they carried out a quick little revolution by making some significant changes in the rules and composition of key House committees--all carefully arranged to be pro-Johnson.

The true potential of the House can never be measured by the numbers alone. It springs from the state of 435 divergent minds, working within a welter of parliamentary mechanism and traditions. The task of making the Democratic majority consistently effective in this setting rests heavily on the Democratic leaders of the House--and none will feel the pressures more than Carl Bert Albert, 56, whose unassuming, somewhat puckish appearance masks not only a Rhodes Scholar but one of the sharpest political professionals in Congress.

He is second to Speaker John McCormack in the House party hierarchy, but Albert's delicate handling of the membership from the floor--developed to a profound proficiency after seven years as party whip and three as floor leader--will dictate to a large extent the pattern and timing of Lyndon's proposals. Says Albert: "I think we have a real opportunity to pull the party together."

Southern Discomfort. But first there had to be a little pulling apart. The leadership faced the thorny problem of disciplining two Dixie Democrats--Mississippi's John Bell Williams and South Carolina's Albert Watson--for defecting to Barry Goldwater during the campaign. Some hot-tempered Democrats, including Speaker McCormack, wanted them drummed out of the party. But Carl Albert and other cooler heads insisted on a less corrosive punishment, and the Democratic caucus merely stripped both renegades of their seniority on committees.

In the Senate, too, the Democrats staged a relatively minor North-South clash. Louisiana's Russell Long, 46, wanted to replace Vice President-elect Hubert Humphrey as majority whip--even though Huey Long's son has a notable record of anti-Administration votes, including t hose against medicare, aid to education, foreign aid, the nuclear test ban treaty, the Peace Corps and civil rights. Because of past political favors, because the liberals were badly organized--and because the White House carefully did not intervene--Russell Long won out over Rhode Island's John Pastore and Oklahoma's Mike Monroney. Said Russell after his election: "This means the Civil War is over." Indeed Long could go far to help swing at least a few Southern Democrats into the Administration's camp on some tough bills. And he has even hinted that he might ease his views on segregation: "I've been able to recognize that things move and to adjust myself to a changing world."

Canceling the Conservatives. With party punishment thus meted out and leadership jobs filled, the Democrats proceeded to grease every possible skid for Johnson's upcoming legislation. Most important was the move to establish control over two major points of conservative power in the House--the Ways and Means and the Appropriations committees, long dominated by a coalition of conservative-minded Democrats and Republicans. When it was chaired by Missouri's late Clarence Cannon, one of the crustiest old tightwads in House history, Appropriations often choked off extra funds for almost anything that smacked of liberal legislation. Cannon died last spring, and the chairmanship went to Texas Democrat George Mahon, a loyal Lyndon man--but to Democratic leaders there was still a disturbing aura of conservatism about many of the 50 committee members. As for the 25-man Ways and Means Committee, headed by Arkansas Democrat Wilbur Mills, it had a longtime tilt to the right too--enough so that the committee managed to keep the Administration's medicare bill from ever getting to the House floor last year.

Thus, at their caucus on the Saturday before Congress convened, the Democrats made sure that henceforth things would be different. They did it by simply canceling a gentlemanly, if arbitrary, agreement made years ago between the late Speaker Sam Rayburn and G.O.P. Leader Joe Martin, to the effect that the ratio of party memberships on the two committees would be frozen, no matter what the makeup of the House. On Ways and Means, the majority party had 15, the minority 10, and on Appropriations the ratio was 30 to 20. The caucus voted to reject that standing ratio and make committee appointments on the basis of actual party membership in the House--and the Republicans had to go along. Thus Democrats would hold a hefty 34-to-16 margin on Appropriations and a 17-to-8 ratio on Ways and Means. Of course, the new members were to be of a distinct L.B.J. bent. Said Larry O'Brian, the President's No. 1 congressional liaison man: "Half the struggle of enacting the Johnson program was over Saturday evening."

Autocratic Outrages. The liberal Democrats' next target was the once mighty Rules Committee, which must pass on every bill before it goes to a floor vote. Until 1961 Virginia's conservative Democrat Howard ("Judge") Smith had almost dictatorial powers, because of a coalition with Republicans. Smith's strength was dissipated in 1961 when John Kennedy and Speaker Rayburn rammed through a change in committee membership. But Lyndon's lieutenants in Congress wanted to take no chances of any kind, and the caucus approved new rules that would give Speaker McCormack broad powers to release any bill bogged down in the Rules Committee for more than 21 days. Opponents of the move complained that it meant a return to the bad old days when the Speaker was a near autocrat, but the speakership is still a long way from Uncle Joe Cannon and Tom Reed, who liked to announce his arbitrary decisions by declaring: "Gentlemen, we have decided to perpetrate the following outrage . . ."

While the rules changes breezed through the Democratic caucus easily enough, they had to be approved by the full House--and, incredibly, the seemingly solid wall of Democrats was full of breaches on the session's first key vote. No fewer than 78 Democrats voted, along with 123 Republicans, to make amendments to the resolution. If 16 Republicans had not bolted to side with 208 liberal Democrats, carrying the rules changes 224 to 201, the majority party would have been beaten. Carl Albert, careful nose counter that he is, was startled, because it indicated defections by some Southern Democrats who had last year helped squeeze several Administration bills through the House. Said he: "I don't think we have a runaway majority."

For the Image. Whether Albert will have to count consistently on a few Republicans to augment his majority remains to be seen. At any rate, the G.O.P. minority in the House was undergoing upheaval too. Last month Michigan's Gerald Ford (see following story) had challenged the floor leadership of Charlie Halleck--on the grounds that old Charlie just did not fit the forward-looking image the party needed. Backing Ford was a group of rebels, including Wisconsin's Mel Laird, chairman of the G.O.P. Convention's Platform Committee at San Francisco, who went after the chairmanship of the Republican House caucus. It was a bitter fight, complicated by the fact that Conservatives Ford and Laird are anathema to some liberal Republicans. In a fit of pique, New York's John Lindsay actually backed Halleck. But Ford and Laird won. What did Ford think about Johnson's chances of getting his program through? Said he: "They certainly have adequate numbers of Democrats to put through everything they want--if they can hold the line."

The line will probably hold, if only because Lyndon Johnson is not likely to push too hard, will tend to ask only what he can reasonably expect to get. His legislative program and its probable fate in Congress shape up something like this:

. HEALTH: Since 1961, Democratic Administrations have tried in vain to get a medicare bill that would offer hospital care for Americans over 65, paid for by an additional social security tax. This year Johnson made medicare the subject of his first message to Congress and embedded it in an elaborate package of other health projects (see box). To make medicare acceptable, Johnson agreed with Wilbur Mills's plan to finance it with a separate payroll tax. The bill almost certainly will pass both houses. "That will be done quickly," predicted Albert. And New Mexico's Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson, a co-sponsor of the proposal, added: "This time it is going to be a law, not just a bill."

. EDUCATION: This is the bill the President seems to be keenest about this session. It calls for $1.5 billion to be added the first year to the $4 billion now being spent for federal aid to education. Unlike Kennedy, who sent up a public school construction bill that roused a roaring controversy in 1961 by flatly excluding private and parochial (mostly Roman Catholic) schools, Lyndon tiptoed around the religious issue. About $1 billion of the package would go to public schools in "poverty-impacted" areas rather than across the board. The rest would be for individual scholarships and grants, and for carefully pinpointed programs such as expanded testing, guidance, and gifted children's facilities in both public and private schools. Albert called Johnson's cautious plan "a fringe attack on the education problem," but predicted it would still be tough to pass. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield agreed: "It will be a problem--although the religious debate is less of a factor every year."

. TAXES: Johnson wants to cut by about $1.5 billion federal excise taxes on retail items, perhaps including luggage, jewelry, cosmetics. Congress is eager indeed to slash excise taxes--so much so that there is considerable agitation to repeal nearly all of them. Frugal Lyndon wants to stop far short of that and may run into rugged opposition to holding the cuts down to his figure. But Albert is slightly optimistic, says: "I do think something can be worked out." The President also wants Congress to ensure quickie tax-cut procedures that would allow fast--but temporary--action should a recession appear in the offing. Well aware that the legislative branch is savagely jealous of its taxation powers, Johnson wisely planned to leave the authority for quick cuts with the Congress rather than ask for the power himself--as John Kennedy had done when he lost out on a similar proposal in 1962.

. LABOR: While the President asked for repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act's Section 14-B, which allows states to have right-to-work laws that prohibit compulsory union shops, any real presidential pressure to force this measure through Congress would almost certainly create an uproar. It might harden the conservative-liberal schisms in both houses to the point where Johnson could lose valuable support on other more important bills. Though repeal of the clause was demanded in the 1960 and 1964 Democratic platforms, there seems little likelihood the President will risk a fight for it now. Says Mansfield: "We ought to have the legislation, but I am doubtful that we will get it this year." Johnson also wants to expand the federal minimum wage ($1.25 an hour) to cover another 2,000,000 people--mostly hotel, restaurant and laundry workers. That measure has a far better chance.

. AGRICULTURE: Bluntly, the Johnson Administration has no idea what to propose for farm legislation this session. In his State of the Union address, Lyndon settled for brief platitudes, calling for "new approaches"--a phrase that drew laughter from him and his advisers as they drafted it. There is some talk in the Administration of lower support prices for larger, prosperous farmers, and higher ones for smaller growers. No matter what Johnson dreams up to mold the U.S. agricultural mess to fit the shape of a Great Society, 1965 farm legislation will be a sticky problem. Says Carl Albert: "This will be an urban-oriented Congress--and that means trouble for farm bills."

. IMMIGRATION: An early push will be given to a favorite Johnson bill--revising immigration to give priority to highly skilled people rather than fixing quotas arbitrarily for each country. This bill may hit a snag in the House, for the immigration subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee is chaired by testy Ohio Democrat Michael Feighan, who is as close to an isolationist as there is in today's Congress.

. APPALACHIA: Johnson wants this bill badly for his "war on poverty." It would offer about $1 billion--mostly in job-creating road construction--to the deeply depressed eleven-state Appalachia region where the unemployment rate has risen to 15%. The Senate approved a bill last year, but the House never got around to it because Democratic leaders could not muster enough votes in the waning hours of the session. Chances are brighter in the 89th, although Albert admits, "We may have some trouble."

. POVERTY: Johnson wants to double the $784 million appropriation he got last year for area-redevelopment and job-training programs. He will run into some skepticism from Congressmen with a show-us-some-results attitude, but sooner or later the liberal 89th will probably deliver.

. URBAN AFFAIRS: In 1961 John Kennedy proposed a Cabinet office to watch over the Government's city-oriented programs such as urban renewal and commuter transportation, as well as the federal complex of housing agencies. He was slapped down at least partly because Southern Congressmen suspected he was doing it to get Federal Housing and Home Finance Administrator Robert Weaver, a Negro, into the Cabinet. Weaver is still waiting in the wings, although Johnson has not committed himself as to who will occupy the post if it is created. Johnson will probably get this one through eventually.

Art & Trains. Visionary Stardust glittered from many of the President's other proposals. He wants a modest $20 million to study the possibility of a highspeed (200 m.p.h.) train between Washington and New York, and he will seek federal authority to control industrial air and water pollution. Both measures will probably pass easily. But he will find it harder to get funds to set up his suggested National Foundation for the Arts--if he really tries it. Congress' traditional distaste for spending tax money on culture cuts across liberal-conservative or even party lines.

Beyond the President's program for new legislation, there will be tussles over old familiar issues. The Senate is girding again for its usual argument over reducing the two-thirds vote required for cloture on a filibuster, and Republicans in both houses have prepared proposals that would cancel the Supreme Court's order to reapportion state legislatures on the basis of population only. Foreign aid will be a battle again. In the Senate, two top Democrats--Arkansas' William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Majority Leader Mansfield--are agitating to have the bill split up instead of coming in "one big conglomerate mass." Their aim is to give Congress a chance to vote separately on various types of aid--a method that the White House strongly opposes. Foreign policy in general is already building up as potentially the most important debate in the 89th.

Good Soldier. The President will of course exert constant pressure on Congress, but will leave much of the overt maneuvering of members to House Majority Leader Albert. And Lyndon could scarcely ask for a better man on the Hill. Carl Albert is a fiercely competitive little man who was born to an Oklahoma coal miner, took his first schooling in a tiny woodstove-heated school at Bug Tussle (since renamed Flowery Mound). He worked his way through the University of Oklahoma, made the wrestling team, the debating team and produced a brilliant scholastic record in government, his major field. He won a Rhodes scholarship in 1931, took two law degrees at Oxford, where Secretary of State Dean Rusk was one of his classmates. Albert worked as a lawyer for several oil firms until 1940, briefly set up a private practice in McAlester, Okla., his home town. In 1941 he enlisted in the Army. Assigned briefly to Washington, he met and married a Pentagon clerk named Mary Harmon.

In 1946, as a newly released lieutenant colonel, Albert entered a five-man Democratic primary for Congress, eked out a 329-vote win out of more than 60,000 votes cast. Once elected, he immediately went to visit Sam Rayburn in Bonham, Texas, just across the Red River from Albert's home House district. Advised Rayburn: "Those who go along, get along." Answered Albert: "I'll be a good soldier."

Power Plays. During his first few years on Capitol Hill, Albert watched Mr. Sam and studied his colleagues to learn how they voted and why. Says Albert now: "You learn the procedure, you learn the rules by the empirical method. It's a good way. I also learned the issues. And I stayed with my party as much as I could. I have been, I think, a real regular Democrat." In 1955, when Tennessee Democrat James Percy Priest decided he didn't want to be party whip again, Rayburn and then Majority Leader John McCormack pored over a list of House Democrats for a replacement. When they hit Albert's name, both said: "That's it."

Albert approached the job with dogged persistence. His responsibility as whip was to keep track of every Democratic vote on every major issue. Recalled Albert: "When I was whip, I'd get the reports in from the assistant whips. I'd call every doubtful member. I then could go down the list and know where the trouble was--which we could count on, which were absolute losses. Then I'd go to work on the rest of them."

Albert's technique was low pressure and easygoing. "You get criticized for not cracking the whip," he says, "but it doesn't make sense, for example, to make enemies that will lose you the farm bill to get the poverty bill, when you can get both." When Rayburn died in 1961 and John McCormack became Speaker, Carl Albert easily won the majority leader's job.

"I'm sot in the ways of the House," he says. And he is so "sot" that he works as hard at it as if he were still the whip, making it his business to "learn every member." Though Albert seems unassuming and mild-tempered, he is capable of using cold power plays. Last year, when Johnson was pressing heavily to get his anti-poverty bill through the House, Albert found many members reluctant to vote for it. He found out which public works projects were pending in districts of some recalcitrant partymen, informed the two committee chairmen dealing with public works, and added pointedly: "I would appreciate it if you will go to these members and tell them we need the votes." The bill passed handily.

Albert has long been a favorite at the White House. John Kennedy was highly impressed with Albert's ability, and in the last session Johnson often phoned Albert two or three times a day. Last summer it was Carl Albert whom Lyndon picked for the thorny job of heading the 1964 Democratic Platform Committee. Albert is virtually certain to succeed McCormack as Speaker.

No Cliffhanging. Albert knows his Aristotle from his university days and has a great sense of the tradition of democratic legislatures, beginning with the Athenian lawmakers who met amid prayer, sacrifice and invective on the Pnyx, a hill near the Acropolis. He is too good a student of Capitol Hill, as well, to trust any kind of legislative majority by itself. He knows that Jefferson had more than 3-to-l majorities in his Ninth Congress (1805-07), yet was not able to get the money in time for one of his pet projects--buying Florida. In the 41st Congress, Ulysses S. Grant had a 56-to-11 majority in the Senate, yet could not get his own party to support his desire to annex Santo Domingo. And Franklin Roosevelt's overwhelmingly Democratic 75th Congress (1937-38) turned on the President and killed many of his New Deal bills because F.D.R. had autocratically tried to pack the Supreme Court with liberals.

Albert is convinced that Lyndon Johnson will not make any such mistakes. Says he of Lyndon's ability as a congressional strategist: "He's one of the best who ever came down the pike. He moves when you don't know that he's moving, and his greatest talent is his tenacity and his endurance. Most Administration measures will not be handled in a rubber-stamp fashion. They'll be altered in the committees and altered on the floor. But they can be passed without the cliffhanging operations we've had in the last few Congresses."

Beyond his loyalty to Lyndon and to the Democratic Party, Carl Albert has an even deeper pride in Congress as an institution. A liberal, he nevertheless scorns doctrinaire liberals--and political scientists--who seem to favor the executive and judiciary branches, rather than the legislative, as the main instruments of progress. "A legislature in a country like ours, more than either the executive or the judiciary, has the power to effectuate new policy in a democracy. Its consensus is more of a national consensus than any other. And this very fact causes the legislature to be the real corner star of a democracy."

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