The Professional

Starting with John Kennedy's race for the Senate in 1952, Lawrence Francis O'Brien's string of major political successes has included J.F.K.'s 1958 reelection, the presidential victory in 1960 and then Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964. As Hubert Humphrey knew when he persuaded the veteran tactician to serve as his campaign manager and as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, O'Brien's impact in any campaign is not merely talismanic. In the art of political organization, Larry O'Brien is a dry-land Nelson. In J.F.K.'s words, "he is the best election man in the business."

The Democratic Party will obviously need all of O'Brien's talents if it is to win in November. For more than three years, Lyndon Johnson has allowed the National Committee to fall into disrepair. While O'Brien's predecessor, John Bailey, languished at the committee headquarters ten blocks from the White House, the President in his personalistic style performed virtually all of his political maneuvers through members of his own Texas clique.

No Overhaul. Last week, as they took command of the barnacled party machinery, Humphrey and O'Brien moved quickly to discard some of the Pedernales Mafia. John Criswell, an L.B.J. subaltern who antagonized many delegates with the stringent security rules he imposed as manager of the Chicago convention, resigned as treasurer of the National Committee, along with 16 other members. The 72-member committee staff will be more than doubled, with most of the new workers coming from the Vice President's campaign staff.

One of O'Brien's conditions for accepting the double role of campaign manager and national chairman was that he have absolute authority. However, he will not stay long enough to effect a complete overhaul of the creaky party machinery. Serving without pay, O'Brien, 51, promised to remain only through the election. He is anxious to return to private life and write a book about his years in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Expert's Code. Nonetheless, his two months' service should be invaluable to Humphrey. The Vice President's campaign was a shambles before O'Brien took control. Among other things, he persuaded Humphrey to release any delegates bound to him by the unit rule, a gesture that cost him only an estimated 40-50 delegate votes but earned him considerable good will. O'Brien is the only major Democratic figure who has direct and cordial relations with all segments of the party--the partisans of Kennedy, Humphrey, Johnson and McCarthy--and one of the few who might persuade leaders of the embittered factions to unite, however uncomfortably, for the November election. Humphrey's first official move toward party harmony, O'Brien argues, must be to take a markedly softer stand on Viet Nam.

Some New Frontiersmen were angered that O'Brien alone remained in the Johnson Administration after the others had departed. But none of them has held the grudge, particularly since O'Brien joined Robert Kennedy's staff last spring. A hotelkeeper's son from Springfield, Mass., O'Brien acquired his taste for Democratic politics as a boy orator campaigning for James Michael Curley, the four-term mayor of Boston. His early tactical work for former Governor Foster Furcolo and then for John Kennedy formed the rich expertise that was later embodied in the "O'Brien Manual," a 70-page codification of all his political know-how.

Both Kennedy and Johnson highly valued O'Brien's skills as a political diplomatist and used him as their liaison officer with the often fractious Congress. Some have argued, with only slight exaggeration, that O'Brien is responsible for passage of the bulk of New Frontier and Great Society legislation. Even after Johnson rewarded him with the postmaster-generalship in 1965, O'Brien continued his liaison work on the Hill.

It is partly to protect that record that O'Brien is now laboring for Humphrey's election. "If we fail," he says, "it will signal a slowdown in the nation, an unwinding of what we have done."

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