The Master of the Maze

It was more than just a desk. It had once belonged to John C. Calhoun, and that alone made it practically a sacred relic. But it had also been used by Huey P. Long, the Kingfish himself, while he served in the U.S. Senate, and then by his son Rus sell. South Carolina's Senator Olin Johnston coveted that desk. Russell Long was running for Senate majority whip in 1964 when the matter of the desk came up. Long needed every vote he could command or cajole from his colleagues. His was a classic dilemma, solved in classic Russell Long style. He cut a deal -- first with his father's shade, then with Olin Johnston. On bended knee, he explained his sacrilege: "Daddy, forgive me, but this time I'm going for broke."

Long won a close race for majority whip, and when Olin Johnston died the following year, he got the desk back as well. He has not had to swap it since. But that is not to say he would not -- if the quid were worth the quo. Russell Long has raised the art of political horse trading to the highest level in living congressional memory. An unabashed wheeler-dealer, he scratches backs with a fine, silken stroke, then calls in his debts with a firm arm twist. He also repays his own lous with interest. "I gave Russell a vote he wanted," recalls a Democratic liberal, "and I've been sipping from his cup ever since." As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee since 1966, Long has left an imprint on every piece of tax legislation passed by Congress.

Long is a pivotal figure in two pieces of legislation that may prove to be the most important of Jimmy Carter's first term in the White House: energy conservation and tax reform. Cater has delayed his tax package until next year so that the energy plan can be completed this session, but when the proposals do get to Congress, Long will probably have more to do with their final shape than any other legislator. Right now, as the Senate's spokesman in the Joint House-Senate Committee on Energy, he is at the center of the struggle to hammer out an energy plan. Plainly, Long will play an important role in shaping the American economy and life-style for the remainder of the century.

Long brings some unique gifts to his role. At 59, he has been in the Senate for just under half of his life (29 years) and is a master of its parliamentary maz es. His intellectual powers are impressive --he can deliver a brilliant 30-minute speech after just five minutes of briefing --and his homespun metaphors cut right through economic obfuscation. Pressed by Senate liberals on tax reform last year, Long responded with a scathing definition: "Tax reform means 'Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.' " In the Senate club, his politesse is unequaled: colleagues are never as beloved or distinguished as they are in their mothers' minds and Long's rhetoric.

Once his tax measures are drawn up by the Finance Committee, Long steers them through the full Senate with consummate finesse. One favorite tactic is to load bills with amendments he is willing to jettison. As each proposal goes over board, Long -- the model of compromise and sweet reason -- exacts support for the points that are truly dear to his heart. Says Majority Leader Robert Byrd: "He cut his teeth on this institution, and he's probably the most skillful tactician on the floor in managing his bills."

Long's climb to the top has not been completely smooth. As the son of Depression Populist Huey Long, he attracted close scrutiny. And he was not found wanting. Richard Russell, the late Georgia Senator who served through six Administrations, called him the second smartest Senator he ever knew. The first smartest, Russell said, was his father.

After Long reached the post of majority whip, a deteriorating marriage and a drinking problem eroded his power, and in 1969 he was unseated by Ted Kennedy. He repaid the favor two years later when he helped mastermind Byrd's upset victory for the whip post over Kennedy. Settled into a new marriage, he began rebuilding his influence at about the same time.

"In the United States Senate," Ambrose Bierce wrote at the turn of the century, "a quorum consists of the chairman of the Finance Committee and a messenger from the White House." Long would x prefer that the White House messengers stay home. Says he: "I'm 3 the President's friend, but I'm not his boy. I don't represent the President in the Senate. I represent the people of Louisiana."

Russell Long and Jimmy Carter disagree sharply on a fundamental point involving the energy program: conservation v. exploration. The linchpin of Carter's proposals is conservation, with a series of stiff taxes on energy use that would be returned to the public in rebates and incentives. Long supports energy taxes in broad outline, but as the senior Senator from a state rich in gas and oil, he has other ideas about who should get the money. He wants to return it to gas and oil producers as a spur to finding new fields and to earmark some of it for developing new energy sources.

In Finance Committee meetings, Long voted for three of the four principal taxes the President wants imposed. But he opposes the key conservation measure--a high tariff on industrial users of gas and oil. When the issue came up in the Senate last week, Long was in vintage form, giving that he might receive. A few days before the vote, Long's chief aide --raising the specter of financial ruin for Louisiana industry--forecast the proposal's future with a Southern lilt: "The industrial user's tax is d-a-i-d, dead." Yet when the measure came to a vote, the wily Long did not thwart the drive to make it 1-i-v-e, live. In exchange, he won Senate agreement on the key feature of his energy philosophy--rebating the bulk of $40 billion in taxes to the gas and oil industry.

So Senate liberals won a skirmish, but they may have lost the war. Long, so far, seems to have had his way. Unless his conference committee colleagues knock out his rebate plan, Jimmy Carter's scheme to return the added cost of energy to consumers, not to the oil companies, will be d-a-i-d, dead.

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