Word: johnsons
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Record Writer. The trick is to take any given national problem and make it look as though the Democrats are doing everything, the Republicans nothing. When President Eisenhower was riding high during his first Administration, Johnson's line was that the Democrats were saving Ike from the Republicans. When Ike faltered during the great budget flap a year ago, ex-New Dealer Johnson patented economy as a Democratic invention-and his Democrats even cut seriously into the defense budget. When the Administration presented a tough civil rights bill, it was Johnson who maneuvered both Democrats and Republicans into...
This year Johnson's showy record-writing has been abetted considerably by the ineptness of Senate Republican leaders and the slow motion at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. After the uproar over the success of Sputnik, it was Johnson, as chairman of the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee, who grabbed the initiative (and the headlines), set up hearings, heard expert testimony from about 200 of the top men in the Defense Department, the armed services, science and industry. So successful was he in capturing the attention of press and colleagues that he produced his own "State of the Union" message...
Cabinet Boss. Last week his issue was recession, and Lyndon Johnson, well prepared as usual, was in his finest hour. For weeks Senate Democrats had been drafting half a dozen pump-priming bills. By last week a $1.8 billion housing bill and a $500 million public-works bill were scorching along the Senate tracks, with Engineer Johnson holding throttle full-out. Johnson himself arose on the Senate floor to introduce two resolutions considering it "the sense of Congress" that the Administration should speed public-works spending. (Two days later...
During the course of his speech, Johnson hoisted himself to political heights without precedent by referring to himself, in effect, as President of the U.S. (south Pennsylvania Avenue division). "As majority leader of the Senate," said he, "I am aided by a cabinet made up of committee chairmen. I have conferred with them. I think they will expedite action." (Columnist Doris Fleeson, who loves Democrats but has built up an immunity to Johnson's charm, asked if he had worked out a disability agreement with his second-in-command, Montana's Mike Mansfield.) Next day Johnson...
...Johnson's unique ability to sense the paramount-or sometimes merely the hourly-issue, and then move fast to get control of it, has made him without rival the dominant figure of the Democratic 85th Congress. As such, his is the Face of Democratic performance, and he does indeed stand second in power only to the President...