Assessing the Achievements of the last Labour Government

It's almost an axiom that the faults of an individual are almost immediately identified, but it takes time to appreciate what they achieved.

The same is true of governments. Thatcher's administrations are more appreciated today than they were in November 1990. Gerald Ford's efforts to help the US recover after "Watergate" are seen more positively than they were at the time. Even LBJ - reviled as he was in the late 1960s and early 1970s - is seen to have accomplished more than Presidents people remembered more fondly.

A new pamphlet has been published - 20 years after Labour won the election in 1997 and entered government for 13 years.

It can be downloaded from here.

LBJ - Hugh Sidey

One of the oral histories recently broadcast by C-SPAN was that given by Hugh Sidey. It was absolutely fascinating. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. A wonderful complement to some of the biographies of the former President and Senate Majority Leader. (Robert A Caro; Randall B Woods; Robert Dallek; Irwin & Debi Unger)

The Video can be viewed here.

LBJ - Oral Histories

This year C-SPAN has been running a series of programmes about LBJ - in the form of programmes where people who knew him & worked with him, shared their memories. A series well worth watching!

Death of a whip

I am close to the end of my studies of US and UK whips. One of the most interesting part of the research involved looking at the lives of the individuals who served as whips in either the US Congress and UK Parliament. I met many whips, and read about many more. There were some very interesting characters. The study covered 1974 to 2010, though I went further back for some whips of particular significance (Lyndon Johnson, Carl Albert, Tip O'Neill and, from the UK, Ted Short for example). As a result some of them have passed away - and time continues to take its toll.

Robert Boscawen passed away just after Christmas. He came from what was once the ideal background for a Tory whip, having served in a leadership role in the army. [He was awarded the Military Cross]. However, unlike many whips, he was associated with a particular wing of the party. He served in the whips office for the greater part of Mrs Thatcher's premiership.

His obituary was published in the Daily Telegraph and can be accessed here.

The Legacy of JFK

I attended a conference last week on John F Kennedy's Presidential Heritage. It was hosted by the excellent Eccles Centre in the British Library. I hope that, in the not too distant future, recordings and possibly transcripts from the conference will be available on their website.

Going down, I feared that it might be an extravagance on my part - JFK has always fascinated me - but that era is just outside my areas of research (US Congress and UK Parliament 1974-date), and there was to be nothing related to the current work I'm engaged in. I need not have felt guilty - it was a thought provoking day - covering the role of "Action Intellectuals" in the White House; Civil Rights; Economics; the Vietnam War; the role of Lyndon Johnson; and Kennedy's death. I took pages of notes - but most importantly, have had lots to think about since.

In the evening David Miliband gave an inspiring talk about America; Britain & Europe: Lessons from JFK. At its heart was Kennedy's recognition of "Double-Pull" - the pull of both national political identity and the search for unity and co-operation between states. Kennedy was attracted by the idea of European Integration - and encouraged Britain to get involved. He liked the idea of strong European institutions to act as umpires in the disputes over national interests.

Do look out for the papers from the conference - they were excellent.

The Passage of Power

On 26th March I posted about the forthcoming publication of Robert Caro's "The Passage of Power" (original post accessible here). Well my copy has arrived at my home in Furzton, Milton Keynes. It was well worth the wait. Like the previous three volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson - it is both scholarly (excellent details of the sources used) and enthralling. Caro has a style (and his subject, a Life) which means it is difficult to put the book down.

This volume covers the period from Johnson's run for the presidential nomination in 1960 (and his uncharacteristic slow start - Caro explains well this unusual behaviour by LBJ) to the State of the Union address given in January 1964. Caro notes the latter as the end of the transition period between Kennedy's assassination and LBJ making the presidency his own.

Although I have quite a heavy workload at the moment - with OU marking; writing up my Ph.D; and planning for the future - I will be giving time every day to reading this superb book.

The Passage of Power

Friends of mine know how much I value Robert Caro's work on Lyndon Johnson - if you see my facebook page you'll see I list it as one of my favourite (set of ) book(s). Which is why I was so excited to see this in the daily email sent by Politico.

THE NEW YORKER PREVIEWS CARO'S FOURTH LBJ VOLUME - "[I]n '[Annals of History:] The Transition," the historian Robert A. Caro takes readers through the dramatic events of the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination, from the point of view of the future President Lyndon B. Johnson. In this excerpt from the much anticipated fourth volume in Caro's lauded series about President Johnson, 'The Passage of Power' [out May 1], Caro presents a portrait of a man on the verge of transition ... [T]he day began for Johnson with the belief-the fear-that he might not be on the ticket with J.F.K. in the coming election. That very day, back in Washington, a witness was providing Senate Rules Committee staffers with evidence that he said linked Johnson to Robert G. (Bobby) Baker, the subject of a scandal that had been exploding in the capital, and ... Life magazine was mapping out an investigation into the sources of Johnson's wealth. The Vice-President's trip to Texas wasn't going well: he had failed to heal the bitter rift between two major Texas democrats, Governor John B. Connally and Senator Ralph Yarborough; the previous day, in San Antonio, Yarborough had refused even to ride in the same car with Johnson. 'Given what the President was seeing for himself in Texas-that Johnson was no longer a viable mediator between factions of his party in his home state-and what was happening at that very minute in the Old Senate Office Building, the President's assurances that he would be on the ticket might start to have a hollow ring,' Caro writes.



"Johnson himself, Caro writes, believed that his political career was 'finished.' Caro details the moments after the shots were fired-Johnson being flung to the floor of his car by a Secret Service agent who lay on top of him for protection, the tense moments at the Dallas hospital as Johnson awaited news of Kennedy's condition, and the mad rush to get Johnson aboard Air Force One amid fears that the assassination might be part of a conspiracy-during which an immediate change took place in Johnson. Jack Valenti said that, 'even in that instant, there was a new demeanor' in the new President. 'Whatever emotions or passions he had in him, he had put them under a strict discipline,' Valenti said, so that 'he was very quiet and seemingly very much in command of himself.' There had been, in Valenti's words, 'a transformation.'


"Caro elucidates the thinking behind ... the decision to call Bobby Kennedy about the oath of office, and to take the oath on the plane in Dallas, rather than flying back to D.C. to do so. 'Even in this ?rst hour after John F. Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson seems to have had feelings that would torment him for the rest of his life-feelings understandable in any man placed in the Presidency not through an election but through an assassin's bullet, and feelings exacerbated, in his case, by the contrast, and what he felt was the world's view of the contrast, between him and the President he was replacing; by the contempt in which he had been held by the people around the President; and by the stark geographical fact of where the act elevating him to o?ce had taken place,' Caro writes. However, 'through the recollections of people present in the room' when Johnson took the oath, 'there runs a common theme,' Caro writes: 'a sense that, out of aimless confusion, order was quickly emerging' due to Johnson's quick decision-making and leadership. 'You see, it was just that he was coming back to himself,' Horace Busby, a longtime Johnson aide, explains to Caro. 'He was back where he belonged. He was back in command.' Caro writes that, 'for the ?rst time in three years, he looked like the Lyndon Johnson of the Senate ?oor. Now he had suddenly come to the very pinnacle of power. However he had got there, whatever concatenation of circumstance and tragedy-whatever fate-had put him there, he was there, and he knew what to do there.'" Abstract, and link for subscribers http://nyr.kr/GRd8Kt $18.98 Amazon pre-order http://amzn.to/GQ0CgY

Marathon

Fifty years ago the Senate had begun what was to become a marathon session. Senate Leader, Lyndon Johnson had begun an attempt to push through civil rights legislation. On February 15th he used a procedural device aimed to get the measures passed quickly (in Senate terms). Instead of introducing a Senate Bill he took opponents by surprise by a series of moves -

* he asked for, and received unanimous consent to proceed to consideration of a House passed bill, H.R. 8315. This was a minor, non-controversial bill authorizing the Army to use particular offices on a specific base for new purposes. No one objected.

* during consideration of the bill, he invited Senators to propose amendments which would introduce civil rights provisions. This meant that what became a civil rights bill would avoid being referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where opponents could keep it tied up. Also, when it was returned to the House - as 'merely' Senate amendments, it wouldn't need a rule granted by the southern controlled Rules Committee.

To defeat the anticipated filibuster by the hardcore of less than 20 southern Senators, Johnson announced that the Senate would go into continuous (24 hour a day) session from 29th February. This would have tested the stamina and resolve of those that would try to filibuster. Senator Talmadge came up with a way to turn the tables. The hardcore 18 were arranged into "platoons" of 6 senators - each platoon was responsible for continuing the filibuster for a day (with two days 'off'). On the day they were covering a 'squad' of 2 would be responsible for 8 hours. Quorum calls were regularly made - this forced the majority to have at least 49 Senators available at all times. Otherwise, the senate would be adjourned - and those sustaining the filibuster would get a rest - and a new 'legislative day' would begin. Senators were only allowed 2 speeches per legislative day - so this would have meant that the filibuster could be sustained.

An aide to Senator Paul Douglas explained "A Senator who was filibustering didn't have to show except every third day and didn't have to speak except every sixth day. The people who were trying to break the filibuster hads to be around...at all times, to answer the quorum calls...The effect of it was to wear out the people who were trying to break the filibuster, rather than to wear out the people who were filibustering"

Floyd Riddick, in a journal article entitled "The Eighty-Sixth Congress: Second Session" which appeared in the Western Political quarterly in 1961 revealed that -

"The "around the clock" session ran from February 29th through March 8th - a nine day continuous session lasting 157 hours and 25 minutes, broken only by a 15 minute recess on March 2 and a recess over Sunday March 6 - giving a 42.5 hour respite. The longest unbroken period took 82 hours and 2 minutes, from March 2 to March 5, during which time there were 13 roll call votes and 51 quorum calls."

Johnson finally called off the continuous session when a cloture petition was filed. It failed 53-42. A watered down administration bill (rather than Johnson's bill) was referred to the Judiciary

Committee. It made it into law - but "in the end the bill satified no one completely".