DEMOCRATS: A Man Who Takes His Time

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Johnson has worked and suffered to achieve his domination over the Senate. After the Democrats won their big majority in 1958, he launched the 86th Congress with his own state of the Union message and a resounding promise to lead the country out of an Eisenhower vacuum. But he soon found that budget-conscious Ike had the moderate-minded U.S. behind him, and beat a dignified retreat. When Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler castigated Johnson for being too cautious and conservative, the Senate Democrats rose up, almost to a man, to defend Johnson, and gave Butler the retort proper: mind your own business. As a good legislator, Johnson believes in taking a fatherly interest in the political and personal welfare of every one of his Democratic colleagues. If a fellow Senator is sick, Johnson demands a daily report—three or more a day, if the illness is serious. He rolls out the welcome wagon for every freshman Senator, works hard to maneuver the most promising men into the most advantageous committee assignments. No local bridge-building bill is too far from Texas or too petty for his full attention, if it will help a colleague's progress toward re-election (Johnson's work in pushing through the Hells Canyon project won him the devotion and friendship of Oregon's late, ultra-liberal Richard Neuberger for the rest of his life). All Johnson asks in return is undeviating loyalty to L.B.J., his leadership and his program. And if a Senator is so ungrateful or independent as to stray from the fold, a saddened Lyndon Johnson pursues him even more relentlessly.

Through the years Johnson has gathered a formidable array of loyalists around him—such divergent Senators as Georgia's rigidly conservative Dick Russell and Montana's liberal Mike Mansfield are outspoken in their admiration. Says Mansfield: "The Senate is the cockpit, so to speak. From here comes our next President. And who is the leader of the Senate?" Johnson has just two consistent Senate critics—Pennsylvania's Clark and Illinois' Douglas—and one consistent problem child—Oregon's Wayne Morse.

"I'm Flattered." Johnson is a backslapper, a shoulder hugger, a knee squeezer. "I like to press the flesh," he says, "and look a man in the eye." He is also a necktie fixer (he once lined up all the men in his office staff, carefully straightened their ties, and then demonstrated his own artistic method of knotting a necktie once and for all the first time he puts it on, carefully loosening it at night and slipping it over his head still perfectly knotted). These small attentions are disconcerting to some, but they are nonetheless genuine and sincere—and never more so than when Johnson is trying to win over an enemy. "I'm flattered," says Attorney Franklin Jones of Marshall, Texas, a constant critic. "And I'm not about to destroy it all by supporting him."