Man in Control

For the first rich weeks of the 86th Congress, unfolding the morning newspaper was nothing but pleasure for Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson. Texan Johnson's weighty advice to the Administration on budget and defense policies, and his considerable success in steering the Senate to spectacular compromise on the filibuster and the housing bill, were the talk of Washington. But by last week Lyndon Johnson had become accustomed to finding more headaches in headlines than he had known in years.

Twice Wisconsin's Senator William Proxmire had got a big play with his speeches attacking Johnson for highhandedness in making Democratic policy decisions, and the attacks had brought Proxmire more mail than anything else he had ever done. Oregon's Wayne Morse, traveling in Wisconsin, made the papers with a complaint that Johnson was a "Charlie McCarthy in a political ventriloquist act." Michigan's unemployment-harassed Pat McNamara, whose Senate achievements have hardly been worth a stick of type, squawked at Johnson for blocking liberal Democratic attempts to broaden unemployment compensation. Pennsylvania's Joe Clark dashed off his second "Dear Lyndon" letter proposing that liberals have more say in policymaking. And even back in Texas, the liberal Young Democrats baited Johnson (209-73) for not being liberal enough, sent their resolution around the U.S. for Democrats to read.

All these slings Johnson bore in tight-lipped silence. Then, with little advance warning, he showed up last week as the only congressional leader at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. unemployment rally in Washington's armory (see The Economy), drew roars by roasting the Administration for rejecting "prudent proposals to expand the economy of our country." Back he went to the Senate to show what a man of action could do. He introduced a bill setting up an eleven-member, legislative-executive unemployment fact-finding commission. Scarcely three hours after the bill was hoppered. 68 Senators had stepped forward to cosponsor. A remarkably brief 48 hours later, the resolution sailed through by voice vote, and liberals, squawkers and other doubters were put on notice the Johnson way that the majority leader was still the man in control.