THE CONGRESS: One-Man Show

As the Senate of the 86th Congress came to order, Illinois' liberal Democratic Senator Paul Douglas crouched, as though ready to spring, behind a desk piled high with books and papers. New York's liberal Republican Senator Jacob Javits jittered at the edge of his chair. New Mexico's liberal Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson prepared to offer the first motion of the new session. This was to be the long-planned, highly touted liberal onslaught against Senate Rule XXII (TIME. Jan. 12) and the filibuster. But before Douglas. Javits, Anderson & Co. could utter a word, Texan Lyndon Johnson got the floor in his capacity as Senate majority leader. From that moment on, it was all over but the shouting—and there was plenty of that.

The liberal battle was based on the argument that the Senate, even though two-thirds of its membership holds over from Congress to Congress, is not a "continuing body'' with continuing rules. Clint Anderson, therefore, was ready to move that the Senate, by majority vote, adopt new rules. Key new rule: a revised Rule XXII that would permit a majority to cut off filibusters after 15 days, would allow two-thirds of the members present to cut off debate after two days. Vice President Richard Nixon was prepared to rule favorably to the liberals (in the actual event, he had no opportunity to render more than an advisory opinion). The Southern bloc, of course, was opposed to any change whatever in the filibuster rules. Cried South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond: "I cannot help but feel that the Senate itself, as an institution, is at this moment under attack and in peril of destruction."

Between the liberal and the Southern extremes stood Lyndon Johnson—and, as he had taken pains to ascertain, most of the Senate. And Johnson beat the liberals to the draw by winning first rights to the floor and presenting his own rules-changing motion, which would:

¶ Permit two-thirds of the Senators "present and voting" to end filibusters instead of requiring two-thirds of the entire Senate membership.

¶ Drop the part of Rule XXII that, in effect, sanctions unlimited filibuster on a change in the Senate rules.

¶ Give a sop to the Southerners—and substance to the notion of the Senate as a continuing body—by specifying that "the rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress."