The Congress: When Is a Majority a Majority?

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Without Apology. Once in the job, Mansfield set about what he called the "dispersal of responsibility." He made Hubert Humphrey his whip, realizing that the ebullient Minnesotan would more than make up for the dynamism he personally lacked. He acknowledged the Senate's 15 committee chairmen as the body's oligarchs, encouraged them to floor-manage their own bills. "It's logical, that's all," he explained. "They are the men who know most about those particular bills." He shunned "parliamentary pyrotechnics," maintained a sensible schedule that got most Senators home for dinner.

The Senate was certainly a less colorful place without Lyndon, and many argued that it was also less effective. Among Mansfield's most vociferous critics were some fellow Democrats, chiefly Oregon's Wayne Morse, and one newspaper called his leadership a "tragic mistake." To that, Mansfield replied in a Senate speech. Said he: "As for being a tragic mistake, if that means, Mr. President, that I am neither a circus ringmaster, the master of ceremonies of a Senate nightclub, a tamer of Senate lions, or a wheeler and dealer, then I must accept the title. Indeed, I must accept it if I am expected as majority leader to be anything other than myself." Of the Senate's legislative record under his leadership, he insisted: "The results require no apology whatsoever."

He had a point—up to a point. As leader, Mansfield has made some mistakes and fouled up some nose counts, but he has also won some heady victories. The depressed-areas bill, the reciprocal-trade program, a spate of education bills, the test ban treaty, and the biggest tax cut bill in U.S. history have all gone through under his aegis. Also passed by the Senate, but defeated in the House, were such items as a $375 million mass-transit bill and a $456 million area-redevelopment program. Two big blunders were not Mansfield's fault, but he blamed himself for "bad judgment" anyway. In 1962 Kennedy overrode Mansfield's warnings, persuaded him to bring the urban-affairs and medicare bills to a vote. Both were beaten.

In his gloomier moments, Mansfield seems anxious to chuck his job. "Being a Senator is the best job in the world," he once said, but "the leadership is a headache." Still, no Montanan has ever risen higher in the U.S. Government than Mansfield, and that is quite something for a poor Irish boy who spent years mining copper and did not finish high school until he was 30 years old.