The Congress: When Is a Majority a Majority?

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Thanks to Lyndon Johnson's precedent-setting decision to give each freshman Senator a choice committee assignment, Mansfield immediately got a coveted spot on the Foreign Relations Committee. To this day, he would rather be considered an authority on foreign policy than a famed floor leader. He made three trips to Indo-China during the years when the French were letting it slip down the drain, concluded that the best solution there was partition, with South Viet Nam under a native, anti-Communist regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem. Re-examining the situation last month, Mansfield urged that neutralization of both North and South Viet Nam ought to be contemplated. President Johnson had considerable trouble convincing South Viet Nam's leaders that Senate Leader Mansfield was not speaking for the Administration, but just for himself.

This was not the first time Mansfield embarrassed a U.S. President with his foreign policy pronouncements. In 1961 he gave Jack Kennedy the same sort of headache by advocating that West Berlin be turned into a free, neutralized city. U.S. diplomats in Bonn spent hours trying to persuade hand-wringing West German officials that Mansfield was merely speaking his own mind, not staking out a new Administration position.

Out of Admiration. In 1957 Lyndon Johnson tapped Mansfield as assistant Senate majority leader. Because Johnson was really his own whip, he needed nothing more than an agreeable errand boy, and Mansfield seemed to fit the bill. Mansfield accepted—but reluctantly, and only out of his personal admiration for Johnson (he supported L.B.J. against Kennedy for the 1960 presidential nomination).

Even after he succeeded Johnson as majority leader, Mansfield had hankerings to be just a plain Senator. He works hard at keeping his seat. He is in his office by 7 most mornings to catch the first mail delivery from Montana, makes a point of seeing as many Montanans visiting Washington as possible. While he paints in broad, if sometimes fuzzy strokes as a foreign affairs expert, his domestic politics are a masterpiece of minutiae—the sort of caring-for-constituents stuff that ensures reelection. "If I forget Montana, they're going to forget me," he says. "I know how I got here." At year's end, according to one Republican, "practically every living thing in Montana gets a Christmas card signed 'Mike.' I think he skips the elk and the mountain sheep."

Thanks to such techniques, Mansfield won re-election in 1958 with 72.2% of Montana's total vote, the biggest percentage piled up by any Senator outside the South. He swept all 56 counties, had a plurality of 120,337. He is up for reelection again this year, but the G.O.P.'s most attractive potential candidates are holding off for a crack at Democrat Lee Metcalf's seat in 1966. Mansfield, therefore, has few worries about reelection.

A Hideous Thing. That is just as well, since his attention is currently consumed by the civil rights bill.