Excerpt from Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Some of these sessions on the cloakroom couches---or in the deep, soft cloakroom armchairs, better even than the couches for Johnson's purposes, since by sitting down on one armrest and stretching an arm across to the other, he could imprison its occupant more effectively---lasted quite a long time. He had to win, and to win he needed the senator's vote. And he wasn't going to get up until he got it. "I've seen him devote an hour to work on one senator," the clerk says.

Then that vote would be secured. Lyndon Johnson would be up off the couch, standing in the center of the cloakroom, dispatching Humphrey or Molly Malone to hold the floor with a speech ("Don't quit talkin' 'til you see me back in there"), asking Russell or Eastland to exert his influence with one of their conservatives or Humphrey to exert his influence with one of his liberals, going over the tally sheets again, reading---quickly but with great care---the latest text of an amendment, ironing out the last details of the unanimous consent agreement, and then sending Baker on the run to have Floyd Riddick's fastest typist type it up. And then he would have the agreement back, and, holding it in one hand, and shoving open the double doors with the other, Lyndon Johnson would come back out on the floor to announce it---or, if he had not been able to get an agreement, to push the Senate to a vote without it, with, in his hand, the tally sheet that almost invariably showed that the vote was going to be very close.


If he had the votes, debate---even the limited debate permitted under the unanimous consent agreement---could only hurt, could allow opponents to realize what he was up to, could give Knowland time to get a more accurate count, could give men whose minds he had changed with his relentless persuasion time to change their minds back, to think better of what they had agreed to. He wanted the question called, and called fast; although the unanimous consent agreement allowed a certain number of hours or minutes for debate, he wanted to be able to yield his time back, and have his opponents yield their time back.

"Don't talk, we've got the votes. Don't talk, we've got the votes," Bobby Baker would whisper, standing at the corridor door to the cloakroom as the senators came through on the way to the Chamber---which, with a vote imminent, was beginning to fill up. Some senators didn't get the idea and insisted on speaking. "I'd go up to him [Johnson] on the Senate floor and say Senator Lehman would like to have the floor as soon as possible," Julius Edelstein recalls. "He'd say" (and as Edelstein shows Johnson's response, his face twists into a snarl), " ‘Well, he can have the goddamned floor!' " Rushing over to Edelstein, Gerry Siegel said: "I know Lehman has to talk for his constituents, but make it short. Make it short! Otherwise, it'll make the Leader mad."

As a supporter of a measure was rising to speak, Johnson would go over to the supporter's desk and growl, "Make it short. I've got the votes for it." The reminders would continue during the senator's statement. Once, Richard Neuberger of Oregon was giving an impassioned statement at a moment Johnson considered propitious for a vote. Johnson whispered to him to stop, but Neuberger didn't. Circling Neuberger's desk---in John Steele's words, "like a coon dog does a treed animal"---Johnson whispered to him "from in back and then to the right side to tell Neuberger to knock it off." Olin Johnston's southern drawl was so slow! "Olin," Johnson whispered urgently, "get the lead out of your ass!" "Lyndon," Johnston said calmly, "you know I always read slow." Says a Senate staffer who was standing nearby, "Then Olin goes back to reading. I thought Lyndon was going to have a fit." Looking on another occasion at a speech that Olin was insisting on reading, Johnson saw to his dismay that it covered quite a few pages. "Two minutes, that's all I can give you," he said. "You've got to hold it to two minutes." Johnston kept refusing. "Olin," Lyndon said, forcing a comradely smile to his face, "why don't you speak for two minutes and tomorrow you can put your whole speech in the Congressional Record and you can mail it to all the folks in South Carolina, and they won't know the difference." "Well, I guess that's all right, Lyndon," Johnston said, and read only a small part of the text—"so quickly," an observer said, "that he scarcely could be understood."

Excerpted from Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro Copyright 2002 by Robert A. Caro. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.