Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party.
The United States Senate wasn't designed to be a majority-rule institution. It was designed to include and accommodate the rights of the minority in small states as well as large states.
My husband is the first man to consistently be involved in the Senate Spouses group.
The Senate are a branch of the treaty-making power, and by consulting them in advance of his own action upon important measures of foreign policy which may ultimately come before them for their consideration, the President secures harmony of action between that body and himself.
Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues.
I worked in the Senate in the 1970s. I worked for the Labor, Public Welfare Committee, and we had Ted Kennedy and my old boss, Bill Hathaway, and Walter Mondale.
Henry M. Jackson, congressman and senator from 1941 until his death in 1983, achieved far greater renown than most legislators, ran for president in 1972 and 1976, and was for much of the 1970s and 1980s one of the most powerful men in America.
The Senate was an odd compromise between the founders and the early leaders of the republic who wanted a single house which was based on popular sovereignty representing the people and those founders who wanted two houses, the upper house, the Senate, being the more aristocratic.
If you look at the Constitution, the two clauses of the Constitution make it very clear the president shall nominate, and the Senate shall provide advice and consent. It's been since 1888 that a Senate of a different party than the president in the White House confirmed a Supreme Court nominee.
Lyndon Johnson, I know for a fact, was a great president. And I don't mean by that he was a great man.