The Presidency When Giants Ruled

By Hugh Sidey

The Republican President eyed the lanky Democratic Senator beside him and then pointed at his leather chair behind the desk in the Oval Office. "Someday you'll sit in that chair," the President said. "No, Mr. President," replied the Senator, "that's one chair I'll never sit in. I wouldn't trade desks with you for anything in the world."

Dwight Eisenhower was right that April day in l958. Lyndon Johnson turned out to be wrong (or uncharacteristically modest), but he probably was so pleased with his position as majority leader of the Senate that for the moment he believed what he said.

There were lions in that chamber in those years. Or you could call them whales, grand political men (three women, no blacks) with all the flaws of the day and hardy battlers for their partisan causes. But they were by almost anybody's standards an extraordinary collection of public figures: Georgia's Richard Brevard Russell, Vermont's George Aiken, Missouri's Stuart Symington, Connecticut's Prescott Bush, Montana's Mike Mansfield, Ohio's Bob Taft, Arkansas' Bill Fulbright, Virginia's Harry Byrd.

When the oratory had died and the smoke from courtly combat had cleared, enough of the lions could see the national interest and unite with each other and the White House to carry the country with them. Little Rock, desegregation, the Suez crisis, the U-2 incident, the Soviet space challenge. To hell with party vanities -- they stood for themselves.

The crusty Aiken came down from Putney, Vermont, determined to nudge his G.O.P. to the left. Immediately he confronted Ike-confidant Styles Bridges of New Hampshire. "No more middle of the road," Aiken declared, "when that is ! halfway between Grant and McKinley." Later he would counsel President Johnson on Vietnam: "Declare victory and leave."

John Kennedy of Massachusetts joined Republican Everett Dirksen of Illinois to help push Eisenhower's bill to loosen restrictions on foreign aid to communist nations. Johnson plunged in time and time again to help Ike, never more so than on the first civil rights bill, in l957. Georgia's Russell, in his last great stand for the Old South, softened the measure. But a bill of sorts was passed, the first fissure in a century of racism. L.B.J., wearing his silver-silk suit, which seemed to glow in the dim Senate corridors, knew what he was doing. So did Ike. And so did Russell.

There were bad moments. The Senate let Wisconsin's Joe McCarthy terrorize the country too long before censure. The likes of Indiana's Homer Capehart and Nebraska's Carl Curtis fumbled and bumbled.

But almost always there was a hard core of vision and purpose. Russell made sure that the U.S. kept its military edge at the height of the cold war. Without trying, Russell became the monument that the Russell Senate Office Building was named for. He basked in the Senate interplay, yet was so devoted to a larger cause it was said he never solicited a vote except on the merits of a bill. When he rose, the galleries quieted. He never looked up but spoke to the floor where his colleagues were collected. When asked once about his huge influence, he looked down that formidable nose of his and dismissed the question. "I cover the ground I can stand on."