Silence in the Senate

Vice President Lyndon Johnson grasped the worn ivory ball that serves him as a gavel, rapped smartly, and declared: "Two-thirds of the Senators present and voting having voted in the affirmative, the sense of the Senate is that debate shall be brought to a close."

That was the announcement of a historic action: the U.S. Senate, which prides itself as the earth's last bastion of unlimited debate, had just imposed cloture on a small band of filibustering liberal Democrats. For seven days the filibusterers had tied up the Senate by fighting an Administration bill that would turn over communications satellites to a corporation owned half by the public and half by private companies. Led by Oregon's splenetic Wayne Morse, they charged that the measure was a "giveaway" by Government, principally to the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Ironically, the liberals used the same tactics for which they had long denounced Southern Senators fighting civil rights legislation.

Back to Caesar. The cloture vote came hard to Senators fond of tracing the history of the legislative filibuster back to ancient Rome, where an eloquent praetor named Julius Caesar tried (unsuccessfully) to talk to death a measure ordering the execution of Catiline's coconspirators.

Until 1917 the U.S. Senate did not have a clear-cut rule to limit debate. That year eleven Senators filibustered against President Woodrow Wilson's proposal to arm merchant ships, precipitating a famed presidential denunciation: "A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible." Under Wilson's angry urging, the Senate adopted Rule XXII, which provided that cloture could be invoked by two-thirds of the Senators present and voting.

Still the Senators droned on and on.

Eleven times cloture votes have been taken against Southerners filibustering against civil rights; eleven times the votes have failed. Until last week, cloture had not been imposed since 1927, when Drys gagged a filibuster by Wets against a bill to beef up Prohibition enforcement.

Just Stay Away. Last week's pro-cloture forces were headed by Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Nearing the end of a frustrating Senate session, and smarting under charges that his mild-mannered methods were at fault, Mansfield finally began to act like a Senate leader. White House aides were ready to get into the fight, but Mansfield, fearing that they would only irritate the Senators, asked them to stay clear. Then, with the help of Oklahoma's Robert Kerr, Mansfield went to work.

His problem was plain to see. The key to imposing cloture lay with Southern Senators--most of them dead set against the filibustering liberals but, by tradition and principle, violently opposed to cloture. First, Mansfield tried to persuade Georgia's Richard Russell to vote for cloture. Said Russell: "I'll vote to gag the Senate when shrimps start to whistle Dixie." In the vote, Russell cast a resounding "no." But significantly, he did not try to influence his Southern Senate followers.

That gave Mansfield his opening. If he could not talk the Southerners into voting for cloture, he could at least persuade them not to vote at all. Mansfield scheduled the vote for a day when a few anti-cloture Senators had good excuses to be away from Washington--Arkansas' William Fulbright found that he had a speaking engagement in New York, Nevada's Alan Bible and Arizona's Carl Hayden were on business trips home. At voting time, Virginians Harry Byrd and Willis Robertson, North Carolina's B. Everett Jordan and Arkansas' John McClellan simply stayed away. Explained McClellan later: "I would never vote for cloture, but I wasn't going to help those people [the Morse band]." Similarly, such anti-clo-ture Senators as West Virginia's Robert Byrd, Nevada's Howard Cannon and North Carolina's Sam Ervin delayed their appearance, recorded their no votes only after cloture was assured.

From Across the Aisle. Of vital aid to Mansfield was Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, who enjoyed the opportunity of bringing the G.O.P. to the rescue of a Democratic leadership so beset by Democratic dissidence. Dirksen worked tirelessly at rounding up Republican votes for cloture. Said he to his colleagues: "This is personal. I have to have your votes.

The prestige of the Senate is at stake.'' Thirty-four Republicans ended up voting for cloture. Only two--Texas' John Tower and Arizona's Barry Goldwater--voted against. And Goldwater, waiting in the Republican cloakroom, did not appear to naysay until Dirksen sent him word that his vote would make no difference.

To see the showdown, spectators filled the galleries, and some 100 senatorial aides lined the walls of the chamber. Mike Mansfield, his soft voice now rough with anger, set forth a final plea that was made more compelling by the fact that Morse & Co. were holding up the satellite bill even while two Russian cosmonauts were swirling about in space. "Will the Senate continue to dawdle?" asked Mansfield. "To decide for cloture is to decide honorably and reasonably to settle this issue one way or another and get on with the business of the Senate. The Senate owes the country a decision." The cloture motion won by 63 to 27--just three votes more than the required two-thirds of those voting. But silence, even when ordered by a lopsided majority of his peers, did not come easily to Wayne Morse, who promptly arose to cry: "A few minutes ago the Senate cast an historic vote. It will rise to plague the Senate for decades." Victory for None. In that judgment at least, Morse was probably right. For in long-term Senate patterns, last week's cloture vote was a victory for no one; Southern Democrats probably lost the least, Morse's liberals the most. The principle of unlimited debate, so dear to the South, had been dented (but the Southerners were still so delighted at knocking over the Morse group that Alabama's John Sparkman, who voted against cloture, posed grinningly for victory pictures with pro-cloture leaders). Republicans laid themselves open to the charge that they will support cloture on an issue involving business, but not on one involving civil rights. The Morse liberals suffered more complicated effects. In their unceasing efforts to achieve civil rights legislation, some have made it a cardinal point to ease the cloture rule. They have insisted that the rule, by its requirements, amounts to a prohibition against cloture. Last week they were proved wrong, and the significance was happily explained by Virginia's Harry Byrd. Said he: "We can point to this vote as proof that no rule change is needed--that the Senate can invoke cloture under the present rule any time it really is of a mind to." As for the satellite bill itself, it was approved by the Senate at week's end by a walloping vote of 66 to n.

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