[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 1 (Tuesday, January 3, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9-S11]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING MIKE MANSFIELD

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, last November, my Republican 
colleagues reelected me to another 2-year term serving our conference 
as leader.
  The greatest honor of my career is representing the Commonwealth of 
Kentucky in this Chamber and fighting for my fellow Kentuckians, but 
the second greatest honor is the trust that my fellow Republican 
Senators have placed in me to lead our diverse conference and help them 
achieve their goals.
  As I begin my ninth Congress serving my colleagues in this role, I 
find myself looking back over some of the remarkable statesmen who have 
come before. Designated party floor leaders have been a feature of the 
Senate for more than 100 years, and no two have done the job exactly 
alike.
  Some notable leaders have built influence through bookish mastery of 
procedure--for example, Massachusetts Republican Henry Cabot Lodge and 
West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd.
  Other leaders are remembered less for parliamentary wizardry than for 
tackle football. Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas delivered much of 
the New Deal through the Senate for F.D.R., with a lively repertoire 
that included cutting deals, red-faced rants, pounding his desk, and 
almost ending up in fisticuffs here on the floor.
  When Robinson died of a heart attack, Roosevelt's pick to fill the 
vacancy was Kentucky Senator Alben Barkley. Even with that endorsement, 
Barkley only won his first election as leader by one vote, in part 
because Senate Democrats worried the President's handpicked man might 
actually have mixed loyalties. But Barkley won his colleagues' trust. 
In 1944, when he dramatically resigned during a showdown with the White 
House over tax policy, his conference reinstalled him on a unanimous 
vote the very next day.
  Then there was our late friend and colleague Bob Dole of Kansas, a 
sharp competitor who excelled both at partisan combat and bipartisan 
compromise--plus, as we all know, had a wicked sense of humor.
  The Texas Democrat Lyndon Johnson was a towering interpersonal force 
and master of relationships. The Ohio Republican Robert Taft had been 
more introverted and cerebral. He was a master of policy. But each was 
a strong force and a powerful thorn in the side of the opposite-party 
administrations.
  Then there have been leaders who rose to the job through lower key, 
behind-the-scenes styles, and that, Madam President, is how Senator 
Michael Joseph Mansfield of Montana became the longest serving Senate 
leader in American history until today. The highest ranking Federal 
official Montana has ever produced wasn't actually born under the ``Big 
Sky.'' When Mike Mansfield's mother died early, this young son of Irish 
immigrants was put on a train from New York City to family in Great 
Falls, MT.
  Though Mansfield would later be famous as a Senate leader who didn't 
bully his colleagues, apparently, young Mike first tried a different 
approach. A brief trial run as a self-appointed schoolyard bully ended 
when a bigger boy supplied some humility right to his nose. At age 14, 
standing all of 5 feet 4 inches, he successfully used doctored 
documents to join the Navy. Soon after, he migrated to the Army, 
instead, and, soon after that, the Marines, which took Mansfield to the 
Philippines and the coast of China.
  After that, back in Montana, Mansfield worked in copper mines as a 
mucker. This was touchy work, in a dangerous underground environment, 
with dynamite everywhere and few exit routes. Eventually, Mike left the 
grueling work to pursue school, but not before the mines had taught him 
enduring lessons about caution and about prudence.
  First came college, then graduate studies, continuing a fascination 
with Asia. But Mike soon exchanged the faculty lounge for elected 
office. He lost his first race to represent Montana's First District in 
1940, but he won both the primary and the general in 1942, after the 
incumbent Republican Jeanette Rankin had cast the only vote against war 
with Japan after Pearl Harbor.
  The war gave Congress's newest Asia expert immediate relevance. 
Speaker

[[Page S10]]

Sam Rayburn made sure he landed on the Foreign Affairs Committee. NBC 
invited Congressman Mansfield to deliver a broadcast lecture on events 
in Asia. Soon, the Roosevelt White House named him the President's 
personal envoy to wartime China. A decade later, five terms in, 
Representative Mansfield was a trusted foreign policy hand and a proven 
fighter for Montana.
  He traveled to Asia multiple times. He served as a U.N. delegate. 
President Truman offered to nominate Mansfield to a State Department 
job, but Mansfield was eyeing a different kind of promotion. In 1952, 
he beat Montana's incumbent Republican Senator by a few thousand votes 
and began a Senate tenure that would span nearly a quarter of a 
century.
  From his freshman seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 
Mansfield spent the 1950s as the Senate's most frequent traveler to the 
increasingly pivotal region of Indochina--what we would soon be calling 
Vietnam.
  Even during the Republican Eisenhower administration, the Montana 
Democrat had great influence. He was an early voice calling for more 
and faster shipments of military aid to the anti-communist cause.
  And at least one historian argues that without Mansfield's personal 
intervention, the United States might well have pulled the plug on 
supporting Diem and conceded Vietnam to the communists as early as the 
mid-1950s, avoiding the entire war.
  It took Mansfield's colleagues little time to identify another use 
for these diplomatic talents closer to home. After the previous 
Democratic whip, Earle Clements of Kentucky, narrowly lost reelection 
in 1956, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson needed a new No. 2. He 
eventually turned to the respected first-termer from Montana.
  Mansfield later remembered how it happened. He said:

       Lyndon insisted I had to take it because I was the least 
     objectionable to most of the Democratic Senators . . . it was 
     not a flattering argument, but after several meetings, I 
     finally lost my resolve against becoming Whip.

  Now, L.B.J. was not looking to devolve any real power to his 
lieutenant. The record suggests that Johnson's famous pit bull staffer 
Bobby Baker did more threatening, horse-trading, and whipping of 
Senators than did Mansfield. Mostly, the Senator kept investing in his 
twin passions: Montana and Asia. But his colleagues grew in 
appreciation for the traits that Mansfield offered the caucus that 
L.B.J. did not: a calm presence, a collaborative style, a listening 
ear.
  When Mansfield's colleagues Kennedy and Johnson won the 1960 
election, both J.F.K. and L.B.J. wanted Mansfield for leader. But there 
was drama right from the start. Johnson insisted that Senate Democrats 
begin the new Congress by voting on a resolution to let him chair the 
Democratic caucus, as if he had never left. Well, the debate was 
unexpectedly fierce. The ``no'' vote was surprisingly large. Even 
though the resolution carried, the episode was a clear rebuke. L.B.J.'s 
former colleagues wanted to turn the page. So Mike Mansfield would be 
leader not just in name but in reality.
  So the shift from a boisterous, high-drama leader to a lower key, 
more businesslike floor manager rippled through the institution. 
Johnson had deliberately run a melodramatic and unpredictable Senate. 
Mansfield set out to make things more predictable and formal.
  Instead of surprise late-night sessions and unpredictable recesses, 
Senators got a set schedule. Instead of micromanaging, the majority 
leader was actually laissez faire. President Kennedy's Cabinet quickly 
learned they could meet with the majority leader all they like, but he 
wouldn't get ahead of his Members. He would listen politely and refer 
them to the appropriate chairman.
  When snafus stalled the Senate floor, Mansfield's first problem-
solving tactic was to try simply doing nothing. One biographer marvels 
at Mansfield's ``awesome, monumental, fearsome, incredible patience.'' 
He would sit ``stiffly erect at his desk on the Senate floor . . . hour 
after hour, and sometimes day after day.''
  Leader Mansfield prioritized treating Members equally. Apparently, he 
never even took a position in the races that determined his own whip. 
In one small but telling touch, Mansfield made sure the Senate's only 
two women Members, Margaret Chase Smith and Maureen Neuberger, got a 
pair of plum offices that shared a private restroom.
  In the Mansfield Senate, proceedings became more orderly and less 
theatrical. Crucial work migrated out of hallway confrontations and 
hideaway handshakes and into hearing rooms and committee offices. The 
Senate was less defined by top-down dramatics than by bills and 
priorities actually percolating upward, a diligent, low-key leadership 
style from a serious, diligent, low-key person. As one historian puts 
it, this ``insistence on being last rather than first, the servant and 
not the suzerain of the Senate, fitted his personality just like a 
comfortable suit.''
  Now, not all Senators welcomed the change; especially during the 
Kennedy years, when some of his party's bold priorities stalled under 
filibusters, some of Mansfield's own Members openly criticized him and 
his comparatively hands-off approach.
  Mansfield, however, stood firm. He prepared a defiant speech, 
doubling down on his faith in an orderly process and collegial Senate. 
Remarkably, literally minutes before this big speech was to be 
announced, President Kennedy was shot and died. Mansfield's remarks 
ended up slid into the Record with little fanfare.

  Of course, thereafter, a variety of factors made the Johnson 
Presidency a fruitful time for major legislation--from the Civil Rights 
Act to the Voting Rights Act, to Medicare and the rest of the Great 
Society. And Mansfield's Senators remained productive.
  Later, the Nixon administration and Democrats in Congress passed a 
thick stack of bipartisan policies. Some critics of Mansfield argue 
that the majority leader was not the direct driving force behind these 
accomplishments, that he contented himself with the modest task of 
keeping the Senate machinery oiled, while other people with stronger 
and clearer visions championed particular outcomes.
  However, it is worth noting Mansfield himself would have seen that 
statement actually as a badge of honor. And really, the caricature of a 
totally hands-off, almost agnostic leader is simply not accurate. 
Mansfield was, in fact, a canny strategist who knew how to rally his 
conference. He knew when to go to battle and when to coordinate with 
his counterpart Everett Dirksen. In short, he knew how to work the 
Senate.
  Even when a supermajority of Senators stood ready to pass the Civil 
Rights Act in early 1964, it took Mansfield's personal field 
generalship to actually get it accomplished.
  On the front end, his crafty moves kept the bill from dying an early 
death in Senator Eastland's hostile Judiciary Committee; on the back 
end, they stopped the final filibuster; and in between, thwarted all 
the creative stall tactics without blowing up the institution.
  But it is certainly true that, overall, Mansfield did not view--and 
did not treat--the Senate as a mere means to policy ends he favored. 
Yes, the former history teacher was a Democrat; he did want particular 
results; and he often got them. But he seems to have felt the most 
valuable end was the institution of the Senate itself--its processes 
and debates, its traditions and its structures, and all 100 of its 
Members.
  He saw his job as facilitating the Senate as a whole working its 
will--and not just working his will.
  Again, this unusually neutral style came with costs. For example, 
L.B.J. was convinced Mansfield could have jammed through the Civil 
Rights Act earlier if he had played harder ball with the Southerners.
  Earlier, J.F.K. had grown exasperated with his friend's patient 
handling of Dirksen while Republicans slow-walked Kennedy's Nuclear 
Test Ban Treaty. But take note: In both cases, the priorities did 
eventually pass. And they probably became law with broader and deeper 
support because Mansfield allowed Members more time, more space, and 
face-saving.
  With regard to Asia, even when Mansfield's historic run in the Senate 
finally ended, his service on the international stage did not. Shortly 
after he departed this Chamber, President Carter nominated him to be 
our Ambassador to Japan. His performance was so

[[Page S11]]

strong that President Reagan asked him to stay on. He served in that 
role for 11 years--from the longest serving Senate leader to the 
longest serving Japanese Ambassador.
  Mansfield's decades of work in Asia could fill a separate speech. But 
it is worth noting one time where his approach to the job of leader 
directly shaped his work in the region.
  I mentioned how some historians see Mansfield's aggressive emphasis 
on Vietnam during the Eisenhower period a key tipping point toward 
eventual war. But as early as 1962, Mansfield's learned perspective had 
him deeply worried about the direction of our involvement in Vietnam. 
Where he had spent the fifties lobbying for more and faster aid, he 
spent the sixties sounding alarms.
  But while there were some public statements, Mansfield remained 
measured and discreet and reserved his sharpest warnings for a long 
string of private memorandums that he sent down to the White House.
  Some historians feel Mansfield should have engineered a more public, 
more dramatic break with the Johnson administration if he was so 
certain we were marching into a quagmire.
  Some Democratic Senators were publicly assailing Johnson's Vietnam 
policies. But Majority Leader Mansfield decided against making a high-
profile public break with a President of his own party on foreign 
policy.
  Clearly, Mike Mansfield was a complex and fascinating Senate leader 
for reasons far beyond his longevity. This scholarly Montanan was not 
an exciting idealist who transformed our national discourse, nor was he 
a policy entrepreneur who brought to the leader's role his own sweeping 
wish list of Federal programs.
  Mansfield made a huge impact through a different road: by viewing the 
role of leader as serving others--well, that and the fact that he 
always enjoyed big, stable majorities on his side, often well in excess 
of 60 votes, helped as well.
  In the Mansfield model, serving his caucus meant listening to his 
Members, supporting them in their goals, and helping facilitate the 
victories his party wanted out of the spotlight.
  And he also sought to serve the Senate as a whole. He got things done 
without blowing up bedrock. He mostly defended the Senate's 
idiosyncrasies, traditions, and pace rather than try to tear them down. 
He erred on the side of empowering his colleagues rather than trying to 
dominate them; prudence over performativity; suggestion over 
dictatorship; and a winning record on his party's key priorities 
without attacking the institution to do it--a quintessentially Senate 
record from one of the quintessential Senate characters in our history. 
What a path, from mucking in the Butte copper mines to serving 16 years 
as Senate leader and advising nine consecutive Presidents as a seasoned 
statesman. And what a testament to our great country that such a path 
was possible. It has been my honor to remember my distinguished 
predecessor this afternoon.

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Sinema). The Senator from Texas.

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