President Lyndon B. Johnson center speaks with U. Can you imagine U. Not so long ago, when politics was less about blood sport, the leaders in the Senate were more cordial and collegial.
Even though U. Everett Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois who was the minority leader, was the opposite in almost every sense of the word from his more reserved counterpart, U. Mike Mansfield, a Democrat from Montana who was the majority leader, they enjoyed a strong friendship that was tested during the turbulence of the s. A new book by prominent historian and former Idaho broadcast journalist Marc C.
Johnson explores their relationship and concludes that the warm friendship helped guide the nation through the rocky times. But Johnson said without the support of Dirksen, especially on key pieces of legislation like the Civil Rights Act, some of the highlights of the s might have wound up as historical footnotes.
Meanwhile, Mansfield was contending with division in his own party as southern Democrats bristled against civil rights measures in the South. Both men had division within their party, and both struggled with the seminal events of the decade, including war, assassination, political turbulence and civil rights. Johnson points to their accomplishments, which include many things Americans may today take for granted. That initially caused some problems, leading critics within the John F.
Kennedy administration to distrust Mansfield because he seemed too accommodating to Republicans. Mansfield would also go against the grain in other respects, being a frequent and early critic of the Vietnam War, much to the chagrin of his old Senate colleague and then-President Lyndon Johnson.
