The Congress: Dirksen’s Defeat

“One man clothed in righteousness is a match for all the hosts of error,” said Senate Republican Leader Everett Dirksen, perched on a table, to reporters. “And I am pursuing sinners who insist on persisting in their error.”

Dirksen’s tabletop press conference came as the Senate was approaching a climactic vote on his year-long crusade to modify the 1964 Supreme Court ruling that both branches of state legislatures must be reapportioned strictly according to population. Dirksen proposed a constitutional amendment permitting the voters of each state to decide if they wanted one of their legislative branches set up on a basis other than population. For approval by the Senate, Dirksen needed a two-thirds majority of Senators present and voting —and he now knew he was going to fall a few short. Said he: “I am not so blind as not to know when I am up against a stacked deck.”

“Give Him Hell.” For one thing, Vice President Hubert Humphrey had been busily lining up votes against Dirksen—even though Dirksen thought he had

President Johnson’s promise that the Administration would not take a position either for or against his amendment. Two weeks ago, Dirksen called on Johnson, demanded to know why Humphrey was working against him. Blandly, the President claimed he had been unaware of the Vice President’s activities until he read about them in the papers. Snorted Dirksen: “Well, then, call him up and give him hell.”

Whether Johnson did or not is un known. But by that time it was probably too late for Dirksen’s purposes. Unable to get an approving vote from the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was forced to a crippling admission of weakness by presenting his proposal to the Senate in the form of a substitute for a resolution providing for a “National American Legion Baseball Week.”

During the debate on his amendment, Dirksen orated before a packed and entranced gallery. He warned that the time could come “when the only people interested in state boundaries will be Rand McNally.” He cried out that the Prohibition Amendment had disastrously deprived states of freedom to make their own laws and that “in 1932 my party was overwhelmingly voted out of office, and not the least of the issues were bread and booze.” He insisted that “the whole burden of my argument has been: go back to the people.” He intimated that the Supreme Court had taken on powers well beyond its right, then thundered in conclusion Brutus’ line justifying the assassination of Caesar: “Not that I love Caesar less, but that I love Rome more.”

“What Do You Do?” The argument against Dirksen was mostly good-natured—except for a sarcastic performance by Dirksen’s Illinois colleague, Democrat Paul Douglas.

Said Douglas: “I regret that I do not possess the art of planned and spontaneous irrelevance which is so charming a characteristic of my junior colleague. Nor can I perform his acts of sorcery and necromancy which, in soaring far beyond logic, disguise an assault upon our political system as a mere amendment to an act to encourage junior league baseball.” Douglas charged Dirksen with “deception,” with introducing “an awesome and abominable proposal,” with trying to give “the rotten-borough legislatures now in operation the power of self-perpetuation,” with “sounding the false alarm that the Supreme Court had created chaos in the states,” plotting to allow “private utilities” and “big financial interests” to hold a veto against “consumers, wage and salaried workers and the general body of citizens.”

In the final vote, the Dirksen amendment was favored 57-39, seven short of the required two-thirds. But beaten though he was, Dirksen vowed to continue his crusade. “What do you do,” he asked, “when you believe in something and are heartsick and you think the Republic is at stake?”