I’ve noticed these days that any win gets portrayed as some great mandate for leadership in a presidential election, both for the president and his party. However, there have been no elections that I would call a major mandate since Barack Obama’s win in 2008. Democrats expanded on their House majority and turned a slight Senate majority into one that could overcome a filibuster. Obama also won the states of Indiana and North Carolina, not ones that have landed in the Democratic column since. Since that election, wins have either been narrow or in the case of Obama in 2012, still having one of the House of Congress in the control of the opposing party. The 1920 election, however, was one for the ages.
Given the unpopularity of the defeated Versailles Treaty as well as a mini-depression that was occurring, it was nigh impossible for anyone to take up Woodrow Wilson’s mantle and win. Ohio’s Governor, James M. Cox, attempted it anyway. Ohio Senator Warren Harding’s call for “normalcy” resounded across the nation as the nation stood disillusioned with progressivism, tired of extensive involvement in foreign affairs, alarmed by race riots, strikes, and an anarchist bombing of Wall Street, and hurting from the depressed economy. Although old rumors that Harding had black ancestry made their way to the public, it didn’t seem to have much of an impact, and he won in a landslide, getting 404 to Cox’s 127 electoral votes. Only the states of the former Confederacy plus Kentucky backed Cox. The Solid South also had a breakaway in Tennessee, the first former Confederate state to vote for a Republican presidential candidate since Reconstruction. Harding could fully claim a mandate, especially with the legislative results that accompanied his election.
House
The House results were catastrophic for Democrats in the North, with Republicans, already having a majority, gaining 63 seats. The following House delegations became or remained entirely Republican after the 1920 election:
Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
Pennsylvania was with one exception entirely Republican, and that exception, Guy Campbell, would vote like a Republican in the 67th Congress and subsequently switch parties.
Outside the South and Border States, Democrats were reduced to 19 representatives:
Carl Hayden, Ariz.
Clarence Lea, Calif.
John Raker, Calif.
Edward Taylor, Colo.
John Rainey, Ill.
Adolph Sabath, Ill.
Thomas Gallagher, Ill.
Peter Tague, Mass.
James Gallivan, Mass.
Charles O’Brien, N.J.
John Kindred, N.Y.
Thomas Cullen, N.Y.
Christopher Sullivan, N.Y.
Daniel Riordan, N.Y.
W. Bourke Cockran, N.Y.
John Carew, N.Y.
Anthony Griffin, N.Y.
Peter Ten Eyck, N.Y.
James Mead, N.Y.
Guy Campbell, Penn.
The Urban Areas
Republicans had massive success in urban areas, particularly shocking being in New York City, where they won a majority of the city’s districts in Congress. This feat has not been repeated since and was achievable because Tammany Hall largely sat on their hands in this election as well as some of the left-wing vote going to Socialist Party candidates arguably cost Democrats victories in New York’s 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 23rd districts. By contrast, today the only New York City district that Republicans often win is Staten Island. New York’s 12th district once again elected Socialist Meyer London, one of only two members of the Socialist Party to ever win a seat in Congress. In neighboring New Jersey, a Republican won a seat in the Northern portion of Jersey City, a feat that has only been repeated once since.
In Illinois, Republicans won all but three of Chicago’s House seats, although Chicago was considerably more Republican than it is now. Outside of Chicago, this election produced future House Speaker Henry T. Rainey’s only reelection loss.
In Ohio, Republicans won both seats in Cleveland, a feat they have yet to achieve again.
Ethnic Germans and Irish, usually rich sources for the Democratic vote in major cities, were hostile to the Versailles Treaty and to President Wilson. These groups had beefs with Britain, and yes, at that time anti-British politics were still something that could be capitalized on in the US. The result was many ethnic Germans and Irish either voted Republican or stayed home in 1920, and the Democratic machines that served these groups were not particularly willing to help the Cox/Roosevelt ticket. The degree of success Republicans had in the 1920 election in urban areas has been unheard of since.
The Border states were a disaster for Democrats too, with them only holding the staunchly Democratic 2nd and 11th districts in Missouri, the latter based in St. Louis. In Maryland, Democrats only won Maryland’s 1st and 4th districts, the latter based in Baltimore. In Oklahoma, Republicans won five of the eight House seats. The norm was for Republicans to only hold the 8th district while the 1st district, based in Tulsa, was highly competitive. The Socialist Party in Oklahoma arguably cost Democrats the 2nd, 4th, and 6th districts. Kentucky was the only state in which things were fairly normal for Democrats, with them holding 8 of 11 of the state’s House seats.
The South remained mostly solid for Democrats, but Republicans won three seats in Tennessee that they didn’t usually win, putting Republicans on par with Democrats. The status quo of only two Republican representatives from East Tennessee would return with the 1922 election. They also won a single seat in Texas based in San Antonio, which they managed to win a few more times, as well as kept a seat in Virginia.
The Senate
The Senate Democrats took a bad lump, but the six-year terms of the Senate shielded them from worse. One retiring Democrat, Edwin Johnson of South Dakota, was succeeded by Republican Peter Norbeck, while 12 incumbents either lost reelection or renomination.
Arizona: Democrat Marcus A. Smith was defeated for reelection by Republican Ralph Cameron, making Cameron the first ever Republican elected to Congress from the young state, which at the time was usually strongly Democratic.
Arkansas – Democrat William F. Kirby lost renomination to Congressman Thaddeus Caraway, and in the South statewide the Democratic nomination contest was the real election.
California – Democrat James Phelan lost reelection to Republican Samuel Shortridge.
Colorado – Democrat Charles Thomas’s political independence resulted in him refusing to run for renomination with Democrat Tully Scot winning the primary, and then Thomas lost reelection as a member of the Nationalist Party.
Georgia – Democrat Hoke Smith lost renomination to fiery populist Thomas E. Watson.
Idaho – Democrat John F. Nugent lost reelection to Republican Frank Gooding.
Kentucky – Democrat J.C.W. Beckham lost reelection to Republican Richard P. Ernst.
Maryland – Democrat John W. Smith lost reelection to Republican Ovington Weller.
Nevada – Democrat Charles Henderson lost reelection to Republican Tasker Oddie.
North Dakota – Republican Asle Gronna lost renomination to Edwin F. Ladd, who won the election.
Oklahoma – Democrat Thomas P. Gore’s independence from the Wilson Administration cost him renomination to Congressman Scott Ferris, who lost the election to Republican Congressman John W. Harreld.
Oregon – Democrat George E. Chamberlain lost reelection to Republican Robert N. Stanfield.
The major gains of this election would result in many Republican policies being passed in the 1920s, but the extent of them would prove temporary as in 1922 Republicans would more than lose their 1920 House gains. Senate Republicans would lose seven seats. However, a Republican majority would persist in the House until the 1930 election and the Senate until the 1932 election, when the United States was in the Great Depression.
President Carter had controversy over his sales of F-15s to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but the disapproval effort failed in a bipartisan vote. Israel and its advocates in the United States were against this sale, which was seen as part of diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. President Reagan, however, took it a step further in his sale of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar planes to Saudi Arabia in his first year of office. This was, at the time, the largest arms sale in history to another country, and it attracted even more opposition than Carter’s sale had. Although Israel didn’t like this, they didn’t make major efforts against this sale since Reagan had offered the nation $600 million in credits, the sale of 15 more F-15s, and relaxing export restrictions on Israel’s Kfir planes (Bard). By 1981, Israel was the only strategic asset in the Middle East after the fall of the Shah of Iran, and the US was looking to strengthen ties with other nations in the region, and one of those was the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a vital priority given the US’s oil troubles in the 1970s. Cold War considerations motivated the US to make such arms sales to Saudi Arabia as well.
The American public was, after the Iran hostage crisis, hostile to the sale of arms to any other nation, with 52% polled against any sales and only 19% of the public supported this sale (US-Saudi Business). The giving away of the Panama Canal, which had been politically devastating for numerous Democrats, had better polling numbers than this proposal. The opponents of this sale argued that Israel would face greater threat from a nation that had declared “holy war” on it, that this sale would not be effective in deterring any potential Soviet attack, and questioned whether the secrets behind the development of AWACS could be protected (CQ Almanac). This seemed an easy issue for Democrats to oppose President Reagan on given that numerous Republicans were dissenting as well. Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.), while acknowledging as valid concerns that US-Saudi relations could be damaged if the sale failed, saw the alternative as worse, stating, “I’m afraid we’re in a position here where we are limiting damage” (CQ Almanac). There were also fears at the time that the Saudi royal family would fall in a coup like in Iran, and thus the AWACS technology could fall into hostile hands. Senator Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who had clashed with Reagan before in California state politics, cheekily stated “I would like to paraphrase the words of Ronald Reagan when he opposed President Carter on the Panama Canal issue. ‘We built the AWACS. We paid for them. We should keep them” (CQ Almanac).
Round One: The House
The Reagan Administration started to lobby the House to back the sale and they had not only the power of the office behind them but also the active support of all three living former presidents: Nixon, Ford, and Carter, although the former did some harm to this effort when he remarked that “parts of the American Jewish community” were holding up the sale and possibly “embarrassing and undermining the authority of their indispensable friend in the White House” (Bard). The Saudis had intensely lobbied numerous American businesses to support the sale, and they did. One event that had some potential to build support was the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat on October 6th, which postponed the vote on blocking the AWACS sale and permitted Reagan to argue that the US was down a friend in the Arab world and that they needed Saudi Arabia more than before (CQ Almanac).
Despite the assassination of Sadat and the efforts of Reagan and former presidents, the House on October 14, 1981, voted to disapprove, and the vote was strongly bipartisan at 301-111. Democrats voted for the resolution 193-33 while Republicans voted for 108-78. Even some conservative hardliners in Congress who were almost always on board with Reagan voted for this, including John Rousselot of California and John Ashbrook of Ohio. Ron Paul of Texas was also another notable vote for.
Round Two: The Senate
Round one of this battle had ended badly for the Reagan Administration and it looked like the sale at the outset was set to go down in the Senate, as the resolution to disapprove had 50 Senate sponsors. Reagan secured the help of Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) to get the deal. Baker asserted that “Anyone who believes the security of Israel will be enhanced by reducing our influence in the Arab world is fundamentally wrong” (CQ Almanac). The measure also received the backing of Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Charles Percy (R-Ill.), who initially advised President Reagan to postpone the sale (Bard). The leading opponent on the Republican side was Oregon’s Bob Packwood, a moderate. However, the Reagan Administration went full on the offensive in securing support, including securing private meetings with 22 Republican senators and 22 Democratic senators. Reagan managed to persuade 14 of the 22 Republicans to vote for the sale and 10 of the 22 Democratic senators (Bard). Some of these votes were secured only the day before the vote, and in some cases, downright horse trading occurred. The Reagan Administration, for instance, won Senator John Melcher’s (D-Mont.) vote by pledging support for a coal-conversion facility near Butte as well as a letter of support for the sale from his predecessor and Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield (Bard). The Reagan Administration did not only offer carrots but also sticks in its approach. Iowa’s Roger Jepsen, who had been one of the Senate sponsors of the resolution to disapprove of the sale, was subject to the threat of sticks. The Reagan Administration painted a bleak picture of his political future were he to vote for the resolution, that he would be politically frozen out from the Reagan White House, especially since Iowa’s other Republican senator, Charles Grassley, had come to support the sale (Bard). However, horse trading and threats were not required in many cases. Arguments that Reagan’s influence and credibility in the Middle East would be damaged were sufficient for numerous Republicans to switch their positions (CQ Almanac). There were also some real consequences for Republican senators who opposed the sale. After Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) voted against the sale in committee, he found out that an air force base in Duluth was to be shut down (Bard). The intense lobbying efforts, it turns out, did the trick. On October 28th, the Senate rejected the resolution disapproving of the sale, with 48 senators voting to disapprove and 52 voting against (Mohr). Republicans voted against disapproval 12-41 and Democrats voted to disapprove 36-11. And just in case you were of the impression that a senator being Jewish meant support for this resolution, only 57% of the Senate’s Jews voted for it, with Senators William Cohen (R-Me.), Ed Zorinsky (D-Neb.), and Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) voting against disapproving the sale.
Although Reagan got his sale, he did not attempt more arms sales to Arab nations in the Middle East. Thus, although lobbying efforts against it did not prevent this sale, it did deter the Reagan Administration from pushing for more. Although there has been more talk about the Israel lobby since the October 7, 2023, attack from Hamas and the war that resulted, this is an example of when the Israel lobby didn’t get its way. Indeed, according to a study conducted by Mitchell Bard, in 782 American policy decisions between 1945 and 1984 Israel got its way 60% of the time, and when the president supported Israel’s position, it won 95% of the time, but Israel also won 27% of the time that the president opposed its position (Bard, 2009). The lobbies of Israel and its US-based supporters are indeed powerful, but where the president stands is of tremendous importance to whether Israel gets its way.
References
Bard, M. (1981). How Reagan Snatched Victory from the Jaws of Defeat On AWACS. Jewish Virtual Library.
In this series, I have for some time avoided a certain figure to cover, primarily because I wanted to make a bit of a long post on him, and now the time has finally come for an entry on Jacob Koppel Javits (1904-1986).
Born to a Jewish immigrant family in New York City, Javits’s background really was one that would have been expected for a Democrat, but he was a bit different. To rise up in life, Javits went to night school at Columbia University while working part-time and then earned a law degree from New York University. As a young man, he would become attracted to the Republican Party because of the reform politics of Fiorello La Guardia and would support his campaigns for mayor. In 1945, Javits would lead the research team for Jonah Goldstein’s Republican-Liberal campaign for mayor. Although Goldstein lost, Javits was recognized for his talents and in 1946 was nominated by the Republican Party to run for Congress from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The odds were on their face daunting: the district was strongly Democratic and the GOP last won the seat in the landslide election of 1920, but Javits pulled it off and the unfavorable environment to Democrats helped as well. Javits to this day, by the way, is the last Republican to have held this district.
Congressman Javits
Jacob Javits was without doubt the most liberal Republican in the House during the Truman Administration. Although he backed the tax reduction and agriculture cuts pushed by Republicans in the 80th Congress, he agreed with them on little else on the liberal-conservative spectrum domestically. Always a supporter of organized labor, Javits opposed the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. He also was a regular foe of anti-subversive legislation and was one of eight House Republicans to vote against the Nixon-Mundt bill for Communist registration. Javits was also unfailingly internationalist, and would be so for the rest of his career. In 1948, he narrowly won reelection against Democrat Paul O’Dwyer, and he voted with the Truman Administration on nearly every question of national significance. He did not disagree with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action on any of the key votes they counted for their 1950-1953 ratings. This approach was popular, and he won reelection in 1950 with over 60% of the vote. Javits was also notably one of only two House Republicans to vote against the McCarran Internal Security Act in 1950, which among other provisions included Communist registration. In 1954, Javits sought the post of New York Attorney General, and in an election that was mostly narrow victories for Democrats statewide, Javits won against Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. In this post, he was vigorous in his enforcement of the state’s Fair Employment Practices law to combat racial discrimination in employment. Javits served in this post until 1956, when he decided to run for the Senate as incumbent Herbert Lehman was not running again. He once again defeated the son and namesake of a prominent New York Democrat in Robert F. Wagner Jr., who had also won the Liberal Party nomination. The Liberal Party would subsequently back Javits’s campaigns for reelection. Javits was a beneficiary of the four-party system that existed in New York in the mid to late 20th century with Republicans and Democrats but also the Liberal and Conservative Parties. The Liberal Party became a useful groundswell of support for Javits, with many voters of the Liberal Party strongly disliking the machine politics of the Democrats while wanting their policies.
Senator Javits
Javits would quickly make a splash on the scene, challenging numerous points of Senate authority including Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.). He was also the most maverick member of the Senate Republicans during the Eisenhower Administration with the possible exception of the aging prairie populist William Langer of North Dakota. Time Magazine (1966) wrote of Javits as a senator that although he was “a member of the minority party and something of a maverick, whose abrasiveness and hustle have always barred him from the Senate’s cozy inner establishment, he has achieved rare respect and stature by force of intellect, diligence, and integrity”. To a degree, he let this get to his head. As Time Magazine (1966) wrote, “the public figure and the private man have fused and become virtually indistinguishable; his handsome wife Marion complains, only half in jest, that even at home he will not answer a question without clearing his throat and buttoning his coat. When approached by a streetwalker late one night in Manhattan, the Senator introduced himself, shook her hand and proceeded to solicit her vote. He loves his eminence and supports it with a sober single-mindedness matched by few, if any, of his colleagues”.
Senator Javits was a bit more amenable to conservative positions during the Eisenhower Administration than he was while in the House during the Truman Administration. Although he supported high-profile liberal causes, he supported several budget cutting proposals supported by the Eisenhower Administration and backed its efforts at easing price floors on agricultural products. In 1960, Javits voted against Senator Clinton Anderson’s (D-N.M.) proposal to institute a Medicare program, but he would support subsequent Medicare proposals. He retained his opposition to domestic anti-Communist measures and unsuccessfully pushed to end the student loyalty oath and non-communist affidavit, which were required for university students to receive financial aid under the National Defense Education Act. Javits also opposed all major amendments in the 1958 and 1959 bills on organized labor reform, which included requiring secret ballots for union votes, curbing “hot cargo” contracts, curbing use of union dues for political purposes. He was also one only two Republican senators to vote against the McClellan (D-Ark.) “Bill of Rights” amendment for union members. Javits saw the role of himself and his fellow liberal Republicans as charting a middle course between “those who ignore international realities and look back with nostalgia to the economic jungle of the 19th century” and those who would seek “increasing control over the nation’s economic and social life” (Time Magazine).
The second term of Eisenhower proved Javits’ high-water mark of conservatism, as during the 1960s, he would be one of the strongest Republican supporters of New Frontier and Great Society measures, including anti-poverty legislation, federal aid to education, funding the arts and humanities, and rent supplements. Javits was also an unwavering supporter of civil rights legislation, and in 1965 he appointed Lawrence Wallace Bradford Jr. as the first black Senate page, and in 1971 in another first he picked Paulette Desell as the institution’s first female page. A member of the Judiciary Committee in the 89th Congress, he proved a pain in the neck for its segregationist chairman James Eastland (D-Miss.) for his dogged persistence on civil rights. Once, when pressuring him to bring the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to a vote, Eastland stared down Javits and acidly said, “I don’t like you or your kind” (Weaver). In the following session, the Southern bloc would successfully pressure Senate leadership to reduce membership of the Judiciary Committee by one just to remove Javits. He then would move to the Appropriations Committee. Despite this and his aides recalling anti-Semitic comments from senators and their staffers, Javits would later in his career state, “I have never felt any anti-Semitism in the Senate. I should warn you, I’m not quick to feel that sort of thing, but not in my worst struggles with Dick Russell did I ever feel it. The Senate is an admirable institution from that point of view” (Weaver). He would also, unusually for a Republican, gain the support of numerous liberal groups for reelection, including Americans for Democratic Action. Javits had also been one of the Republicans to refuse to endorse Barry Goldwater’s presidential run. This was not the first time he had declined to endorse the Republican nominee, having endorsed FDR for reelection in 1940. Javits was also one of only two Republican senators to vote against both a school prayer amendment and an amendment permitting state legislative redistricting on a basis other than solely population. He also played key roles in drafting legislation for the National Endowment of the Arts and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. Although Javits was not a direct sponsor of many laws, he was able to form effective coalitions with liberal Democrats to pass legislation and was able to influence how said bills were written (Weaver). In 1966, he set his eyes on the vice presidency, but he did not really have a chance to make it to that office in the GOP, not with his record. Unlike in 1964 with Goldwater, Javits endorsed Richard Nixon in 1968 and, despite numerous disagreements with him, would do so again in 1972.
Although initially a supporter of the Vietnam War, Javits became a critic, supporting both the Cooper-Church Amendment block funding of US forces in Cambodia and Laos as well as setting a timetable to end the war with the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment. His foremost legislative achievement regarding this subject was his leadership in passing the War Powers Act in 1973, an effort to reassert the power of the legislative branch. However, he occasionally supported a measure supported by defense hawks, most notably the Selective Service Act in 1980. As previously noted, Javits was often in disagreement with President Nixon, and he voted against unsuccessful Supreme Court nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell as well as being one of three Republicans to vote against William Rehnquist in 1971. He was also less willing to back spending cuts backed by the Nixon Administration than he was under the Eisenhower Administration. However, on Watergate, Javits was highly cautious in his approach, contrasting with the public criticism issued by his fellow New York senator, Conservative James L. Buckley. He also publicly cautioned Nixon not to play “impeachment politics” by cutting his programs “to please a given number of senators: 33 plus one” (Tolchin). Javits had observed the Nixon Administration retreating on certain legislative programs, including his abandonment of the Family Assistance Plan, mass transit, and consumer protection. Indeed, President Nixon given his positions on legislation in his second term comes off considerably more conservative than in his first term. In 1974, Javits faced a difficult reelection but won a three-way race with his chief opposition being Democrat Ramsey Clark, LBJ’s former attorney general who had become a man of the radical left and had a long controversial career after of radical left activism that included defending Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Javits’ position in 1974 was compromised due to his Nixon connection as well as him not taking a leadership role in opposing the Vietnam War, and as one aide remarked, “If he had been running against anyone else but Ramsey Clark, he would have lost” (Weaver).
Why Was Javits a Republican Anyway?
Despite Jacob Javits being a maverick in his party and far more often voting with the Democrats, he insisted to the very end that he was a Republican. It turns out he had a permanent distaste for the Democratic Party of New York City due to the corrupt bossism of New York City’s Tammany Hall. He saw his father work for the organization, and he was disgusted by their practices (Pearson). Thus, no matter how often he disagreed with the GOP, he never considered switching parties. This is a complaint that today, at least applied to Tammany Hall is no longer an issue as Tammany Hall is defunct. However, to what degree at least some of their practices continue in major Democratic controlled cities is an open question.
Final Term
Javits was a true blue liberal as usual, and his status in Washington seemingly higher than ever after victory. In 1976, he campaigned hard for the election of Gerald Ford to a full term and watched the election results at the White House. That year, with the loss of James Buckley for reelection, Javits got a much more similar colleague in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and the two closely collaborated. He also played a more prominent role in foreign affairs, working with the Carter Administration to produce the Camp David Accords. However, there were problems ahead for him, both politically and on his health.
Decline
In 1979, Javits was diagnosed with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease), albeit an unusually slowly progressing version. Thus, he decided on running for yet another term in 1980. This time, the Republican Party, which had been getting more conservative as the 1970s dragged on, were not on board. Javits lost renomination to Al D’Amato, the vice chairman of the Nassau County Board of Supervisors. However, he was not out of the running! While he lost the Republican nomination, he still won the Liberal Party nomination, which resulted in a three-way race between him, D’Amato, and Democratic Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. While the Liberal Party nomination had succeeded in getting Mayor John Lindsay a second term in 1968, this time it resulted in a split of the liberal vote, resulting in D’Amato’s election. The Conservative Party had gotten on board with D’Amato, and thus no split among the right existed. This outcome resulted in the decline of support for the Liberal Party as a force in New York politics, and part of why New York is predominantly Democratic today is that the Liberal Party no longer exists to throw a spanner into the works. When it comes to measuring the ideology of Javits, he only agreed with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 14% of the time during his career in the Senate, agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action a whopping 85% of the time throughout his career in Washington, and his DW-Nominate score was a -0.124, exceptionally low for a Republican.
Although ALS resulted in his confinement to a wheelchair, Javits maintained a positive outlook, and in 1983, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It appears that Javits would have mostly survived another term in the Senate, as he succumbed to ALS on March 7, 1986.
References
ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.
The state of Illinois is not exactly the friendliest ground for Republicans these days, but Illinois’ prominent Republican figures was Charles Harting Percy (1919-2011), who was a big name in Rockefeller Republican circles. His life before politics was a series of great successes. At the age of 30, after working for the Bell & Howell Corporation for several years (with an interruption for service in the Navy from 1942 to 1945), he became its president. He served for 15 years, and Percy proved an astute businessman, growing the company and multiplying revenues by 32 and the number of employees by 12 and making the company go public (The San Diego Union-Tribune). The Bell & Howell Corporation, which makes cameras, camera lenses, and other film equipment, still exists today. During his time as president, he became involved in politics, supporting President Dwight Eisenhower, who encouraged him to write Decisions for a Better America, a book outlining policies for Republicans to promote for the future.
In 1964, Percy resigned his post to run for governor, but the national environment weighed too heavily with Barry Goldwater’s unpopularity and his endorsement of him and he narrowly lost to Democratic incumbent Otto Kerner. The 1966 campaign would prove more successful for him. Percy ran against 74-year old Senator Paul Howard Douglas, long a prominent and principled independent liberal voice in Illinois. He benefited from a backlash to the Johnson Administration’s social policies, including support for a fair housing law. Although Percy also favored a fair housing law and civil rights legislation overall, some voters saw voting for him as a way to stick it to the Johnson Administration. Percy also received sympathetic support because of the brutal murder of his 21-year-old daughter and campaign manager, Valerie, by a home intruder. The case remains officially unsolved. Percy won the election by 11 points, and he was almost immediately considered a strong candidate for a possible future presidential run, with many seeing him as Kennedy-esque. In late 1967, a Louis Harris poll placed Percy ahead of Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 election (Clymer). Johnson was not the only big name who Percy was a potential threat. Richard Nixon thought him a potential threat in the Republican primary in 1968, noting, “Percy and Nixon are two to one…Percy has a good forum in Washington and he’s smart, but he doesn’t have a delegate base” (Chicago Tribune). However, Percy did not think himself sufficiently experienced to run for president, and endorsed Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon gave Percy some consideration as a running mate, but he did not land on his list of finalists due to him having endorsed Rockefeller during the primary. In 1968, he sponsored a proposal to permit communities to use federal law enforcement grants to recruit, train, and pay young people to aid the police in community relations, which attracted the support of many moderate and liberal Republicans. Percy was a rising star among Rockefeller Republicans to the point that he was considered a contender for the Republican nomination for president in 1968. His record in the Senate reflected his moderate liberalism. The Chicago Tribune (1985) wrote in a retrospective of his career, “As a Senator, Percy was good but not great. Early in his legislative career, Ralph Nader’s Congress Project described Percy as “one of the most diligent, well-prepared and effective men in the Senate””. Percy was effective in altering how federal judges were picked in Illinois, considering selection on a merit basis, to the consternation of Illinois Republican leaders (Chicago Tribune).
Like Percy did with many Republicans in Illinois, he also crossed President Nixon on numerous occasions. He voted against the nominations of both Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, but he did vote for William Rehnquist in 1971. Percy also supported both the Cooper-Church Amendment in 1970 to pull out of Laos and Cambodia but he also opposed the McGovern-Hatfield “End the War” Amendment, the first to establish a timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam. In 1972, Percy decided to leave the Appropriations Committee for the Foreign Relations Committee, seeing this as a more optimal committee for which to boost himself for a presidential run. On the Foreign Relations Committee, Percy advocated for pulling out of Vietnam and in support of détente (Chicago Tribune). Despite all the talk of him being president, he only seriously considered running once, and that was in 1973 when he formed an exploratory committee for the 1976 presidential election. That year, Percy sponsored a resolution for an independent prosecutor to investigate the Watergate break-in and called on President Nixon to “tell the whole truth” about Watergate (Naughton). However, Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s succession to the presidency ended Percy’s presidential ambitions. He would instead endorse Ford for a full term. Americans for Constitutional Action regarded Percy poorly, with him supporting their positions only 34% of the time during his career, with him at worst backing ACA positions only 7% of the time in 1969 and 71% at most in 1984. The liberal group Americans for Democratic Action, on the contrary, found a good deal more to like about him. He agreed with them on the issues 57% of the time and his agreement ranged from 35% in 1981 to 79% in 1968. DW-Nominate scores him at 0.099, lower than any Republicans serving in Congress today. Percy described himself as “a conservative on money issues but a liberal on people issues” (Hawkins, 2011).
In 1974, Percy introduced legislation to make 55 miles per hour the limit for national freeways as a fuel conservation measure and this became law in 1975, lasting until 1987. In 1975, Percy recommended John Paul Stevens for the Supreme Court to President Ford. Stevens was Ford’s only pick for the Supreme Court. In 1978, Percy, at first thought to have an easy road to reelection, was surprised when relatively unknown Democrat Alex Seith proved to be a more formidable challenger than he thought. Polling had originally put Percy at 20 points ahead of Seith, but Seith embraced some hardline anti-communist stances and fiscal conservatism, which resulted in some conservative defections and a Chicago Sun-Times poll had Seith up by seven points in the week before the election. Percy had to campaign hard in the last week, airing a blitz of TV ads and using his own money to fund his reelection (Time Magazine). Percy pulled through by roughly the reverse of the Chicago Sun-Times poll.
Final Term
Although often a liberal on foreign policy including voting for the Panama Canal Treaties, he also tried to push through an amendment to make clear to China in 1979 that aggression to Taiwan would be considered against the interests of U.S. national security. The amendment failed to pass, but Percy’s pushing of this amendment was a clear indicator that he at least wanted to appear tougher on the international stage. The 1980 election would elevate him to the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee. Despite his chairmanship, his historical approach to foreign relations was considerably different from that of the Reagan Administration, and President Reagan often went to Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) instead for help on his foreign policy initiatives. Percy, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall of the party’s direction, was a bit more accommodating to Reagan Republicanism than he would have been in the past. However, he maintained a significant degree of independence, and in 1981 he spearheaded opposition to the construction of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, a project that Reagan had gotten behind and environmentalists had gone against. Ironically, one of the ways in which he did help Reagan harmed him when he sought reelection. In 1981, Percy had voted for President Reagan’s sale of Airborne Warning and Control Systems radar planes to Saudi Arabia, which supporters of Israel had opposed as a potential threat to the nation’s security. Percy also crossed Israel and its supporters the next year when he condemned Israel’s invasion of Lebanon (Broder). Due to Percy’s sometimes critical stance on Israel, he was now a target for defeat. It also didn’t help that Percy had once described Yasser Arafat as a “relative moderate” (Cornwell). Despite President Reagan coming to Illinois to campaign for him, the Israel factor as well as Illinois having a weak economy and becoming an increasingly Democratic state, resulted in his narrow 1984 defeat for reelection by liberal Democratic Congressman Paul Simon. Percy, like the man he beat for reelection, had served three terms. Percy’s loss has been interpreted by some as having significant future implications as it showed the power of the pro-Israel lobby.
References
Broder, J. (2003, December 10). The battle of the Mideast lobbies. NBC News.
Clymer, A. (2011, September 17). Charles Percy, Former Ill. Senator, Is Dead at 91. The New York Times.
Retrieved from
Cornwell, R. (2011, September 22). Charles Percy: Politician hailed early in his career as the Republicans’ answer to John F. Kennedy. The Independent.
To Agree to That Portion of a Percy Amendment to S. 917 Which Adds to the Stated Purpose of Grants to Improve Law Enforcement the Purpose of Recruiting and Training of Community Service Officers to Assist Police in Discharge of Certain Duties. Voteview.
John F. Kennedy, the man who defeated the Battle Act
By 1951, the Cold War had heated up quite a bit with the Korean War, and as part of the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act, a provision was included by Rep. Laurie C. Battle (D-Ala.), which prohibited foreign aid to any nations that traded with the USSR. Although this was accepted in the heat of the Korean War, over time internationalists thought that this tied the president’s hands excessively when it came to Cold War maneuvering. India, for instance, sold a small amount of Thorium nitrate to China in 1953 after a deal fell through with the US, prohibited under the Battle Act for receiving aid. India was a tricky nation for the US to deal with at the time as it was one of the non-aligned nations, and its government under Jawaharlal Nehru was left-wing, nationalizing many industries and subjecting others to tight bureaucratic regulations. Yet, India was not a nation that the United States wanted to make a foe either, even though they were more aligned with Pakistan at the time, which was with the Western Bloc. Multiple efforts were made subsequently to cut aid to India, including a successful one in 1955 cutting $10 million by a vote of 68-16 on July 22nd, and an effort by staunchly anti-Communist Senator Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) to cut aid to India by 50% the following year which was rejected 23-56 on June 29th.
Given complications with India as well as Stalin no longer being a factor in the USSR, it was thought that perhaps American aid to Soviet satellite nations may push them to break way from Soviet control. This thought was shared by President Dwight Eisenhower and Senator John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who sponsored such a proposal. The Kennedy Amendment stipulated that aid could be extended to these nations if the President believed that it would loosen the grip of “Sino-Soviet domination” (Time Magazine). This proposal was also endorsed by Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. However, Eisenhower could not wave a wand for this provision to come into law, as it had to go through Congress. Although it is true that many Republicans lined up to support Eisenhower on foreign aid, less were willing to support granting aid to communist nations, and these included the previously mentioned Bridges as well as Senate Minority Leader William F. Knowland (R-Calif.) and Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.). All three were influential and willing to vote against foreign aid cuts, but they were not willing to provide aid to Soviet satellites. Dirksen and Bridges had voted against Eisenhower’s nomination of Chip Bohlen as Ambassador to the USSR in 1953 as they regarded him as too accommodating to the Soviets and all three voted against censuring Joseph McCarthy in 1954. These three pressured Eisenhower with the threat of foreign aid cuts to back down on revision of the Battle Act, with him instead calling for the measure as a separate bill instead of an amendment to Mutual Security legislation. Senator Knowland’s motion to table Kennedy’s amendment prevailed by a single vote, and Eisenhower being on record opposing Kennedy’s amendment undoubtedly sunk it. However, President Eisenhower would back a separate bill to revise the Battle Act the following year, which met an easier time in a significantly more Democratic Senate. However, the House declined to act. President Kennedy tried again as president in 1961 with a separate bill that passed the Senate 45-36, but the House once again declined to act. However, the Battle Act itself was ended as the Mutual Security program was replaced with the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 later in the year, and this measure stipulated that the president could provide aid to any Communist nation if he regarded it as vital to the security of the United States.
References
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954, Africa and South Asia, Volume XI, Part 2. State Department Office of the Historian.
HR 12181. Mutual Security Act of 1958. Amendment to Strike Language Giving the President Authority to Approve Aid to Communist Nations Other Than Soviet Union, Communist China, and North Korea. Govtrack.
HR. 7724. Mutual Security Appropriations for Fiscal 1956. Committee Amendment to Reduce by $10 Million Funds for Development Assistance for India. Govtrack.
S. 1697. Give President Authority to Approve Economic Aid for Communist-Dominated Countries Other Than Soviet Union & Those in the Far East When Important for National Security. Govtrack.
* – This source has an error on the vote of Nebraska senators, it was Hazel Abel who voted to censure McCarthy while the hardcore conservative Roman Hruska voted against.
The Congress: Retreat & Defeat. (1958, June 16). Time Magazine.
President Carter’s foremost achievement in the Middle East is widely regarded as the Camp David Accords, but a critical part of the strategy of the Carter Administration in the Middle East was for the United States to be friendly with all the Middle Eastern nations that they could. After all, OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) had flexed its economic muscle in October 1973 with an oil embargo in response to the Nixon Administration and other nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the US shipment of arms having been credited with saving the nation. This produced an oil shock in the United States that resulted in oil shortages and higher prices and ended in March 1974. The US thus sought to find ways to improve their relations with Arab nations while continuing their historic support for Israel. One of these ways was through military sales.
Israel had asked the Carter Administration in early 1978 to sell it 25 McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagles, but the Administration only agreed to 15 as well as 75 F-16s, which were less powerful models of military aircraft. Egypt was to get 50, and Saudi Arabia 60 F-15s, the total sale amounting to $4.8 billion (Hovey). Israel had previously been sold 25, so their total arsenal of F-15s would stand at 40 by 1981, when deliveries were to occur. The Carter Administration had in mind a balance of power in the Middle East with the inclusion of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. However, this was before the Camp David Accords and advocacy groups for Israel saw this arrangement as on net against its interests, fearing that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would use their F-15s against Israel, and campaigned against it. How the politics of the Middle East looked in 1978 as compared to today is a marked contrast; the foremost critic of Israel in the Senate at the time was North Carolina’s Jesse Helms (he would change his tune after the 1984 election), while liberals tended to be the strongest defenders of Israel. Liberal Republican Lowell Weicker of Connecticut issued a scathing critique of this new approach in May 1978, accusing Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski of exchanging a “balance of power” approach for a “world order” approach, and that Jews were an obstacle to this, darkly warning that “We know from history that time and again, when national leaders ran into difficulties, they found it convenient to blame their problems on the Jews. And we know what were the results” (Wald). However, Carter had more to contend with on his own side of the aisle in opposition. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), for instance, commented that “It certainly seems to be an ill‐timed intrusion into the peacemaking process” (Hovey). This measure also met the total opposition of Rep. Clarence Long (D-Md.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations.
Opponents introduced Senate Continuing Resolution 86 to disapprove of the sale, and there was considerable support for the resolution. In response, President Carter wrote a letter to the Senate, urging them to accept the deal, arguing, “The long-term interests of Israel are served by the proposed sales to Egypt and Saudia Arabia. It is in Israel’s interest to encourage the forces of moderation in the Middel East, and to promote their close relationship with the United States. It would not serve Israel’s interest if we were to fail to keep bi-partisan commitments, made by the prior Administration as well as by mine, to provide aircraft for the defense of Saudi Arabia. It would be against Israel’s interest if moderate nations are brushed aside by the United States, opening vast possibilities for the intrusion of hostile influences” (Carter).
On May 15, 1978, the Senate voted on the resolution disapproving of the sale, and they were persuaded of the Carter Administration’s position, with the resolution failing 44-54 (D 33-27; R 11-26; I 0-1). The conservative Americans for Constitutional Action counted a “yea” on this resolution as against their position while the liberal Americans for Democratic Action counted a “yea” as for their position. This was one issue in which conservatives and the Carter Administration were in accord, with Senate conservatives by and large backing the sale, and even some normally quite liberal people went to bat for Carter, including Maine’s Edmund Muskie and South Dakota’s George McGovern. Senator John J. Sparkman (D-Ala.), the aging chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and 1952 candidate for vice president, came to the sale’s defense. However, a young Joe Biden of Delaware, who had been the first of the Democratic senators to endorse Jimmy Carter in the 1976 primary, voted for the resolution, as did Frank Church of Idaho, who would succeed Sparkman as chairman and had been a strong supporter of the Panama Canal Treaties. Neither Egypt nor Saudi Arabia would use their planes to attack Israel, as opponents of the sale had feared as a possibility, and Israel would make great use of F-15s in military operations. The Reagan Administration, interestingly enough, would have a similar controversy surrounding military aircraft sales to the Middle East only three years later, and would have an even tougher battle on the matter. However, that’s a post for another time.
References
Carter, J. (1978, May). Letter to Members of Congress on Middle East Arms Sales. Jewish Virtual Library.
Hovey, G. (1978, February 15). U.S. Plans First Jet Sale to Cairo, Reduces Israeli Order for Craft; Saudis Get 60. The New York Times.
Retrieved from
To Agree to S. Con. Res. 86, The Resolution Expressing Disapproval of the President’s Proposal to Sell Aircraft and Related Defense Articles to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Govtrack.
In 1903, the US sought to carve an interoceanic canal in Central America, and negotiated the Hay-Herran Treaty with Colombia, which at the time had Panama as a province. However, the Colombian legislature rejected the treaty, and the US subsequently gave support to the cause of Panamanian independence, which was declared that year and recognized by the US, resulting in the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which granted the US the rights to a canal zone in perpetuity, and Panama getting $10 million from the US as well as an annual rental payment. The Canal Zone that resulted was an American enclave in the otherwise sovereign nation of Panama, and tensions rose between Canal Zoners and Panamanians over the next sixty years, and this resulted in two more treaties in 1936 and 1955.
Cold War tensions in Central and South America changed the political equation, and on January 9, 1964, an anti-American riot occurred at the canal after a scuffle between American and Panamanian high school students and Canal Zone police resulted in the tearing of a deeply symbolic Panamanian flag. The matter of who instigated the scuffle is a subject of dispute to this day. The riot resulted in the deaths of 4 US soldiers and at least 22 Panamanians. One of the deaths of the soldiers was accidental, and among the Panamanian deaths, some were killed by Canal Zone police after demonstrators threw rocks in response to tear gassing, but at least six were killed in a fire set by Panamanian rioters. This event resulted in the Panamanian government breaking off diplomatic relations with the US, to be renewed only when negotiations were opened for a new treaty regarding the Panama Canal, and President Johnson started negotiations. Although an agreement on three treaties was reached in 1967, political uncertainty in Panama resulted in a setback. The talks, however, continued during the Nixon and Ford Administrations. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger advised President Ford that “If these [Canal] negotiations fail, we will be beaten to death in every international forum and there will be riots all over Latin America” (Department of State). Gerald Ford was thus in favor of relinquishing the Panama Canal during the 1976 campaign. However, Jimmy Carter signaled opposition at the time, pledging not to surrender “practical control of the Panama Canal any time in the foreseeable future” (Department of State). Despite Carter’s initial opposition, his advisors were for it, and they ended up convincing him to be for it too.
The Carter Administration finalized the talks with Panama, signing two treaties on September 7, 1977. The first was that the 1903 treaty was to be scrapped, that the Canal Zone would cease to exist as a separate entity on October 1, 1979, and that the US would turn over control of the Panama Canal by December 31, 1999. The second was that the Panama Canal would be neutral and that the US would have the authority to defend its neutrality with military force. Thus, the US sought to ensure instead of ownership in perpetuity, use in perpetuity.
Carter managed to get the support of Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.V.) and Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.). For both men, neither among the staunchest partisans in their respective parties, this was an early test of their leadership abilities, as this was the first session of Congress that both men were their party leaders. As Byrd would recount, it was his “trial by fire” (U.S. Senate). Baker definitely had a lot more to lose; he was up for reelection in 1978, and he had presidential aspirations for 1980. Byrd, on the other hand, had been reelected in 1976. The political establishment of Washington faced major headwinds over this issue; 38 senators signaled their opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty, and public opinion was against, with only 23% of Americans supporting while 50% opposed. Ronald Reagan strongly opposed the treaties, famously stating, “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we’re going to keep it” (Lindsay). He had also used this issue against Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican primary, and Reagan had come close to winning. The Senate’s top opponent was James B. Allen (D-Ala.), an ally of George Wallace who frequently championed conservative causes and had even received one vote for vice president at the 1976 Republican National Convention. Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) declared that “The loss of this canal would contribute to the encirclement of the United States” (Department of State). Indeed, conservative legislators were suspicious of Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, who was thought to be favorable to communism.
Although 38 senators signaled their opposition to the Panama Canal Treaty, Democrat Ed Zorinsky, the first to be elected to the Senate from Nebraska since the Great Depression, indicated his private support for the treaty, but that Nebraskans were strongly opposed and that he would only vote for it if President Carter could convince Nebraskans to support it. Carter, Byrd, and Baker proceeded to lobby senators, and for the first time in the Senate’s history, the proceedings of the Senate for the treaty debate were live on radio in an effort to educate the public on the treaty (U.S. Senate). They also got support from a few unexpected people: famously conservative actor John Wayne as well as National Review’s William F. Buckley Jr. came out in favor of the treaties. Wayne was a friend of General Omar Torrijos, and accused Reagan of misinforming people in his arguments (Lindsay). One of the senators who played a significant role in trying to shape the treaty in the Senate was Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.). Arizona didn’t typically elect Democrats, and DeConcini’s election in 1976 had been the product of an unusually bitter Republican primary. He thus sought to add language that would make his vote in favor easier for him to explain to his conservative constituents, and proposed a reservation giving the United States the explicit right to use military force to defend the Panama Canal, which threatened Panamanian support for the treaty. Ultimately, this reservation was adopted but with language added that nothing in the treaty was to be “interpreted as a right” of intervention in the domestic affairs of Panama (Time Magazine). Senator Ed Brooke (R-Mass.) sought and got some minor technical reservations to the treaty, winning his vote. A senator with a bit of a different angle on this matter was James Abourezk (D-S.D.). Abourezk, who was staunchly liberal, was not actually against the treaty, but wanted to make a deal with President Carter that he would vote for the treaty if he would veto a bill deregulating natural gas, but Carter was not inclined to be cutting deals (Time Magazine). A senator the Carter Administration hotly pursued was California’s Republican S.I. Hayakawa. Hayakawa was an interesting fellow to say the least, and he had in his 1976 campaign said regarding the canal that we “stole it fair and square” (Lindsay). However, he turned out to be persuadable and Carter buttered up his ego by voicing an eagerness to consult Hayakawa on foreign policy regularly. He came to support the treaties, and, contrary to a budding consultative partnership forming, neither man spoke to the other again. One senator who was in a difficult position was Byrd’s West Virginia colleague, Jennings Randolph. Randolph was well into his seventies, and he was facing a tough reelection, with Republicans having recruited their strongest candidate yet against him in Governor Arch Moore. He was one of three or four senators would only vote for if his vote was needed, and it turns out it wasn’t. He would narrowly survive his reelection in 1978. The vote on the Neutrality Treaty on March 16th was 68-32 (D 52-9; R 16-22; I 0-1).
This would be followed up with an identical vote for the Panama Canal Treaty on April 18th. This was one more vote than was needed to ratify, and although this vote was close, the pro-side actually had three to four more senators they could have flipped if their votes were needed. This would be Senator Allen’s last battle; he died less than two months after Senate ratification of a heart attack on June 1st.
The Fight Over Funding and Consequences for Pro-Treaty Senators
This was a tough vote, and the battle wasn’t over. Congress had to approve funds to implement the Panama Canal Treaties, and by the time Congress was considering the measure, a midterm had occurred. While it wasn’t too shabby for Carter and the Democrats given the history of midterms, he nonetheless faced a less friendly Congress, and there had been senators who lost reelection at least in part over their vote for the Panama Canal Treaties. These included Democrats Floyd Haskell of Colorado, Dick Clark of Iowa, William Hathaway of Maine, Wendell Anderson of Minnesota, and Thomas J. McIntyre of New Hampshire. Republican Clifford Case of New Jersey, long a frequent dissenter from Republican positions, lost renomination to anti-tax activist Jeffrey Bell. This would also contribute to the Republican sweep of the Senate in 1980, with pro-treaty senators Herman Talmadge of Georgia (although his segregationist past and his censure for ethics violations hurt him more), John Culver of Iowa, John A. Durkin of New Hampshire, and Robert B. Morgan of North Carolina. Perhaps the most notable loss among the Democrats up for 1980, though, was Frank Church of Idaho, who had been the floor manager of the treaties and lost to Congressman Steve Symms, an ultra-conservative who was critical of the treaties. Minority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), however, managed to handily win his bid for a third term in 1978, but his leadership on the Panama Canal Treaties cost him any hope of winning a Republican nomination for president. The vote to implement the Panama Canal Treaties lacked the need for the 2/3’s majority the treaties had, and indeed it fell just short of 2/3’s when the Senate voted for it 63-32 on September 25, 1979. However, it also had to be approved by the House unlike with the treaties, and the House was a bit less persuadable. Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich.), for instance, was far from receptive, stating, “We in the House are tired of you people in the State Department going to your tea-sipping friends in the Senate. Now you good folks come up here and say you need legislation [to implement the treaties] after you ignored the House. If you expect me to vote for this travesty, you’re sorely in error” (Lindsay). Adoption of the conference report was on a narrower margin of 232-188 the following day, with President Carter signing the law on the day after. Carter said in his statement on signing the Panama Canal Act into law that the treaties “express the commitment of the United States to the belief that fairness, and not force, should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world” (The American Presidency Project).
Although a staunch opponent of the Panama Canal Treaties had been elected to the presidency in Ronald Reagan, he did not attempt to undo the treaties…he had enough on his plate in Central America with the situations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Although many analysts regard the Panama Canal Treaties as a success given the fears of what would happen if they were not ratified, there are still issues surrounding the canal, notably China’s growing influence through the subsidiary of a Chinese business managing two ports and Chinese businesses funding the construction of a new bridge over the canal.
References
Lindsay, J.M. (2011, March 16). TWE Remembers: The Fight over the Panama Canal Treaties. Council on Foreign Relations.
Although many obituaries on Jimmy Carter are laudatory, he is generally much better regarded for his post-presidency than his presidency. President Carter had an interesting way about him in being a source of dissatisfaction for both conservatives and liberals, although considerably more for the former than the latter. While obviously liberals would prefer his policies to those of his successor, the characterization of Carter as a liberal Democrat does have some contesting from them, and dissatisfaction with Carter was sufficient for Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to challenge him for renomination in 1980. One article that caught my eye was that from liberal columnist Timothy Noah writing for Politico, who regards labeling Carter as a liberal a mistake, and although the headline of his article seems to point to Carter being labeled a conservative, he gets labeled instead a liberal Southerner within the article. However, this seems to be considered some form of conservatism, although a lesser form than practiced by the GOP. Liberals not counting Carter as one of their own does have a degree of basis in one of the three standards I like to use in examining politicians, Americans for Democratic Action. ADA finds Carter to have embraced their position on issues 75% of the time, with him at lowest embracing their positions 63% of the time in the Senate in 1979 and at highest, the House in the same year at 90%. Although clearly backing what ADA regards as the “liberal” position 3 in 4 times is not acceptable to conservatives, it also unsatisfactory for liberals. One notable issue in which Carter sided with conservatives was in the retaining of the Hyde Amendment in 1977, a big no-no for contemporary Democrats. Interestingly, Carter by his own admission related better to Southern Democrats and Republicans than he did his liberal allies, who voted with him more (Noah). This is similar to Lyndon B. Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader. Although he was much more with liberals in how he voted than conservatives and he would prove even more liberal in his presidency, his personal relations with liberals were testier than his chummy relations with fellow Southern Democrats. What this translates to, however, is that liberals largely get the wheat and conservatives largely get the chaff. Carter agrees with Americans for Constitutional Action, ADA’s conservative counterpart, 13% of the time. However, there are a few interesting aspects to this judging of Carter, including on three occasions ADA and ACA taking the same position on an issue! This occurred twice for the Senate in 1980, when both ADA and ACA objected to Senator Dan Moynihan’s (D-N.Y.) proposal for federal funds for private school tuitions and supported Senator Jake Garn’s (R-Utah) amendment maintaining the status quo for housing instead of a new housing subsidy program. President Carter was on the same page as both organizations. In the House that year, both ADA and ACA approved of Representative Samuel Devine’s (R-Ohio) motion to recommit and thus kill the bill establishing the Energy Mobilization Board. This board, if put in place, would have empowered the president to override environmental laws on a federal, state and local level. While overturning environmental laws might appeal to conservatives eager to promote development for economic growth, the full implications of what this could establish for federalism (meaning proper relations between the federal government and states) became clear to most by 1980. Liberal Democrats found this objectionable for two reasons. The first is the environmental angle, and the second was the very real possibility at the time that came true that the next president would be Ronald Reagan. Contrary to the position of both organizations, Jimmy Carter opposed killing the bill. I always find these incidents in which on major issues the most conservative and the most liberal people align to be fascinating. Those weren’t the only votes ADA counted that are questionable from an ideological standpoint. Counting the vote for lifting controls on gas by 1985 is questionable given that many conservatives opposed the proposal as too long retaining controls, and senators from the oil-rich Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas were against. If anything, this vote is a vote of the political center against the strong left and right. It should also be noted that DW-Nominate gives Jimmy Carter a score of -0.504, which is quite liberal indeed! However, it should be noted that I’ve noticed that the ideological bent of presidents does seem exaggerated by this standard and this is because presidents don’t weigh in on every or sometimes even a lot of issues that Congress votes on that have ideological salience. I will proceed with examining Carter’s stances on the issues of his time.
Foreign Policy
Jimmy Carter was a supporter of the postwar consensus surrounding foreign aid, backing foreign aid bills and he also sought to present to the world you might say a kinder, gentler United States. He supported sanctions for the white minority ruled Rhodesia in 1977 and opposed lifting them to support the government of the black majority government of Bishop Abel Muzorewa elected in 1979, opening the path for China-backed Robert Mugabe’s election in an election fraught with violence in 1980. Mugabe, although considered a symbol of Pan-Africanism, brought Zimbabwe to ruin with his economic and social policies. Although many people point to the Camp David Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and Egypt, as a great accomplishment of the Carter Administration, the more consequential action of his was the Panama Canal Treaties. The first treaty scrapped the old 1903 treaty that granted the US rights in perpetuity over the canal, instead turning over control to Panama by December 31, 1999, and the second was the neutrality treaty, which mandated that the canal be neutral and that the US was authorized to militarily intervene to enforce neutrality. Carter also ceased support to the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, which allowed the Marxist Sandinistas to have a successful coup and he then supported providing aid to the new government. Carter also dropped support for the Shah of Iran in the fall of 1978 after Black Friday, in which 88 religious demonstrators were gunned down for failing to disperse, and the national strike of October which shut down the nation’s petroleum industry. Unlike Rhodesia, Nicaragua, and the Panama Canal Treaties, there was no Congressional vote regarding the situation in Iran.
Domestic Policy
Carter was fairly strong with liberals on domestic policy. He supported the creation of the Department of Education, opposed weakening an increase in the minimum wage, opposed maintaining the requirement that food stamp recipients pay for part of it, supported a windfall profits tax, supported retaining the 1969 credit control law, and backed conservation measures reserving lands in Alaska, California, and Idaho for national parks and wildlife refuges. Carter also backed a set of mandatory and voluntary price controls for the healthcare industry in response to inflation, which died in Congress. He opposed conservative efforts to end price controls on natural gas in 1977 on new onshore that year and new offshore by 1982, instead supporting a compromise proposal the following year to end price controls on all newly discovered gas by 1985. Although Carter indicated support for budget reductions, he opposed several conservative proposals at budget reduction and budget balancing. Although Carter supported trucking deregulation and opposed an effort by Senator Warren Magnuson (D-Wash.) to weaken it with an amendment placing a “burden of proof” on applicants for a trucking certificate to demonstrate that their proposed service works towards present or future public needs, he also opposed allowing Congress to check the executive on this matter by having the ability to vote to overturn regulations that might stem from the legislation. Carter was also opposed to efforts to end gas rationing and supported bailing out the Chrysler Corporation. Carter did oppose a consumer co-op bank bill in 1977, but backed a subsequent proposal. Despite being portrayed as a fiscal conservative, Carter backed Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Giamo’s (D-Conn.) budget for fiscal year 1981 increasing the deficit.
Jimmy Carter on Civil Rights and Women’s Rights
Carter supported strengthening the fair housing act in a way that gave authority for enforcement to administrative law judges instead of jury trials and supported the Equal Rights Amendment, with the latter he signed into law the measure extending the deadline for its ratification to 1982, but no additional states ratified between then and the deadline. Ronald Reagan had supported the ERA while California’s governor but by 1980 he had turned against it, and Reagan would sign a measure strengthening the fair housing act that provided for jury trials for violations in 1988.
Jimmy Carter on Military Issues
On military issues, Carter had a mixed record. He opposed the construction of five B-1 Bombers and managed to get support for this from some politicians who were usually defense hawks such as Armed Services Committee chairman John C. Stennis (D-Miss.) and Appropriations Committee chairman George Mahon (D-Tex.). Carter tended to oppose stronger measures to cut military spending, including Rep. Ted Weiss’s (D-N.Y.) 1977 attempt to delete all funds for the neutron bomb and Rep. Paul Simon’s (D-Ill.) 1980 effort to delete funds for the MX Missile Basing System.
Jimmy Carter was more liberal than Ronald Reagan on every issue during the 1980 election…except the institution of the Selective Service. Carter was receptive to arguments that this measure was needed in case the US had to mobilize for a full-scale war. Although instituting the selective service is the conservative position, there were numerous conservatives who opposed it as opening the door to the government viewing the nation’s youth as their property, and Reagan was among them. Liberals were opposed to this measure, not wanting to potentially bring back the draft, with many of the Vietnam War doves against. However, after the 1980 election he would decide instead to form a commission to investigate the issue and then he would decide whether to continue supporting ending it. They advised him to keep the selective service, and he did. In 1978, Carter backed sales of aircraft and other munitions to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, but supporters of Israel were opposed to this measure as on balance benefiting its at the time enemies. Indeed, the original arrangement had Israel being sold more arms and Egypt and Saudi Arabia were not in the arrangement. The Senate rejected the effort to overturn this sale, the effort being supported by ADA and opposed by ACA. Conservatives at this time supported an approach to the Middle East that was comprehensive…or backing both Israel and Islamic nations in the region.
I think that with this I have largely if not entirely dismantled the notion that Carter was not a liberal. Perhaps you could say he was a moderate liberal as that’s what ADA puts him at, but ACA and DW-Nominate find him to be considerably stronger in liberalism than Timothy Noah gives him credit.
References
ADA’s 1977 Voting Record. Americans for Democratic Action.
The Warren Commission presents their report to President Johnson
While today few who investigate the Kennedy assassination walk away believing that the Warren Commission was adequate, the outcome of the Warren Commission initially seemed uncontroversial. Time Magazine’s (1964) appraisal was even laudatory, “In its final form, the Commission’s report was amazing in its detail, remarkable in its judicious caution and restraint, yet utterly convincing in its conclusions. The wonder was that the commission took such a long time to complete its report but that it did so much so swiftly”. However, even within the commission itself there was a lot of disagreement despite Earl Warren getting a unanimous vote on the report. This unanimous vote papered over the fact that three of the commissioners did not agree with the single bullet theory: Richard Russell, John Sherman Cooper, and Hale Boggs. Russell mistrusted CIA testimony based on past dealings with the agency and was deeply unsatisfied with what he saw as the lack of depth with the Warren Commission’s investigation (Wilkes, 3). History would vindicate Russell’s mistrust and criticism. Furthermore, in 1970, he told The Washington Post that he believed that Oswald had encouragement to kill Kennedy and asserted that the members of the Commission “weren’t told the truth about Oswald”. Russell also reiterated that he supported the conclusion that Oswald was the assassin. Interestingly, LBJ agreed with Russell when he expressed his disbelief that a single bullet went through Kennedy and Connally (The New York Times, 1994). This wasn’t the only conclusion that Johnson doubted on the commission. He also believed, contrary to the Warren Commission’s conclusion that no conspiracies foreign or domestic were responsible for Kennedy’s assassination, that Castro had masterminded the conspiracy (Davison). Commissioner John J. McCloy, whose long career was due in part to his mastery at building consensus, also did so with the final report of the Warren Commission. Although he initially had doubts about the single bullet theory, he came around to it, siding with Allen Dulles and Gerald Ford. However, the most influential figure to dissent from the Warren Commission would be one of the people who testified as a witness, Mark Lane.
Rush to Judgment
In 1966, the consensus bubble surrounding the Kennedy assassination burst with the publication of Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane. Lane had had a short stint in the New York State Assembly as a liberal Democrat whose candidacy was endorsed by Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt and had publicly expressed skepticism about Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt as far back as December 19, 1963, and subsequently twice testified before the Warren Commission. In this book, he serves essentially as the defense for Lee Harvey Oswald and challenged numerous narratives of the Kennedy assassination, including the “single-bullet theory”, questioned that Oswald was the killer of officer J.D. Tippit based on a witness testimony of the perpetrator that was inconsistent with Oswald’s appearance, and introduced witness accounts of hearing shots coming from a nearby grassy knoll. It should be noted that of the witnesses of the Kennedy assassination, less than 12% heard the shot as coming from the grassy knoll, with more reporting hearings shots either from the Texas School Book Depository or another building (National Archives, 492). Earl Warren himself did not think highly of Lane. He dismissed him as “a publicity seeker who played fast and loose with the subject” (Cray, 430-431). This view on him was bolstered by JFK assassination journalist and researcher Gene Russo. Russo found that what Lane wrote was “completely inaccurate, there were a lot of falsehoods in it…it was total fiction” and that he had been fed disinformation without his knowledge from a KGB source (The Mob Museum). Nonetheless, with the doubts that he presented to the public, Lane became the father of JFK conspiracy theories, and his aim to sow doubt over the Warren Commission’s conclusions was undoubtedly a roaring success by the 1970s. In 1976, 81% of the public did not believe that Oswald acted alone according to a Gallup poll (Swift). Lane would write a total of ten books on the subject, with the last one being Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA (2013).
Criticisms of the Commission
One of the major criticisms of the Warren Commission was that the investigation was incomplete, with numerous witnesses not interviewed and questions remaining to this day about Lee Harvey Oswald’s visit to Mexico City several weeks before the assassination. Indeed, the commission did not make a conclusion on Oswald’s motives to kill Kennedy. In Mexico City, he had visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies in an effort to get a visa to Cuba. What Oswald said at those embassies and whether he had indicated that he wanted to kill Kennedy to them or whether he had been encouraged to do so is up for debate. Indeed, per author and researcher Philip Shenon, this was never sufficiently investigated by the CIA, FBI, or the Warren Commission. FBI Director Clarence Kelley wrote in his memoirs in 1987 that he believed that Mexico City held the key to Oswald’s motives, writing “Oswald’s stay in Mexico City apparently shaped the man’s thinking irrevocably” (Shenon). Furthermore, there was a desire to provide closure for the American public in time for the 1964 election with the conclusion that had pretty quickly been reached by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. As Edward Jay Epstein wrote of the Warren Commission in Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (1966), “sincerely convinced that the national interest would best be served by the termination of rumors, and predisposed by its make-up and by pressure of time not to search more deeply, failed to answer some of the essential questions about the tragedy” (Wilkes, 4).
Other major criticisms of the commission stem from the testimony of the FBI and the CIA, as both organizations were seeking to cover their operations and behinds. The FBI concealed how much was known about Oswald, with Hoover testifying under oath that “there was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to the president” (Shenon). However, the Kennedy assassination was not the first time Oswald had come up on the FBI’s radar. In 1975, FBI director Clarence Kelley revealed that the FBI’s Dallas office had only days before the Kennedy assassination received a threatening letter from Oswald in response to FBI agent James Hosty’s inquiries into his wife, Marina (The New York Times, 1975). Two days after the Kennedy assassination, Hosty destroyed the letter on the orders of his superior.
The CIA did not tell the Warren Commission that they had been surveilling Oswald in Mexico City and they also omitted that they had engaged in numerous operations to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. Indeed, these multiple attempts on Castro’s life was why President Johnson suspected that Cuba was behind President Kennedy’s assassination. The presence of Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission was for the purpose of making sure that other Commissioners didn’t ask CIA operatives questions that would imperil operations.
Journalist and professor Edward Jay Epstein discovered after the Warren Commission Report’s release that of the seven commissioners, Russell, Cooper, and Boggs disagreed with the “single bullet theory”, believing that separate bullets had penetrated Kennedy’s throat and hit Governor Connally (Bickel). None of the three, however, had made secret their issues with the commission.
John Sherman Cooper publicly criticized the conclusion of the Warren Commission as “premature and inconclusive” and doubted that Kennedy and Governor Connally were hit by the same bullet, or the “single-bullet theory” and told Robert and Ted Kennedy in 1964 that he didn’t believe Oswald had acted alone (Simkin, Cooper). Cooper did, however, agree with the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was the only assassin in a 1980 interview. He said, “We’ve all said if someone could find something that we didn’t, we want it to be found because the truth is what we want. But I think all of us believe and I still believe, even after the last investigation by the House, that our decision will stand. There are some places in it which are hard to explain but every evidence pointed to Oswald as the sole assassin and no conspiracy” (Gerth).
Hale Boggs of Louisiana was critical of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in this matter. He believed that Hoover had “lied his eyes out” to the commission (Simkin, Boggs). By the early 1970s Boggs was an overall critic of J. Edgar Hoover, and his criticisms would be bolstered by revelations about the FBI’s activities after his death. Incidentally, John Connally, whose injuries were severe enough for him to have nearly joined Kennedy, also doubted the single bullet theory.
Earl Warren suppressed key evidence from other commissioners. For instance, he was the only commissioner to see Kennedy autopsy photos and did not allow the commission to interview certain people Oswald knew in Mexico, notably an employee at the Cuban consulate in Mexico, Sylvia Duran. Warren would not hear her testimony with the rationale that the commission could not count on truthful testimony from communists, which may have shed more light on his activities there and what he was talking to the Cubans about (Andrews). However, Warren kept all but one investigator in the dark that the commission had managed to interview Fidel Castro, who denied all involvement. So much for no testimony from communists!
Gerald Ford, His Defense of the Warren Commission, and His Role
Gerald Ford would consistently defend the conclusions of the Warren Commission. On February 5, 1999, he issued the following statement, “In 1964, the Warren Commission unanimously decided:
Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin, and
The Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.
As a member of the Commission, I endorsed those conclusions in 1964 and fully agree now as the sole surviving Commission member” (UA University Archives).
He would do so until the day he died. Interestingly, in 1997 it was revealed that Ford had pushed for changing the description of where the bullet entered Kennedy from “A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly below the shoulder to the right of the spine” to “A bullet had entered the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine”, with the final report reading, “A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine” (UPI). Ford had sought to alter the description to make it higher on his body to give further credence to the “single bullet theory”. Ford regarded the change as minor, but this certainly added to the view that the single bullet theory was cooked up. What’s more, while the CIA had a man on the commission in Allen Dulles, Ford was the FBI’s man on the commission, secretly providing information to Hoover about its proceedings (Andrews).
It is entirely possible that the Warren Commission got the big picture conclusion correct that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, but there was an undisputably political nature to the investigation, and numerous stones were left unturned in the process. The incompleteness of the Warren Commission would result in the also flawed House Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s and the proliferation of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. The effort to tamp down on rumors long run completely and utterly backfired. One element that was not ruled on in the investigation, but we now have information for is Oswald’s motivation.
Motivation of Lee Harvey Oswald
I do not wish to dive too deeply into the possibility of conspiracy, as that itself would require A LOT more coverage than this post, but I do want to say that the Warren Commission was quite incomplete and this is due not only to some self-imposed limitations by Chairman Earl Warren, the FBI and CIA misleading in their testimony, and failing to ascertain a motive for Oswald. The failure to ascertain a motive and the misleading by the CIA, however, are connected.
Ever since the Warren Commission’s conclusion, a convincing motive for Oswald has since been revealed. There is clear evidence indicating that he was a staunch supporter of Castro’s communist regime in Cuba, and this was a known fact to the Warren Commission. Indeed, he was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and there is a photograph that exists of him passing out literature from said committee in New Orleans. He also invented the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and despite his claims of having 35 members, he was the only member. Oswald had engaged in activities he’d hoped would please the Cubans, including taking a shot at the right-wing activist General Edwin A. Walker.
Seven weeks before the Kennedy assassination, Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico, and he went to the Soviet and Cuban embassies, including meeting the KGB’s chief of assassinations in the region. The CIA as well as Cuban intelligence were monitoring him, and the Cubans had been keeping tabs on him since the past year. It has since been alleged, particularly by author and journalist Gus Russo, who wrote in his book on the Kennedys and Castros, Brothers in Arms, that representatives of the Cuban government egged him on to kill Kennedy, although they did not act beyond that. LBJ, as I noted earlier, thought that the Cubans were behind the assassination and feared that if the American public came to that conclusion that they would demand vengeance, potentially resulting in nuclear war. This, plus the CIA not wanting the public to know about its multiple operations to assassinate Castro, were reasons for the possibility of conspiracy to be tossed and for the CIA to mislead the Warren Commission. Furthermore, the FBI and CIA wished to avoid potential blame for failing to prevent President Kennedy’s assassination.
References
Andrews, E. (2013, November 18). 9 Things You May Not Know About the Warren Commission. History Channel.
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 