Let me get this out of the way…no this is not a post alleging that Ronald Reagan was a liberal or a RINO as president or any other such half-baked revisionism. This is about the early phase of Ronald Reagan’s public life, when Reagan was in fact a liberal.
Reagan’s Early Life
Ronald Reagan’s early upbringing was influenced by the politics and religion of his parents. His mother was a devoutly religious woman and his father, Jack, a traveling salesman, was a staunchly populistic Democrat who supported the progressive causes of his day, strongly opposed the KKK and racial and religious bigotry, and would support the New Deal. As a young man, Ronald Reagan would let black college football players stay at his folks’ place when no establishment in his town would let them stay the night. Reagan’s experiences in young adulthood motivated him to stick with a liberal Democratic philosophy; after all, President Roosevelt’s work relief programs had provided his father and older brother with jobs (Cannon). In 1934, Reagan started his work as a sports radio announcer for WHO in Iowa. Interestingly, heading up the news section at WHO was H.R. Gross, would later become a notorious skinflint in Congress and support Reagan’s rise in politics. When asked in 1984 at a visit from President Reagan if he thought that Reagan had the chops to be president at the time, he responded, “No. He was a Democrat. He belonged to the wrong party” (UPI). After his time in radio, Reagan would move to Los Angeles and got a contract with Warner Brothers after a successful screen test. His enthusiasm for liberal causes was strong but it was based in a strong idealism and the personal magnetism of FDR appealed to him greatly. Writer Howard Fast even claimed that Reagan attempted to join the Communist Party in 1938, but was turned down as he was thought to be a lightweight and unreliable (Geller). This story is, however, disputed.
Reagan remained committed to FDR during his presidency and voted for him every time. By 1946, he concluded that the communists were a force of evil to be reckoned with much like the Nazis had been, but this approach was not well-received by many of the actors who had previously been in full support of his positions. He worked with actress Olivia de Havilland to counter communists in the Independent Citizens’ Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, which was ostensibly a pro-FDR group, but was headed by secret communist Hannah Dorner who with the communist leadership made the organization always side with the USSR despite a primarily non-communist membership (Fund). Ultimately, Reagan, de Havilland, James Roosevelt, and other prominent figures who lent credibility through their membership to the communist leaders left the organization, rendering the committee influentially inert.
The following year, he became president of the Screen Actors’ Guild and to this day he is the only president to have ever led a union. Reagan became a member of the newly established liberal Americans for Democratic Action (which would staunchly oppose his presidency) as well as United World Federalists. As president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, he clashed with communists and pro-communists in Hollywood, who were using underhanded methods to gain control of unions and had been trying to destroy the Stagehand’s Union (which was an anti-communist bulwark). Reagan would testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities as a friendly witness in 1949. In 1948, he campaigned for the election of Harry S. Truman for a full term and Hubert Humphrey for the Senate. In a 1948 speech for the pair, he criticized the Republican 80th Congress’s performance, condemning the Taft-Hartley Act (permitting states to adopt “right to work” laws) and citing the Congress’s blocking an expansion of Social Security and failure to enact civil rights legislation as among their shortcomings (YouTube).
Although Ronald Reagan was initially supportive of liberal Rep. Helen Gahagan Dougals’s bid for the Senate in California in 1950 and contributed $50, his attitude shifted during the election. Towards the end of the election, he switched his support to Rep. Richard Nixon (Nixon Foundation). By this point, Reagan was although not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, not the strong liberal he had once been. In 1952, he again broke from his party in his decision to support Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. Reagan’s increasing conservatism would develop throughout his time hosting the General Electric Theater anthology series from 1954 to 1962, as he would often talk politics with conservative GE executives, who would persuade him to take up the conservative mantle. In 1962, Reagan officially switched his party registration to Republican. Reagan’s biographer Lou Cannon summed up Reagan’s transformation from liberal to conservative as being due to “ increased wealth, and the higher taxes that accompanied it; conflicts with leftist union leaders as an official of the Screen Actors Guild, and exposure in his General Electric days to a growing view that the federal government, epitomized by the New Deal, was stifling economic growth and individual freedom”.
References
Cannon, L. Ronald Reagan: Life in Brief. UVA Miller Center.
On July 18, 1957, octogenarian Congressman James B. Bowler of Illinois’ 7th district, based in Chicago, died. Running in his place was Roland Libonati (1897-1991), controversial lawyer who represented Al Capone during his heyday and had connections and friendships with the mob in general.
In 1930, Libonati, often known as “Libby”, was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives, serving until 1934, and then was elected again in 1940, serving a single term. He was then elected to the Illinois Senate, where within his five years of service he rose to be minority whip. and in 1940 secured election to the Illinois Senate, where he rose in the Senate leadership to be minority whip. Throughout his career, Libonati was, in addition to his connections to mobsters, known for his malapropisms, which included calling Slavic voters “Slavishes”, speaking of late autumn as the time of year when “the moss is on the pumpkin” and “I am trying not to make any honest mistakes” (Time Magazine).
When running for the special election in 1957, his victory was never in doubt given the district’s staunchly Democratic makeup and the firm grip the Daley machine had in the district. His relations with mobsters were maintained right to his time in Congress, with Time Magazine (1957) noting that “Libonati is still on chummy terms with Capone henchmen such as Tony Accardo and Paul (“the Waiter”) Ricca, who are really “charitable” and “patriotic” fellows, according to Libby”. During his career in Congress, Libonati sat on the House Judiciary Committee, which considered civil rights legislation Libonati’s record was strongly liberal; he sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 93% of the time and the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action only 3% of the time. His DW-Nominate score was a -0.415. The only major issue that Libonati opposed liberals regarding public power with the Hanford facility in Washington state. Libonati was considered a staunch man of the Daley machine, but his loyalty would be tested with a subject of which he was passionately in support: civil rights.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, Libonati was involved in the consideration of the civil rights bill, and he was for a very strong bill. The issue was that strong proposals in the past had either been filibustered to death in the Senate or had been watered down considerably. The hope of the Kennedy Administration and the leadership of the Judiciary Committee was to produce a bill that was strong but could also attract needed Republican votes. Although Libonati was pressured by President Kennedy and Mayor Daley to support the compromise bill, he voted with liberals for the stronger bill. After this, Libonati reported to a colleague that the Daley machine informed him that his career was over (Purdum, 144-145). This may not have been the only factor, however. The Cosa Nostra was reported to have ordered Libonati to retire, with the decision being made in late 1962 given him having fallen into disfavor by Salvatore Giancana (The Chicago Sun-Times Post-Dispatch). He was succeeded in Congress by Frank Annunzio, who is an interesting figure himself.
References
Gang Reported Forcing Out Rep. Libonati. (1964, January 15). The Chicago Sun-Times Post-Dispatch.
Purdum, T. (2014). An idea whose time has come: two presidents, two parties, and the battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company.
The year is 1956, and Senator Herman Welker is in a uniquely weak position. Although President Eisenhower writes a letter of endorsement of him, it is perceived as lukewarm, and furthermore he pointedly refuses to come to Idaho to campaign for him. In the world of politics, a lukewarm endorsement can be worse than no endorsement. Welker was a staunch ally of Senator Joseph McCarthy and not seen as an individual who could be relied upon by the Eisenhower Administration. Worse yet, as I covered in my last post, Welker’s behavior was noticeably increasingly erratic and his increasingly poor balance to many pointed to heavy drinking (it turned out to be a terminal brain tumor). Enter young Boise attorney Frank Church (1924-1984).
Church contrasted positively to Welker as well as the third-party nominee, Glen H. Taylor, who was extremely liberal. His campaign slogan was highly effective, “Idaho Will Be Proud of Frank Church”, and he also refused to engage in negative campaigning, rather contrasting his positions with those of Welker. Welker repeatedly voted to cut foreign aid and supported the Bricker Amendment while Church was an internationalist, Welker supported private power development while Church supported public power. Church was also greatly assisted in his campaigns and career by his wife, Bethine, whose influence was such that she would be commonly known as “Idaho’s third senator”. Although Eisenhower won Idaho convincingly with 61% of the vote, Welker ran 23 points behind him, with Church getting 56% of the vote. Something to bear in mind about Idaho at the time was that it was less conservative than than it is now. Democrats, for instance, from Democrat Compton White’s win of the 1st district in 1932 until Republican James McClure’s win of the district in 1966 were able to win the district in all elections save 1946 and 1950.
Relations with LBJ and Ideology
Church’s initial relations with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) were difficult because he voted for a Senate rule to curb the filibuster, and he was frozen out for six months. However, Church got back in Johnson’s good graces by agreeing to support two amendments to ease passage of civil rights legislation; the Anderson-Aiken Amendment striking the authority of the Attorney General to initiate 14th Amendment lawsuits under the bill, and co-sponsoring the O’Mahoney-Kefauver-Church Jury Trial Amendment to require jury trials in voting rights cases of criminal contempt, although Church was sure to include a proviso that required such juries not be segregated. He would prove himself in the Senate as a solid liberal, strongly supporting most New Frontier and Great Society programs, such as the Economic Opportunity Act, Medicare, Mass Transit legislation, and federal aid to education. Despite his earlier record supporting limiting amendments on civil rights legislation, he would not support Lyndon Johnson’s (D-Tex.) maneuvering to limit the Attorney General’s authority for the 1960 Civil Rights Act and voted for all of the 1960s civil rights laws. Although a liberal, he was not without exceptions. For example, in 1966, he supported both of Minority Leader Everett Dirksen’s (R-Ill.) proposed Constitutional amendments counteracting Warren Court decisions, namely on state legislative reapportionment and school prayer. He also supported the conservative position on some hot-button social issues, such as his opposition to strong gun control, his support for a federal death penalty, and for restricting federal funds for abortion. Church sided with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 17% of the time during his career, while he conversely sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 83% of the time. His DW-Nominate score was a -0.384. However, Church wasn’t a politician who merely catered to the political whims of his state.
Vietnam War Critic
Church became an early Senate critic of the Vietnam War along with Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), and his stance provoked enough dissatisfaction with him in Idaho that a recall effort was initiated by conservative Kootenai County commissioner Ron Rankin, but not only did this effort get snuffed when a federal court found that recall laws don’t apply to US senators but it also backfired on Church’s opponents as many Idahoans came to sympathize with the senator. In 1968, he won reelection with 60% of the vote, his best performance, against Congressman George Hansen. Church’s opposition to the Vietnam War continued into the Nixon Administration, and he became a legislative leader in opposition. In 1970, Church sponsored with John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.) the Cooper-Church Amendment, which if enacted would have blocked funds for US troops in and over Cambodia and Laos. While this amendment passed the Senate, it lost a vote in the House. Nonetheless, this was the first time that an amendment to limit the Vietnam War passed a House of Congress, and indeed, the first time the Senate had ever adopted a proposal to limit the president’s authority to deploy troops during a war. Church would also support the McGovern-Hatfield “End the War” Amendment that year, which if adopted would have set a timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam. He would get a successful amendment through in 1973 that he sponsored with Senator Clifford Case (R-N.J.) that barred any funds for further operations in Indochina (Vietnam), Laos, or Cambodia or off the shores of these nations after August 15, 1973. Faced with veto-proof margins of support, President Nixon reluctantly signed it into law on July 1st.
The Church Committee
On December 22, 1974, The New York Times published Seymour Hersh’s expose of CIA operations attempting assassinations on foreign officials, and this plus revelations about the domestic surveillance program of the US Army resulted in the Senate voting 82-4 to create a committee to investigate intelligence agencies (The Levin Center). This committee was chaired by Church, and vice-chaired by Senator John Tower (R-Tex.). This committee was one of three governmental bodies to investigate such activities, and this included the Rockefeller Commission in the Executive Branch as well as the Pike Committee in the House, but the Church Committee was the most successful of the three. This can be in part due to Church’s approach of seeking bipartisanship as well as pushing for consensus. The Church Committee’s investigations uncovered numerous operations that constituted abuses of power or were outright illegal. The FBI operation was COINTELPRO, that had agents infiltrate numerous groups, primarily left-wing, that they regarded as subversive (The Levin Center). The CIA had multiple operations exposed. These were Project MKUltra (CIA mind control experiments with LSD), Project HTLINGUAL (interception of mail to the USSR and China), Project MKNaomi (collaborating with the military to stockpile biological weapons without executive or legislative authority), Project Mockingbird (journalists working for the CIA to spread propaganda), and the “Family Jewels” (operations attempting to assassinate foreign officials) (The Levin Center). The National Security Agency was also found to have their own illicit operations. These were Project SHAMROCK (intercepting mail coming to and from the USSR and China) and Project MINARET (monitoring with the cooperation of telecommunication companies of numerous individuals on its “watchlist” including Senator Church himself) (The Levin Center). The CIA also opened the mail behind the back of the US Postal Service, including the mail of that of prominent US politicians. One of these was presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 (The New York Times, 1975). Nixon would ban the mail reading program during his administration. Also revealed was that the FBI from 1942 to 1968 conducted illegal burglaries at least 238 times against 14 targeted groups and individuals (The New York Times, 1975).
The Committee’s final report was unanimous. They concluded that “intelligence excesses, at home and abroad”, were not the “product of any single party, administration, or man”, but had been endemic from the administrations of FDR to Nixon and amped up with the Cold War (U.S. Senate). The committee issued 96 recommendations for change. Church would also that “The technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government … is within the reach of the government to know” (Healy, 2013). Reforms enacted after the Church Committee’s conclusion included President Ford’s Executive Order 11905 prohibiting political assassinations, included the establishment of permanent Select Senate and House Committees on Intelligence for oversight, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the limiting to ten-year terms of the post of FBI director so there couldn’t be a repeat of J. Edgar Hoover (The Levin Center).
Church for President
Critics of Church and the Church Committee asserted that this committee was a springboard for his presidential ambitions, and they weren’t necessarily wrong. In March 1976, he announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Although he won the primaries of Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and Oregon, there was too much momentum behind Jimmy Carter and he dropped out. Church would prove to be of great help to the new president.
Church and Carter
As an important member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Church was the floor manager of the Panama Canal Treaties and worked closely with the Carter Administration, Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), and Minority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) to get them ratified, as I had written about in an earlier posting. However, this did not mean that Church would always go along with Carter. He voted, for instance, to cancel the sale of jet fighters to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Another key collaborative effort between President Carter and Senator Church was the establishment of the Central Idaho Wilderness Act in 1980, conserving over 2 million acres of wilderness. However, this act was not popular in Idaho, nor were the Panama Canal Treaties, and the Anybody But Church Committee formed to defeat him in the next election, and Republican Congressman Steve Symms was their nominee.
The 1980 Election and The End
In 1980, Church faced his toughest challenge yet as he was up against the arch-conservative Symms who ran as a staunch supporter of Ronald Reagan. The election was very close, but Symms won by less than a point. With the departure of Church there left the last liberal to represent the state of Idaho in Congress and the last Democrat to represent it in the Senate, and he would practice international law after his term. Sadly, the fate of Frank Church bears some resemblance to that of his predecessor, Welker, in the sense that he would not have survived another term in the Senate and that he would die of a malignant tumor in his fifties.
On January 12, 1984, Church was hospitalized for what was discovered to be a malignant pancreatic tumor. Senator James McClure (R-Idaho) quickly introduced legislation to rename the wilderness established under his act “The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness” so he could be recognized before his death, and it was signed four weeks before Church’s passing on April 7th. The wilderness today is commonly known in the area as “The Frank”.
References
40th anniversary: The act that created the largest wilderness in the lower 48 and honored an Idaho lawmaker. (2020, July 23). Boise State University.
The 1952 election brought Dwight Eisenhower to the presidency as well as Republicans to a majority in Congress. One of Eisenhower’s policies was instead of public construction of dams, as had been the norm with the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, that there would be a partnership between government and private companies, with government using private companies to construct and own the dams generating power. This proved highly controversial in the West, and the proposal for constructing the Hells Canyon Dam was at the center of this controversy.
Hells Canyon is a deep canyon between Idaho, Oregon, and a small portion of Washington, and has the snake river, and was seen as a rich source of hydroelectric power. The Eisenhower Administration favored the Idaho Power Company constructing three dams to generate power, but this met strong opposition from Democrats. Unfortunately for the Republicans, there was more opposition than that among the public. In 1954, Oregon Republican Senator Guy Cordon, the last conservative to represent the state in the Senate, narrowly lost reelection to Democrat Richard Neuberger despite President Eisenhower coming to Oregon to campaign with him, and one of the key issues Neuberger pushed was opposition to private power as opposed to public power, painting it as a giveaway of public rights (LaLande). After the 1954 election, Oregon had two Democratic senators for the first time since the Wilson Administration.
Votes on Hells Canyon Dam and an Alleged Deal
In 1956, the Senate voted down public construction of Hells Canyon Dam 41-51 on July 19th. Most Republicans voted against it along with several Southern Democrats. The 1956 election didn’t produce a different party makeup of the Senate, as Republicans and Democrats both gained and lost different seats. Yet, on June 21, 1957, the Senate approved public construction of Hells Canyon Dam 45-38. The senators who had voted against in 1956 but voted for this time were George Smathers (D-Fla.), Richard Russell (D-Ga.), Russell Long (D-La.), Margaret Chase Smith (R-Me.), James Eastland (D-Miss.), Sam Ervin (D-N.C.), and George Aiken (R-Vt.). The flip of five Southern Democrats was key to securing this victory, and Senator Charles Potter (R-Mich.), a supporter of a strong civil rights bill and opponent of public ownership of Hells Canyon Dam, alleged right after the vote that this flip was done in exchange for the support of Western Democrats for watering down the pending civil rights bill (The New York Times). Senator Wayne Morse (D-Ore.), a supporter of strong civil rights legislation and a co-sponsor of the Hells Canyon Dam denied the charge. Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), who had voted for both of the key amendments weakening the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and had co-sponsored the Jury Trial Amendment as well as the Hells Canyon Dam bill, denied that a deal had occurred. He stated, “There was never any understanding between Lyndon Johnson and me that I would take a role in the Civil Rights Bill or I would join in the sponsorship of the Jury Trial Amendment in exchange for his help on Hells Canyon. That’s pure fiction utterly without any basis in fact” (Gellman). Although this flip of the Southern senators is suggestive of a deal, there was a public explanation for the flip from the de facto leader of the Southern Democrats. Senator Richard Russell (D-Ga.) stated as to his own reason, “I happen to be one of the five Democrats who changed his vote on Hells Canyon. I did it because of the tax amortization feature which made it very apparent that the Federal Government was going to pay for the dam in any event. If we were going to pay for it, I thought we ought to have title to it” (Bill Downs, War Correspondent). Several senators who were alleged to be participants in this deal denied that a deal occurred, but historian Robert Caro gave this allegation credence as he reported that Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) masterminded this deal. However, historian Irving Gellman (2015) contests this, holding that Hells Canyon Dam had been killed in a House subcommittee before the vote on the Jury Trial Amendment. However, this counter-argument might be off as well, as the exchange, according to Time Magazine, was over the vote to send the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to the Judiciary Committee, chaired by segregationist James Eastland (D-Miss.), to undo Minority Leader William Knowland’s (R-Calif.) maneuver bypassing it. Indeed, the vote on sending the bill to the Judiciary Committee was held the day before the Hells Canyon Dam vote and numerous Western senators voted with the South on this one, with the five Southern senators voting for the dam allegedly in gratitude for the support of Western senators. Interestingly, Frank Church was not among the senators to vote to bring it back to committee, pointing to his denial being accurate that he didn’t make a deal. Although Wayne Morse voted to send it back, his record was consistent as a stickler for legislative procedure and he voted against efforts to weaken the bill, making his denial credible as well. Although several senators had denied there was a deal, Russell Long (D-La.) would give credence to the notion of an informal deal, stating, “Johnson put together sort of a gentleman’s agreement where about four of us would vote for the high dam at Hells Canyon and about four on the other side would vote with us (…) on a completely unrelated subject: civil rights” (Lange, 69).
Political Consequences of Support for Private Power
There were significant political consequences for those in the Pacific Northwest who supported private construction and ownership of the Hells Canyon Dam; although President Eisenhower easily won reelection in Oregon, Oregon Republicans got hit hard; Oregon Republican Congressmen Sam Coon and Harris Ellsworth lost reelection in districts that had been held by Republicans since the 1942 election. Coon’s loss was directly attributed to his opponent Al Ullman’s opposition to private construction of dams in Hells Canyon (Foss). Indeed, the 1956 election had bad results for Oregon Republicans by and large. That year, Republican Governor Elmo Smith lost reelection to Democrat Robert Holmes and Democrats won control of the state legislature for the first time since 1878 (Swarthout). In Idaho, Democrat Frank Church, a supporter of public ownership of dams at Hells Canyon, defeated Republican incumbent Herman Welker, a supporter of private ownership, in the last election in which a Democrat would defeat a Republican Senate incumbent in Idaho. Although in this case, Welker’s loss was attributable to more than that as his behavior was increasingly volatile and erratic, with him being prone to temper tantrums and bouts of depression as well as appearing to have poor balance, which included a public incident of stumbling and falling down airplane stairs (Hill). At the time his critics alleged that this was the product of heavy drinking, but the truth was worse: it turned out Welker had a brain tumor, and it would kill him on October 30, 1957. Welker’s strong support of Joseph McCarthy also proved a hindrance rather than a help by 1956.
Despite these political consequences, the Hells Canyon legislation being killed in the House subcommittee proved to be the final word on it, as the Idaho Power Company would later construct three dams on the Snake River.
References
Foss, C. Albert Conrad “Al” Ullman. Oregon Encyclopedia.
Gellman, I.F. (2015, November 9). Robert Caro Gives LBJ More Credit than He Deserves for the Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. History News Network.
HR. 6127. Civil Rights Act of 1957. Point of Order Against Objection by Knowland to Referral of Bill to Judiciary Committee. Rejected. (Bill Thus Bypassed the Judiciary Committee). Govtrack.
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.
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.
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 