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United States Senate Norms and the Majority Whip Election of 1969

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

David Mervin
David Mervin
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

In two influential books written some years ago William S. White and Donald R. Matthews suggested that the distribution of power within the United States Senate was, to a large extent, governed by certain informal rules of behaviour. Conformity to these norms or ‘ folkways ’, it was argued, was the key to success and influence in the Senate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1975 , pp. 321 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 White, William S., Citadel: The Story of the U.S. Senate (Houghton Mifflin, 1956)Google Scholar. Matthews, Donald R., U.S. Senators and their World (Vintage Books, 1960)Google Scholar, See also Rieselbach, Leroy, Congressional Politics (McGraw Hill, 1973)Google Scholar. Huitt, Ralph ‘The Internal Distribution of Influence: The Senate’, in Truman, David (ed.), The Congress and America's: Future (Prentice Hall, 1965)Google Scholar.

2 Matthews, op. cit., p. 114.

3 Ibid., pp. 101–2.

4 White, op. cit., pp. 84–5.

5 Polsby, Nelson, Congress and the Presidency (Prentice Hall, 1964), p. 36Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 39.

7 Ibid.

8 Polsby, Nelson, ‘Goodbye to the Inner Club’, Washington Monthly, 1969Google Scholar, reprinted in Nelson Polsby (ed.), Congressional Behavior (Random House, 1971).

9 Ibid., p. 108.

10 Ibid., p. 106.

11 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, No. 2, 10 January 1969, p. 56.

12 New York Times, 19 January 1969, Section II, p. 4. Newsweek in commenting on the Whip contest said, ‘When Teddy beat Long in the showdown, he was, ironically, cashing in on his own reputation as a regular and on Long's as a maverick’. (International Edition, 13 January 1969, p. 30).

13 The final vote in favour of censuring Dodd was 92–5, the five against being Dodd himself, his Connecticut colleague Ribicoff, Tower of Texas, Thurmond of South Carolina, and Long; Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 23 (1967), 256.

14 Ibid., pp. 239–55.

15 Evans, Rowland and Novak, Robert, ‘Ted Kennedy's Southern Supporters’, International Herald Tribune, 11–12 01 1969, p. 4Google Scholar.

16 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 23 (1967), 283–95.

17 Ibid., p. 294.

18 Ibid.

19 New York Times, 15 December 1967, p. 1.

20 Rieselbach, op. cit., p. 144.

21 15 December 1966, 25, 19–24.

22 International Herald Tribune, 28 January 1969, p. 3.

23 Op. cit., p. 30.

24 U.S. News and World Report, 24 February 1969, pp. 82–3.

25 Ibid.

26 Congressional Behavior, p. 107.

27 Quoted by Greenfield, op. cit., p. 19.

28 Jonas, Frank (ed.), Western Politics (University of Utah Press, 1961), p. 16Google Scholar.

29 White, op. cit., pp. 84–5. Polsby, it should be noted, does not regard this distinction made by White as ‘convincing’: Congress and the Presidency, p. 34.

30 Matthews, op. cit., p. 109.

31 New York Times, 4 January 1969, p. 1.

32 Ibid.

33 Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 24 (1968), 956.

34 Shannon, William V., New York Times, 19 01 1969, section II, p. 4Google Scholar.

35 Congressional Behavior, p. 106.

36 Mayhew, David R., Congress: The Electoral Connection (Yale University Press, 1974), p. 147Google Scholar.

37 Richard Russell's pre-eminence in the Senate was particularly notable; Evans and Novak wrote of his ‘towering prestige among his colleagues’: Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 64Google Scholar; and Mayhew, op. cit., described him as being ‘For years the chief “Senate man'’ (p. 147n.).

38 Evans and Novak, International Herald Tribune, loc. cit.

39 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 29 No. 4, 22 January 1971, 180.

40 For the scope available to mavericks or ‘outsiders’ see Huitt, Ralph, ‘The Outsider in the Senate’, American Political Science Review, 55 (09 1961), 566–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Ripley, Randall, ‘Power in the Post-World War II Senate’, Journal of Politics, 31 (05 1969), 465–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Ibid.