policy - The Black Vault

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assurance that his proposed domestic policies and programs would be passed
in Congress. With former Senate Majority Leader Johnson serving as the
vice president, there was now a gap in the congressional Democratic leadership.
That 1-½adership was essential to the formulation of a consensus for
passage of presidential programs. To-P Wicker's account in his book JFK and
LBJ of Congressman Sam Rayburn's efforts to increase the size of tie Rules
Committee to assure a Democratic majority and hence, the introduction and
passage of Kennedy's programs illustrates how narrowly Kennedy won control
of the House. 45/ With the death of Sami Rayburn, the control of Congress
by the Democrats had almost completely disappeared. 46/ Rayburn had been a
powerful leader within the House - his position derived from long experience
in the House and from his sense of himself as a peer of the
President. 47/ His death was a blow to the House itself which lost a
degree of prestige that Rayburn's strong leadership had provided. The
unravelling of the once strong democratic party control within Congress
left congressional politics in disarray.
Although when Lyndon Johnson came to the presidency he had considerable
experience as a parliamentarian and he won bipartisan support in
Congress for the Southeast Asia Resolution, his control over Congress was
declining. 4_8/ Senator Fulbright and several other of Johnson's former
colleagues and allies in the Senate were becoming disenchanted with the
president's policies in Vietnam. 49/ Senators Mansfield and Fulbright
began to call for increased efforts toward negotiation as a preferred
Vietnam policy, and in 1966, Senator Fulbright conducted the first congressional
inquiry of US policies in Vietnam. Fulbriglht intended that the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings would serve as "both an organ
for Senate deliberation and a forum of public education." He intended
further, that the hearings might shape "a true consensus in the long run,
even at the cost of dispelil.ng the image of a false one in the short
"run." 50/ On the subject of tre hearings. Fulbright continued:
It is our expectation Chat these proceedings may
generate controversy. If they do, it will not be
because we value controversy for its own sake but
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