Russell Long: A Life in Politics

Chapter 3. On the Outside Looking In, 1953–1960

70 chapter three On the Outside Looking In, – I n july 1952, Russell Long ventured to Chicago as a member of the Louisiana delegation to the Democratic National Convention. Long hoped Georgia senator Richard Russell would receive his party’s presidential nomination, but it was not to be. “Had Richard Russell not come from a Southern state,” Long later stated, “and remained loyal to the view of the people of the state that he represented . . . he probably would have been president.” But Senator Russell did maintain his loyalty to “the view”—a view that included the maintenance of racial segregation and black disfranchisement and that would pervade the politics of all southern senators for the next decade and half—and the Democrats instead nominated Adlai Stevenson , the smooth, sophisticated governor of Illinois and darling of the party’s liberal wing. Although he had suggested that he would have liked another Illinois liberal, Senator Paul Douglas, to receive the nomination, Senator Long approved of Stevenson as the party’s choice, and he kept more conservative elements among the Louisiana delegation from bolting the convention over the nomination. Exhibiting a penchant not only for being a good party operative but also for supporting liberal presidential candidates, Long campaigned for Stevenson in Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. 1 Who earned the Democratic nomination mattered very little when the votes were cast that November, because the Republicans ran World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower, who handily won. Eisenhower’s victory ushered in a period of relative bud- on the outside looking in, 1953–1960 71 getary restraint on the domestic front and a new variation of containment on the diplomatic. For Russell Long, it brought the first chance of his young career to function as a member of the opposition party.2 During the Eisenhower administration, Long refined his philosophy of practical politics. Committed to relatively liberal stances on social welfare and foreign policy, he also held to conservative —even reactionary—postures on matters of southern race relations and racial politics. In both instances, Long was rather typical of southern politicians, and particularly southern senators, of his day. To the chagrin of the Republican Party’s more conservative elements , Eisenhower and his administration maintained many of its Democratic predecessors’ economic and social welfare policies. Although not committed to expanding the New Deal/ Fair Deal programs, the administration maintained the liberal welfare state. Indeed, during the first two years of his presidency , Eisenhower appeared committed to following in Truman’s footsteps by revising the Taft-Hartley Act, promoting national health insurance, and backing federal aid to education. As during the Truman administration, however, the congressional conservative coalition wanted no part of most of these reforms. Following the 1954 election cycle, in which Democrats gained control of Congress and liberal Democratic legislators began to wield more influence, the administration managed to gain some increases in Social Security. 3 For Russell Long, those minor gains in Social Security were scarcely enough. Expanding the compass of the Social Security system formed one of the major themes of Long’s early career, and it reflected a political inheritance he had received from his father and his Uncle Earl. During the few months in 1948 that Long had served as his uncle’s special counsel, his chief mission had been winning legislative approval for increases to the state old-age pension and gaining federal matching funds for the pro- on the outside looking in, 1953–1960 72 gram. He took his support for such programs to Washington. In 1950, Long had pushed for a major extension of the national Social Security system, but Senate conservatives on both sides of the aisle wanted nothing of it. When Eisenhower assumed the presidency, Long hoped progress might be made: in an early State of the Union address, the president called for increases in both the number of people receiving Social Security payments and the size of those payments. By Eisenhower’s second term, however, Long understood that the president’s more conservative commitments tempered his dedication to expanding such liberal programs. Long’s disillusionment with the administration ’s lack of movement on Social Security translated into opposition stances on other issues. 4 Long’s appointments to important Senate committees during the 1950s placed him on a path to national influence that, although not fully realized until the 1960s, would have long-term implications stretching into the 1980s. In 1953, he was...