One The Unveiling

I On the afternoon of March 19, 1959, most of the 98 U.S. senators and about 50 of their invited guests jammed into the ornate Senate Reception Room for a ceremony. In one respect this early spring event was your standard Senate occasion. The Senates chaplain offered a patriotic prayer and Democratic and Republican leaders spoke, as did the vice president in his capacity as president of the Senate. But this occasion was unusual, both because of the participants and because of the purpose of the ceremony. Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, who was the Senate president pro tempore, the Senates most senior Democrat, presided over the event. He was a bald, terse, and crusty man who was rarely without a cigar. He made the necessary introductions and kept the program moving along. Holding forth with great flourish was the Senates Republican leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois, invoking Old Testament scripture and uttering lofty pronouncements about the Senate and the flow of American history. What an amazing and moving pageant this Republic is, he intoned as he prepared to paraphrase the Book of Revelation and suggest a Hollywood movie about the life of Joshua.1

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JFK in the SENATE

The three featured speakers at the ceremony were tucked into one corner of the reception room: Vice President Richard Nixon, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, and John F. Kennedy, the junior senator from Massachusetts. They and their guests had gathered to celebrate the unveiling of portraits of five of the greatest senators in American historythe Famous Five, as they were knownas determined by a special committee that Kennedy chaired. The remarks made by Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy highlighted their different relationships with the Senate, their distinctive political personalities, and the way their careers had overlapped. As they joined together on this March afternoon to celebrate senators of the past, all three hoped to win the presidency the following year and put behind them their direct association with the Senate. Nixon, lean and black-haired, said the ceremony would be remembered as one of the proudest days in the history of the Senate because it honored not only five historic figures who served in the upper chamber but also hundreds of others throughout the years who have borne the proud title of U.S. Senator. The vice president, who had been in his second year of Senate service when he was elected vice president on a ticket with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, noted the ceremony was the culmination of an effort that began nearly nine decades earlier in 1870 when Senator Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont wrote to the architect of the Capitol suggesting that artists be commissioned to paint portraits of leading senators in the reception room. No action was taken. Or should I say that the Senate acted in its usual, very deliberate way, Nixon quipped.2 Johnson, the majority leader and the widely recognized powerhouse of the Senate, used his remarks to make it clear that the project to identify the five Senate greats had been his idea from the start. He recalled that in the summer of 1955, as he was recovering in the hospital from a heart attack, he was visited by then Republican leader William Knowland and Earle Clements, Johnsons Senate deputy. At Johnsons suggestion, they discussed filling five panels on the walls of the Senate Reception Room with paintings of the leading senators in American history. Shortly thereafter, Knowland

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The Unveiling

and Clements introduced a resolution in Johnsons name creating a special committee to determine the five Senate greats. Johnson recalled that he had initially been designated to lead the project, but because of health reasons he was forced to pass on the assignment to the very able and gifted Kennedy.3 Although the ceremony was to honor the five former senators, Johnson noted that in a real sense we have met here to honor the institution of the Senate, which all of us love so much, for what it is, and for what it has always been in our system: the testing place for the character of the living generations of Americans. Borrowing from Lincolns Gettysburg Address, Johnson said, Our recognition here can add little to the stature and esteem already so securely theirs. Yet by this action we remind ourselvesand perhaps remind the entire Nationof some of the most enduring values. History has not had to seek out these men, to give them their due. They were honored in their own times, even though they were frequently criticized.... But the greatness that emerges from each of them and towers high is the greatness of character. Then he made a veiled allusion to the fact that these five senators had each dreamed of residing in the White House but never quite made it there. Johnson said the Senates Famous Five aspired, at times, for other roles. Most of them, in fact, found less than complete fulfillment of their aims and of their convictions.4 But the clear star of the event was Kennedy, a rising force in American politics who was already actively running for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. Slender, youthful, and confident, he shifted smoothly from lofty to playful. Blending serious reflections and humorous stories, Kennedy made the Senate event his own. Kennedy described the five men who were chosen for the Senates so-called Hall of Fame. First was Henry Clay of Kentucky, whom Kennedy called probably the most gifted parliamentary figure in the history of the Congress, whose tireless devotion to the Union demonstrated that intelligent compromise required both courage and conviction. Kennedy noted that Clay served in the Senate on four separate occasions between 1806 and 1852 and was

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