(bottom line is we will need strong presidential leadership now to get real health care reform)
President Johnson used the telephone to discuss strategy and direct tactics with his allies in Congress to get the civil rights bill passed. (LBJ Library):
On December 2, Johnson called Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, to enlist her editors in pressuring representatives to sign a discharge petition. That would bring the bill out of the Rules Committee. Many representatives were against a discharge petition on principle, believing that it undermined the committee system. LBJ suggested that the Post run articles arguing "every day, front page . . .
individuals: 'Why are you against a hearing?' Point them up, and have their pictures, and have editorials, and have everything else that is in a dignified way for a hearing on the floor."
To persuade Republicans to sign the petition, LBJ continued:
We've only got 150 Democrats; the rest of them are southerners. So we've got to make every Republican . We ought to say, "Here is the party of Lincoln. Here is the image of Lincoln, and whoever it is that is against a hearing and against a vote in the House of Representatives, is not a man who believes in giving humanity a fair shake. . . . Now if we could ever get that signed, that would practically break their back in the Senate because they could see that here is a steamroller."
Humphrey later recalled how LBJ worked on him when the President went into high gear on the 1964 bill. The President called him to the Oval Office, and in true Johnson fashion, issued a challenge:
"You have got this opportunity now, Hubert, but you liberals will never deliver. You don't know the rules of the Senate, and your liberals will all be off making speeches when they ought to be present in the Senate. . . . ou've got a great opportunity here, but I'm afraid it's going to fall between the boards." He sized me up; he knew very well that I would say, "Damn you, I'll show you. . . ." He knew what he was doing exactly, and I knew what he was doing. One thing I liked about Johnson: even when he conned me I knew what was happening. It was kind of enjoyable. I mean I knew what was going on, and he knew I knew.
Finally, the impact of the 1964 act on the American political scene was profound. Bill Moyers, a former aide to LBJ, recalled, in a statement during a 1990 symposium at the Johnson Library:
The night that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, I found him in the bedroom, exceedingly depressed. The headline of the bulldog edition of the Washington Post said, "Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act." The airwaves were full of discussions about how unprecedented this was and historic, and yet he was depressed. I asked him why.
He said, "I think we've just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the rest of my life, and yours
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/civil-rights-act-2.html
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