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Extreme Advocacy Leadership in the Pre-Reform House: Wright Patman and the House Banking and Currency Committee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

John E. Owens
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Committee chairmen in the United States House of Representatives were often very powerful figures until the reforms of the early 1970s – as the numerous tales about those stereotyped villains, the southern Democrats, bear witness. Yet, surprisingly little explicit typologizing about leadership in congressional committees appears in the academic literature despite a growing awareness of the different goals which congressmen pursue and the variety of environments in which they operate. Just two different models of chairmen's power were developed in the context of the pre-reform Congress. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the accepted view, perhaps caricature, was that committee chairmen were autocratic, obstructionist (at least as far as liberals were concerned), conservative, possibly senile, and more than likely representative of constituencies outside the mainstream of national politics. A list of chairmen seen as fitting into this mould would include men such as ‘Judge’ Howard Smith, chairman of the Rules Committee from 1955 to 1967; his somewhat less skilful successor from 1967 to 1972, William Colmer of Mississippi; Graham Barden, the provocative chairman of the Education and Labor Committee between 1953 and 1960; and the authoritative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee for seventeen years until 1966.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 187 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 See Matsunaga, Spark M. and Chen, Ping, Rulemakers of the House (Urbana and London: University of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 96–7.Google Scholar Also Jones, Charles O., ‘Joseph G. Cannon and Howard W. Smith: An Essay on the Limits of Leadership in the House of Representatives’, Journal of Politics, XXX (1968), 617–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Fenno, Richard F., ‘The House of Representatives and Federal Aid to Education’ in Peabody, Robert L. and Polsby, Nelson W., eds, New Perspectives on the House of Representatives, 2nd edn (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 283–323 especially pp. 297–300.Google Scholar

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5 Manley, John F., The Politics of Finance (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 113.Google Scholar

6 Probably the most explicit statement of this view is in Dyson, James W. and Soule, John W., ‘Congressional Committee Behaviour on Roll Call Votes: The US House of Representatives, 1955–1964’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, XIV (1970), 626–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The proposition is deliberately cast in the past tense because it is not as appropriate for the contemporary House. Since the reforms of the mid-1970s reduced the powers of committee chairmen, much of the Banking and Currency Committee's legislation has been managed on the House floor by subcommittee chairmen. On the contemporary roles of full and subcommittee chairmen, see Deering, Christopher J., ‘Subcommittee Government in the US House: An Analysis of Bill Management’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, VII (1982), 533–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Deering, Christopher J. and Smith, Steven S., ‘Majority Party Leadership and the New House Subcommittee System’, in Mackaman, Frank H., ed., Understanding Congressional Leadership (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1981), pp. 261–96, at p. 268Google Scholar; Smith, Steven S. and Deering, Christopher J., Committees in Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1984).Google Scholar

8 Patman immediately asked the House Administration Committee to increase the budget of the Banking and Currency Committee for the 88th Congress from $5,000 to $530,000. The committee was actually authorized something over $400,000.

9 The majority staff were very much Patman's creatures. Patterson, for instance, observed that the committee was illustrative of committees where the staff is not readily available to the minority members. Patterson, Samuel C., ‘The Professional Staffs of Congressional Committees’, Administrative Science Quarterly, XV (1970), 22–37, p. 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 During this period, only three other House committees (House Administration, Post Office and Civil Service, and Rules) increased their staffs by factors greater than Banking and Currency (Bibby, John F., Mann, Thomas E. and Ornstein, Norman J., eds, Vital Statistics on Congress 1980 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1980), Table 5–6, p. 72).Google Scholar

11 During the 89th Congress, for instance, twelve committee members, including six Democrats, signed a statement accusing Patman of issuing subpoenas to bankers for information without the committee's specific authority. At the beginning of the 90th Congress, committee members voted to tighten up the rules governing committee investigations.

12 See the discussion in Norton, Bruce D. F. ‘Banking and Currency as a Legislative Subsystem of the House of Representatives’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 08 1970, University Microfilms No. 71–18, 500), Chap. 4.Google Scholar

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14 For an alternative leadership typology, see for example Patterson, Samuel C., ‘Legislative Leadership and Political Ideology’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVII (1963), 399–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Patterson's scheme was used by Unekis and Rieselbach to classify House Committee chairmen: see Unekis, Joseph K. and Rieselbach, Leroy N., ‘Congressional Committee Leadership: Stability and Change, 1971–78’ (paper delivered at the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Leadership Center, Sam Rayburn Library Conference, Washington, D.C., 06 1980), pp. 12–13Google Scholar; Unekis, Joseph K. and Rieselbach, Leroy N., Congressional Committee Politics: Continuity and Change (New York: Praeger, 1984), Chap. 3.Google Scholar See also Levine, Myron A., ‘Goal-Oriented Leadership and the Limits of Entrepreneurship’, Western Political Quarterly, XXI (1980), 401–16, pp. 405–6.Google Scholar

15 Bolling, , House Out of Order, p. 94Google Scholar; Norton, , The Committee on Banking and Currency Committee, pp. 314–20, 368.Google Scholar

16 Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, p. 463.Google Scholar

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18 This table makes sense because it was invariably clear what Patman's position was in the first place. The basic data in the table are whole bills or parts of omnibus bills concerned with the regulation of credit institutions. Manley used available roll-call votes without any broad assessment of whether or not Mills generally supported a piece of legislation. See Manley, , The Politics of Finance, p. 147.Google Scholar

19 Some of these problems are discussed in Lewis, Anne L., ‘Floor Success as a Measure of Committee Performance in the House’, Journal of Politics, XL (1978), 460–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Manley also recognized that leadership always involves a certain amount of followership. However, he rejected followership as a description of Mills' leadership because it did not allow for his success in persuading his colleagues to accept his position. See Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, pp. 446.Google Scholar For a general discussion of the relationship between leadership and followership, see Burns, James MacGregor, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).Google Scholar

21 See for example Dahl, Robert A., ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioural Science, 11 (1957), 201–15.Google Scholar On the problems of defining and measuring power see for example Barber, James David, Power in Committees (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), Chap. VII.Google Scholar Barry for instance writes: ‘we can describe an actor's power by cataloguing the kinds of situation in which he can change a prospective loss for the side he supports to a win for it’ and later ‘an actor has more power … the more opposition he can overcome.’ (Barry, Brian, ‘Is it Better to be Powerful or Lucky? Parts I and II’, Political Studies, XXVIII (1980), 183–94 and 338–52, pp. 349–50.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Fenno, Richard F., Congressmen in Committees (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 1.Google Scholar

23 Cf. the more limited use of the term in Unekis, Joseph K. and Rieselbach, Leroy N., ‘Congressional Committee Leadership, 1971–1978’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, VIII (1983), 251–70, especially footnote 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, pp. 446Google Scholar; but cf. Unekis, and Rieselbach, , ‘Congressional Leadership: Stability and Change’, p. 3.Google Scholar

25 For a similar emphasis on legislative achievement in analysing congressional committees, see Ostrom, Donald, ‘Consensus and Conflict in the House: A Revised Look at the Ways and Means and Education and Labor Committees’, Polity, XI (1979), 340–9.Google Scholar

26 American Banker, 7 11 1969, p. 1.Google Scholar

27 Common Cause, Report on House Committee Chairmen (Washington, D.C.: Common Cause, 13 01 1975), pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

28 Parker, Glenn R., ‘The Selection of Committee Leaders in the House of Representatives’, American Politics Quarterly, VII (1979), 71–93, pp. 74 and 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Smith and Deering have recently suggested that Patman was deposed because Democratic liberals could not pursue their interests effectively. They argue that by the mid-1970s Patman's concern for the more esoteric banking issues had became less relevant to his housing-orientated colleagues. See Smith, and Deering, , Committees in Congress, pp. 100, 137 and 176.Google Scholar

29 Parker found exactly the same problem. He found a strong correlation between committee leadership fairness and membership support but with ‘one glaring error’: Patman's ‘level of leadership fairness [was] not commensurate with his level of membership support!’. See Parker, , ‘The Selection of Committee Leaders’, p. 80.Google Scholar

30 Hinckley, Barbara, ‘Seniority 1975: Old Theories Confront New Facts’, British Journal of Political Science, VI (1976), 383–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Parker also suggests having a Northern challenger as being important to an explanation: Parker, , ‘The Selection of House Leaders’, pp. 74 and 84.Google Scholar

32 Gibb, Cecil A., ‘Leadership: Psychological Aspects’Google Scholar and Seligman, Lester G., ‘Leadership: Political Aspects’ in Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 9 (New York: Macmillan and the Free Press, 1968), pp. 93–4, 99–100 and 108.Google Scholar

33 Fenno, , Congressmen in Committees, p. 133Google Scholar. Even the stereotype obstructionist chairmen could not rely solely on their formal powers to get their way. They were successful because they were able to use those powers skilfully and within political environments favourable to the exercise of their skills.

34 Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, p. 452.Google Scholar

35 Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, p. 452Google Scholar. On the general importance of institutional context, see Jones, Charles O., ‘House Leadership in an Age of Reform’Google Scholar in Mackaman, , Understanding Congressional Leadership, 117–34, p. 118Google Scholar; Cooper, Joseph and Brady, David W., ‘Institutional Context and Leadership Style: The House from Cannon to Rayburn’, American Political Science Review, LXXV (1981), 411–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lynette Perkins has documented important changes in the House Judiciary Committee following Emmanuel Celler's retirement. See Perkins, Lynette P., ‘Member Recruitment to a Mixed Goal Committee: The House Judiciary Committee’, Journal of Politics, XLIII (1981), 348–64, pp. 360–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similar comparisons have been made between successive chairmen of the House Interior Committee, Wayne Aspinall and James Haley. See Fenno, , Congressmen in Committees, p. 36.Google Scholar

36 This statement should not be taken to mean that Ways and Means members were only interested in power as an end in itself. They were also interested in certain policy outcomes and re-election, but these latter goals tended to be subsumed in their determination to retain their committee's prestigous position and the trust this afforded them in the House.

37 Manley, , The Politics of Finance, pp. 44–53, 63–96Google Scholar. See the comment by a Ways and Means Republican contrasting Ways and Means with Banking and Currency, p. 70.

38 For elaboration of this description, see Owens, John E., ‘The House Banking and Currency Committee and American Credit Institutions, 1963–1974: A Study of Interest Group-Committee Relations’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Essex, 1982), Chap. 2.Google Scholar

39 For the difficulties experienced by Patman's successor, Henry Reuss, see Berg, John, ‘The Effects of Seniority Reform on Three House Committees in the 94th Congress’ in Rieselbach, Leroy N., ed., Legislative Reform: The Policy Impact (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978), 49–59, p. 58Google Scholar. Even during ‘the era of subcommittee government’, Reuss's successor, Rep. Fernand St. Germain (D., Rhode Island) has attempted some (cont. overleafxs) (cont.) parliamentary manœuvres reminiscent of Patman's. See Smith, and Deering, , Committees in Congress, p. 180Google Scholar. Similarly, Bolling has suggested that Patman's much less controversial predecessor. Brent Spence (D., Kentucky), also found difficulty in generating a consensus within the committee. See Bolling, , House Out of Order, p. 93Google Scholar; Bailey, Stephen K. and Samuel, Howard D., Congress at Work (Hamden, Conn.: Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 270–92Google Scholar. On the effect of institutional changes in the Ways and Means Committee on Al Ullman, see Cohen, Richard E., ‘Al Ullman – The Complex, Contradictory Chairman of Ways and Means’, National Journal, Vol. 10, 4 03 1978, pp. 345–50Google Scholar; Cohen, Richard E., ‘A Report Card for Congress: An F For Frustration’, National Journal, Vol. 11, 11 08 1979, p. 1857Google Scholar; Rudder, Catherine, ‘The Policy Impact of Reform of the Committee on Ways and Means’Google Scholar in Rieselbach, , ed., Legislative Reform Policy Impact, pp. 73–89.Google Scholar

40 Patman, however, was not above dispensing favours to allies and adversaries. The Patman Papers contain many examples of staff assistance being given even to those who usually opposed the chairman, for example by arranging committee trips abroad and promoting pet projects and legislation. One memorandum written by Paul Nelson, the committee's staff director, indicates that ‘all told 17 members of the House Banking and Currency Committee have left on trips or are scheduled to leave’ (Memorandum from Nelson, to Patman, , 29 11 1966, Patman PapersGoogle Scholar). Similarly, in July 1965, Patman appointed the fairly junior Democrat Charles Weltner (D., Georgia), but a close ally of Patman's, to the chairmanship of a new study group inquiring into usury. In 1969, while the committee was considering bank holding company legislation, Patman appointed his old adversary Ashley as chairman of a new ad hoc subcommittee on Urban Growth.

41 After all, there have been many examples of committee chairmen with more limited personal qualities finding great difficulty in realizing the full potential for leadership in their committees. For example, see Fenno's comment on Carl Perkins of the Education and Labor Committee: Fenno, , Congressmen in Committees, p. 288Google Scholar. For a review of the psychological literature on the importance of personality to the emergence and maintenance of leadership, see Gibb, , ‘Leadership: Psychological Aspects’, pp. 97–9.Google Scholar

42 Manley's description of Mills in this connection is not unlike that given here of Patman. See Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, pp. 451–2.Google Scholar

43 Most of Patman's colleagues preferred the more direct rewards resulting from active involvement in writing housing and urban development legislation (Owens, , The House Banking and Currency Committee, pp. 74–80Google Scholar). However, this is not to argue that Patman did not accommodate his colleagues' interests, cf. Smith, and Deering, , Committees in Congress, p. 181.Google Scholar

44 Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, pp. 451–2.Google Scholar

45 Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1960), p. 3.Google Scholar

46 Thus the demand for open committee meetings to mark up the bill – a rare event in 1965 – and one bitterly attacked by Ashley and his supporters.

47 Banks most immediately threatened by various decisions of the Supreme Court, including the newly merged Manufacturers Hanover Bank of New York, were particularly anxious to have new legislation approved by Congress which would effectively overturn the Court's position. Immediately after an unfavourable district court decision and in order to avert coming to some arrangement with the Justice Department whereby the bank would divest some of its assets, the Manufacturers Hanover Bank began a campaign in the Senate and apparently pressured the Independent Bankers' Association (frequently a supporter of Patman's positions) into changing its position from one of opposition at the Senate hearings to neutrality at the House hearings. Patman wanted to prolong his committee's hearings in order to put pressure on Manufacturers Hanover to reach a settlement with Justice, thus obviating the necessity for new legislation and confirming the Supreme Court's position.

48 Interview with former ABA lobbyist, 14 April 1975.

49 For example, Patman's staff drafted six private bills introduced by Congressman Todd and designed to underline the private nature of the legislative relief sought by the six litigant banks (letter from Nelson, Paul to Todd, Congressman, 27 08 1965, Patman PapersGoogle Scholar). These bills were, of course, introduced primarily for propaganda purposes.

50 Even the American Banker conceded that the business background of Kennedy, Walker and Volcker left them ‘open to conflict of interest charges that certainly will be whispered, if not publicly pressed over the months ahead’ (American Banker, 3 02 1969, p. 2Google Scholar). Patman actually introduced a bill to prohibit the highest officials of the Treasury Department from owning shares in credit institutions. Robert P. Mayo, Nixon's Director of the Bureau of the Budget, was also a former vice-president of Kennedy's bank.

51 See, for instance, the headlines in the American Banker, 18 04 1969Google Scholar – ‘Kennedy, Patman in Clash As Top Officials Testify on 1-Bank HC Bill’; 2 May 1969 – ‘Eggers Won't Testify on Kennedy Finances’; 2 June 1969 – ‘Patman asks Kennedy Data on Continental Illinois.’ See also the financial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post for the same dates. Various other events were also helpful to Patman's campaign. During the committee's consideration of the legislation, the Wall Street Journal carried a story that a senior Republican member of the House Banking and Currency Committee, Congressman Seymour Halpern of New York, had received a loan on very favourable terms from the First National City Bank of New York. While Patman refused to comment on the Halpern affair, it was undoubtedly useful to his campaign. For example, on 31 July 1969, the New York Times reported (p. 25)Google Scholar that bankers feared that the affair could have a serious impact on the one-bank holding company legislation. Just before the committee voted on the legislation, columnist Jack Anderson also publicized the fact that many of Patman's committee colleagues held bank stock or directorships. Finally, Patman himself proposed an investigation by his committee of the banking lobby. However, twenty-five committee members sent him a letter demanding a committee meeting to discuss the proposed investigation. At the meeting, the committee refused its approval.

52 Following Patman's difficulties over the bank merger legislation, in late 1965, Joseph (Jake) Lewis was appointed to the Banking and Currency Committee staff, effectively as Patman's public relations officer. (Committee dissidents had made it clear to Patman and the committee's staff director, Paul Nelson, that Nelson was to be responsible to the whole committee, or at least its majority members.) Lewis also worked on Patman's re-election campaigns. One of Lewis's primary responsibilities was to ensure that the media were informatively exposed to Patman's views and comments on current legislation and staff research.

In the Patman Papers, there is extensive correspondence with journalists over specific legislation before the committee or the House. See, for example, Letters: Patman, to Hutnyan, Joseph (of the American Banker), 8 03 1969; 8 11 1969; 12 11 1969Google Scholar; Patman, to Shanahan, Eileen (of the New York Times), 25 03 1969Google Scholar; Patman, to Royster, Vermont (editor of the Wall Street Journal), 19 04 1969Google Scholar; Patman, to Mintz, Morton (of the Washington Post), 14 05 1970Google Scholar. See also Memoranda: Lewis, to Halloran, Dick (of the Washington Post), no dateGoogle Scholar; Lewis, to Eileen, (Shanahan), 24 07 1969Google Scholar; Lewis, to Jan, (Nugent Peirce of the Washingdon Post), no date.Google Scholar

53 Interview, 14 April 1975.

54 Patman was also a tireless campaigner outside the House. Besides urging banker opposition to the ABA's position in states where small country banks were more preponderant (for example, in Arkansas and Kentucky), as well as amongst competing industries threatened by holding company expansion, he also took it upon himself to organize lobby support in Washington. Just before the committee vote on the one-bank holding company legislation, he held a meeting in the committee's hearing room where he provided about twenty representatives of industries opposed to the holding companies with details of the ABA's lobbying efforts, and urged those attending to lobby other members of the committee to try to persuade them to vote for the strongest possible bill.

55 For a discussion on the advantages of a legislator committing himself early, especially when powerful interest group pressures are exerted, see Kozak, David C., ‘The Conditional Nature of Congressional Decision-Making’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburg, 1979), p. 175.Google Scholar

56 This point was also emphasized by Speaker McCormack in his efforts to persuade Ashley to compromise. See the American Banker, 21 01 1966, p. 2Google Scholar. House leaders and the White House were also concerned that the fight would damage the prospects of passage of future legislation, including important housing and small business programmes.

57 Most important for future merger policy, however, the language which subsequently influenced the courts' interpretation of the legislation, was introduced at this stage. Congressman Ashley, however, alleged in an interview with the author that through his position as manager and defender of the committee bill on the House floor, Patman introduced new legislative history into the record which supposedly enabled the courts to interpret the legislation in a manner favourable to Patman's position. This allegation, however, seems to be contradicted by Ashley's statement in the mark-up session that ‘the competitive factors are in a sense pre-eminent’. Transcript of executive session of the House Banking and Currency Committee, 19 January 1966, p. 82.

58 It is important to make this point because Patman was often accused of not consulting sufficiently with his colleagues. In the Patman Papers, however, various correspondence and memoranda attest to constant communication between Patman or his staff and potential supporters. Republicans and Democrats. For instance, Patman's close consultations with Reuss, Moorhead and Hanna during his committee's consideration of the 1966 Interest Rate Control legislation supports this interpretation.

59 Fenno has pointed to similarities in the strategic premises of Banking and Currency (identified by Norton) and those of the House Education and Labor Committee (identified by Fenno himself). However, Fenno does not compare Patman with Barden (Fenno, , Congressmen in Committees, p. 9).Google Scholar

60 One might mention incidentally that Manley's description of Mills is much more appropriate to Patman than it was to Barden. Indeed, Manley also warned against categorizing chairmen simply in terms of their use of sanctions when he distinguished Mills's leadership style from Barden's (Manley, , ‘Wilbur Mills’, p. 460).Google Scholar

61 For example, see Cooper, and Brady, , ‘Institutional Context and Leadership Style’, p. 481.Google Scholar

62 On Fulbright, see Fenno, , Congressmen in Committees, pp. 134–5Google Scholar. On Kefauver, see Schuck, Peter H., The Judiciary Committees: A Study of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, The Ralph Nader Congress Project (New York: Grossman, 1975), pp. 64–5Google Scholar. An excellent illustration of Kefauver's style, relating to the Pure Food and Drug Amendments of 1962, is given in Harris, Richard, The Real Voice (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 145–8.Google Scholar

63 I rely on the description of Long's chairmanship in Price, David E., Who Makes The Laws? Creativity and Power in Senate Committees (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1972), pp. 164–9Google Scholar. Price's comment that Long's advocacy of his campaign finance proposal ‘demonstrated what the efforts of a single, determined and powerful advocate could sometimes accomplish’ (pp. 164–5) is particularly useful in pointing up similarities with Patman's style.