Nick Katzenbach and the 1965 Voting Rights Act

This is a story that I heard from Nick Katzenbach about his role in the formulation and passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  see this web link. 

I had no role at all personally...Kath and I were living in Maryland out Massachusetts Avenue in the Woodacres neighborhood at the time... and I was busy trying (successfully it turned out) to get a job in Germany and we were largely indifferent to the machinations of the Government...even something as important as the Civil and Voting Rights Acts. So we were unaware at the time of the momentousness of the events surrounding the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

But later, after leaving government, after having served as Deputy Attorney General, Attorney General, and Deputy Secretary of State, Katzenbach became IBM's General Counsel in the 1980s and would come to Washington... I was working for IBM's government relations office on K Street...the infamous K Street corridor of lobbyists. I had worked in Germany, California, France, and then returned to Washington.

It was IBM's practice to attach a Government Relations (GR) guy to any IBM senior executive who came to town because generally, IBM's executives were unfamiliar with Washington and the various 'risks' of  the political environment presented to an unwary businessman, but that was a ridiculous rationale when applied to Nick Katzenbach who knew more about working in Washington than I or any of my colleagues ever would.

When Katherine and I came back from France in 1983, I joined IBM's "government relations department" ...a euphemism for 'lobbying group'...in Washington, DC as Corporate Director of Technology Policy Programs... a right-sounding title.... but, like bank vice presidents, there were a lot of us.

IBM ran its lobbying group like a law firm...that is, those of us in charge of certain policy areas...such as in my case 'technology policy'... had to have 'clients' within the IBM company who formed a policy position...

this was to discourage 'freelancing' ...that is a lobbyist advancing a personal political agenda...I must admit, I was guilty of this on occasion... but officially any 'IBM view' that I expressed to Congress or the Executive branch on behalf of IBM had to have been backed up by a senior executive 'client' who had espoused that view after gaining concurrence of it within the corporation... 

but reality intervenes...policy positions were formulated only rarely in this orderly manner...most of the time I, as the 'manager' of the perception of IBM's policy position on any given subject, would, in fact, absent an executive formulation, 'draft' a position on an issue and organize concurrence within IBM...the reverse of the process...rather than a top-down approach...this is not especially unusual...I suspect most corporate political positions are originated by specialists within their lobbying groups...and then adopted as a corporate position after the fact....or before the fact, but as a result of advocacy by the government relations person rather than the corporate policy person...this is not to argue that corporate lobbyists are smarter, but simply that they do have the time to think about issues and the incentive and the information to formulate a coherent political position...they do what they are paid to do...

...of course, senior IBM executives wanted to come to Washington and to interact with political figures in the Congress or the executive branch...so any senior IBM visitor...that is a 'client'... would be escorted by his contact in the lobbying group....for example, 'me' ...to any meetings with government officials... the unofficial reason for this was because while senior executives have power and budget money and have strong views on issues ...often in calls on the Hill or in the Executive Branch they would say things that really did not represent IBM corporate views...it was not as a surprise...but this tendency was to be monitored and 'contained' ..some sort of order and conformity was necessary...I don't mean this was rampant but frequent enough to cause the creation of this scheme of 'minders'. 

If during a meeting, an IBM visitor/client would announce an off-the-wall view, I, for example, would not contradict him at the time...but I would attempt to change the subject such as in this manner: "Well Senator Gore, your staff director told me that you have a floor vote in 10 minutes, so 'Bobby Joe X' our Senior Vice President for Asia and Latin America and Texas Sales would like to use this remaining time to explain our views on the telecommunications trade act being advanced by your colleague Senator Danforth in the Senate."

Then, as soon as possible, later that day or the next, I would get back to the staff contact of the person we had visited and explain that the IBM visitor had misspoken about this or that...most often the misstatement would have made no difference because, as large and powerful... economically... as IBM was in the 1980s, it was just one of many corporate 'constituents' with which a Senator or Representative might interact...

but occasionally it was important because the misstatement could have been used politically to IBM's discomfort...and the responsibility for the causing of that discomfort was not the visitor, but his 'contact', because the lobbying job included making sure that the IBM's formulated...'official' view about political issues was clearly and consistently expressed to the various representatives of the US Government and understood by the IBM visitor...

This is a long way around to get to the point that Nick Katzenbach...then, at the time of my story, was IBM's General Counsel...but he had been formerly, as I related above, Assistant Attorney General under Bobby Kennedy, then, Attorney General under President Johnson, after that Deputy Secretary of State...used to come to town from Armonk, NY...IBM's headquarters.. to 'call on' people in Washington...many of whom he had known as colleagues while in government...Nick had been brought into IBM...I think...to address the antitrust suit brought in 1969...there was a joke told by Frank Cary, then CEO of IBM, that Nick was the only man to have exceeded an unlimited budget. Incidentally, IBM used Cravath, Swaine, and Moore law firm in New York...and a young David Boies was the lead attorney in IBM's defense.

and I would pick Nick up at the private airport at National Airport in Washington in a black Lincoln private town car and we would make calls on various political figures in Washington...

well ..as you can imagine...with all Nick Katzenbach's experience and history, the idea that I was going to monitor or 'mind' his conduct with political personalities in Washington was absurd...

so I explained to him the first day I picked him up at National why I was even involved with his visits to Washington, and we both laughed about it, 

and I suggested that during the lulls between calls .. rather than look at each other or engage in trivial chit chat... or worse...  for me to try to explain to him some complicated political position that IBM was espousing... about which he would have already been intimately familiar...that maybe he might recall for me...since I was fascinated by the period... his roles in opening the University of Mississippi and Alabama to black students...it was Katzenbach that confronted and caused to back down Governor of Alabama George Wallace as he 'stood in the door' to bar the enforcement of the Brown versus Board of Education decision by the US Supreme Court...

and his active, although discrete, management of the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act....

plus his role in creating the Warren Commission to investigate the Kennedy assassination...

and his agreement to defend Clinton against impeachment...just to name only a few of the momentous events in which Nick Katzenbach participated...

and he agreed, by his agreement to tell me some stories, I confirmed, then, my belief that it's very difficult for anyone to say no to a request to relate stories in which they played a prominent and important role...

and Nick did not disprove my theory....who cannot speak to a listening ear...

By the way, he liked the now-defunct Jockey Club in the old Fairfax Hotel on Massachusetts Avenue for lunch...he did not like Harvey's on 18th street ..also gone...maybe because it was J. Edgar Hoover's favorite, ''Hoover", of course, worked for Katzenbach as AG, but Hoover was apparently a thorn in his side"...and believe it or not Nick liked Chrisfield II on Georgia Avenue...one of 'our' ...Katherine and me...favorite places for Maryland seafood.

Nick told me about his request to Dr. King not to make the Selma march....Dr. King refused his sincere request saying to him..."you're a white, male, Protestant, graduate of Philips Exeter, Princeton, Oxford, and Yale and you can't have any idea of what it is to be a black man in America today..."

Lyndon B. Johnson was appalled by the violence of 

that summer. Within days after signing the Civil Rights Act in July 1964, Johnson began pressuring Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to “write me the goddamn best, toughest voting rights act that you can devise.” Mr. Katzenbach got to work.  In fact, the bill was informally referred to as the 'Dirskenbach' bill 

because Nick enlisted Republican support by involving 

Minority Leader Everett Dirksen in its drafting. 

Although Democrats controlled both houses in 1965...

southern senators...all of who voted against it, 

tried to filibuster the bill, but cloture was invoked with Republican votes.

In 2017 the voting rights act was 52 years old and here's a great article comparing what John Lewis, who claims Trump's presidency is illegitimate, 

and who was disparaged by Trump using Twitter as ''all talk'... and Trump... were doing in the period preceding the passage of the Voting Rights Act. 

It's a revelation.