The U.S. Senate is so sharply polarized along partisan and ideological lines today that it’s easy to believe it was always this way. But in the turbulent 1960s, even as battles over civil rights and the war in Vietnam dominated American politics, bipartisanship often prevailed.
In his latest book, Mansfield and Dirksen, Marc C. Johnson highlights two remarkable leaders whose committed to bipartisanship made them giants of the Senate – Republican leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois and Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, the longest-serving majority leader in Senate history. The political and personal relationship of these party leaders, extraordinary by today’s standards, is the lens through which Johnson examines the Senate in that tumultuous time.
Marc C. Johnson served as a top aide to Idaho’s longest-serving governor, Cecil D. Andrus. His writing on politics and history has been published in the New York Times and elsewhere, and he manages a blog and podcast called Many Things Considered. He last joined us in 2021 to talk about his book, Tuesday Night Massacre: Four Senate Elections and the Radicalization of the Republican Party.
