Mike Mansfield was a legislative giant, yet his two favorite words might have been \u201cYep\u201d and \u201cNope.\u201d\u00a0 He could be a Sunday-morning news show host\u2019s worst nightmare, because the brevity and directness of his answers meant that the host would have to prepare more like 50 questions rather than 15, for what in reality was a 22-minute program.\u00a0 Asked if he agreed with a policy or with the words of another public official, he would simply say \u201cYep\u201d if he did and \u201cNope\u201d if he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 He had his reasons, but preferred to reveal them without embellishment and only when the interrogator showed that he too had some understanding of the issue.<\/p>\n

He became one of the giants of the mid-20^{th<\/sup> century as a gentle yet strong senator, born in New York City, who as a young boy moved out to Big Sky country (Montana).\u00a0 Mike Mansfield served as Senate Majority Leader from 1961 \u2013 1977, longer than anyone else in American history.\u00a0 It was not an easy task to succeed Lyndon Johnson, the savvy but bloviating leader from Texas, who had gone on to the Vice-Presidency and then the Presidency after John F.\u00a0Kennedy was assassinated.<\/p>\n}

Think of what Congress accomplished during Mansfield\u2019s sixteen years as leader of the Senate.\u00a0 Three important Civil Rights bills passed Congress, one in 1964, covering public accommodations, a second in 1965, strengthening voting rights, and a third one in 1968, enacting fair housing rules.\u00a0 This was after a century in which Congress essentially stood by while a few presidents exercised what power they could to advance civil rights, and the Supreme Court came to acknowledge that the \u201cequal protection\u201d clause of the 14^{th<\/sup> Amendment applied to African-Americans as well as whites.\u00a0 In 1964, Mansfield cleverly convinced Republican Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois to ally members of his side of the aisle with northern Democrats to stifle the filibuster of Southern Democrats; the kind of individuals who would have felt right at home with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell\u2019s recent declaration of April as Confederate History Month without any mention of slavery.<\/p>\n}

Mansfield also helped Johnson shepherd through the monumental Great Society, which while important and lasting in many ways, was cut off at the knees when Johnson turned his attention and resources to the war in Vietnam. Before Johnson was sidetracked, Congress, under the leadership of Mansfield in the Senate and John McCormack in the House, established the War on Poverty, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act, the Bilingual Education Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Truth-in-Lending Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.\u00a0 The significance of these accomplishments shines even brighter as we see that today\u2019s Congress took fifteen months to pass a watered-down health insurance reform act.<\/p>\n

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