By Tim Shelley | WCBU
Published August 25, 2023 at 2:56 PM CDT
The politicians of today’s U.S. Senate could stand to learn a thing or two from Everett Dirksen and Mike Mansfield.
That’s a central argument author Marc C. Johnson makes in his new book, Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate.
Johnson, a former broadcast journalist and aide to former Gov. Cecil Andrus, D-Idaho, said the relationship between Mansfield, a Democrat from Montana; and Dirksen, a Republican from Illinois, was unique in modern American politics.
“Totally different personalities, from very different states from very different parts of the country, very different political ideologies,” Johnson said. “But still, somehow during the very tumultuous time of the 1960s, they managed to work together on a vast array of things that have continued to shape American politics and civic life. So quite an extraordinary partnership.”
The Senate leaders were pivotal in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the creation of Medicare, and building a consensus for ratification of the limited nuclear test ban treaty.
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