View to a Bill - Douglass Caster Describes LBJ Federal Education Bill

Douglas Caster was a President's Man. This means he was given sensitive assignments that required discretion and diplomacy. He got shit done for LBJ, who, I imagine, wished like hell he had never been saddled with the Viet Nam War.

Douglass Caster was the type of beaurocrat that typifies service to country. It's notable he is a fan of Marshall and that other one...

Here is an inside look at what it took for LBJ to reform education. It is the picture of a functional government. One we should hope for..

This is an oral piece of history.

[C = Douglass Caster]
[M = Interviewer]
[Date: 1971?]

God Bless the University of Texas and LBJ.

Enjoy.



M: The books again advance on the idea that the religious issue was central in that. Is that a correct analysis?

C: Yes, well, the Elementary-Secondary Education Act had three major political settlements that had to be worked out. First was the Church-State one. That had been one of the reasons for blockage in the past, and we went to great lengths to try to take soundings. On this I worked very closely with Frank Keppel, who was extremely able and maintained good contact with some of the parochial church leaders; so that, whereas we didn't lay before them the specifics of the legislation, we posed situations to them and got their responses which led to the titles of the Elementary-Secondary Act.

Then the second political settlement had to be on the matter of the segregation
issue. Well, fortunately, that had been cleared away by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so that it was no longer necessary to have a civil rights proviso written into the education bill itself.

The third was the fight over formula in which you had to figure out how the
education dollar was going to be divided among the regions and states. It was there that the task force recommendation of a poverty impact formula--I don't recall how precisely the task force laid it out, and certainly they did not lay it out in political terms--but the idea that a top priority for federal aid to education should be to go to disadvantaged students--school children--this provided the possibility of developing the Title I formula which managed to survive the political tugs and hauls.

M: Was there any opposition based on the thought that the federal government should not spend money for education?

C: Opposition where?

M: In Congress?

C: Well, yes. Some of the die-hard Republicans, I'm sure, still felt that the federal government ought to stay clear of education altogether. After the mandate of 1964 that kind of direct opposition sort of quieted down. Instead the nature of opposition tended to be, "Well, we're for it, but we're for it in a different way."

M: Did you spend a lot of time on the Hill working on this?

C: Yes.

M: And did this work consist of interviewing congressmen or committees or what?

C: It mainly consisted of dealing with the committee chairman and key members of the subcommittee and the committees. The legislative liaison people in the White House, led by Larry O'Brien, tended to deal with the leadership, and the major scheduling and the major strategy for passing bills. But in working out the substance of the legislation and dealing with the amendments and all of that and the clarifications, I had to work very closely with some of the key people on the education committee.

M: And who were these people?

C: In the House there was Chairman Powell--Adam Clayton Powell. The subcommittee chairman was Perkins of West Virginia--Carl Perkins. He was quite a force for good in getting that bill passed. By the way, I had to develop some situations of strength outside the committee as we got toward the floor, and I worked very closely with Phil Landrum of Georgia, who had been at one time a member of the education committee, but who had subsequently become a member of the rules committee and whose support rallied a number of key southerners to support the bill. I would say his support was critical to the bill.

I also worked with Manny Celler of the judiciary committee to get the judicial
interpretation that helped us avoid traps that were laid for us. In the Senate I worked closely with Wayne Morse, who was the subcommittee chairman for education. I worked in addition with John Brademas, with Hugh Cary, who in the House was very key in working out a modification in the distribution formula that gave us some necessary support. Edith Green was involved, although she ended up opposing us on some key amendments to the bill on the floor.

In the Senate side there was Senator Joe Clark, who was a strong supporter. I
worked very closely with the staff members on both sides--the committee staff
members--Jack Forsythe and Charles Lee in the Senate. The name of the House man slips me at the moment.

M: Can you estimate at all how much you would spend up there on this bill? Were you up there every day?

C: No, a lot of times they would come up to the White House and we'd work there, too. No,the time I spent on the Hill was principally, that year particularly, was when the bill actually was moving onto the floor. I would pay spot visits up to see a particular person, but we had a lot of strategy meetings in my office. At that time my office was in the Executive Office Building. I subsequently moved over to the White House proper.

M: At these strategy meetings, you would be there, congressmen would be there, other White House staff people?

C: Yes. Sometimes we'd hold strategy meetings in my office and either Henry Wilson, who worked with the House liaison, or Mike Manatos, with the Senate, would come.

Sometimes, when it was getting to the crucial stage, we would have a meeting in Larry O'Brien's office. We wouldn't have large groups of congressmen. Usually it would be one or two who would be up to consult on a particular matter. We had Edith Green up to lunch, I remember. Bill Moyers and I had a lunch with her and took her in to see the President. We had briefed him ahead and he tried very hard to keep her from jumping off the reservation on the bill. She subsequently did jump off.

We had a series of meetings, which were sometimes held in my office and sometimes up in the second floor conference room at the White House. We'd have in key groups, the education lobbyists--the NEA, the state school superintendents, the PTA, the National Catholic Welfare Council.

M: Would these people also see the President?

C: On occasion. On occasion, if it seemed that it might give an extra drive, I would memo the President and ask if he would informally drop by the Cabinet Room or the Fish Room and speak to a particular group we had in. We tried to be sparing of his time and didn't just use his time freely. But he was always very receptive if we felt it would do some good.

M: Did the President follow the evolution of this bill closely? Did he know what was going on all the time?

C: Oh yes. We had the habit of systematically reporting to the President through memos. At the end of the day, if there was some significant movement on some area of your responsibility, you'd give the President a report memo. Other times you'd give him a memo in which you needed his concurrence of his decision on some--

M: This would go into the night reading?

C: Yes.

M: So through the passage of this bill, he knew everything that was going on and would use his power when necessary?

C: Yes.

M: Did he drive you on this bill at all? Did he ever call you in and say push harder on this particular individual or this particular--?

C: He had the notion that we wanted the elementary-secondary to be a fast-moving piece of legislation. I think a great deal of exaggeration has been written about the fact that the President demanded that it be steam-rollered through. If he did, he didn't do it in my presence. I know, for example, that Wayne Morse, when it got to the Senate, presented it as his own idea that the bill from the House should be passed without amendment. And Wayne Morse was not the kind of a person that you could just lay the law down to and say, "Do it this way." I think Morse was quite conscious that if the Senate amended it, it would then have to go back and Edith Green would have a second go at maybe disrupting it in the House. He and Edith Green had a natural rivalry and he didn't want to give her that opportunity. But the President did feel that this bill ought to be one of the first ones dealt with, and he found ready cooperation from Carl Perkins and Wayne Morse.

M: Did he say anything to you after the successful passage of the bill?

C: Yes, indeed, he wrote me a little letter in which he said--I have it framed at home--to the effect that, "a great many people were responsible for the Secondary-Elementary Education (Act), but nobody deserves more credit than you do, and I want you to know how much I appreciate what you've done." He said something, too, at the signing of the bill. As I remember it he was paying credits and afterwards, he grabbed me and said, "Where were you and Bill? Nobody deserves more credit than you all for that." He was very gracious in his compliments.

M: Is this, incidentally, gratifying to a person who is an assistant to the President to get this kind of praise?

C: Oh, yes. It makes all the difference.