Tiny windows

Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton, has a new book titled The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society; he did a talk on it at Politics & Prose. Zelizer's thesis is that LBJ was not the all-powerful "Master of the Senate" who could push through whatever legislation he wanted--and that LBJ recognized that fact. His period of great  legislative achievement was really just the two-year period from 1964-66, when he had overwhelming majorities in both houses and power had shifted away from conservative Southern Democrats. That ended with the 1966 mid-terms, when Southern Democrats returned to power, Republicans gained seats and were less likely to cooperate with him, making it far more difficult for him to achieve as much in the final two years of his presidency (including appoint a replacement for Warren).

This illustrates the broader point that what we think of as eras of particular legal and political achievements often are a product of a much smaller window within that broader era. So, Zelizer argues, the "Great Society" was created largely in two years of Johnson's five-year presidency, when the numbers and personnel lined up. Much less was happening during the other three years.

This matches Lucas Powe's argument about the small window for what we regard as "The Warren Court" and Justice Brennan's power as the intellectual engine of the Warren Court. While Warren was Chief for 15 years, "The Warren Court" really was a seven-year period from 1962-69, when the appointment of Goldberg provided five solid votes (Warren, Black, Douglas, Brennan, Goldberg) for most liberal or civil libertarian positions on speech, civil rights, and criminal procedure. Or, even more narrowly, it might be limited to only the two-year period beginning with Marshall's appointment in 1967, in which there were six liberal Justices and the bloc could afford one defection (by that point, it often was Black) and still maintain a majority.