The Making of Barbara Jordan
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?
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When Connally led the Texas delegation to the Democratic Convention in 1968, Jordan announced from the beginning that she would not support him as a favorite son. She was for Humphrey. Then Connally changed his mind and wanted to lead the delegation into the Humphrey Camp. Jordan then changed her mind and wouldn’t go along (she did end up supporting Humphrey). Whatever Connally wanted, she opposed. In 1972, when one of Connally’s key political operatives, UT Regents Chairman Frank Erwin, Jr., sent her a $1000 campaign contribution as a peace offering, she sent it back. However, she did testify as a character witness at Connally’s bribery trial, for some or all of these reasons: because it put the Houston establishment even deeper in her debt; because beneath the deepest of differences politicians share a basic mutual protection society so far as prison is concerned; and because—less likely—as a lawyer she believed her testimony would help him get a fair trial. At the trial, she testified, “As far as I know from my personal experience, he had a good reputation for honesty.” When asked if she had any political differences with Connally, she replied, “I have had spectacular. . .” At that point the prosecution objected, and she was not allowed to finish. Full circle of irony: he helped keep her off the State Democratic Executive Committee in 1964; she helped keep him out of prison in 1975.
From LBJ to Connally the line of succession went, until Jordan came along, to Ben Barnes. Barnes was a real comer, the major star—Jordan had a supporting role then—of late sixties Texas politics. He was the youngest Speaker ever of the Texas House of Representatives, and in 1968, when he was 30, he was elected lieutenant governor by carrying every county in Texas. Barnes and Jordan were both natural politicians, and they got along well. They understood each other. Jordan knew what Barnes was up to, and he knew that while she was in the full flights of her oratory on the Senate floor he could catch her eye from the podium, wink, and she would wink back. They almost never agreed on issues, but they had one thing in common: towering ambition. In the spring of 1971, he helped her carve out a congressional seat for herself; she gave him the impression she would support him for governor. She made it, he didn’t.
The Revenge of Aunt Jemima
The election of Barbara Jordan to Congress in 1972 continued an undeniable personal achievement. She had come home from the East at 23, a black lawyer with few prospects in a segregated society. She was returning to the East at 36, a U.S. Representative and the protégé of the former president of the United States. Her traditional approach to politics had been overwhelmingly vindicated against a black militant. Her ambition, her intelligence, her sense of personal destiny, her voice, and her charisma—combined with her shrewd political skills and her penchant for hard work—would make the Congress her personal national stage. But while Jordan has tirelessly sought office, she has not so obviously sought acclaim. She has consistently gone after power, but recognition came to her. She worked hard to get where she is, but she became a celebrity almost effortlessly. Before taking a final look at her personal and political achievements, the real and symbolic sources of her national appeal, and the reasons she seems to strike such a deep chord in American, it would be wise to reconsider just how she got there.
Barbara Jordan brushes aside high-flown descriptions of her symbolic significance and insists she is just “a practical politician.” In judging politicians, means are often as important as ends: how a politician reaches his goals can be as important as the goals themselves. Jordan’s means have been the classic politics of her mentor, Lyndon Johnson; some of her liberal critics call her “a black LBJ.” Those politics can be characterized in many ways, but above all they are the art of the possible: the practical craft of knowing how things work, what buttons to push, who has power and who doesn’t. Such a politician is popularly known as “someone who can get things done.” The reduction of politics to the level of practical makes good, hard-nosed sense in most cases; there are times, however, when it backfires.
Being practical means avoiding unnecessary risks. The line between political prudence and political timidity is very thin; the danger lies in settling for less than you might have gained had you fought harder. When Barbara Jordan used good old political horse trading to create a congressional seat she could win, somehow her old Senate seat got lost in the process. “Either that was part of the deal with Barnes or she just felt she had to give something up to get something, but it wasn’t necessary,” recalls a former Senate colleague. “If she had used her muscle to keep the Senate seat for blacks, she could have had both. They would have cratered. That’s exactly the sort of thing they are most afraid of her about. But she didn’t make a peep.” “It just wasn’t in the game plan,” says Jordan. Safe, practical politics. The result: while each state senator represents about 400,000 people, there is no black state senator for Houston’s 350,000 blacks, which is the rough equivalent of dividing up Fort Worth to be represented by Dallas, Abilene, and Wichita Falls.
Being practical also means knowing where the power is and cultivating it. The trap here is confusing the trapping of power for power itself. When Jordan let Barnes believe she would support him for governor, she confused his power in the state Capitol, which was near absolute, with his power in the state, which had dissipated in the wake of the Sharpstown scandal. (Barnes seemed “clean,” but he was then the state’s most prominent wheeler-dealer politician, and the political mood was “throw the rascals out.”) Both conservative and liberal political outsiders smelled blood. Frances Farenthold was the liberal candidate for governor. To Jordan, Farenthold must have seemed a political lightweight: she was only a state representative, she didn’t understand how practical power worked, she was, in short, yet another quixotic, maverick liberal doomed to defeat. But when Jordan went to the Harris County Democrats endorsement caucus, she got a surprise. It was a heated meeting. The liberals were disillusioned with Jordan. They wanted to know where she stood on the governor’s race; they wouldn’t stay neutral in her congressional race with Graves unless she endorsed Farenthold. For an excruciating moment, the chickens were home to roost. Then Jordan made her choice: without naming Farenthold, she pledged to support the candidate of the Harris County Democrats. No one knows what she told Barnes, who got 17 per cent of the vote and came in third. Farenthold made the runoff, losing finally to Dolph Briscoe, another outsider.
Being practical means playing the game with the people in power. In the intraparty squabbles of Texas Democrats, Jordan customarily comes down on the side of the “ins,” which means the conservatives. “Party issues are power issues,” says one committed liberal. “Barbara’s devotion to the conservatives means she keeps the party’s power on the side of the people who oppose her legislative goals. She’s been vice-chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee for four years, and as far as I know she’s never attended a meeting. That means blacks and liberals really have no voice, which is how the conservatives want it. She doesn’t seem to care that her inaction means important issues like voter registration and party finances are in the hands of the conservatives. In party politics, she is truly a token. They use her, and she gets nothing for blacks or liberals in return.”
Being practical is making the most of what you’ve got. The most immediately obvious thing Jordan has is being black. What should have been an obstacle she has turned into an asset. One longtime liberal recalls that no one even thought to scrutinize Jordan’s intentions or character when she first became active in liberal politics. “I had no idea she would turn out an establishment Democrat,” he groused. “Back then we didn’t question the motives of blacks. It didn’t occur to us that one of them might be using us for her own ambitions. It sounds naïve, but then we thought, well, blacks were better, more pure and honest, than white politicians, that they had a cause bigger than themselves. If she had been white, we would have seen her as just another ambitious politician.” The source of white admiration for Barbara Jordan, this theory goes, is akin to the admiration white audiences had for an entertainer like Al Hibbler, a blind black pianist. Hibbler was good, but the applause was out of proportion to his performance, because white people were so proud of him for overcoming his handicaps. “Barbara makes it easy for mossbacks to like her,” says one white political reporter. “They get buddy-buddy with her and in one fell swoop they can convince themselves they aren’t sexist or racist.” Admiring Barbara Jordan, in other words, solves the problem of how to deal with all these blacks and women clamoring for recognition. “Black politicians who try to follow Barbara’s footsteps are doomed to failure,” says one black politician who has tried. “The establishment only needs one black to be cozy with, and she’s it.”
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