How to Use Backchannels to Create Change
Everyone who's been in an office knows there are a few people who are more influential than others. Here's how to identify and use them to create change.
Bottom-up pressure is the key to lasting. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands had successful democratic movements because of pressure from below. Imposing new rules from the top down fails, as top-down revolutions did in fascist Germany, communist USSR, or revolutionary France.
However, once enough popular support has been mustered, powerful elites must play their role and turn popular passion into sound policy.
Robert Caro’s book, Master of the Senate, brings readers into the backrooms of the Senate during Lyndon Johnson’s near-decade as Democratic Majority Leader. That included the 1957 Civil Rights Bill, a weak bill whose enforceable provisions wouldn’t be given teeth until 1964 and 1965.
Nineteen fifty-seven was a turning point for the civil rights struggle. Not only were the Montgomery bus boycotts ongoing. Not only were civil rights leaders securing early court victories in cases like Browder v. Gale. The previous summer, Emmitt Till’s murderers gave an interview justifying their crime.
Northern audiences were freshly enraged by Jim Crowe’s barbarity. (Northerners would be less accommodating in the 1970s, when whites fled the cities to avoid Black neighbors.)
The Senate managed to dodge civil rights in 1956. But 1957 was the start of a new legislative session, and pressure to pass a civil rights bill had peaked. It would take a master of backchannel negotiations to guide a civil rights bill through a Senate long dominated by Southern senators.
And no one was better at leveraging backchannels than Lyndon Johnson.
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