U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (Photo: Flickr/ryanjreilly)

During a speech given in Texas last night, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder criticized legal challenges launched by states — including Florida — against the section of the Voting Rights Act that requires approval of election laws in certain areas. Holder also affirmed the need for vigilance against laws aimed at rolling back voting rights.

According to a draft of his speech released to the press, Holder also said that he was taking a “thorough” look into Florida’s controversial new elections law.

“We’re also examining a number of changes that Florida has made to its electoral process,” he said, “including changes to the procedures governing third-party voter registration organizations, as well as changes to early voting procedures, including the number of days in the early voting period.”

“Although I cannot go into detail about the ongoing review of these and other state-law changes,” he continued, “I can assure you that it will be thorough — and fair. We will examine the facts, and we will apply the law. If a state passes a new voting law and meets its burden of showing that the law is not discriminatory, we will follow the law and approve the change. And where a state can’t meet this burden, we will object as part of our obligation under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

Florida has not been the only state facing scrutiny from the federal government. Holder also mentioned interest in other states such as Texas and South Carolina. Both states were among several that enacted new photo ID requirements to vote.

Holder said during his speech (according to the prepared remarks):

Despite this history, and despite our nation’s long tradition of extending voting rights – to non-property owners and women, to people of color and Native Americans, and to younger Americans – today, a growing number of our fellow citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that – nearly five decades ago – LBJ devoted his Presidency to addressing. In my travels across this country, I’ve heard a consistent drumbeat of concern from many Americans, who – often for the first time in their lives – now have reason to believe that we are failing to live up to one of our nation’s most noble, and essential, ideals.

As Congressman John Lewis described it, in a speech on the House floor this summer, the voting rights that he worked throughout his life – and nearly gave his life – to ensure are, “under attack… [by] a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, [and] minority and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.” Not only was he referring to the all-too-common deceptive practices we’ve been fighting for years. He was echoing more recent concerns about some of the state-level voting law changes we’ve seen this legislative season.

Since January, more than a dozen states have advanced new voting measures. Some of these new laws are currently under review by the Justice Department, based on our obligations under the Voting Rights Act.

Holder also spoke about recent challenges to the Voting Rights Act, specifically the section of the law that requires federal “preclearance” of election laws in certain areas. In October, Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning launched a legal complaint against that requirement.

In his filing, Browing argued that federal preclearance requirements for state election laws are “unconstitutional” and that “subjecting Florida counties and other jurisdictions covered exclusively under the language minority provisions of the [Voting Rights Act] to pre-clearance is not a rational, congruent, or proportional means of enforcing the Fourteenth and/or Fifteenth Amendments and violates the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the U.S. Constitution.”

Last night, Holder said:

Despite the long history of support for Section 5, this keystone of our voting rights laws is now being challenged five years after its reauthorization as unconstitutional in no fewer than five lawsuits. Each of these lawsuits claims that we’ve attained a new era of electoral equality, that America in 2011 has moved beyond the challenges of 1965, and that Section 5 is no longer necessary.

I wish this were the case. The reality is that – in jurisdictions across the country – both overt and subtle forms of discrimination remain all too common. And we don’t have to look far to see recent proof.

Holder described recent problems with Texas and Louisiana’s redistricting efforts, which he said “failed to show the absence of discrimination.” Holder said, “To those who argue that Section 5 is no longer necessary — these and other examples are proof that we still need this critical tool to combat discrimination and safeguard the right to vote.”

The attorney general also announced that the issue of protecting voting rights in the country was a moral imperative that required public support.

“As concerns about the protection of this right and the integrity of our election systems become an increasingly prominent part of our national dialogue, we must consider some important questions,” he said. “It is time to ask: What kind of nation — and what kind of people — do we want to be? Are we willing to allow this era — our era — to be remembered as the age when our nation’s proud tradition of expanding the franchise ended? Are we willing to allow this time — our time — to be recorded in history as the age when the long-held belief that, in this country, every citizen has the chance — and the right — to help shape their government, became a relic of our past, instead of a guidepost for our future?”

Holder said new legislation that was formerly introduced in the Senate by then-Sen. Barack Obama, would be reintroduced by Sens. Charles Schumer and Ben Cardin. The law “would establish tough criminal penalties for those who engage in fraudulent voting practices — and would help to ensure that citizens have complete and accurate information about where and when to vote,” he said.

“Despite so many decades of struggle, sacrifice, and achievement — we must remain ever vigilant in safeguarding our most basic and important right,” he concluded. “Too many recent actions have the potential to reverse the progress that defines us — and has made this nation exceptional, as well as an example for all the world. We must be true to the arc of America’s history, which compels us to be more inclusive with regard to the franchise. And we must never forget the purpose that — more than two centuries ago — inspired our nation’s founding, and now must guide us forward.”

President-elect Barack Obama will need to work effectively with Congress if he hopes to enact his legislative agenda. (WDCpix)

As President-elect Barack Obama assembles his administration, the final scenes of the 2008 campaign shift to Capitol Hill, where a lame-duck session shadowboxes over economic recovery measures. At the same time, the unresolved races in Georgia and Minnesota, the fate of renegade Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and the Democrats’ quest to construct a “filibuster-proof majority” highlight the crucial challenge for the incoming president: his ability to push legislation through both houses of Congress and appointments through the Senate.

Even with Obama’s party in power on Capitol Hill, that task will not prove simple. Nobody should expect a reprise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first hundred days, when Congress rushed to enact banking reforms without even getting the chance to read the legislation.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Indeed, an electoral mandate and majorities in both houses offer no guarantee of legislative success. President Jimmy Carter could not navigate his energy plan through a Democratic Congress (remember the cardigan?), nor could President Bill Clinton win support for his health-care plan (remember the Health Security Card?).

Republicans have fared no better. Fresh off his re-election victory in 2004, George W. Bush told the White House press corps that he had “earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.“ He staked much of it on a proposal to privatize Social Security that failed to move through the GOP-controlled Congress.

How, then, might Obama avoid such pitfalls? The career of another senator-turned-president suggests some valuable lessons. During the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson transformed the relationship between the legislative and executive branches. A former Senate leader, LBJ immersed himself and his staff in all the details of legislation from “the cradle to the grave, from the moment a bill is introduced to the moment it is officially enrolled as the law of the land.”

Johnson visited the Capitol frequently and met constantly with congressional leaders. “There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress,” he said, “and that is continuously, incessantly and without interruption. If it’s really going to work, the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous. He’s got to know them even better than they know themselves.”

Johnson ordered his staff to give congressional relations the highest priority. “You are going to get a lot of phone calls,” LBJ warned his White House advisers. “People are going to court you and flatter you because you have access to the president. You are going to find yourself a social lion and a fellow with more charm than you ever thought you had. And you will be all this because of the job you hold.” But, LBJ commanded, “the most important people you will talk to are senators and congressmen. You treat them as if they were president. Answer their calls immediately.”

Lyndon Johnson's relationship with Congress allowed him to pass the Civil Rights Bill in 1968. (Wikimedia Commons)

When Congress was in session, Johnson breakfasted every week with the legislative leadership. As they feasted on eggs, toasted homemade bread and links of the special deer sausage Johnson flew in from Texas, the president worked through a large posterboard sitting on an easel. The poster mapped out all the pending legislation in the House and Senate, plotting its path through the various committees down into a bowl drawn on the bottom of the chart to represent final passage of the law.

As they ate, LBJ applied the “Treatment,” cajoling, flattering and persuading the congressional leaders to move his bills forward. The chart accompanied Johnson to Cabinet meetings and his conferences with influential citizens. During 1965, it seemed to follow him everywhere.

Managing Congress also meant knowing when not to ask for a vote; understanding that allies — particularly in a broad, unstable majority — sometimes could not vote with the president. This is something Obama also needs to know. With more than 50 “Blue Dog Democrats” in the House, including conservative Southern and Western congressmen from districts carried strongly by Sen. John McCain, Obama will have to know when he can count on their votes, and when he must expect (and even approve) their opposition to preserve the long-term health of his majority.

For example, Johnson, who was determined to pass the civil-rights law that had stalled in Congress for decades, knew it was fruitless to apply pressure to Southern senators in his own party. “I can’t make a Southerner change his spots,” he told one civil-rights leader, “any more than I can make a leopard change them.” To shut off the inevitable filibuster, Johnson needed Republican votes — especially the support of the Senate minority leader, Everett Dirksen of Illinois.

Johnson began a campaign of flattery — praising Dirksen’s statesmanship, asking his “advice” on appointments, granting him small victories against the White House. “You know this bill can’t pass unless you get Ev Dirksen,” Johnson told his floor manager for civil rights, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.). “You’ve got to let him have a piece of the action. He’s got to look good all the time.” In the end, they got Dirksen and more than enough Republican votes to end the filibuster and pass the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act.

With the Blue Dogs in the House and fewer than 60 votes in the Senate, Obama will need to build and rebuild a shifting series of coalitions. Even if the Democrats do reach 60 votes in the Senate, that majority will only be “filibuster-proof” if the leadership can deliver every single vote for cloture. On few issues is a caucus that includes Lieberman and Edward M. Kennedy, Virginia’s Jim Webb, North Dakota’s Tim Johnson, and California’s Barbara Boxer likely to find unanimity.

Those ad hoc majorities were central to LBJ’s dealings with Congress. On civil rights, he needed northern Republicans. On Medicare and Food Stamps, he brought together conservative Southerners in his own party with liberal Northerners to overcome Republican opposition.

Sometimes, Johnson made concessions to influential congressmen, like Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Arkansas), chairman of the Ways-and-Means Committee. Other times he built broad coalitions by strategically larding bills with goodies for key legislators. A number of conservative Southern senators supported the food stamp program, for example, because Johnson made sure it was as generous to farmers as to the poor and hungry.

While Johnson’s White House almost never explicitly traded favors for particular votes, every member of Congress understood that cooperation brought benefits: invitations on foreign trips, influence on appointments, projects for the home district. When they voted against the president, recalcitrant members knew they would pay a price.

Defending a key vote against the administration, Sen. Frank Church told the president that celebrated newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann had endorsed his views. “I’ll tell you what, Frank,” the president replied, “next time you want a dam in Idaho, you call Walter Lippmann and let him put it through for you.”

So President Obama must know when to ease off, but he must also recognize when to push.

Johnson began the 89th Congress, the 1965 legislative session, with a commanding Democratic majority — 295 out of 435 votes in the House. For the first time in decades, the wide margin ensured a sympathetic majority for liberal measures.

Despite his popularity, John F. Kennedy had trouble getting his agenda passed. (Wikimedia Commons)

Even without the support of conservative Southern Democrats, the administration could count on enough votes to enact its reform agenda. As one of Johnson’s congressional liaisons put it, “When we have a fat Congress as we did in the 89th, then we can hike up our demands to fit the situation. When the votes are not razor thin,” he explained, then the administration had not pushed far enough.

The last time a sitting senator moved straight into the White House, familiarity with Congress bred only contempt. John F. Kennedy championed a slew of new programs, but with only a few exceptions the president could not get them enacted. The principal objectives of Kennedy’s domestic agenda — federal aid to education, a tax cut, and civil rights legislation — stalled on Capitol Hill.

The New York Times political reporter, Tom Wicker, described Kennedy’s inability to manage the Congress as one of the “great ironies of American politics. He wondered why “JFK, the immensely popular president, could not reach his legislative goals.” The stubborn opposition surprised Kennedy himself. “When I was a congressman,” the thwarted president mused, “I never realized how important Congress was. Now I do.”

Americans might hope that Obama learns that lesson sooner and better than his role model.

Bruce J. Schulman is the Huntington professor of American history at Boston University. His latest book, co-edited with Julian E. Zelizer, is “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s.” He is the author of “The ’70s: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics,” “Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism” and “From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt : Federal Policy, Economic Development and the Transformation of the South 1938-1980.”