. >> edward dirksen. what role in history does he play in the senate? >> well, he's most remembered for making it possible to invoke closure on civil rights legislation. >> what does that mean? >> to shut off debate with the proper amount of votes. at that point, they needed 67 votes to end debate on this 1964 civil rights act. southern senators were determined not to pass that. and it was edward dirksen who managed to gather up enough of the republican colleagues to give them what ended up to be 71 votes to pass. that was huge. it was the first time ever that the senate shut off debate on civil rights legislation. and it was really the beginning of the end of southern filibusters on civil rights. >> did you ever know him? >> i didn't. i saw him -- i saw him in action in the mid 1950's. when i came to visit the senate chamber one time. for many years in the 1970s and 1980's, i served on the board of ethics in the research center in his hometown in illinois. a really state of the art patterned research facility. neil mcneil, the biography of derksen, tha

you know, johnson used to sit in a hideaway office kneecap to kneecap with edward dirksen, the minority leader, and dirksen would say to them, mr. president, i know a fine young man in my home state of illinois who i believe deserves a judgeship and johnson would say, we will look into that. the deal was cut. johnson is going to get dirksen to vote on something and dirksen was going to get the judgeship for his constituency. if this were the case now, they would screen ugly bargain, political corruption. but that's how politics works. that's how it worked in the past, you see. and so it's so much more difficult i think to operate in that way. there were leaks of course to the press. johnson hated the leaks. kennedy hated elites. roosevelt didn't like it, although johnson and roosevelt and kennedy, they would leak things to the press themselves in order -- ross once told me when johnson appointed him national security advisor, he called them up the night before the announcement was being made at midnight and said to him, why did you tel tell the press on te pointing you national security

the republican leader who at the time was in illinois a man named edward dirksen came up to my father on the four of the senate and said, look, i know you're running for reelection. i hope you'll tell me what i can do to help. this would never happen today. but back then, that generation, they had been through the great depression. many of them had served in the military during the second world war. you're in a foxhole, you don't care if the person next to is a republican or democrat. you just want to make sure they watch your back. then the struggle with global communism fall that. people of that generation knew there were greater challenges to the welfare of the country than just members of another political party, someone who had a different ideological thing. it's changed, it's just a different place in the senate. and since my time there used to be things, the leaders of the two caucuses used to not campaign against each other, raise money against each other. now that's commonplace. you can imagine how you feel when you find the person you're supposed be working with is out to th