Majority Leadership in the U.S. Senate: Balancing Constraints By ...

Even though the office, unlike the speaker of the House, lacks a constitutional charge, it is no less significant. As chief administrator of the Senate, the Senate majority leader is responsible for upholding order with scheduling and agenda setting. The institutional structure and rules require a supermajority for most major actions, effectively mandating an institutional role to the Senate majority leader. The necessity of minority support de-emphasizes overt partisanship by the Senate majority leader. Even as a large margin of majority may lessen the need to consult with relevant members of the minority, the demand for institutional preservation constrains the Senate majority leader to that role still.

President

For the Senate majority leader, balancing the different factions within his own party against the centrifugal forces of the minority, while attending to the needs of the state that elected him in its service and while preserving the institutional prestige of the Senate, is no mean feat. Add to that juggling act an extra-branch constituent—the president. Whether under unified or divided government, the president and Senate majority leader have a reactive relationship. Under unified government, the Senate majority leader is beholden to the policy demands of the national figurehead of his party—a man who was elected on a slate of campaign promises he now has to enact. In fact, one scholar (Munk, 1974) tied the emergence of the office of Senate majority leader to the demands of the president—he needed a leader to push his platform. Presidential influence, thus, may be evident in the selection and operation of Senate majority leaders. Divided government perhaps gives the Senate majority leader more leeway to originate policy and set agendas, but the leader remains constrained by the threat of presidential veto, if not presidential popularity. The result is an office obliged to so many interests, there is no clear understanding by participant or observer as to what the role is or what it should be.

Ambiguities of the Office

During the throes of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson, himself the previous occupant of the majority leader's desk, pleaded with Senate