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At the recommendation of my friend Matt Yglesias, I’ve been reading Robert Caro’s chronicle of Lyndon Johnson’s years in the Senate. A good portion of the beginning of the first volume is dedicated to beating into the reader’s psyche an expectation that the Senate – no matter how pressing a crisis the nation may be facing – can be counted on to ignore the needs of the American people. The significant exception appears to be the first 100 days of FDR’s presidency when he enacted his sweeping economic recovery agenda. And even then, the Senate was only forced into action with a strong Democratic majority and public outrage so strong that armed guards had to be posted on the steps of the Capitol.

As Caro explains, when Johnson pushed as Senate Majority Leader for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the Senate had blocked nearly every attempt by reformers in both houses of Congress to implement meaningful federal civil rights legislation since the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870:

If, for eighty-seven years, every attempt to enact federal voting rights legislation had been blocked in Congress, most of the more significant of these bills had been blocked in the Senate, for it was in the Senate that the power of what had come to be called the “Southern Bloc”…was the strongest. … Hundreds of pieces of legislation had been proposed–bills to give black Americans equality in education, in employment, in housing, in transportation, in public accommodations, as well as to protect them against being beaten, burned, and mutilated. … Exactly one of these bills had passed–in 1875–and that lone statute had later been declared unconstitutional.

So, it isn’t surprising that with regard to guaranteeing Americans the right to health care, the Senate has worked equally hard to stem progress. While the issue of health care access has thankfully been one of at least some punctuated equilibrium with LBJ forcing the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the fact remains that it was nearly 75 years ago that FDR first suggested a national health insurance system would be needed. He apparently never backed any particular piece of legislation to create such a system because – you guessed it – lack of will in the Senate.

But all of this is a long way remarking on the fact that the structure of the Senate – with its self-imposed requirement to have 60 votes to move on virtually anything – seems to be giving Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats just enough rope to hang themselves with. Indeed, Senate Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats seem exceptionally committed to ensuring that history remembers them as it remembers the Southern Bloc of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: as principled defenders of the injustice of the status quo. Today, as the Senate Health Committee reported out what is perhaps the most progressive health care reform plan, the Senate Republicans rushed to hold a press conference denouncing the plan. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement, saying, “Americans want us to take the time necessary to make health care less expensive and more accessible, while preserving what they like about our system.” For McConnell, 75 years isn’t quite long enough.