Hardly working to working hard
While a student at the College, Johnson confesses that he was not much of an academic. "My overall academic record was spotty," he said. "It was the exposure to the intellectual atmosphere at Amherst that really caught me off guard. I suffered through freshmen and sophomore years with very mediocre grades and no awareness of what was necessary to respond intellectually."
Working more diligently in his final two years at the College, Johnson eventually became, in his words, a "sufficiently adequate student." After completing his undergraduate education, Johnson chose to attend the University of Virginia Law School. What Johnson owes to Amherst above all else, he says, is the "motivation to be intellectually curious and start working harder" and the ability to "scrutinize issues skeptically." "It didn't happen overnight, ... but I'm glad it happened at all," he said.
Though Amherst infused Johnson with intellectual curiosity, it did not motivate him to pursue a career in government. Quite the contrary, in a course on political parties taught jointly in 1958 with Mount Holyoke College, Johnson and his classmates were assigned to work with a Springfield Republican candidate for the Massachusetts State Senate. When the students arrived at the campaign headquarters, the candidate greeted them and had them spend the evening tearing down his opponent's signs all over Springfield. "That gave me a negative impression of politics," Johnson says.
In keeping with his new-found appreciation for hard work, Johnson spent his final two years at the College exploring diversifying his study focus before finally settling on a major. "I jumped all over the place for four years," Johnson said. "It's a combination of taking a variety of courses and writing articulately and approaching something skeptically that's important."
Becoming active on campus
A four-year benchwarmer for the varsity basketball team, Johnson has fond memories of Amherst life outside the classroom. Junior and senior years he belonged to the Chi Psi fraternity, though he avoided the common practice of "just sticking with the frat guys," instead making a concerted effort to meet different types of people, especially in Valentine Dining Hall. "The social scene was very contrived," Johnson says about Amherst in the late 50s. "Frat bells would go off at Smith College and Mount Holyoke at 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends, so if you had a date at Amherst, the girls had to be back in their dorms when the bells rang–that was strictly monitored."
Active outside of Amherst
Johnson recalls a few moments of student activism in a post-war era marked by social contentment, a half-decade before the Civil Rights Act was brought to the table. During his senior year, he marched at the White House to express support for civil rights; however, President Eisenhower was in Georgia, playing golf.
"There weren't many causes politically. There was an expectation in the 50s that all was relatively well." Johnson recalled when the College constructed a religion building with plans to mount a cross on the steeple. Students filled the site with waste baskets in protest.
After entering the University of Virginia Law School at a time when, according to Johnson, "eighty-seven percent of our class went immediately to grad school [and] acceptance from a place like Amherst was almost guaranteed," courses on statutory interpretation caught Johnson's eye and he met his academic match.
Twenty-four years old upon graduating from law school in 1963, Johnson was required to fulfill two years of mandatory military service under the terms of the draft, and he opted to serve active duty in the New York Army National Guard.
Public service
Shortly after his service in the Guard, government beckoned. The House Parliamentarian hired Johnson as an assistant in 1964 and, except for a brief stint as a Lieutenant in the Navy as a JAG officer, Johnson found his niche in the House and remained there for four decades.
It is no wonder that Johnson's life has been devoted to mastery of details. He speaks of the responsibilities of the Parliamentarian, meticulously recalling each procedural problem and the Parliamentarian's solution to it. In his voice, several things are clear. Johnson cares deeply for American government and sees an obligation to protect it, ensure its perpetuation and sell its merits to a new generation of young Americans.
"I'm here to remind the House members of traditions, precedents, rules. That's my job," he said. "One or more Parliamentarians would be on the floor [of the House] at all times. If I weren't there, I'd watch on closed circuit [television]. We had to be able to respond as situations arose. Ninety percent of the job would be anticipating ... problems before they arose and advising staff whether they could do something. When it comes time to legislate, my philosophy is 'Maximize the amount of time members have to legislate and minimize the amount of argument and time spent on the process.' To be able to do that effectively, members want to know their prerogatives before they erupt on the House floor. We can avoid long ... arguments on the floor and keep the focus on substance."
No two days were the same. "The unique ability to work with all the members and staff of committees, and the individuals in the House, the dynamic of having new challenges all the time, is part of what kept me inspired. Our job was to keep the House focused on rules and ... traditions and precedents, which is not always easy because the House often changes the way it operates."
High profile work
The most high profile procedural conflict Johnson resolved took place in 1998 as the House prepared to vote on the articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. "The articles of impeachment emerged from the Judicial Committee, and the Democrats felt it was inappropriate, so they came up with the notion that the president should be censured rather than impeached," Johnson recalls. "Our advice to the presiding officer was that censure is not germane to impeachment. ... Impeachment is the remedial ability of the House and then the Senate to remove the president-that is the extent of constitutionally contemplated sanctions that can be brought against a president in the House."
Once Johnson and his staff announced their opinion, the Democrats made a final motion to create a rule that would allow censure. "The Republican majority refused to allow it," Johnson remembered. "The Democrats appealed the ruling of the Chair when the Chair ruled it out of order. That process of appealing is extreme because the Chair's rulings are considered sacrosanct. They've been researched by our office based on procedural documents we've gathered and published. ... When it comes to interpretation of the rules of the House, we've maintained the tradition of consistency and non-partisanship."
Not your average retirement
In retirement, Johnson plans to write a book comparing Congress to the British Parliament, and he will teach a seminar at the UVA Law School next semester. "In this age of cynicism about politics and public service, it's important to try to encourage people to at least look to public service," he said. "At this time ... the most important thing is combating cynicism about the process, disengagement of young people, thinking the political process is irrelevant. Overcoming that image is incumbent upon every American. I haven't become a cynic or a skeptic. My primary responsibility through writing and teaching is to encourage young people to remain skeptical but not cynical. That is a key distinction."
Whether in South Dormitory in 1957 or in the office next to that of the Speaker of the House in 2004, Johnson has kept himself grounded in a steady sense of modesty. Joseph Zgrodnick '60, a orthodontist who has known Johnson since his college days, said"I'm going down to visit Charlie Johnson. I'm sitting in his little foyer waiting, and all of a sudden the Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, says 'Who are you?' I said I went to Amherst College with Charlie and we played basketball there together." Charlie said, 'Mr. Speaker, he's full of shit; we sat on the bench together.'"