Googling to find more on how they SFRC chairs and Presidents interacted - I found this fascinating oral history of Fullbright'e lead staffer - given in 1983. (To prevent others having the same confusion - the Senator Al Gore mentioned at the end is Gore's father - and was not ambiguous in 1983!)
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Marcy_interview_8.pdfHe speaks of many things - including what it takes to be a powerful voice. It is interesting that he found Percy too reluctant to disagree with Reagan - and attributed part of Fullbright's power to his split with LBJ. He also has an interesting discussion on the earlier history when the SFRC tended to be a committee with the chairs of other committees there (including a fascinating discussion on the relationship of Finance and SFRC - reading that it was interesting that not only is the current chair of Finance not on SFRC, but Kerry is the only one on both.)
He speaks of the popular Governor of Arkansas winning the primary against Fullbright. It is easy to see parallels to Weld/Kerry, with Weld getting far more coverage than Kerry - which had a much better outcome. With the possibility of Kerry heading SFRC, under a President Obama, this seemed to be relevant.
Speaking of what makes a powerful SFRC have a powerful voice, he says:
"MARCY: Well, it takes time.
It takes personality. It takes hard work. It takes an ability to have other individuals recognize a
person as an individual who knows what he or she is talking about. One of the problems of the Senate is that senators have so many constituencies that the have to worry about. They have to worry about agriculture, about trade, about labor problems. It's very difficult for a senator to become recognized as a great authority on anything. Fulbright very much confined his work to issues of foreign policy. He'd make pro forma speeches on agriculture and rice and things of that sort. Those were the sorts of things that his domestic staff would put into his hands and he would do his domestic duties. But on these other issues, the foreign policy issues, he thought about them, he read about them. I was going to say he knew the figures, that's not quite right, because that's one of the problems. To come back a little bit, there is a distinction between knowing the nuts and bolts and realizing that the nuts and bolts are there because of a policy or the lack of a policy.
I think Fulbright was a leader because he managed to keep his eye on the fundamental, basic, policy issues. To come back to our Church example earlier; the issue of a Soviet brigade in Cuba was certainly not a fundamental policy issue in the framework of the overall impact that approval of a SALT treaty would have had.
I think sometimes that leadership comes from a person's voice. Walter George had a tremendous resonant voice, and when he would say some simple thing it sounded like it came from God himself. Those things are characteristics of leadership.
And I think leadership within the Senate means that you can't be anyone's person. You cannot jump to attention when the president or the Secretary of State takes a position. You can't just say, "That's right."
When one believes the president is right, you say it's right, but then people listen to you because they know very well that if you think a policy is wrong, that it ought to be changed you speak up, you say it. Too many senators, I think, keep quiet if they disagree with the president, or they make some innocuous statement. You can't lead that way"
Kerry is nearly unique in his willingness to dissent when the policy is wrong - and he will do it in the measured respectful way he did in 1971 and in the Bush years - and in the years in between. In fact, one of the only negatives any of us mentioned on SoS was that public dissent and independence is limited.