On September 1, 1983, news has just reached the United States on the Soviets shooting down Flight KAL 007, killing 269 people, one being Congressman Larry McDonald (D-Ga.). Washington’s senator, known as a hawkish figure on matters regarding the USSR, at a televised press conference in Seattle blasts the Soviets for this act. Only hours later, despite publicly appearing to be in good health, he suffers a massive heart attack and despite the best efforts of cardiologists at Everett’s Providence Hospital, he is pronounced dead less than two hours later at the age of 71. This ended the 42-year long career of one of Washington’s true political giants, Senator Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson (1912-1983).

The Start of a Career

Washington was in 1940 even more of a Democratic state than it is now…indeed Postmaster General James Farley at the time described the United States as 47 states and “the Soviet of Washington” (Will). This election, however, sends 28-year-old Jackson, a crusading prosecutor from Everett, to Congress. Although a loyal New Deal Democrat, one of his first votes is against Lend-Lease. A number of Washington’s politicians are non-interventionist, including one of its senators, Homer T. Bone. However, Jackson votes to permit U.S. merchant ships to enter belligerent ports later that year and after World War II, he would readily embrace the postwar internationalist consensus, backing the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. The approach of actively countering the Soviets abroad was the position of almost all postwar liberals, and this consensus would hold until the Vietnam War.

Defeating Cain

The 1946 midterms had gotten elected a number of Republicans who probably would not have been elected under other circumstances. One of these was Republican Harry P. Cain of Washington. Its not that he was a bad legislator, rather that ideologically he was quite to the right of the state of Washington’s consensus, and in 1952 Congressman Jackson challenged him for reelection. He had been the only Democrat up for reelection to Congress who had weathered the 1946 midterms and was highly popular. Cain didn’t benefit at all from Eisenhower’s landslide win, with Jackson winning by over 12 points. Although Jackson defeated Cain, Cain would later become supportive of him.

Senator Jackson – Domestic Policy

Senator Jackson stands as a staunch advocate of liberalism in domestic affairs, such as for the Great Society. He voted for the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 as well as Medicare. Jackson also proves a strong supporter of civil rights legislation and takes the lead on environmental causes. In 1969, he introduced the National Environmental Policy Act, which created the Council on Environmental Quality, and pushed for more lands to be protected from development and regulating surface coal mining. Jackson also stood as an outspoken foe of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) style of anti-communism, asserting that he and his committee were “hunting headlines instead of hunting Communists” and voted, as did all other voting Democrats, to censure him in 1954 (Shribman).

Although a liberal, Jackson was one who wanted to get “tough on crime”; in 1970 he voted for “no knock” warrants in drug cases and in 1974 voted to restore the federal death penalty. Along with colleague Warren Magnuson they were a powerhouse for the state of Washington. With Magnuson as chairman of Appropriations and Jackson as chairman of the Interior committee, the two, often referred to as “Maggie” and “Scoop” (Jackson’s childhood nickname) secure a great deal of federal money for the state. Jackson was also known as the “Senator from Boeing” for his pushing for Boeing being awarded military contracts; which at the time was the largest employer in Washington. Jackson’s support for Boeing also came out in his support of government funding for the Supersonic Transport. Although he supported that business, he was strongly supportive of government placing limitations on the economy overall, including backing wartime price and rent controls in the 1940s and 1950s as well as price controls, including on oil, in the 1970s.

Statehood for Alaska and Hawaii

During the 1950s, Jackson was one of the leading senators pushing for statehood of both Alaska and Hawaii, and in 1955 he introduced legislation to admit them both, which died in the House. Alaska and Hawaii statehood would both be signed by President Eisenhower in 1958 and 1959 respectively.

Foreign Policy: Anti-Communist and Anti-Detente

While Senator Jackson’s stance on aggressive anti-communism wasn’t so different from Democrats in the 1950s, indeed he critiqued the Eisenhower Administration for supposedly not doing enough on defense. He was and remained throughout his life a firm believer in internationalism and supported a number of treaties for arms control, including the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1969, and the ABM Treaty in 1972. However, on September 14, 1972, Jackson proposed an amendment to the SALT Interim Agreement, which passed 56-35, which mandated that future treaties assure each nation of rough numerical equality in intercontinental deterrent forces. Indeed, his differences with liberals on defense would become particularly notable by the Nixon Administration.

This New Deal liberal would be out of step with Northern Democrats on Vietnam and military spending, although to what degree he changed and liberal Democrats changed is disputable. In 1970, Jackson voted against the McGovern-Hatfield “End the War” Amendment and on May 31, 1973, he was one of only three Democrats to vote against Sen. Thomas Eagleton’s (D-Mo.) popular amendment pulling out all funds from Cambodia and Laos. Jackson would even after American involvement in Vietnam believe that the U.S. was right to enter. Many people who would later figure in Republican policy on foreign policy, including UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz, had started as staffers for or supporters of Jackson. Jackson in many ways remained a liberal on foreign policy despite his hawkishness, voting for barring the importation of Rhodesian chrome in 1973 and voting to advance the Treaty on the Prevention of Genocide in 1974.

Presidential Bids

In 1972 and 1976, Jackson sought the Democratic nomination for president, but was hampered by his hawkishness on the Vietnam War, a significant break from the liberals. He didn’t gain a lot of traction in 1972 and did marginally better in 1976, winning the Alaska, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington primaries. However, he was overshadowed by figures like the audacious California Governor Jerry Brown and George Wallace, who had at this point had renounced segregation. Jackson was also, despite his success in Washington state politics, not an enthusiastic national campaigner.

Jackson-Vanik Amendment

In 1974, despite the objections of the Nixon Administration and the Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, denying most favored nation status to non-market nations that refuse their citizens the right of emigration. President Nixon regarded this as hindering his efforts at detente and this was in response to the USSR imposing hefty taxes on those who wished to emigrate, especially Jews. As Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky (2004) later wrote, “…Kissinger saw Jackson’s amendment as an attempt to undermine plans to smoothly carve up the geopolitical pie between the superpowers. It was. Jackson believed that the Soviets had to be confronted, not appeased. Andrei Sakharov was another vociferous opponent of détente. He thought it swept the Soviet’s human rights record under the rug in the name of improved superpower relations. … One message he would consistently convey to these foreigners (the press) was that human rights must never be considered a humanitarian issue alone. For him, it was also a matter of international security. As he succinctly put it: “A country that does not respect the rights of its own people will not respect the rights of its neighbors” (3).

President Carter: A Mixed Relationship on Foreign Policy

Although Senator Jackson was a strong supporter of President Carter on domestic policy, his record with Carter on foreign policy is mixed. In one of the earliest key votes in the Carter presidency, Jackson dissented. This was on the nomination of Paul Warnke as head of the SALT II talks; he had been Senator George McGovern’s (D-S.D.) advisor on defense issues during the 1972 election and had proposed reducing the military by 1/3 (Mauravchik). Jackson was able to get 40 senators to vote against Warnke, indicating that he could sink any agreement that didn’t meet his standard of rough equality between the US and USSR in intercontinental deterrent forces. Although Carter and Brezhnev signed SALT II in 1979, Jackson was staunchly opposed and Carter withdrew it from the Senate for ratification on January 2, 1980, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Glass). Both sides would adhere to the unratified SALT II until 1986. Jackson also opposes Carter’s 1978 sale of jet fighter planes to Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia; it was seen as overall unfavorable to Israel, back in the day in which strong support of Israel was more indicative of liberalism than today. Jackson, however, did support Carter on barring imports of Rhodesian chrome and on the Panama Canal treaties.

Reacting to Reagan and Legacy

Although President Reagan was more in line with Jackson’s approach to confrontation rather than detente with the Soviets, the ship of detente had sailed with the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Reagan appreciated Jackson’s stances on the Soviets and offered him he nomination as Secretary of Defense, but he declined. Instead, Jackson was mostly an opponent of the Reagan Administration and won reelection in 1982 by campaigning against “Reaganomics”. He would continue to oppose Reagan’s domestic policy while embracing confrontation with the Soviets until his death. Overall, Jackson was quite a liberal, but he has become more known for where he broke with liberalism than where he stood, which was in truth most of the time. Organized labor remembered him fondly, with president of the AFL-CIO Lane Kirkland holding that “Labor had no stauncher friend. He shared our commitment to social and economic justice and to a strong national defense adequate to protect those values against totalitarians of the left or the right” (Shribman). Yet in the process he gained the admiration of some conservatives, such as George Will; in 1987 wrote an article titled “Henry Jackson, The Greatest President That U.S. Never Had”.

References

Abrams, E. (2014, March 24). The Real Scoop Jackson. The Washington Examiner.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-real-scoop-jackson

Glass, A. (2018, January 1). Carter withdraws SALT II accord, Jan. 2, 1980. Politico.

Retrieved from

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/01/carter-withdraws-salt-ii-accord-jan-2-1980-319819

Mauravchik, J. (2012, July/August). ‘Scoop’ Jackson at One Hundred. Commentary Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.commentary.org/articles/joshua-muravchik/scoop-jackson-at-one-hundred/

Senator Henry M. Jackson, 1912-1983: Legislative Record. University of Washington.

Retrieved from

https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/henry_jackson/legislative_record

Sharansky, N. (2004). The case for democracy. New York City, NY: PublicAffairs.

Shribman, D. (1983, September 3). Senator Henry M. Jackson is Dead at 71. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/03/obituaries/senator-henry-m-jackson-is-dead-at-71.html

Will, G. (1987, May 28). Henry Jackson, the Greatest President That U.S. Never Had. Orlando Sentinel.

Retrieved from

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/1987/05/28/henry-jackson-the-greatest-president-that-us-never-had/