In October 1917, 22-year-old South Dakotan Clinton Presba Anderson reports for duty to serve his nation for World War I. What he didn’t know was that he was suffering from advanced tuberculosis, and this was diagnosed by the army doctors, who gave him 6 months to live. Since antibiotics hadn’t been discovered yet, it was a common practice of those who suffered from tuberculosis to move to a hot and dry climate to recover or die, and he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, spending time in a sanitarium. Initially, it looked like the army doctors were going to be right, as Anderson’s lungs were hemorrhaging, and the doctors gave him less than five days to live. However, five days passed by, and he was still holding on. Then six months passed by, and he had still eluded the grim reaper. In nine months, Anderson (1895-1975) was well enough to start a career in journalism, and by 1919 he had recovered, but he would often struggle with his health throughout his life. While a journalist, Anderson developed a passion for politics in New Mexico. Republicans held the governorship from 1917 to 1923, and Anderson didn’t like how they were running the state, so he joined the Democratic Party and during the 1920s the party started to see significant successes; in 1922, they won the governorship, and in 1924 they won a Senate seat and maintained their hold of the governorship. Anderson was also involved in public health, having worked for the New Mexico Public Health Association starting in 1919, where he sought to improve the public health system, and in 1923, he entered the insurance business, starting his own firm in 1925. Given his health difficulties as well as his background in public health and insurance, it makes sense that his later career would be characterized by pushing for the expansion of health insurance. In 1928, Anderson became the head of the state’s Democratic Party, and they made long-term gains during the Great Depression, which were completed after the death of progressive Republican Senator Bronson Cutting in an airplane crash in 1935. Ultimately, from 1935 to 1962 there would be no federal Republican officeholders. In 1933, Anderson was elected Treasurer, and in 1934 he became the head of the state’s relief administration.

In 1940, Congressman John J. Dempsey was deprived from running again due to a dispute within the Democratic Party, and in his place, Clinton Anderson was elected. Although without doubt a supporter of FDR and backing numerous key policies such as Lend Lease, his voting record was not staunchly liberal, rather moderately liberal. In 1945, Anderson headed up a committee to investigate food production in postwar United States, and President Truman was so impressed with his report and recommendations that he nominated him to be his Secretary of Agriculture, a post in which he sought to move the US agricultural economy from wartime to peace time as well as addressing the food shortage in the postwar world. Anderson was one of the key people, working closely with President Truman and former President Herbert Hoover, in getting people in war-torn areas fed. Hoover would craft plans, and Anderson would implement them. However, in 1948, by which time the postwar food situation was stable, he resigned to run for the Senate after Carl Hatch announced his retirement. The Republicans picked former Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, but this year was good for the Democrats, and Anderson prevailed by 15 points. In the Senate, he strongly supported President Truman’s agenda. Although Republicans were starting to make gains in New Mexico, most notably with the election of Ed Mechem as governor, Anderson was more than capable of hanging on, and in 1954, he won reelection against Mechem by nearly 15 points. Republicans would only get within single digits of defeating him in 1966, and that was a backlash election against the Johnson Administration.

Anderson and Eisenhower

As Secretary of Agriculture, Anderson had come to believe that flexible price floors were the right approach for agriculture and thus supported Ezra Taft Benson in his efforts to push agriculture more to a market-based system, which was not popular in rural areas. As a New Mexican, he supported the oil industry and in 1950 and 1956 he voted for legislation prohibiting the Federal Power Commission from regulating the price of oil. Anderson also supported maintaining the 27.5% oil depletion allowance. However, there were ways in which he waved his partisan flag. For example, Anderson had come to strongly dislike Lewis Strauss when he headed the Atomic Energy Commission. A key issue that the men fought on was public power generation and distribution; Strauss opposed, Anderson supported. Strauss had also once insulted Anderson when he said that he, the chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, had “a limited understanding of what is involved” in Cold War atomic energy policy (U.S. Senate). Although Anderson never forgave Strauss for that insult, he initially decided to put politics out of the way when in 1958 President Eisenhower made clear that he wanted him to be Secretary of Commerce. However, this was not stuck to as in the 1958 election Democrats won 12 seats, the issue of Strauss’s involvement in the revoking of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance came up, and Strauss came off badly in hearings as arrogant, combative, and condescending to the Senate. On this matter, he was his own worst enemy, and Anderson now put his full energy into calling for his nomination to be voted down, and it was, 46-49, on June 19^th, Strauss being one of the few cabinet nominees in history to be voted down by the Senate. This event is notably portrayed in the 2023 film Oppenheimer. He was also known during his time in the Senate as a scholarly figure who had a hobby of collecting and reading old books about the American West, and this resulted in him having one of the finest personal libraries in New Mexico.

Anderson and Civil Rights

Although Senator Anderson generally supported civil rights and backed the major laws on final passage, he also supported Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) in his successful efforts to water down the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 to ease them for passage. Indeed, he sponsored with Senators George Aiken (R-Vt.) and Francis Case (R-S.D.) the amendment striking 14^th Amendment implementation from the 1957 law. Anderson can be seen as both a supporter of civil rights but also a Senate institutionalist.

Advocacy for Medicare

Senator Anderson was one of the principal politicians, along with Albert Gore of Tennessee and Representative Cecil King of California, to push for the adoption of Medicare. President Kennedy had specifically designated Anderson as the leader of adopting the measure. Anderson would write on his role, “Perhaps a man who has spent much of his life fighting off the effects of illness acquires…an understanding of the importance of professional health care to all people” (U.S. Senate). Although the Senate rejected Medicare proposals in 1960 and 1962, in 1964, Anderson succeeded in getting the Senate to adopt a Medicare amendment to the pending Social Security legislation. However, in the course of doing so, he strained his health and found himself managing the measure from his hospital bed. Because the House and Senate could not agree upon a final version of the Social Security measure, Medicare would have to wait until the next Congress, which had more of the president’s supporters elected to the Senate and especially the House. After Anderson managed to get Medicare passed in the Senate in 1965, President Johnson invited him to the signing ceremony in which former President Truman and his wife, Bess, were given the first Medicare cards. Medicare would not be the only cause in which he specialized, as he also was the Senate’s leading advocate for wilderness conservation. Anderson wrote on the matter, “There is a spiritual value to conservation, and wilderness typifies this. Wilderness is a demonstration by our people that we can put aside a portion of this which we have as a tribute to the Maker and say–this we will leave as we found it” (Wilderness Connect). Anderson also supported most other Great Society proposals, but he proved more conservative on law-and-order issues. He supported several proposals to weaken the impact of Supreme Court decisions on criminal defendant rights, but did not support the Nixon Administration’s efforts to enact “no knock” warrants for drug cases. Anderson also supported efforts to withdraw from the Vietnam War, including the Cooper-Church Amendment in 1970 and the Mansfield Amendment in 1971. Despite his support for withdrawal, he tended to support increasing military spending for key missile delivery systems as well as taking a hardline stance on the USSR.

By 1972, Anderson’s health was clearly declining, and he chose not to run again. Throughout his Senate career, he agreed with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 66% of the time, the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 23% of the time from 1955 to 1972, and his DW-Nominate score was a -0.201. In retirement, he continued his hobby of collecting and reading old books on the American West. Anderson was wise to have opted to retire, as on November 11, 1975, his 58-year streak of eluding the grim reaper came to an end with a massive stroke at the age of 80.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Anderson, Clinton Presba. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/165/clinton-presba-anderson

Clinton Anderson. Wilderness Connect.

https://wilderness.net/learn-about-wilderness/people/clinton-anderson.php

Clinton P. Anderson. The Miller Center.

Retrieved from

https://millercenter.org/president/truman/essays/anderson-1945-secretary-of-agriculture

Clinton P. Anderson Dead; Ex-Senator Was in Cabinet. (1975, November 12). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Medicare Signed Into Law. United States Senate.

Retrieved from

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Medicare_Signed_Into_Law.htm

Simmons, M. (2014, December 26). Trail Dust: Clinton P. Anderson went from newsman to senator. Santa Fe New Mexican.

Retrieved from

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/trail-dust-clinton-p-anderson-went-from-newsman-to-senator/article_27d72c92-0379-5041-b936-7e70f3cdc31d.html

The Administration: The Strauss Affair. (1959, June 15). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,892639,00.html

In 1946, the American public elected a Republican Congress for the first time since the Great Depression. One of the fresh faces in Washington who vanquished a Democrat was another Democrat in Otto Ernest Passman (1900-1988) of Monroe, Louisiana. Passman, an appliance manufacturer and salesman by profession, had succeeded in ousting conservative Democrat Charles McKenzie in the 1946 nomination contest. However, if national Democrats got their hopes up that he would be more loyal to party line than his predecessor, they were in for a great disappointment. Passman was one of the most agreeable in the House to the conservative agenda of the 80^th Congress; in his first year, Americans for Democratic Action scored him a 25%, one of the lowest among House Democrats that year.

Passman the “Lord High Executioner of Foreign Aid Bills”

Passman was a frequent thorn in the side of the internationalist leadership in both parties. As chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, he was frequently pushing for budget cuts, with his critics calling him the “Cajun Cassius” and being responsible for reduction of annual presidential foreign aid requests by an average of 20% from 1955 to 1965, resulting in Time Magazine (1965) calling him the “lord high executioner of foreign aid bills”. He had also been one of the few Democrats to vote against the Marshall Plan in 1948. Passman so ticked off President Eisenhower that he once told an aide something similar to what President Truman told an aide regarding J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Remind me never to invite that fellow down here again!” (Time Magazine) President Kennedy wasn’t terribly happy with him either. He once told an aide in exasperation, “What am I going to do about him?” (Time Magazine) Appropriations Committee Chairman Clarence Cannon (D-Mo.) would not rein him in, as although he wasn’t an opponent of foreign aid himself, he also would sometimes push for budget cuts regardless of whether the president wanted it or not, regardless of party. Passman said regarding presidential support, “What the President wants does not mean a damn thing to me unless it makes sense” (Time Magazine, 1957). Both Cannon and Passman could be peppery in the carrying out of their duties, further aggravating presidential and Democratic Party leadership. The essence of Passman’s critique of foreign aid was that it propped up despots whose regimes might have otherwise collapsed (Curtis). There has since been research that suggests that Passman was right. For instance, a 2016 paper by Faisal Z. Ahmed (2016) found that “U.S. aid harms political rights, fosters other forms of state repression, and strengthens authoritarian governance”. Passman did, however, do a solid for the Johnson Administration when he successfully pushed a compromise to allow shipments of wheat to the USSR and Hungary in 1963 against fierce Republican opposition.

Passman the Powerless

Passman’s power was conditioned on Cannon permitting him free reign, and Cannon’s death in 1964 resulted in a far less favorable successor in George Mahon of Texas. Although Mahon was not a liberal, he was willing to cooperate with his fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, and this included the subject of foreign aid. Although he allowed Passman to stay on as chairman, he reduced the membership of his subcommittee from 11 to 9, making most of its membership favorable to foreign aid and resulting in Passman losing committee votes, and Mahon even deprived him of the ability to write reports on pending legislation as they contradicted what the majority wanted (Time Magazine, 1965).

Foe of 1960s Domestic Liberalism

Among the Louisiana delegation, Passman was strongly opposed to most of the liberal domestic programs of the 1960s. He voted against aid to medical schools and students and accelerated public works in 1963, against urban mass transit legislation, food stamps, and the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964, and federal aid to education and Medicare in 1965. Passman did have something of a soft spot for minimum wage legislation, and backed increases in 1961 and 1966. His record on civil rights is what you’d expect from a Louisiana representative of his time and place. Given Passman’s dissatisfaction with liberalism in the 1960s, he was certainly looking for an alternative, and one came with Richard Nixon in 1968.

Embracing Nixon

Although a Democrat, we have already established that Otto Passman was not the sort of Democrat we think of today, and he was quite pleased with President Nixon. As he had with President Johnson, he supported President Nixon’s Vietnam War policies. On social issues, Passman was largely on the conservative end, but he made a rather striking exception in his opposition to a school prayer amendment to the Constitution in 1971. His support for Nixon even extended beyond his resignation, with him being one of only three representatives to vote against adopting the report on his impeachment proceedings. Passman stated in support of Nixon after his resignation, “I contend that Richard M. Nixon is the greatest President this country ever had. Rather than take any chance of doing anything offensive to this great man, I decided to vote ‘no’” (Rosenbaum). Can you imagine a Democrat today saying this about President Trump? Passman’s overall ideology differs somewhat between sources. He was in accord with the position of Americans for Constitutional Action 70% of the time from 1957 to 1976, only 17% with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action from 1947 to 1976, and his DW-Nominate score was a -0.056, which is conservative for a Democrat.

Koreagate

In 1976, a scandal broke regarding South Korean millionaire lobbyist Tongsun Park. Park had been spreading money around Washington both to promote his rice business and to maintain US military presence in South Korea as a bulwark against North Korean aggression, and Passman was one of 31 representatives named by Park as having accepted money from him. His involvement in this scandal resulted in his narrow loss for renomination in 1976 to Jerry Huckaby. On April 1, 1978, Passman was indicted for accepting $98,000 in illegal gratuities or bribes from 1972 to 1975, and allegedly in exchange he lobbied Congress to maintain Park’s monopoly as an agent for selling American rice to South Korea (Columbia Missourian). However, Passman managed to get the venue of his trial changed to his home city of Monroe, given that there was also a tax evasion charge. His attorney portrayed him as “an unknowing victim of an evil Korean conspiracy” and he was acquitted (The New York Times). This acquittal, however, many have been produced by the move in venue as well as sympathy he got from his poor health.

Sex Discrimination

Although Passman had been one of many members of Congress to vote for the Equal Rights Amendment, he has the dubious distinction of being the first member of Congress to be sued for sex discrimination. In 1974, he fired his assistant, Shirley Davis, and wrote in her termination letter that it was essential that a man be in her role. She sued him, and the case established a Supreme Court precedent in 1979’s Davis v. Passman, which affirmed that members of Congress can be sued for discrimination. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount that year.

The Last Years

Passman ended up living longer than would be expected given his poor health in the late 1970s. His wife died in 1984, and he soon remarried to his secretary, who was over 25 years younger than him. Passman died on August 13, 1988, at the age of 88.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Ahmed, F.Z. (2016). Does Foreign Aid Harm Political Rights? Evidence from U.S. Aid. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 11: 1-35.

Retrieved from

Click to access ahmed_qjps2016.pdf

Curtis, J. (2021, March 17). Author details Otto Passman’s life in latest book. The Ouachita Citizen.

Retrieved from

https://www.hannapub.com/franklinsun/community/author-details-otto-passman-s-life-in-latest-book/article_5ab63372-81bc-11eb-b400-1f3c2fc3b4bf.html

Passman Is Acquitted On Charges of Taking Payments by Korean. (1979, April 2). The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Passman, Otto Ernest. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/7228/otto-ernest-passman

Rosenbaum, D.E. (1974, August 21). House Formally Concludes Inquiry Into Impeachment. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Second congressman indicted. (1978, April 1). Columbia Missourian.

Retrieved from

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwibhteY-_mNAxX2BDQIHSDUBXoQFnoECBQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmdh.contentdm.oclc.org%2Fdigital%2Fapi%2Fcollection%2Fcolmo7%2Fid%2F126569%2Fdownload&usg=AOvVaw0KlKnyDSz57wgFM3ECkxgq&opi=89978449

The Congress: A Tartar Tamed. (1965, September 17). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842094-1,00.html

The Nation: The Gutting of Foreign Aid. (1957, August 26). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6800125/the-nation-the-gutting-of-foreign-aid/

Sam Rayburn of Texas, House Democratic leader in both the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations.

In this follow-up to the post tracking the Republicans between the Truman to Eisenhower Administrations I was thinking that given the Republican movement, especially in the House, during the Eisenhower era that there might be similar Democratic movement, but the truth I found I must confess was pretty unexciting in the House: Democrats in the House averaged an agreement rate with Americans for Democratic Action of 67% during the Truman Administration and a 66% during the Eisenhower Administration. This makes them a moderately liberal party in this time, and it averages out this way because of the increasingly stark differences observed between Northern and Southern Democrats by Americans for Democratic Action. Southern Democrats were figured as moderate during both administrations, with an average of 42% and 41% respectively, while Northern Democrats were solidly liberal, with an 85% and 86% respectively. Many people who conduct research wish to only report the exciting results, but sometimes the research is done, and the results are mundane, but true. I think there’s a good argument to be made that the current Democratic Party is more liberal than the Northern Democrats in that time.

The Senate was a bit more of an exciting story, although this is because there were considerable shifts in the Senate and more votes on civil rights and foreign aid that attracted crossover votes in a way they didn’t in the House. The Senate Democrats figured at 65% and 55% respectively, with Southern Democrats having a pronounced decline from 45% to 33%. Northern Democrats too had a decline, from 82% to 75%. An example of such decline is James Murray of Montana, who agreed with ADA 97% of the time during the Truman years but had a decline to 85% during the Eisenhower years. In part this was due to his willingness to back compromising amendments to civil rights legislation and his support for sustaining Senate rules. Senate Democrats had a decline in liberalism by ADA standards as opposed to House Democrats at least in good part because the Senate considered a wider range of issues. On foreign aid, it was usually the case that amendments cutting foreign aid of some sort were counted in the Senate while foreign aid passage votes were counted in the House. Votes on the former are not exactly equivalent to the latter. The same goes with the coverage of civil rights in the House as opposed to the Senate. More Northern legislators crossed to the position opposed by ADA on the subject in the Senate than in the House. Furthermore, more civil rights votes were held and counted in the Senate than in the House. By ADA standards, House Democrats were remarkably consistent while Senate Democrats saw a decline. It is also interesting when we look at how little the Senate Republican score rose as opposed to the House Republican score, highlighting to me the importance of trying to balance out the House and Senate when determining scores. After all, if one branch holds 20 tariff votes and the other holds only one, a legislator could be judged more conservative or liberal by the mere fact that he or she is in the House instead of the Senate. One must bear in mind of course that I am basing my results on the standards of a liberal organization. Conservatives to be sure saw legislators in a different light; the conservative organization Americans for Constitutional Action did not register the Southern Democrats quite as conservative as ADA did in the Eisenhower years. ADA, however, is the only non-DW-Nominate source that covers both the Truman and Eisenhower years. When I finalize my own set of ratings, that can accomplish with ADA does but with more consideration for the conservative position.

The numbers, based on agreement with ADA position:

The 1952 election produced the first Republican presidential win in 24 years as well as a Republican Congress, thus united government. From the onset of the Great Depression until 2001, the 1953-1955 session of Congress would be the only time the GOP would have united government. Although the Republicans, particularly the House Republicans, stood against the Truman Administration agenda staunchly, their resolve against liberalism lessened during the Eisenhower Administration, at least per how much they agreed with the votes Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) from 1947 to 1960 determined as important for liberal policies. I would have loved to use Americans for Constitutional Action for this, but they did not exist during the Truman Administration.

One of the most prominent and dramatic examples was that of Republican House leader Joe Martin of Massachusetts. While he proved a strong partisan against liberalism and the Truman Administration, he shifted during the Eisenhower Administration to accommodate its priorities which were considerably more moderate than the anti-New Deal politics of many of the Congressional Republicans during the Truman years. Despite opposing public housing during the Truman Administration, as Speaker in the 83^rd Congress Martin supported the administration’s request for public housing. He had only supported ADA’s position 6% of the time during the Truman Administration. During the Eisenhower Administration, it was 53% of the time. Martin’s successor as leader of the House Republicans, Charles Halleck of Indiana, went from 6% to 35%, and Republican Whip Les Arends of Illinois went from 5% to 29%. Some Republicans who stood previously stood resolute against foreign aid under Truman were supporting Eisenhower’s Mutual Security legislation (economic and military aid). Another interesting phenomenon was that a few of the most conservative Republicans by DW-Nominate standards actually moved rightward during the Eisenhower Administration. Illinois’ Noah Mason agreed with ADA 10% of the time during the Truman Administration, only 4% of the time during the Eisenhower Administration. Likewise, Wint Smith of Kansas, Bob Dole’s predecessor in the House and possibly the most conservative individual Kansas elected to Congress in the 20th century, had gone from siding with ADA 4% of the time to 1%. Iowa’s H.R. Gross, who started his career as something of a populist, saw his agreement decline from 37% to 13%. Overall, the House Republicans increased their agreement with ADA positions from 19% to 30%. The effect was far less dramatic, however, in the Senate. Interestingly, some of the Senate’s moderates during the Truman Administration moved to the right during the Eisenhower Administration (such as Massachusetts’ Leverett Saltonstall and Vermont’s Ralph Flanders) but the trend did still exist, although only 27% to 30%.

Sheet w/Scores and Averages:

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

As a state, Ohio has had a long history as a swing state in politics, and Stephen Marvin Young (1889-1984) had a long career in which he benefited from and was harmed by such shifts.

Young, a lawyer by profession, launched his political career in 1912, winning a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives in the same year that Woodrow Wilson was elected president. He would serve until 1917, when he was called to fight in World War I. The 1920s would be the political doldrums for him, as he lost a state attorney general election in 1922 and lost the Democratic primary for governor in 1930.

In 1932, Young was elected to Congress, representing the entirety of Ohio as an at-large representative. Although a supporter overall of FDR’s New Deal who voted for much of it including the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the National Industrial Recovery Act, he was more moderate in his voting in his early years in Congress than he would be later, indeed Congressional Quarterly described him during this time as a “moderate New Deal Democrat” (CQ Almanac, 1958). He also took a stand against popular opinion in his opposition to the Patman Bonus bill for veterans on fiscal grounds, and this would be far from the last time he would be unafraid to stand against public opinion. In 1936, Young opted to run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination but lost to incumbent Martin Davey.

Young sought to win back one of Ohio’s at-large seats in 1938, but the winners for the two seats were Republicans George Bender and L.L. Marshall. However, in 1940 he ran again and with Bender was one of the top two. Time Magazine (1942) described him as a “New Deal enthusiast” and as Ohio’s top vote-getter for the Democrats. However, even in this “enthusiast” stage, Young nonetheless didn’t always vote in line with what New Dealers wanted, and this included his vote for the Vinson Anti-Strike Bill in 1941 and his vote against continuing the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1942. The former vote contrasts greatly with his strong pro-union record later in his career. In the 1942 election, the number of at-large seats was reduced to one, and with that year being a good one for Republicans, Young lost the election to Bender. He proceeded to resume his military service, serving from 1943 to 1946, rising in rank from major to lieutenant colonel. And he wasn’t a staff officer either; like also in his fifties Paul Howard Douglas. At the war’s end, Young was serving as military governor of the Province of Reggio Emilia in Italy.

In 1948, Young came back to Congress again by defeating Bender, as this year went sideways for the Republicans. In the 81^st Congress, as a veteran of both world wars, he furiously denounced Veterans Committee Chairman John Rankin’s (D-Miss.) effort to scuttle President Truman’s proposed expansion of Social Security through a big veterans’ pension bill. Young proved a strong supporter of President Truman’s agenda, both on domestic and foreign policy. However, in 1950 the winds would shift back to the GOP, and Ohio’s at-large seat to Bender. Young would run for state attorney general in 1956, but lost to Republican William B. Saxbe, who would later serve in the Senate and briefly as the U.S. attorney general. The 1950s would also be a time in which Young would start to suffer several personal tragedies in life. In 1952, his wife of 41 years, Ruby, died of lung cancer, and one of his sons, Stephen Jr., followed in 1958 at the age of 46. His other son, Richard, would die seven years later at 42. His second wife, Rachel, who was 23 years younger than him, would nonetheless precede him in death by two years due to a car accident.

The 1958 Election: The Fall of the House of Bricker

In 1958, many Senate Republicans were up for reelection, and one of them was Ohio’s John W. Bricker. Bricker was a big name in Ohio, as he had been a popular and successful governor from 1939 to 1945, Thomas E. Dewey’s running mate in 1944, and had served in the Senate since 1946. Bricker was in many ways the antithesis of Young. He had written a proposed amendment to the Constitution, known as the Bricker Amendment, which if enacted would have considerably weakened the president’s ability to enact executive agreements. He was one of the most conservative senators; he sided with the liberal Americans for Democratic Action only 7% of the time, the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 98% of the time from 1955 to 1958, and had a DW-Nominate score of 0.528, which made him the 4^th most conservative senator in the 85^th Congress (1957-1959). Many Democrats passed on running against him because they thought he was unbeatable, that is, except Stephen Young. Young had some incentive to run for the Senate in addition to his ideological opposition to Bricker; he was 69 years old, and this was likely his last chance to continue his political career.

A lot of people underestimated Young in the 1958 election because of his age and as mentioned before, Bricker was popular. Indeed, only one statewide newspaper endorsed Young. However, a “right to work” amendment, backed by Senator Bricker, was on the ballot for the state constitution, and unions went into overdrive in campaigning against it. Another favorable development for Young was him getting former President Harry S. Truman to campaign for him. Truman took a great liking to Young as he saw him as a kindred spirit; a liberal who calls a spade a spade. This, combined with the generally unfavorable environment for the Republicans in the 1958 midterms, resulted in Young’s win by 5 points.

Senator Young

In the Senate, Young had a liberal record and did not get on well with his fellow Buckeye Democrat in the Senate, Frank Lausche. Lausche, the most conservative Senate Democrat north of the Mason-Dixon line, hadn’t backed his 1958 run. Thus, Young refused to abide by the senatorial custom of having the senior senator walk the junior senator down the aisle to be sworn in to office. As Time Magazine (1962) reported, Young said of Lausche, “If Senator Lausche supported me for election, it was a well-guarded secret.”

Young was known for his acerbic answers to constituent letters that he considered abusive, stupid, ignorant, or generally repugnant. Such answers included,

“Dear Sir: It appears to me that you have been grossly misinformed, or are exceedingly stupid. Which is it?” (Lardner)

“Buster, your insults show that you are the east end of a horse going west” (Rasky).

After a constituent wrote him a nasty letter in which he finished with, “I would welcome the opportunity to have intercourse [as in discussion] with you”, he responded, “you sir, can have intercourse with yourself” (Crass).

In response to a constituent letter defending the Ohio National Guard’s conduct in killing four students at Kent State University protests, he wrote, “Only a cruel ignoramus would take the position that these four students – not one of whom was rioting or throwing stones – deserved to be killed. Also, you are a stupid, cruel jerk” (Buchanan).

He also wrote to one Ohio voter that he was “a low-down skunk and a liar” and to another that he was “lower than a snake’s tail in a wagon rut” (Buchanan).

Young also went after some prominent targets for criticism. In response to Ohio American Legion posts censuring him for speaking before the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (a left-wing group), he responded by calling them “puffed-up patriots” and “publicity-seeking professional veterans” (Time Magazine, 1962).

Young was not afraid of blowback from these responses, rather he publicized them! It was his view that no matter who was going after him, it was fair game for him to defend himself. In 1963, he voted for the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Young considered this the single most important vote of his career. He was also greatly concerned with the less fortunate in society and thus strongly supported nearly all New Frontier legislation as well as backed Medicare every time it came up for a vote. However, he sometimes would support a cut in government spending, particularly on foreign aid. Sometimes international agencies could attract his scorn, once declaring, “The Agency for International Development must have far in excess of the usual quota of dimwits” (Rasky). One of the few exceptions he made to domestic legislation as a senator was his vote against the Domestic Service Corps in 1963. Young also opposed government subsidies to industries. This included his votes against fishing vessels in 1959 and 1960 and drydock subsidies in 1959.

Young and Civil Rights

As both a representative and a senator, Young supported civil rights legislation, including supporting strengthening amendments that weren’t adopted in the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and supported the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with no weakening amendments. However, this didn’t mean that he agreed with all the tactics of the activists of the civil rights movement. In a speech he delivered before the Senate on July 11, 1963, he expressed his strong opposition to a proposal for a mass sit-in at the offices of members of Congress by civil rights demonstrators, stating, “Citizens have a right to petition and to lobby. However, a mass invasion and demonstration is unwise and is a disorderly way to dramatize any cause. It would probably lead to rioting. Any such sit-in in the Senate Office Building or the Capitol would demonstrate contempt for the Congress and a lack of confidence in senatorial powers to reason and deliberate. It would recklessly demonstrate disregard for the dignity and integrity of the legislative branch of our Government” (Congressional Record, 11745). Ultimately, the March on Washington did occur, with Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech but without the proposed sit-ins as the activists reached the same conclusion Young did about the wisdom of such tactics. The next year, Congress would pass the comprehensive Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The 1964 Election

Young was in a vulnerable position for reelection. His poison pen rubbed some voters the wrong way and his voting record was certainly to the left of the average Ohio voter. He was even at risk in the Democratic primary, as a compelling challenger stepped forward in astronaut John Glenn. However, he slipped and fell in a bathtub and suffered a head injury that forced him to bow out to recover. Glenn would be elected to the Senate in 1974. Furthermore, Republicans picked a strong contender to defeat him in at-large Republican Congressman Robert Taft Jr. Taft’s center-right politics were probably closer to the views of Ohioans than Young’s and certainly more appealing to the electorate than Goldwater’s ultra-conservatism, and the general consensus was that he was going to win the election. However, Goldwater at the top of the ticket dragged down the candidacies of numerous Republicans down ticket given his outspokenness and his uncompromising nature. Indeed, at the time only one senator exceeded him in conservatism according to the DW-Nominate scale. Goldwater ran behind many other Republicans down ticket and his candidacy likely resulted in victories for Democrats in key races that they would have otherwise lost. The Senate races in Ohio as well as Nevada were major examples, and Young prevailed by less than a point. By contrast, Johnson won in Ohio with 63% of the vote, the best performance a Democrat ever had running for president in the state.

Young: All the Way with LBJ?

Young was a strong supporter of President Johnson’s Great Society programs, voting for the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Social Security Act Amendments of 1965 (established Medicare and Medicaid), federal aid to education, and the Housing and Urban Development Act. He also opposed both of Senator Dirksen’s (R-Ill.) proposed amendments to the Constitution, which if adopted would have permitted states to have one legislature proportioned based on factors other than population and permitted voluntary school prayer in schools and other public buildings.  

However, Young was not always on board with President Johnson. He became an early critic of the Vietnam War in part based on inconsistencies with what he saw when he visited Vietnam and what the Johnson Administration was saying. Young also had a level of skepticism when it came to foreign policy that made his vote not guaranteed for the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. In 1968, Young stood as a “favorite son” candidate for president but recognizing that he had no chance to win, he only submitted his name for the Ohio primary.

Young was a strong opponent of the Nixon Administration and opposed “no knock” warrants in drug cases as well as the unsuccessful Supreme Court nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. He also led the opposition to Nixon’s nomination of conservative Otto Otepka to the Subversive Activities Control Board, who had had a controversial tenure as the Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of Security until he was fired by the Kennedy Administration in 1963. In 1970, Young decided that it was time to hang up his hat. Although still in good health at 81, he believed it was time for someone younger to succeed him. Young agreed with the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action, which had covered his term in the House during the Truman Administration and his Senate record, 90% of the time while he agreed with the conservative group Americans for Constitutional Action which covered his Senate record 14% of the time. Young’s DW-Nominate score, which covers his entire career, was a -0.351, which accounts for his early record as a moderate New Deal supporter and his stronger liberal record later in his career. Young’s successor was none other than the man he bested in 1964, Taft Jr. He had endorsed Taft’s opponent, Howard Metzenbaum, who had managed his 1958 Senate campaign. Young lived to see Metzenbaum defeat Taft Jr. in 1976.

Young had a strong spirit and a commitment to work that he maintained after the Senate as he believed it kept him alive. This, in addition to his daily workouts at the gym and possibly some excellent genetics from his mother (who lived to be 95), got him 95 years of life, dying on December 1, 1984, from a blood disorder. He outlived all of his siblings, and his daughter only survived him by three years.

Bonus:

Three ads in which former President Truman expresses his support for Young in 1958, ads produced by the General Pictures Corporation and provided by the Harry S. Truman Library:

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Biographies of Newly Elected Senators. CQ Almanac 1958. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Retrieved from

https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal58-1340461#_=_

Bricker, John William. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/1024/john-william-bricker

Buchanan, T. (2021, January 28). History Thursday: Pugnacious Ohio senator was unafraid to insult critics. Ohio Capital Journal.

Retrieved from

History Thursday: Pugnacious Ohio senator was unafraid to insult critics

Crass, S. (2015, August 31). Statesmen and mischief makers: officeholders and their contributions to history from Kennedy to Reagan. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation.

Democrats: Mighty Steve Young. (1962, December 21). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6873226/democrats-mighty-steve-young/

Lardner, J. (1966, March 10). Senator Stephen M. Young. The Harvard Crimson.

Retrieved from

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1966/3/10/senator-stephen-m-young-pwhen-the/

Rachel Bell Young, Wife of Ex-Senator, Active in Red Cross. (1982, June 29). The Washington Post.

Retrieved from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1982/06/29/rachel-bell-young-wife-of-exsenator-active-in-red-cross/8007f39a-2c8e-49c1-a81f-98e8e765ba57/

Rasky, S.F. (1984, December 2). Stephen Young Dies; Served Two Terms in Senate from Ohio. The New York Times.

Retrieved from

Stephen Marvin Young Jr. FamilySearch.

Retrieved from

https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/K8RX-HT8/stephen-marvin-young-jr-1889-1984

U.S. At War: Revolution in Ohio. (1942, November 16). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6865963/u-s-at-war-revolution-in-ohio/

Young, S.M. (1963, July 11). Proposed Mass Sit-In at Capitol Should Not Be Tolerated. Congressional Record. Congressional Printing Office.

Retrieved from

https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/347164906610210-march-on-washington-stephen-m-young-typed-letter-signed/#mz-expanded-view-416334941426

Young, Stephen Marvin. Voteview.

Retrieved fromhttps://voteview.com/person/10454/stephen-marvin-young

Representative John Elliott Rankin (D-Miss.) had a storied career in Washington. Although he voted with his party most of the time in the 1920s as he was a rural progressive at the time, by the Truman Administration, he was a frequent dissenter from its policies. During his first session of Congress (1921-1923), for instance, he voted with his party 87% of the time, but during the 81^st Congress (1949-1951) he voted with his party only 48% of the time. Rankin’s open expressions of bigotry against numerous groups had also increased over time, which made him a lightning rod of controversy and resulted in his favor declining in a party that was increasingly supporting civil rights measures and courting black voters. In 1948, he along with many Mississippi Democrats, backed the State’s Rights Party ticket, or Dixiecrat ticket, in response to Truman’s ordering of the desegregation of the army as well as his embrace of civil rights. At the start of the next Congress, Rankin paid for his support of Strom Thurmond over Harry S. Truman as well as his bigoted conduct by being removed from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he had introduced the resolution to make permanent four years earlier. Rankin was now completely out of favor, but he was still by seniority rules the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, and with that position as well as taking advantage of another one of the changes that occurred with the new Congress, he could potentially deal an embarrassing blow to President Truman and give the middle finger to Democratic leadership.

One of the planks that President Truman campaigned on for his 1948 election was for an expansion of the Social Security. Indeed, one of the Democratic Party planks at the Democratic National Convention reads, “We favor the extension of the Social Security program established under Democratic leadership, to provide additional protection against the hazards of old age, disability, disease or death. We believe that this program should include:

Increases in old-age and survivors’ insurance benefits by at least 50 percent, and reduction of the eligibility age for women from 65 to 60 years; extension of old-age survivors’ and unemployment insurance to all workers not now covered; insurance against loss of earnings on account of illness or disability; improved public assistance for the needy” (The American Presidency Project). Rankin saw an opportunity to scuttle this proposed expansion, and do so by a proposal that was hard for his fellow representatives to vote against: veterans’ pensions.

On January 3, 1949, Congress passed a rules change that President Truman had sought, which allowed the chairman of a committee to bring a bill to the floor that had been approved by said committee if the Rules Committee held said measure past 21 days without voting on a rule for consideration. Rankin introduced a measure that would have covered both World War I and World War II veterans that would have provided for, starting at 65, a $90 a month pension regardless of need, as well as $42 a month minimum for widows of veterans, which if enacted was estimated to have come to cost a total of $200 billion (in 1949 dollars), which was four times the amount the U.S. paid out to veterans from Revolution to 1948 (Time Magazine). The Rules Committee at the time was chaired by Adolph J. Sabath (D-Ill.), a staunch liberal and ally of the Truman Administration and he had no interest in this bill going to the floor. Thus, Rankin was able to use the rules change to bring the bill directly to the floor. This put Democrats and Republicans alike in a bind, as no member wanted to be seen as voting against veterans. As the Harvard Crimson (1949) noted, “Democratic leaders cannot require their forces to oppose the pension bill, unless they want a full-scale mutiny on their hands. The GOP is similarly tied, although Republicans can hardly deny some satisfaction at the sight of the Administration taking a licking”. Had World War I veterans only been covered, it is believed the measure would have easily passed. But adding all these World War II veterans set up the United States to pay large sums towards them for many years to come. The New Republic (1949) described the political consequences for this measure being adopted, “Had Rankin’s extravagant proposal of $90 monthly pensions for all 65-year-old veterans of World Wars I and II been approved, President Truman’s program for equitable social security could not have been considered” (7). Many Republicans certainly saw it, as did many Dixiecrats, as an opportunity to put the Truman Administration between a rock and a hard place. Despite their stated commitment to low spending, the top three House Republicans, Joe Martin of Massachusetts, Charles Halleck of Indiana, and Les Arends of Illinois were all in favor of this measure. House Ways and Means Committee ranking Republican, Dan Reed (R-N.Y.), was also for it despite his highly fiscally conservative record which had included voting against Social Security. For the measure to go down and to permit consideration of Truman’s proposed Social Security expansion, World War II veterans would need to speak against this measure, and speak against this measure several of them did. John W. Byrnes (R-Wis.) declared that “This legislation is dishonest…In ten years, our veterans will be shouldering half the nation’s tax burden…I am unalterably opposed to this bill. It is no hot potato as far as this member is concerned” (Time Magazine). The Rankin bill was substantially amended overtime from its original proposal, including only permitting such benefits for veterans who were honorably discharged. Rankin justified the expense of his bill by making a dig at foreign aid spending, “If we can spend untold billions of dollars on other countries, feeding and clothing every lazy lout from Tokyo to Timbuctu – then we can take care of our aged veterans when they are unable to care for themselves” (Time Magazine). Other members of Congress had their takes on this proposed measure:

In favor:

Edith Rogers (R-Mass.), Rankin’s Republican counterpart on the Veterans Affairs Committee, stated “I am distressed to feel that there seems to be a pushing aside of the veterans today. The war is over, but we have not taken care of them; we are not taking care of them, not for a large amount. I agree with the gentleman that this is our last opportunity, perhaps ever, to pass a pension bill for World War I veterans” (Congressional Record, 3110).

William M. Colmer (D-Miss.) stated, “It is all quite apparent now, from the debate, the motions and the amendments that are being offered by the so-called liberal bloc in this House, that their real purpose is to pull the veterans of this country into the pattern which they hope to weave for the country or the so-called Fair Deal program. It must be apparent to all now, from the utterances of these leaders of the so-called liberal bloc, that they want to put the veterans of this country into the same class as the indigent, the poor, the ne’er-do-wells, and that unfortunate class of our people generally who are forced to seek alms at the hands of their Government. They would place the veteran who risked his very life, and bared his breast in defense of his country, under social security. They would do away with the system of pensions for the veterans of the wars which has prevailed in this country since the days of the Revolutionary War. In other words, they would make no distinction whatever between the veterans and the nonveterans,” and went on to state, “…I must confess, if this constitutes liberalism, then I am just a plain old fogey who still believes that it is right, proper, and just that a country give separate, different, and distinct treatment and preference to those who are torn by their Government from their homes and families and required to risk their all as a living sacrifice upon the altar of their country” (Congressional Record, 3111).

Against:

Peter F. Mack (D-Ill.) protested the circumstances under which the bill was brought to the floor, “…I am one of the seven members who walked out of the Veterans’ Committee in the interest of the welfare of the many veterans of this country. My action was in protest against the undemocratic principles being employed in conducting the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs” and went on to state, “The Rankin bill, which was voted out of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, was not given adequate hearings and was discussed for only 7 minutes in the committee” (Congressional Record, 3111).

Donald Jackson (R-Calif.) noted how a rules change enabled this bill to be brought forward, “In curbing the power of the Rules Committee it appears that the administration also cut the bonds of the Frankenstein monster which lay strapped on the legislative table, a monster which now appears, licking its chops when committee chairmen sound their whistles” (Congressional Record, 3112).

Stephen M. Young (D-Ohio) stated, “…I will vote against a pension grab of this magnitude. This is the most outrageous, shameful, and untimely bill to be considered in the House of Representatives within my memory. At this time when the Soviet Union is threatening the peace of the world as an aggressor in the Hitler pattern, at a time when this Congress is compelled to appropriate $15,000,000,000 each year for our Air Force, Army, and Navy to defend this Nation, at a time when this Congress is forced to appropriate additional billions for European aid to prevent Communist infiltration into the nations of western Europe, at a time when we are all striving mightily, and spending huge sums of money to maintain the peace of the world, it is outrageous and unthinkable to give serious consideration to this stupendous pension grab” (Congressional Record, 3113).

Liberal Democrat John Carroll of Colorado, a veteran of both World Wars, took on a leading role in opposing this measure, and motioned to kill the bill. Although there was agreement to do so in private, when a public vote was demanded the motion failed. Again, many representatives were afraid of being seen as voting against veterans. The opponents of this measure did find a perfect representative to go up against Rankin; war hero Olin “Tiger” Teague (D-Tex.). Only Audie Murphy was more decorated in World War II than Teague, and it sure didn’t hurt that Teague was a Southern Democrat and not a liberal. He motioned to send Rankin’s bill back to committee for study. Teague’s motion was passed by one vote, 208-207 on March 24th. Democrats voted to kill 151-100 while Republicans voted 57-106, and the American Labor Party’s Vito Marcantonio of New York voted against killing it. Votes to kill the measure included three future presidents in Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Gerald Ford (R-Mich.). Although many conservatives voted to stick it to the Truman Administration, there were those old anti-New Deal hardliners who would not go along with this scheme, including Clare Hoffman (R-Mich.), James Wadsworth (R-N.Y.), John Taber (R-N.Y.), and Robert F. Rich (R-Penn.). Among Rankin’s Mississippi colleagues, only William Whittington, who was the most favorable to the Truman Administration of the representatives yet had fiscally conservative leanings, opposed his pension bill. All four Republicans had opposed Social Security in 1935. Although it was largely considered liberal to line up against this measure and thus save Truman’s Social Security expansion and not have veterans as a separate and special group among Americans, there were liberals who supported Rankin’s bill despite voting liberal on other key measures in 1949, including Cecil King (D-Calif.), who would become the House’s leading advocate for Medicare, future Senator Abe Ribicoff (D-Conn.), and future Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.).

The New Republic (1949) wrote after this episode, “The final vote was not the issue of pensions. It was straight party politics. John Rankin, bitterest of Dixiecrats, is eternally eager to embarrass President Truman in every way possible. This time his opposite extreme, Vito Marcantonio (ALP, N.Y.), presumably with the same intent, lined up with him. And the House Republican leadership saw the Rankin pension-grab bill a fine opportunity to put the Administration in an impossible position. Minority Whip Charlie Halleck and the ranking Republican member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Daniel Reed (R-N.Y.), both voted for the pension. When Rankin rose to speak for his boodle bill he addressed his remarks, significantly, to the Republican side of the House. The GOP, which is committed on the record to (a) a contributory social-insurance program and (b) economy, followed his lead by voting in bloc for (c), a pension program which would have ruled out both (a) and (b)” (7). 

This perspective was held not only by liberals, but also some Republicans. Kentucky Irish American (1949) reported that Representative Thruston Morton (R-Ky.) had made the same allegation that Rankin and Republicans were simply out to embarrass President Truman (1). Instead of the Rankin pension bill, in 1950 the Social Security Act Amendments were passed, which increased Social Security benefits, expanded coverage, and established aid to the disabled among other provisions.

References

1948 Democratic Party Platform. The American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1948-democratic-party-platform

HR 2681. Motion to Recommit for Further Study. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/81-1949/h27

Pensions for Veterans of World War I and World War II. (1949, March 24). The Congressional Record, 3110-3115. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Retrieved from

Click to access GPO-CRECB-1949-pt3-4-2.pdf

Rankin’s Folly. (1949, March 25). The Harvard Crimson.

Retrieved from

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1949/3/25/rankins-folly-prepresentative-rankins-pension-plan/

The Congress: Rankin’s Revenge. (1949, February 28). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6602178/the-congress-rankins-revenge/

House Stages Farce. (1949, April 2). Kentucky Irish American.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1137684085/

Rankin, John Elliott. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/7731/john-elliott-rankin

The Week. (1949, April 4). The New Republic.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/1143264877/

Although the most famous “Senator Douglas” from Illinois is Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s opponent in the 1858 Senate election and 1860 presidential election who advocated for popular sovereignty on the issue of slavery and sponsored the infamous Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, a more recent “Senator Douglas”, one that contemporary Democrats would feel they have much more in common with, was Paul Howard Douglas (1892-1976).

As a youth, Douglas had grown up in Maine, a staunchly Republican and conservative state, and from a young age he was a rebel against such politics. Indeed, he was considered quite radical. One of his classmates at Bowdoin College, Sumner Pike, who served on the Atomic Energy Commission, recalled him as “rather to the left of Eugene V. Debs, who was tried for something about once every four years. Douglas was a radical campus leader in almost everything. If he could find a minority, he would go with it” (Time Magazine). Douglas was inspired by multiple muckrakers. His longstanding opposition to corruption derived from Lincoln Steffens’ The Shame of the Cities, his strong support for civil rights from Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle inspired his later support for consumer protection laws, and Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives inspired his support for economic regulations as buffers for the working class (Bergman). Douglas advanced through academia, spending two years at Columbia and two years at Harvard. He taught at several universities before settling on the University of Chicago in 1920, where he became a popular instructor. Douglas’s lessons were highly memorable. For instance, Rose Friedman, one of his students, recalled that he demonstrated the concept of marginal utility by bringing a bag of oranges to class and toss them to his students one by one until they yelled “no more” (Bergman). His time in academia grounded his radicalism into thinking about real-world application, and he wanted to do so scientifically. In 1934, he authored his most notable work in economics in The Theory of Wages and in 1947 he would be elected president of the American Economics Association. As an economist, he was a Georgist, believing in a land tax, and he did not affiliate himself with a major political party for much of his life. Douglas found the Republican Party too conservative and the Democratic Party too corrupt. However, he advised both Republican Governor Gifford Pinchot of Pennsylvania and Democratic Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York on the issue of unemployment and would draft pension and old-age insurance laws for Illinois (Time Magazine). Although Douglas would eventually find his home in the Democratic Party, he was not there yet in the 1920s. He even wrote, “There is indeed no logical place in American life for the Democratic Party” (Time Magazine). Douglas also made a key connection with progressive Chicago attorney Harold Ickes. Together, they protested against public utilities magnate Samuel Insull for his stock manipulations (Time Magazine). In May 1930, Douglas was staunchly opposed to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. He thus with other economists who initiated a petition, signed by 1,028 economists, urging President Herbert Hoover not to sign the Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill (Econ Journal Watch). Prioritizing party orthodoxy, Hoover did not heed the petition.

The New Deal Warms Douglas to the Democrats

Although Douglas had been an advisor to FDR, he still stuck to his socialist guns and voted for perennial Socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas in 1932. However, Douglas would find much to like about the New Deal. He indeed found that a lot of what was in the New Deal had originated from socialist thinking (Time Magazine). Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes would get Douglas appointed to the Consumers’ Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration, but this was dismantled after the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act in ALA Schechter Poultry Corp. v. U.S. (1935). He was involved in drafting After Douglas and his second wife, Emily Taft Douglas, visited Italy, he came to strongly oppose fascism and like much of the Western world was aghast at Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, which made him drop pacifism. Interestingly, despite serving in a Democratic administration, Douglas tried to win the Republican nomination for city council and then campaigned for the winner of the primary. However, in 1939, Douglas was approached to run for the city council post as a Democrat. He agreed to do so as long as Mayor Ed Kelly respected his independence. There were many men on the city council who could already be expected to do Kelly’s bidding, and he thought supporting Douglas would benefit his credibility, thus this arrangement was acceptable. Kelly told him, “We need an anchor man on the council, someone who can inject some thought into it” (Time Magazine). Douglas attracted a lot of the university and the black vote, and won the election.

Douglas was often a gadfly on the Chicago City Council, calling for numerous reforms, including to the corrupt public school system, which other aldermen stymied. Indeed, this was often the fate of his efforts at reform, and he would tell his friends, “I have three degrees. I have been associated with intelligent and intellectual people for many years. Some of these aldermen haven’t gone through the fifth grade. But they’re the smartest bunch of bastards I ever saw grouped together” (Time Magazine). If there was a vote on the City Council in which there was one dissenter, it was most likely Douglas. In 1942, he sought the Democratic nomination for the Senate, but lost as the Kelly-Nash machine preferred someone who could be counted on to follow the machine line in Congressman Raymond McKeough, who won the primary thanks to a massive vote for him in Chicago. McKeough lost the election to incumbent Republican Senator C. Wayland “Curly” Brooks. After his primary loss, Douglas resigned from the Chicago City Council to serve in World War II, entering as a private in the Marines despite being 50 years old and having been rejected for service during World War I due to poor eyesight thanks to obtaining numerous waivers by Navy Secretary Frank Knox. He would end the war as a lieutenant colonel and won two purple hearts. Interestingly, Emily Taft Douglas managed to get elected to Federal office before he did, with her defeating At-Large Republican Congressman Stephen A. Day, who I covered in the last post.

In 1948, Douglas was interested in running for governor, but the Democratic Party organization dreaded the impact he could have on state patronage, being an independent reformer and all, thus they had him run for Senate while Adlai Stevenson III ran for governor. Initially, Douglas was not given much of a chance against the popular Senator Brooks. Brooks had a well-deserved reputation as a conservative and a non-interventionist, and such politics still had significant traction in Illinois. His record was almost down-the-line support for the Republican 80^th Congress on domestic issues and he had voted against both aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan. Douglas decided to campaign all over the state in a jeep station wagon with a loudspeaker, making 1,100 speeches over six months (Time Magazine). He campaigned against the Taft-Hartley Act (which Brooks voted for), for the Marshall Plan, for civil rights (Brooks had voted favorably on such measures), public housing (Brooks had voted against killing the Taft-Ellender-Wagner Bill, one of his few liberal turns). Brooks, believing he was too far ahead of Douglas to need to debate, dismissed his request for a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. Thus, Douglas, having no Lincoln in Senator Brooks, held the debate himself, talking to an empty chair. While talking to an empty chair has quite the potential for backfiring as it did when Clint Eastwood tried it at the 2012 Republican National Convention, it worked here. The public liked the honesty and sincerity of the man they saw on the stage. As one steelworker who witnessed the debate said of him, “That guy’s no politician. He doesn’t try to con you” (Time Magazine). Douglas pulled off what was regarded as a major upset, as he defeated Brooks by over 10 points, running ahead of President Truman.

Senator Douglas

Senator Douglas immediately became known as a liberal maverick. His most admired senators were not Democrats, rather Republican maverick Charles Tobey of New Hampshire and conservative Robert Taft of Ohio (he respected the latter’s intellect and honesty even if he often disagreed with his conclusions) and did not support President Truman’s backing of the Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill, which if enacted would have established the equivalent of Britain’s National Health Service, believing he was trying to accomplish too much at once (Time Magazine). However, from a liberal perspective, Douglas’s voting record was outstanding. He agreed with the position of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action a remarkable 96% of the time, and his DW-Nominate score was a -0.58, making him one of the most liberal senators of his day. Douglas also sided with the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action 13% of the time from 1955 and 1966. His score is a bit higher with them than you might have expected from the conservative standpoint, and this was due to him sometimes supporting spending reductions proposed by conservatives and his consistent opposition to subsidizing industries. Douglas said regarding backing a 5% spending cut across the board, “This is not a matter of liberalism v. conservatism. To be a liberal one does not have to be a wastrel”, but still considered himself a “90 percent” Fair Dealer (Time Magazine). Douglas was one of those senators who could not be swayed by Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson’s (D-Tex.) support for the Senate filibuster nor his weakening amendments to pass civil rights legislation. He would be involved in the crafting of Medicare, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Area Redevelopment Act, and fought against conservative efforts to undo “one man, one vote” established by the Warren Court by Constitutional amendment. He would also advocate for the 18-year old vote, which was ratified in 1971. Douglas had staying power, although this was partially due to his first two elections being in good Democratic years. He was also a strong supporter of the New Frontier and Great Society programs, but this also came with a significant disagreement with liberals in his continuing support of the Vietnam War, and he would defend it after his time in the Senate. Speaking of…

The 1966 Election: Backlash

In 1966, the Democrats were facing headwinds due to both how the Vietnam War was turning but also a backlash to President Johnson’s Great Society. Furthermore, despite the most far-reaching civil rights laws having been passed since Reconstruction, there were numerous urban riots which had a negative impact on public opinion on the subject. Worse yet for Douglas, Republicans managed to score a top recruit for the 1966 midterms in the highly successful businessman Chuck Percy, who had once been one of his students.

Although Percy was also staunchly pro-civil rights and favored a good deal of the Great Society, he was seen as a preferable alternative. The age contrast couldn’t have helped Douglas either; he was now 74 years old and Percy was a comparatively young 47, highly telegenic, and his presentation was polished and intelligent. He won the election by 11.1%, an even bigger defeat for Douglas than he had handed Senator Brooks in 1948. Percy had almost certainly gotten some sympathy vote after the brutal murder of his daughter, Valerie. Percy, who I have also already covered in my RINOs series, would, like Senator Douglas, serve three terms before losing reelection. Douglas would subsequently accept a post teaching at The New School in New York City. In 1968, he sparred on the subject of limited government with Conservative MP Enoch Powell in an American Enterprise Institute hosted debate. However, his public life was curbed when he suffered his first stroke in 1969. Douglas would nonetheless manage to get his autobiography, In the Fullness of Time, published in 1972. He would suffer two more strokes before his death on September 24, 1976, at the age of 84. Senator Douglas was a figure that even if you have fundamental disagreements with his politics, you can still respect him as an honest broker who could not be bought or bossed, and if you have the cynical views that many seem to express on politics these days, that’s worth its weight in gold.

References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Bergman, W. (2023). Paul H. Douglas (1892-1976). The Palgrave Companion to Chicago Economics, 249-273.

Retrieved from

https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1239&context=business_facpubs

Douglas, Paul Howard. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/2691/paul-howard-douglas

Douglas, P. & Powell, J.E. (1968). How Big Should Government Be? American Enterprise Institute Press.

Retrieved from

How Big Should Government Be?

Economists Against Smoot-Hawley. (2007, September). Econ Journal Watch, 4(3), 345-358.

Retrieved from

https://econjwatch.org/articles/economists-against-smoot-hawley

Ex-Senator Douglas Dies. (1976, September 25). The Evening Times, 1.

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/71651412/

The Congress: The Making of a Maverick. (1950, January 16). Time Magazine.

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