One of the Greats

James Albertus McClure, 1924-2011 History will record that Sen. Jim McClure, who died Saturday at the age of 86, was one of the most significant politicians in Idaho's history. A staunch Republican conservative, McClure nonetheless was liked and respected by those across the political spectrum, but beyond that he accumulated a record of accomplishment that has lasting impact. A strong advocate for the natural resources industries so important to Idaho, McClure also saw the need to resolve long-standing debates over wilderness designation in his native state. He worked out the boundary lines of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area by spreading maps on the floor of the governor's office and getting on his hands and knees with Democrat Cecil D. Andrus. He helped champion creation of the Sawtooth NRA and in the last days of Frank Church's life he got the iconic River of No Return Wilderness renamed for the Democrat. He fought tooth and nail to grow the Idaho National Laboratory and distinguished himself as a member of the Iran-Contra Committee investigating that scandal. As a reporter and in other capacities, I have had the chance to interview Jim McClure probably more than 20 times over the years. I never sat down with any person who was better prepared or who provided a better interview. He was candid, opinionated and always impeccable well informed. I also never saw the guy use a note card or a script. He was a marvelous extemporaneous speaker. He was also a complete gentleman. Once in Sun Valley years ago, while McClure was chairing the Senate Energy Committee, he sat for a taped interview for well more than half an hour. At the end of the session, while we were making small talk, the technical crew whispered in my ear that none of the half hour of Q and A had been recorded on tape. Gulp. I'd just wasted the time of a busy, important U.S. Senator and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Not missing a beat, McClure smiled and said, "Let's do it again." And we did. He didn't have to do that. Most would have said, sorry, but I've got to run. Obviously, I have never forgotten the kindness. One thing I'll never forget about McClure was his principled pragmatism. Never anything less than a loyal and conservative Republican, he also knew that progress often requires compromise and finding a middle ground. Such was the case when McClure again hooked up with Andrus in 1987 and spent weeks working out a comprehensive approach to the decades-long battles over Idaho wilderness. They flew around the state, spread out the maps and offended everyone - particularly their respective "base" voters. There was something in the grand compromise that everyone could hate and the McClure-Andrus approach ultimately failed. I've thought many times since that the two old pols knew they were far out in front of their constituents, but were nevertheless willing to risk political capital to try to resolve a controversy. It's easy in politics to say "no." It is much more difficult - and risky - to try to lead. McClure was a leader. I was pleased to have a hand in creating a University of Idaho video tribute to Jim McClure in 2007. You can check it out at the University's McClure Center website. In the Idaho political pantheon, McClure stands with Borah and Church as a among the greatest and most important federal officials Idaho has ever produced. He was a genuinely nice guy, too.

Unique Among 50

Nebraska's Unicameral

The great Nebraska Senator George Norris (that's him in the photo) had many ideas during his long years of public service. His ideas and his enduring reputation for decency and integrity mark him as one of the truly great figures in American politics and one of the best ever U.S. Senators.

Among other things, Norris was the "Father of the TVA" - the Tennessee Valley Authority. Unusual for a man from the prairie land of McCook, Nebraska to care about rural economic development in the American south, but Norris was a different kind of senator. He didn't believe auto builder Henry Ford should gain control of the vast hydropower resources in the Tennessee Valley and fought for public development of the resource. Norris Dam, a TVA project, carries his name. Norris also successfully pushed the Rural Electrification Act, instrumental in bringing electricity to much of rural American.

A progressive Republican, Norris was a huge supporter of Franklin Roosevelt. In 1936, he ran as an Independent and FDR famously said: "If I were a citizen of Nebraska, regardless of what party I belonged to, I would not allow George Norris to retire from the U. S. Senate."

One of Norris's most interesting ideas resulted in my home state of Nebraska having the only one house, non-partisan state legislature in the nation. Nebraskans call it simply "the unicameral."

Norris personally conceived of the idea of eliminating one house of the state legislature - he said it was just inefficient and a wasteful duplication to have two houses doing the same thing - and, after he campaigned for the idea statewide working through two sets of tires, Nebraska voters overwhelming approved the unicameral legislature in 1934. The single house has 49 members who are called Senators. The 35-year-old Speaker of the Nebraska legislature was recently profiled in TIME magazine as one of the nation's 40 top leaders under 40 years of age.

The Nebraska system is far from perfect. No political system is. But the next time you read of a huge fight between the House and the Senate in your legislature, and those fights happen in 49 states, you'll not be reading about Nebraska. At least, George Norris took care of that problem.

A Verdict of History

Wisconsin's Curious Senate History At least three times in the last sixty-plus years Wisconsin voters have sent packing a respected national politician with a record of genuine accomplishment and replaced him with, well, to be generous, someone else.

La Follette - McCarthy

In 1946 Joe McCarthy, whose name is forever linked with a bleak period in American political history, beat Sen. Robert M. La Follette, Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary. Young Bob La Follette had replaced his father, Fighting Bob La Follette, in the Senate when the elder icon of the famous Wisconsin political family died in 1925. Robert La Follette, Sr. was selected in 1955 as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators. By all accounts Young Bob was a serious, studious legislator determined to carry on his father's progressive political legacy. La Follette was also supremely independent. He broke ranks with the old-line Republican Party in 1932 to support Franklin Roosevelt, supported much of FDR's New Deal legislation and was a champion of civil liberties when such things were not very popular. A measure of La Follette's respect in the Senate is contained in the intriguing fact that, although elected as a Republican, Democrats gave him the chairmanship of an important labor investigations committee in the 1930's. He also helped pass landmark federal government reorganization legislation near the end of his Senate career.

McCarthy's career, despite regular efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the bully from Appleton, is well documented. He was shameless as a self promoter, trampled on the very idea of civil liberties and was ultimately censured by the Senate in 1954. His death at 49 in 1957 was directly related to his years of heavy drinking.

After service in the Truman Administration, young Bob La Follette's life also came to a tragic end. He committed suicide in 1953.

Nelson - Kasten

In 1980, Wisconsin voters turned out another remarkable Senator, Gaylord Nelson. First elected to the Senate in 1963, Nelson, a former Wisconsin Governor, became one of the foremost champions in the Congress of conservation legislation. Nelson supported trails legislation, sponsored or co-sponsored the Wilderness Act and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. It was Gaylord Nelson's idea to have the very first Earth Day in 1970. The event was important because, as Nelson later said, the country needed "a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda."

President Clinton presented Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, fifteen years after his defeat by Robert Kasten in the Reagan landslide of 1980.

Kasten went on to, charitably, a less-than-distinguished two terms in the Senate. Kasten now has his own consulting business. Defeated for re-election in 1992, Kasten was a part of the Class of 1980 that included Idaho's Steve Symms, Indiana's Dan Quayle, New York's Al D'Amato and South Dakota's James Abdnor. None of whom, history would say, made much of a lasting mark in the United States Senate.

Feingold - Johnson

It remains to be seen if the most recent Senate election in Wisconsin, where Sen. Russ Feingold lost re-election, continues the McCarthy - Kasten pattern of replacing an accomplished, national figure with a senator who doesn't quite measure up.

Feingold, say what you will about his generally liberal politics, was widely seen as a serious legislator with one of the most independent records in the Senate. Republican John McCain got downright emotional in talking about Feingold's Senate career. "I don't think he is replaceable," McCain said during a floor speech.

History will judge, but Feingold's principled opposition to the U.S.A. Patriot Act and the Iraq War, not to mention his bipartisan work with McCain on campaign finance reform, mark him as someone who made a difference during three terms in the Senate.

Sen-elect Ron Johnson - he beat Feingold by 105,000 votes in November - came out of no where to do so. Johnson is a plastic manufacturer, a favorite of the Tea Party movement and has never held public office.

It has been said that we get the government we deserve. One wonders, with the perfect hindsight of history, if the great state of Wisconsin, proud of its cheese and Packers, might not like to replay at least a couple of its 20th Century U.S. Senate elections?

The judgment passing of history can be rather harsh on whether we voters always make the best choices. Put a different way, looking back on Wisconsin's Senate history, another term for a Bob La Follette and a Gaylord Nelson might look pretty good right now.

The Death of a Brand

The Once and Future John McCain There once was a time when Arizona Sen. John McCain warmly embraced the label "maverick." He seemed to delight in taking positions at odds with his party - or even his state's - orthodoxy. He had established himself firmly in the tradition of some of the great Senate mavericks of the past - LaFollette, Borah, even Goldwater. But just as BP's "Beyond Petroleum" brand washed away in the Gulf oil spill, so has McCain's maverick brand forever vanished thanks to his presidential election run and his ugly, but still decisive, victory yesterday in the GOP primary in Arizona. McCain, by all odds, will be back in the Senate post-November, but not as a maverick and likely not ever again as an interesting, important American political player. I have always found the tough, opinionated McCain to be one of the more fascinating characters in American politics. His personal story, the POW experience, his once obvious regard for those on the other side of the aisle, his old school willingness to be an unpredictable independent couldn't help, at one time, to make him an interesting, maybe even historic, player in the long history of the Senate. That brand is gone, I think, and with it much that made John McCain so interesting and important in the Senate. As Politico noted in its story today about McCain, during the most recent primary, in addition to spending $21 million, he repudiated many of the positions - immigration, climate change, etc. - that once made his maverick brand genuine: "Immigration wasn’t the only issue where McCain seemed to recalibrate his position in response to the primary challenge," Politico said. "He also promised to filibuster any legislation that revoked the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy after pledging to support the repeal in 2006 and he distanced himself from an emissions capping measure he co-sponsored with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) as conservative anger over cap-and-trail boiled over." As one commentator noted, McCain rolled out a TV spot with six, tough looking Arizona sheriffs to attest to his new, tough stand on immigration. This is the guy who once teamed with Ted Kennedy to write an immigration reform bill, but during the campaign he walked away - ran away - from all that history. "The votes are in," Adam Hanft wrote at the CNN website. "The sheriffs spot -- and an entire campaign apparatus that had to relegitimize the senator's conservative acceptability, including an endorsement from Sarah Palin -- did the job. "But it's a profound comment on where Republican politics stand in 2010 that John McCain had to run against a new challenger by also running against his old principles." The Senate was a more interesting place when McCain the Maverick roamed the floor. He may, who knows, prove to be a maverick again once safely re-elected, but he may also find that in politics once you are seen as running from your principles its pretty hard to ever again be taken seriously, as a maverick or anything else.

Ted Stevens

Stories Of Uncle Ted Alaska says "goodbye" today to the guy the state legislature once voted "the Alaskan of the Century." I'm betting the ceremony in the great north - Vice President Biden is scheduled to speak - will be sad and historic and will remind all there, as well as the rest of us, that we reflect too little, and often too late, on the greatness and the humanity of people who, in one way or another, have touched our lives. A group of my Gallatin colleagues - Republicans and Democrats - had the good fortune over long years to have encounters both large and important and small and meaningful with Ted Stevens who will go down in the history books as the longest serving Senate Republican in history and one of the "old school" members of the Senate. Stevens' life and career is indeed one for the history books. There follows some of the recollections, too late for sure, but no less important for the lessons they carry. Cecil D. Andrus, four-term Idaho Governor and Interior Secretary from 1977-1981 Senator Stevens, even before my arrival at Interior, had worked out a “deal” of some sort with the Appropriations Committee chairman, the late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who also nominally chaired the Interior Appropriations subcommittee. I say nominally because Senator Byrd basically let Senator Stevens run the subcommittee. It was a Democratic Congress and a Democratic Senate, yet I had to face Senator Stevens sitting in the chairman’s seat when testifying. Even the majority staff answered to Stevens. Using this power, Stevens on one occasion summoned me to appear before "his" subcommittee to justify a slightly more than $1 million request for the budget of the Interior Department's Office of Public Affairs. This would have been the fall of 1978. Earlier that summer I had personally led a group of some 30 journalists from across the United States on a 10-day “resource inspection” tour of many of the areas my department was proposing be aside for lasting protection as part of the deal creating the Trans-Alaska pipeline and the settling of native land claims. It was a glorious trip and it garnered gallons of free ink in major publications all across the country. And Senator Stevens was furious. In his view, I was lobbying Congress with taxpayer money. In my book I was educating voters through the media as to what the stakes were and why every American should care about Alaska. Ted demanded to know the cost of everything, the manifests of who flew on what flights, the itinerary - all of which he pored over with a fine tooth comb. He subjected me to several hours of detailed questions about this ridiculously small office budget, when the entire Interior budget was about $4 billion. Thankfully, I’d done my homework and was prepared, patiently answering the senator’s numerous questions designed to embarrass me. Finally, Ted took off on a tangent. He asked if I had yet read John McPhee’s “Coming into the Country,” the fine book on Alaska and Alaskans that had just been published. Before I could answer he launched into a long soliloquy about what a great book it was and how it had captured the fierce independence of Alaskans and their "hands off me" and "no governmental interference" attitude. It was not often one could best Senator Stevens, but that morning I was able to. I replied that not only had I read the book, Mr. McPhee was scheduled to have lunch with me that very day and unless the session adjourned very soon I would be late. Clearly stunned that I had already read the book and surprised to hear the author and I would be visiting, the Senator had no choice but to stammer, “By all means, Mr. Secretary, keep your luncheon date. Meeting adjourned!” Dan Lavey, Gallatin President and former Chief of Staff to Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith I met Senator Stevens briefly under very sad circumstances. We were both attending a memorial service for the son of a mutual friend. The back story, however, offers some insights into the man’s character and personality. I’ve enjoyed a long-time relationship with former Senator Gordon Smith – serving has a political advisor and on his staff. When he ran for re-election in 2002, Smith pledged to oppose oiling drilling in ANWR – a long-time goal of Senator Stevens. Smith, who prided himself on building close relationships with his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle, struggled to maintain his friendship with Stevens over the course of several high profile votes against opening the Alaska wilderness for energy development. Stevens was none too happy with Smith and let me know on several occasions. In September 2003, Senator Smith tragically lost his son Garrett to suicide. It was a heartbreaking situation for Gordon, his wife Sharon and their family. When the news became public of Garrett’s death, Smith’s Senate colleagues rallied to the family’s side – offering comfort and support. None more so than the Senior Senator from Alaska. Indeed, Stevens personally helped organize a delegation of Senators to travel to Oregon for the memorial service and, as Pro Tempore of the Senate, made the decision to put the Senate in recess for a day allowing Senators to attend the memorial and honor the memory of Garrett Smith. I know how much this act of kindness touched Senator Smith and his family. Here was this gruff, self described “SOB” who was widely known to have been very disappointed with Smith’s votes against ANWR, putting a personal relationship ahead of politics and policy. Other than exchanging a brief handshake with the man, I did not know him. But this act of grace on behalf of my friend I will never forget. Chris Carlson, Gallatin Founding Partner and Director of Public Affairs in the Andrus Interior Department. Chris covered Stevens and the Alaska delegation as a young Washington correspondent. In spite of Stevens' pugnacious, acerbic style, it was clear he cared deeply and respected the Senate and his colleagues. He was smart as a whip and did his homework. Beneath the gruff exterior, lay a heart of gold and, on occasion, a keen sense of humor. He also had a terrific temper and was demanding of his staff. Consequently, he went through staff and chiefs of staff quickly. I also knew Stevens to be an honest man of his word. I had a hard time giving any credence to government charges that he accepted corporate favors and could easily see him paying bills for work on his modest summer retreat, not realizing they had been heavily discounted by the contractor. Stevens loved the Senate and his work too much to risk losing it over nickel and dime greed. If he was guilty of anything, it was the insidious arrogance of power that few can stymie. Even "Uncle Ted" started to believe his own press clippings. He must have thought he was bullet proof and certainly believed he was indispensable in the voters' minds. He was a realist, though, and when President Carter, following the suggestion of his Interior Secretary (Cecil Andrus), my old boss, used the Antiquities Act in November of 1978 to put much of Alaska into National Monuments, he knew he would have to negotiate and get passed decent and fair legislation. My own Stevens story involves a tribute piece I wrote for Montana Magazine after the death of the great Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana. I'd been told by a Mansfield staffer that one of the very best Mansfield stories involved Stevens. I called the Senator and, rather amazing to me, he called me back promptly to talk about Mansfield. He's the story Stevens recounted: Stevens was a rookie Republican Senator in 1970, appointed to fill an unexpired term. Last in seniority and more than a little unsure of himself, he was determined to offer his own amendment to a pending ocean fishery bill being debated on the Senate floor. To prepare, Stevens had talked to his next-door neighbor and the floor manager of the bill, Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, to make certain he would have the chance to get his amendment considered. Stevens knew he would be involved in Senate committee work while the bill was being debated on the Senate floor. In response, Muskie said he would get the word to Stevens in time to facilitate floor discussion of his amendment. The call never came. Stevens vividly remembers his feelings more than 30 years later. “When I realized that the roll call was underway, I rushed from the committee room back on the Senate floor, and not being one to mince words, I said to Muskie, ‘You son of a bitch, I have an amendment to this bill, and you know how much it means to me to be able to offer it.’” Standing in his customary spot, observing the roll call was Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. He heard the raised voices and the obscenity. “Mike said to me, ‘Senator, we just don’t use that kind of language on the floor of the Senate,’” Stevens said. “I apologized, but told Mansfield I was so upset because I had an amendment to the bill being voted on, and Senator Muskie told me I could present it, then hadn’t given me the chance.” With the vote on final passage of the bill continuing, Mansfield asked Muskie, a fellow Democrat, if Stevens’ story was true. “It’s true,” Muskie said, “but the amendment wouldn’t have passed. It’s just not necessary, Mike.” Stevens then remembers that Mansfield turned to him and did something that was at the same time both simple and extraordinary. He asked for a copy of Stevens’ amendment. Stevens said what happened next has never happened again in the United States Senate. Mansfield interrupted the roll call and asked unanimous consent to reverse course on the Senate calendar to the proper place where amendments could be offered. Stevens remembers dead silence in the chamber. The unanimous consent was granted and the Majority Leader was recognized. “On behalf of the Senator from Alaska, I offer an amendment,” Mansfield said. “Does any Senator care to debate the amendment with the Senator from Alaska?” No Senator did. Mansfield then turned to Stevens and asked if he cared to make a comment. Stevens still laughs at the thought that by opening his mouth he might have derailed the unprecedented action that was unfolding to his benefit on the Senate floor. He didn’t say a word. In fact, no one, including Muskie, said a word. On the strength of Mike Mansfield’s sense of fairness – his character, really – the Stevens amendment passed that day without debate and remains the law today. “When all this was over, Mike came over to me and said, ‘We are all equal on this floor, and a Senator must keep his word,’” Stevens says. “That was very meaningful to a new Senator and I have never forgotten it. Mike and I became wonderful friends and it began right there. He treated everyone alike without regard to politics or seniority.” Stevens told me that his Democratic friend, Mike Mansfield, was “the best leader we ever had” in the Senate. Ted Stevens will be remembered for a long time and for many things. A tough, demanding partisan; a fierce advocate for Alaska, but also a practical guy, a complex human like all of us. The kind of person you feel fortunate to have had a moment with. This is a day to remember - and celebrate - his life and accomplishments and all he touched.

The Senator From Alaska

Remembering Ted Stevens I wanted to feature this photo of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens for one reason. Stevens is smiling, something he seemed rarely to do - at least in public. A more common Stevens image captured him as a scowling, angry guy, given to instant fits that displayed his legendary temper. A D.C. magazine once voted him the "hottest" senator and not for his chiseled good looks. Stevens, the longest serving Republican senator in the country's history, died Monday night in a back country plane crash in Alaska, the state he represented in the Senate for 40 years. Stevens was 86 and scandal and controversy and temper aside he deserves to be remembered as one of the most influential senators of the second half of the 20th Century. I can't say I really knew the man, but did interview him on two occasions and both were memorable. In 1980, Republicans captured control of the Senate for the first time in memory in the election that saw a slew of western senators, Stevens included, elevated to committee chairmanships. Stevens went on to run the Appropriations and Commerce Committees with a loud voice and a fast gavel and, of course, with a slab of bacon for the Last Frontier always first in his mind. I was producing public television programs in 1980 and some how was able to convince the boss to send me and a photographer (current Idaho Public Television General Manager Peter Morrill) to Washington to do an hour-long special on the newly powerful GOP. Stevens graciously sat for an interview and gave the yokels from Idaho plenty of his time. Years later I was working on a piece for Montana Magazine on the late, great Montana Senator and Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. I'd been told by a former Mansfield aide that I really needed to get to Stevens who, the aide assured me, would tell me a great story about his relationship with the famous Montanan. Thanks for my old boss, Cecil Andrus, who had clashed many a time with Stevens over Alaska issues, but who nevertheless maintained a healthy respect for the senator, which Stevens reciprocated, I was able to connect with Stevens on the phone. He told me a remarkable story of how, as a freshman senator, Mansfield has shown him an unprecedented degree of respect and courtesy and imbued Stevens with the notion that every single member of the Senate has a right to be taken seriously on every single issue. He ended by saying, in words I'll never forget coming from a Republican about a Democrat, "Mike was the best leader the Senate has ever seen." Ted Stevens was tough on environmentalists and those who dared to cross him. He was a champion of the earmark back before speaking ill of federal appropriations became a litmus test for every politician. By one count, Stevens had a hand in nearly 1,500 earmarks over his Senate career worth more than $3.4 billion. Like his friend the late Robert Byrd, Stevens came to the Senate to take care of his state and that meant appropriating money for projects back home. He was, as has been said of lesser men, not always right, but seldom in doubt. Stevens once proclaimed, while chairing the Appropriations Committee, “I’m a mean, miserable S.O.B." On another occasion, he said: “I didn’t lose my temper. I know right where it is.” Ted Stevens was also part of a vanishing breed, a throw back to the Senate of Mansfield and Jackson, Church and Baker, Long and Dole. Theirs was a Senate were, once in a while, serious legislation got considered and past without the incredible partisanship displayed today by both parties. Much will be made of the fact that Stevens' death came in a plane crash, the same awful circumstance that claimed his first wife and nearly killed him in 1978. Considering his eventful life, including flying Army Air Force transports over "The Hump" in the Himalayas ferrying supplies from India to China in World War II, it seems like a eerily fateful ending to more than eight decades. In his Senate farewell, Stevens summed up his career: "To hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska." That's pretty much how he'll be remembered, I suspect. With Byrd's death earlier this year, we've now seen the passing of two old and tough Senate bulls, a type not around any more. They'll both be remembered for a long time - and should be.

The Worst Idea in Politics

Governors Appointing Themselves The recent death of Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia has many, many consequences. For example, until his replacement is decided, Byrd's seat - the 60th Democratic seat in the Senate - deprives the majority of the vote needed to stop a filibuster. Also, depending on how things play in West Virginia, the "safe" Byrd seat could be a seat Democrats have to protect, particularly if there is a special election in the fall. Nothing upsets a state's politics quite like a Senate vacancy, which brings me to the fellow pictured nearby - Governor then Senator Charles Gossett of Idaho. As I noted in a post a few months back, Gossett is one of two Northwesterners - Montana's John Erickson being the other - who engineered their own appointments to the U.S. Senate. It is a horrible idea and nearly always fatal to the politician doing the engineering. Perhaps this is why West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, who reportedly longs for Byrd's Senate seat, has repeatedly ruled out appointing himself. Maybe that self awareness helps explain the governor's 70% approval rating in the Mountaineer State. Still, the state's AFL-CIO, among others, has publicly called for Manchin to reconsider. Bad idea, Governor. Nine governors have tried the, "gee, I think I'll appoint myself to the Senate" approach. Eight of them subsequently lost a primary or the very next opportunity to confront the voters, Gossett and Erickson included. Only one governor has been able to pull off this political slight of hand, Kentucky's Albert B. "Happy" Chandler in 1939. Chandler went on to win a special election and then a full term and then resigned his Senate seat in 1945 to become Commissioner of Baseball. It says all one needs to know about Chandler's Senate career that he is best remembered for succeeding Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis and approving Jackie Robinson's major league contract in 1947, but that's another story. At least one very promising political career ended when a governor appointed himself to the Senate. In 1977, Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson, a rising star in national Democratic politics, decided he was the best choice to replace Walter Mondale who had left his Senate seat vacant when he was elected Vice President. Anderson, handsome, well-spoken, known to Minnesotans as "Wendy", had graced the cover of TIME magazine in 1973 while wearing a plaid shirt and holding a big ol' northern pike. Anderson, it seemed, was a young man with a bright political future. It all ended with the "Minnesota Massacre" of 1978. The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party - the DFL - suffered a shackling at the polls that year. Anderson lost the Senate election and his former Lt. Governor, Rudy Perpich, who had facilitated Wendy's Senate aspirations, lost the Governor's race. The voters took out their resentment on politicians who were seen as too smart by half. Generally speaking, voters hate an inside deal. In the Minnesota case, once they had punished him, voters did give Perpich a second chance. He came back to win and go on to become the state's longest serving governor. When a Senate vacancy occurs, it must be tempting for a governor having won a statewide race, having built a political organization, to look in the mirror and think: "there is no one better for this job." History says there are better choices - and they include anyone but the governor.

Another Icon of the Senate

Joseph Taylor Robinson (1872-1937) Much is being made today - as it should be - of the honors being afforded Robert C. Byrd, the longest serving member ever in the United States Senate. Senators will stop everything - Supreme Court confirmations, Wall Street regulatory reform, maybe even partisan bickering - to honor Byrd whose mortal remains will hold the Senate floor for a final time. It is a great honor and a fitting one. In another July - 73 years ago - another powerful, beloved Senate leader, a Senator with many of the southern and political instincts that Byrd came to symbolize, received much the same honor Byrd receives today. Joseph Taylor Robinson, when he died of a heart attack during a blistering hot spell in Washington, D.C. on July 14, 1937, was the longest serving majority leader in history. His death shocked the nation's political establishment and, like Bobby Byrd, it caused the institution to stop and reflect on how special and significant one person can be, even in the rarefied air of the United States Senate. Robinson, a former Arkansas governor and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 1928, was widely admired in the Senate for his work ethic, his fairness and his ability to forge lasting personal relationships. [Technically, Byrd is lying in repose today, while Robinson's 1937 ceremony was called a memorial.] Robinson's biographer, Cecil Edward Weller, Jr., says he was the most important Arkansas politician in the first half of the 20th Century, and one of the most influential in the south. But even more than that, Robinson, like Byrd, was a creature of the Senate. Ironically, Robinson's lifetime ambition was a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court and that seemed within his reach in 1937. It was the worst kept secret in the Capitol that Franklin Roosevelt had promised the first open seat on the Court to Robinson, mostly out of respect for his party loyalty. Robinson had taken on the thankless job of running as the southern balance on the Democratic ticket in 1928 with New York Governor Al Smith. Smith was a Catholic, northeastern, urban, "wet," while Robinson was a rural, Protestant, southern "dry." The Smith-Robinson ticket got trounced. When a Supreme Court opening materialized in the summer of 1937, FDR hesitated in naming Robinson because he was completely embroiled in his controversial plan to enlarge the Court; or "pack" it in the popular phrase of the day. Robinson had been FDR's loyal lieutenant in advancing the Court plan - and the rest of the New Deal for that matter - even though he was personally skeptical that it was the right policy. Still, when conservative Justice Willis Van Devanter retired, it looked like Robinson was destined to get his wish. His Senate friends took to calling him "Mr. Justice," but still FDR withheld the formal offer of a Court appointment. The president wanted his Court plan to pass and knew he needed his majority leader on the job to get it done. As events turned, neither FDR's bill passed nor did Robinson get to the Court. When Joe T. died on July 14, the Court plan died with him, as did his hope to end his long career on the nation's high court. Its all speculation, but had Robinson lived he might well have forced Roosevelt to compromise and accept two or three additional Supreme Court justices rather than the six FDR wanted. Without Robinson pushing and prodding the Senate, the president got nothing. By the same token, had FDR acted quickly to appoint Robinson to the Court, it might well have been the gesture the Senate was looking for - putting a popular Senate leader on the controversial Court - to move the president's legislation. Proof that timing is often everything in politics. FDR attended Robinson's memorial ceremony in the Senate chamber and most members of the Senate and many House members boarded a special train to Little Rock for services prior to Robinson's burial in Arkansas nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

Byrd, Kagan and the Senate

A Monday Morning in Senate History The news that the longest serving member of Congress in the nation's history, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, had died got me to thinking about all that the silver maned "dean of the Senate" has seen since coming to Washington, D.C. in 1952. Think about it: Korea, McCarthy, the Cold War, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Vietnam, civil rights, Nixon, Watergate, the rise of China, the end of the Soviet Union, radical Islam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What a time and what a career. Byrd was 92 and he loved the Senate. Byrd, with his courtly demeanor and three piece suits, was a throwback in many ways. Before his declining health, he was one of the Senate's great theatrical orators. Byrd was also a respecter of tradition and rules, one of the Senate's champion appropriators - it seems like half of the bridges and buildings in West Virginia carry his name - and a fierce defender of the Senate's role and responsibility as an institution in our system; particularly the Senate's role in limiting executive power. His has not been a career free of controversy, either. In the early 1940's, Byrd organized a Ku Klux Klan chapter in his hometown, Crab Orchard, and was chosen the chapter's "Exalted Cyclops." The Klan connection followed him all the rest of his life. In his memoir, Child of the Appalachian Coal Fields, published in 2005, he called joining the Klan a serious case of "bad judgment" driven by the naivete and ambition of a young man. "(Klan membership) has emerged throughout my life," he wrote, "to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one's life, career, and reputation." Byrd goes on to note, not without irony, that organizing the Klan chapter in the 1940's served as his stepping stone to politics. He was mentioned as a presidential or vice presidential candidate more than once, rose to become Senate Majority Leader and has been a genuine scholar of Senate history. His book - The Senate: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, 1789-1989 - is wonderful reading for a political history buff. In his day, Byrd could play a pretty fair fiddle. I remember seeing him in action in a stiflingly hot Boise High School auditorium during a campaign event for Sen. Frank Church in the fall of 1980. Byrd has also been a passionate advocate for better teaching of American history and when the Federation of State Humanities Councils presented him some years back with an award for his advocacy and support, he pulled out tattered copy of a history text he had read as a child in those Appalachian coal fields. The book, now mostly long forgotten, was An American History written by a Columbia University historian, David Saville Muzzey, and first issued in 1911. Muzzey's work was a standard American history text in the early 20th Century and Byrd praised it to nines; repeatedly referring to "his Muzzey." In 2004, Byrd authored another book; a slim and well-reasoned volume entitled Losing America. With the book he lamented the steady rise, during what was then his nearly 60 years in Washington, of the power of an American president to commit our military to action with little if any questioning by the Congress. The book was written in the wake of 9-11 and George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq; a action Byrd had courageously and very openly opposed. He wrote: "The awesome power to commit this nation to war must be taken back from the hands of a single individual - the president of the United States - and returned to the people's representatives in Congress as the framers intended. No president must ever again be granted such license with our troops or our treasure." At a time when there is so much talk about threats to the Constitution from - take your pick - President Obama, the Democratic Congress, a conservative Supreme Court or talk radio it is interesting that those doing the denouncing on both the left and the right hardly ever - OK, Ron Paul is an exception - mention Byrd's point about Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 - "The Congress shall have power...To declare war." Bob Byrd knew "his Muzzey" and his Constitution. He has always carried a copy of the founding document in his coat pocket. His Senate career is one for the record books and the history books and the Senate could use his historical perspective as it takes on another Supreme Court confirmation this week. And Now, Judging Kagan Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings open today and the Senate's increasing inability to comprehensively, carefully and civilly carry out the "advise and consent" function may be as much on trial as the nominee. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were threatening over the weekend to boycott the hearings unless they got access to more Kagan documents. Ranking GOP member Jeff Sessions even suggested a filibuster might be in order. Almost all of this, along with unbelievable talk about Kagan's wardrobe and looks, is little more than political theatre. The real questions that need to be asked, and probably won't be, are much less theatrical and much more important. Is she competent? Supreme Court clerk, White House Counsel's Office, Harvard Law dean would argue for a yes. My question: what did she learn from those experiences and how might it apply to the Supreme Court? Has she done anything in her professional or private life that might disqualify her - or anyone with similar history - from service on the high court? Nothing we know of. So, ultimately, does she understand the role of a judge? While we'll hear a good deal about her "judicial temperament" and whether she is an "activist" or a "liberal." I'd like some member of the Senate committee to ask her who she thinks has most affected American judicial thought since 1789, or in the 20th Century? Does she know anything about Holmes and Brandeis, Marshall and Taney? What opinion of Chief Justice Rehnquist's does she most admire? What has she read lately? How does she see the job of lawyer to the president? How will she work with Roberts and Scalia? Does she think she has any responsibility to explain herself - and her opinions - if she gots to wear the robe? You can bet the White House has equipped Kagan with 110 ways to say "I couldn't possibly comment on that since it is an issue that may well come before the Court." So, maybe we could have the Senate engage her in a conversation about how she thinks, what she knows about history and the Constitution and how she will apply her experience. I'm not holding my breath. The nineteen members of the Judiciary Committee - assuming the Republicans show up - will each need plenty of C-SPAN time. Why waste any of those precious moments on a real question that might really tell us something about the nominee when a partisan speech is possible - and expected? Bob Byrd and Elena Kagan are joined in history this Monday morning; the history of the United States Senate. Let's hope the current Senate is up to playing something approaching a useful role in writing one more chapter in that history, because with two problematic wars raging, a stagnant economy and millions out of work, the country hardly needs the sideshow of an unproductive fight over who should join the Supreme Court. The White House and the Senate have a stake in making things work, and work better. Why not start today? In his massive history of the Senate, Byrd wrote lovingly about the great Majority Leader from Montana Mike Mansfield and quotes the Montanan - the longest serving leader in history - as saying: "In moments of crisis, at least, the President and the Congress cannot be adversaries; they must be allies who, together, must delineate the path to guide the nation's massive machinery of government in a fashion which serves the interests of the people and is acceptable to the people." That is the Washington we need right now and can't seem to get.

Advise and Consent

Senate Rule 38: ...the final question on every nomination shall be, "Will the Senate advise and consent to this nomination?..." In Otto Preminger's 1962 film of Allen Drury's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Advise and Consent, Walter Pidgeon - playing the Senate Majority Leader - tells the fictional president: "that's a hell of an appointment." That must be every majority leader's lament to every president: "you gave me this nomination to get through the Senate?" I got to thinking, in light of Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court and the nasty, Internet-driven campaign to raise questions about her sexual orientation - if the old Drury novel, with the same subplot, holds up all these years later. Simple answer: absolutely. The dust jacket of Advise and Consent - it was published in 1959 - talks about "driving ambition" and "ugly personal jealousies" and the always popular "vicious demagogues." Sounds like this morning's headlines. The Senate historian has a wonderful piece on the book that provides some guesses as to who Drury based his characters on and notes that the novel launched his fiction writing career. How good was the book? Drury's major competition for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1960 was Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King and, this is saying something, the inside account of a Washington, D.C. Senate confirmation fight won out. In literary competitions, as in politics, you are often defined by who you beat. Writing in Policy Review Roger Kaplan said Advise and Consent is the only book of its genre - the political thriller - worthy of literary acclaim. And NPR's Scott Simon noted on the 50th anniversary of the novel that he has read and re-read the book since first discovering it when he was 12 years old. Thomas Mallon's 50-year look back at the book in the New York Times noted that Drury's senators in the late 1950's were dealing with issues of pre-empetive war, the consequences of lying under oath and the notion that the cover up is always worse than the crime. Add the sexual orientation subplot now rearing its ugly head in the Kagan nomination and it is easy to conclude that not much changes in American politics. I also agree with Peter Bogdanovich that Preminger's movie, based on the book, just might be the best American political movie ever. It has a great cast, in addition to Pidgeon, that includes Henry Fonda, Don Murray, Peter Lawford, the great Charles Laughton and, brace yourself, Betty White. It is a great film. Drury's story, of course, involves a decades-old allegation about sexual orientation. Eventually all the principle characters know what's going on, as do newspaper reporters, and in 1959 - at least in Advise and Consent - the mere hint of being outted as a homosexual was enough to prompt a suicide of a prominent senator. The whispering about Kagan has already moved to the mainstream with the Associated Press asking if her orientation is anyone's business. Ultimately that question, and any other you can think of, is for the Senate to determine as part of its Constitutional duty to advise and consent. How the question is handled will say as much about the Senate as it will about the nominee. Years after his celebrated book was published and after Drury, a Times reporter, had written several other not-so-well received books, he was asked what he made of the Senate that he had long covered and wrote about in fiction and non-fiction books. Drury said: "There's nothing like it on God's green earth." That's for sure. Read the book and rent the movie. Think of it as research for the Kagan hearings.

A Really Bad Idea

Tea Partiers Want to Do Away With Direct Election of Senators? Come on... The fellow to the left should be the poster boy for why repealing the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a really, really nutty idea. William Andrews Clark was one of the original robber barons of the American West, a Montana Copper King, a genuine scoundrel and a United States Senator thanks to the money he spent buying a few state legislators and his ticket into the world's greatest deliberative body. Now - brace yourselves - the Tea Party movement is advocating, you can't make this stuff up, doing away with direct election of U.S. Senators. Even more off the wall, the two top candidates for the GOP nomination for Congress in Idaho's First Congressional district have endorsed the idea as has Idaho's governor. These folks must be drinking something stronger than tea. William Edgar Borah, one of the greatest United States Senators, lead the charge in the early 1900's to amend the Constitution to take away from state legislators the power to elect United States Senators. Borah was a progressive - that would be a dirty word for many Tea Partiers - who believed that the power to make Senators ought to reside with the people, not a tiny group of elected officials (legislators) subject to the influence and money of special interests, raw politics, deal making and close door decision making. He fought for the amendment for years before it was finally passed. Now, apparently harboring the misguided notion that letting legislators elect U.S. Senators would somehow strengthen states rights, the Tea Party movement is all over repealing Borah's historic handiwork. Borah's biographer Marian McKenna writes this about the Idahoan's effort to put the American people in charge of deciding who serves in the U.S. Senate. "The feeble and corrupt, he wrote,will always be found in personal government, but in a true democracy neither incompetence nor dishonesty will long remain unexposed. 'What judgment is so swift, so sure and so remorseless as the judgment of the American people?'" Indeed. The founders wrote the state legislature election process into the Constitution because they wanted to ensure one house of the national legislature would be dominated by an elite. The House of Representatives would be for the common people, the Senate for the new American nobility. The provision stayed in the Constitution for so long, in part, because southerners worried that African-Americans would influence the popular vote for members of the Senate. Borah disliked the lack of direct election for the same reason William Andrews Clark loved the idea. Borah knew he could stand a chance getting elected if the people were passing judgment, if a bunch of small-time pols in the legislature did the selecting they would often be subject to deals, pressure and money. Clark used all three to seal - or steal - his election in Montana at the turn of the 20th Century. Do candidates like those in Idaho who have endorsed this idea really think we ought to disenfranchise the people and let a simple majority of the 105 members of the Idaho Legislature elect our U.S. Senators? If they do, they haven't read any history. They need to. Can you imagine the wheeling and dealing in the state legislature around a U.S. Senate seat? I'll vote for your guy if you support the appropriation for my community college? You want your bill to see the light of day, better support my guy for the Senate? The state legislature - any state legislature - is capable of more than enough mischief, thank you, without trusting them to elect our U.S. Senators. I really hope the otherwise serious people who are supporting this idea are merely guilty of pandering to the movement of the moment. If they are serious, the tea they're drinking has fermented.

What is it about Montana

Giants in the Senate Fewer than a million souls live in Montana, the state that sprawls out under the Big Sky. Yet, during the 20th Century, Montana produced well more than its share of powerful, influential United States Senators. The handsome and very liberal Jim Murray, a wealthy son of Butte, Montana, is one of a group of Democratic senators who wielded real power and have had lasting influence, while representing geographically massive, but population small Montana. Murray's pioneering role in pushing for universal health care coverage was recalled recently in a fine piece by Montana journalist Charles Johnson. Johnson notes that Murray occupied, from 1934 to 1961, the seat now held by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a champion of the health care legislation recently passed. "Jim Murray was a trailblazer as part of a trio of lawmakers who worked hard but ultimately failed to pass national health insurance bills under Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman," Johnson wrote. As proof that little really ever changes in American politics, Murray's work more than 50 years ago with Sen. Robert Wagner of New York and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the father of the current Dingell in the House, was attacked as "socialized medicine" that was certain to usher in the ruination the country. Johnson recalls that Sen. Robert Taft, the Ohio Republican now regarded as one of the all-time giants of the Senate, once interrupted Murray at a hearing to denounce the health legislation as “the most socialist measure that this Congress has ever had before it.” Murray, never a great orator, shouted back at Taft: “You have so much gall and so much nerve. … If you don’t shut up, I’ll have … you thrown out.” The charge of aiding and abetting socialism was perhaps an even more powerful accusation in the 1950's than it is when hurled at President Obama today. Murray's brand of progressive liberalism always brought with it a charge that he was a dangerous lefty. In his long Senate career he never had an easy election. Charles Johnson notes the irony in the fact that while Murray's most passionate opponents in the 1940's and 1950's came from the ranks of the American Medical Association, the AMA's current president endorsed the recent legislation, noting that it "represents an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of tens of millions of Americans." Now, it is Baucus' turn to have his role in the passage of the health care legislation fiercely debated in Montana. Perhaps as as indication of the intensity of the furor, Baucus, who was re-elected just last year, has gone up on television in Montana today seeking to explain why the legislation that he had a major hand in creating and, that dates back to his Senate predecessor, is good for Montana. Each of Montana's most influential U.S. Senators were controversial in their day. In my read of the state political history, Murray and Baucus properly join Sen. Tom Walsh, the investigator of the Teapot Dome scandal; Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, the man who lead the fight to turn back Franklin Roosevelt's assault on the Supreme Court in 1937, and Sen. Mike Mansfield, the longest serving majority leader in Senate history, as Montanans who have made a lasting mark on the Senate and on the nation's business. Few states can claim a larger collection of truly influential - or controversial - U.S. Senators. Big names, indeed, from the Big Sky State.

Heck Of A Job Brownie

Has There Ever Been A Bigger Upset?

It is hard to find in the recent history of the U.S. Senate a bigger upset than the game changer in Massachusetts yesterday. Republican Scott Brown came from behind to thump Democrat Martha Coakley and give the Bay State a GOP Senator for the first time since 1972. We'll be sorting out the long-term implications, I suspect, for a long, long time.

I can think of only one race - a 1952 contest in Arizona - that might rival Brown's victory in terms of an historic upset that carried broad national implications.

Democratic Senator Ernest McFarland (that's him on the left above) was the Senate Majority Leader in 1952 and seeking a third term. Arizona in those days was a dependable Democratic state and McFarland, a popular figure with a record of accomplishment, including creating the G.I. Bill of Rights, should have won in a walk. He didn't.

The national economy was soft, U.S. troops were bogged down in a stalemate in Korea, Joe McCarthy was hunting Communists and President Harry Truman's approval ratings were in the ditch. Arizona Republicans seized the moment and put forth a handsome, articulate, well heeled haberdasher by the name of Barry Goldwater.

"I had no business beating Ernest McFarland, and I knew that from the day I started," Goldwater said years later, "but old Mac just thought he had it in the bag and just didn't come home [enough]. I could never have been elected if it hadn't been for Democrats...I'd still be selling pants."

Goldwater's defeat of the sitting Senate Majority Leader was, in the view of McFarland's biographer, "a harbinger of a new conservative and urban Republican agenda in the politically changing West." But there was even more to the upset, including the fact that Arizona shed the one-party label.

McFarland's loss also contributed to Republicans capturing the Senate majority in 1952. The great Robert Taft became Majority Leader and a still young first-termer from Texas by the name of Lyndon Johnson got his chance to lead Senate Democrats. Goldwater, of course, went on to a long Senate career and his own presidential run in 1964.

McFarland took the loss hard, but recovered to have his own second and third acts in Arizona political life. After losing the Senate seat, McFarland won the governorship twice, lost a Senate rematch with Goldwater, then served as Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court.

Barry Goldwater's win in 1952, like Scott Brown's in 2010, sent huge ripples through American politics, ripples that can still be felt.

Now, the political speculation will focus on other shoes falling. I'm guessing Harry Reid, the current and beleaguered Senate Majority Leader, fighting for his own political survival in Nevada, knows all about Ernest McFarland and a remarkable political upset back in 1952.