The Wicked Wine of Democracy: A Memoir of a Political Junkie, 1948-1995

15. Mike’s “Fish Bowl”

15 MIKE’S “FISH BOWL” 194 sometime in the summer of 1962, the phone rang in my cluttered Connecticut Avenue office. My secretary was out, so I answered. “Joe, this is Darrell Jones, calling from Milwaukie, Oregon. Do you remember me?” I nudged my memory and saw a moonfaced fellow built like an NFL center . “Yes, you’re a Clackamas County commissioner, and you’re involved with the Oregon and California Land Grant Counties Association,” I said. A gurgle of appreciation. “Joe McCracken said you would remember. Yes, I am president of the association, and we have a big problem. There is a powerful congressman from Ohio who is trying to put us out of business, and we are told that he is a friend of yours.” My ears twitched. “You must mean Mike Kirwan, Darrell, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Mike prides himself on being the best friend the West ever had in Congress. I can’t believe he would do anything to jeopardize that.” Jones explained that Oregon’s maverick senator, Wayne Lyman Morse, had infuriated Kirwan by using the Senate’s arcane rules to kill the Ohioan’s pet project, a $10 million “national aquarium” on the Potomac River. By Kirwan’s standards, Morse had betrayed his support for western issues, and revenge was the only recourse. It could be exacted by slashing funding for Oregon, including funding for the Oregon & California land grant—2.5 million acres of the choicest timberlands in the nation. The small lumbermen were totally dependent on federal O&C and Forest Service timber to stay in business. Consequently, the bidding wars were mike’s “fish bowl” 195 fiercely fought, which jacked up the prices paid to the feds and to the eighteen western Oregon counties in which O&C lands were located. Fifty percent of the yearly gross receipts was paid directly to these counties, divided up according to the percentage of O&C lands within their borders. Another 25 percent of the receipts went to the intensified management of the lands, making the sale of more timber feasible. The remaining 25 percent went into the U.S. Treasury. The generous payments were occasioned because the counties had experienced years without tax revenue early in the twentieth century , when ownership of the land grant had been fought out in federal court. Congress had settled on the 50–25–25 formula in 1937. Oregon was vulnerable. In 1962, its small congressional delegation was at its weakest, with no one on the Senate and House appropriations committees for the first time in decades. Those committees funded the big developments that Oregon depended on—the huge Columbia River dams, flood control, navigation, reclamation, forest development, salmon hatcheries, coastal port improvements. Without someone on the inside to speak for Oregon ’s interests, the state was dependent on the kindness of others—like Mike Kirwan, the longtime chairman of the subcommittee that appropriated the funds for virtually all of Oregon’s federal projects. Fifty-two percent of Oregon ’s land mass was within his financial jurisdiction. How could the superbly intelligent Morse have been so stupid to incur Kirwan’s wrath over such an insignificant issue? I wasn’t going to find out from Morse. He and I hadn’t spoken since 1959 as a result of his ugly feud with Dick Neuberger. Morse had challenged me to take sides, and I refused to declare. Nasty words spewed out of him. From then on, every time he saw me with another senator, Morse later delivered a screed on my general rottenness . These philippics were played back to me, usually in bemused fashion , and I learned to ignore them—and him. As Jack Kennedy said, “Poor Wayne. How can he be so brilliant and so childishly irrational at the same time? He can’t stand it if you don’t go with him when he’s convinced that he is right. He is colorblind. Can’t see the grays.” For reasons I never fathomed, Kirwan had taken a shine to me. I guess it was because I loved to listen to his colorful and fanciful stories about his past. The House had a group of big-city Irish congressmen, whom I dubbed the “Irish Dukes”—Bill Green of Philadelphia, John Fogarty of Rhode Island, Tip O’Neill of Massachusetts, Jack Shelley of San Francisco, and a 196 mike’s “fish bowl” few others. Kirwan was primus inter pares among...