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

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In May 1950, President Truman dedicated Grand Coulee Dam in Coulee City, Washington . Tepid support for the Columbia Valley Authority (CVA) came from Mon C. Wallgren (back to camera), a former Washington State governor; Secretary of the Interior Oscar Chapman; Rep. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA); and Sen. Warren G. Magnuson (D-WA). Rep. Hugh B. Mitchell (D-WA) (right) was the only true CVAer in the crowd. The twenty-eight-year-old Miller, at the time executive secretary of the League for a CVA, is holding the sign in front. John F. Kennedy and Miller on a swing through Hawaii during the 1959 political campaign that introduced statehood. Joe Miller at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. Bobby Kennedy was cheered, but LBJ was nominated. Miller’s early career was as a journalist, and he wrote for the Portland Oregonian in the early 1950s. He is shown here with A. Robert Smith, longtime Washington correspondent for the Oregonian and other Pacific Northwest newspapers. Miller (right) is shown in the Capitol Rotunda in about 1970 with his friend U.S. Rep. Wendell Wyatt (R-OR). They often disagreed over politics; but, Miller writes, “I never had a better friend than Wendell.” Richard Lewis Neuberger (right) was one of Miller’s first political clients and became a beloved friend. He is shown here on the Alcan Highway in about 1950. Joe Miller (right), with Bob McElroy (center), staff director of the U.S. House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, and Herb Brand of the Seafarers Union. With the subsidy money that the committee authorized—based on the supposed patriotic premise that the Merchant Marine was “America’s Fourth Line of Defense”—maritime labor (and management) entertained lavishly and contributed generously to any politician who would support the subsidies. Herblock, the Washington Post cartoonist, portrayed the maritime unions as pirates raiding the good ship U.S.S. Congress. Erna Miller and Scoop Jackson attended a Norwegian-American Society dinner honoring the new Chief Justice, their fellow Norwegian Earl Warren. According to Miller, Scoop hated to date women taller than he was, but he made an exception in Erna’s case. Miller spent a good deal of time at Democratic fund-raisers such as this one in Washington , D.C., 1970. He poses here with (from left) Jesse M. Calhoon, a maritime union president; Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-ME); Rep. Charles Diggs (D-MI), chair of the Democratic Black Caucus; and Jane Muskie. At the time Ed Muskie was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to take on President Richard M. Nixon. In 1977, Vice President Fritz Mondale asked Miller’s help in getting his college-age son a summer job as a sailor. He got the job and did well. Miller did the same for a number of scions of senators and congressmen. Miller kicked up his heels with an Ohio congressman to the music of trumpeter and U.S. Rep. Bob Leggett (D-CA), a member of the Congressional High Notes. Leggett lost his seat, Miller reports, when he dared Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, to print the story of how he was keeping a mistress at a suburban Virginia lake across from hearth and wife. “You don’t have the guts to print it,” he said. Bradlee did—eight columns on the Sunday front page—and Leggett was gone. Joe and Erna Miller are shown here on one of their frequent trips to New York City. Erna was the longtime personal secretary to Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, her hometown neighbor in Everett, Washington. George McGovern (left) and Joe Miller posed for this photo after having a few drinks at their friend Gaylord Nelson’s home. Joe and Erna Miller married in 1963 and lived a few blocks from Capitol Hill. Miller (left) hiking on Maryland’s Eastern Shore with Jesse Calhoon, president of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association. Joe Miller (right) with Thomas E. “Doc” Morgan (D-PA), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Throughout a forty-year career in Congress , Morgan maintained a full-time general practice in his hometown in Washington , Pennsylvania. ...