Wounded Warrior: The Rise and Fall of Michigan Governor John Swainson by Lawrence M. Glazer (review)

Book Reviews 107 Lawrence M. Glazer. Wounded Warrior: The Rise and Fall of Michigan Governor John Swainson. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010. Pp. 322. Appendices. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $39.95. It is difficult to think of a subject who lends himself more to a thoughtful, analytical biography, or a thorough analysis from a legal scholar, than does the troubled 42nd governor of Michigan, John Burley Swainson. Lawrence Glazer—formerly an assistant attorney general in Michigan, the chief legal adviser to Michigan governor James Blanchard, and a state circuit court judge—offers us his interpretation of Swainson’s life in Wounded Warrior. Unfortunately, Glazer’s analysis is decidedly uneven and the book is ultimately disappointing. After a perfunctory look at his subject’s early years, Glazer quickly takes readers to the seminal event in Swainson’s life. While he was on a reconnaissance mission on November 15, 1944, Swainson lost both of his legs below the knee, and for the rest of his life would wear a pair of artificial legs that were often painful. In an interview Swainson gave in his later years, he said that this injury drove him into politics. Interestingly enough, Glazer quotes one of Swainson’s associates, who claimed the future governor told him that he entered politics because practicing law would be too strenuous for his damaged body. Regardless of the reason, Swainson lost little time after he graduated from law school (University of North Carolina, 1951) before he entered politics. After presenting a synopsis of the rise of the postwar Democratic Party in Michigan, Glazer describes Swainson’s meteoric rise in state politics. He was elected to the state senate in 1955, lieutenant governor in 1959, and governor in 1960, becoming a bona fide national political superstar. In telling the story of Swainson’s success, Glazer introduces readers to several Michigan political leaders—Neil Staebler, G. Mennen Williams, Frank Murphy, Martha Griffiths, and many others—as well as John F. Kennedy, to whom Glazer compares the youthful (he was thirty-five when he was elected governor), philandering Swainson. Glazer also notes Kennedy’s role in Swainson’s 1960 victory. This was the end of Swainson’s rise in politics. Although Glazer strains not to make it so, it is clear from the evidence he presents that Swainson’s career—nay, his life—was in a consistent free fall from his election as governor until his death in 1994. Swainson’s two years as governor were a disaster: faced with an opposition legislature, his 108 The Michigan Historical Review entire 1961 legislative package was defeated; in 1962 he lost the governorship to Republican George Romney. Subsequently, Swainson begged Kennedy for a job in the federal government, but the wily president refused to intervene in internal Michigan politics. In 1965 Swainson was finally elected to the Third Judicial Circuit of Michigan, and in 1970 he was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, where it was expected he would quietly serve out the rest of his career. Up to this point, readers are treated to a fairly straightforward political biography, one that subordinates an understanding of the man to an understanding of his role in the politics of his time. Specifically Glazer offers only a five-page chapter on Swainson’s life prior to World War II, his wife Alice never becomes more than a footnote to the story, his womanizing is only hinted at and hardly proven, and his children do not appear until page 108. The early political story, furthermore, is unevenly told. The tale of Swainson’s rise to power— battling his handicap with courage and guile—is the best part of the book, and the account of the growth and development of the Democratic Party in Michigan adds heft and context. However, Glazer gives us virtually no information about Swainson’s experiences as a circuit court judge, and the discussion of his time on the Michigan Supreme Court is limited to a brief summary of three cases in which he participated. The second part of the book, which relates the most well-known part of Swainson’s life, is decidedly a disappointment. In a melodramatic tone—one that does...