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

13. No Vestal Virgin in the Whorehouse

13 NO VESTAL VIRGIN IN THE WHOREHOUSE if the preceding chapter implies that i was a vestal virgin dragged unwillingly into a cathouse of whores trying to seduce Congress, I have misrepresented myself. My blooding in that arena had come in the 1959 nationwide steel strike, the concurring battle in Congress over the LandrumGriffin bill, and earlier legislative efforts to curb the dumping of foreign steel at below-production costs. In my mind, the difference was that working for working people did not constitute lobbying, as it was perceived in the special-interest sense. Lobbying to bring advantages to trade unions I saw as “doing the Lord’s work.” Literally. In January 1959, David J. McDonald, the well-coiffed president of the United Steelworkers of America, had let me know that a steel strike was coming. We were having dinner in his Carlton Hotel suite when I informed him that Jack Kennedy had asked me to be a deputy campaign manager in his coming run for the presidency. “I am going to really need you this year,” he said. “Our contracts are not up until June 30, yet the Big Steel companies already have drawn a hard line in the sand. On the work-rules issue, this union will stand together to a man for as long as it takes. This fight is going to get into Congress, which is why I need you. Do anything you want to do for Jack. I don’t care. But stick with us until it is over.” Naturally, I did. The strike began quietly in July. At strike headquarters at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, McDonald and Arthur J. Goldberg, the union’s counsel, gave me my first assignment—a proposed Senate Joint 167 Resolution calling for establishment of an impartial public fact-finding committee to investigate the conflict and make recommendations for settlement. “We can’t lose on this one,” Goldberg said. “This strike clearly has been precipitated by Big Steel in a blatant attempt to break the union. Any impartial fact-finding committee is going to have to reach this conclusion. That’s why this resolution is so important to us. All of our friends in the Senate must cosponsor it.” Jack Kennedy had agreed to be the resolution’s principal sponsor, Goldberg continued, and he handed me the statement he had written for him to use on the Senate floor. It sounded like a Wobbly pronouncement. The language was sulphurous: “Profit-crazed steel barons” were trying to “grind their steel-studded boots into the workers’ faces.” My reaction showed on my face. “I don’t know, Arthur. It isn’t exactly Kennedy’s style.” Goldberg, my genial neighbor with whom I rode downtown every morning , suddenly turned into Captain Queeg. He strode over and thrust his face into mine. “Don’t change a word, not a comma,” he barked. “If there is any attempt to change anything, I am to know immediately—regardless of the time.” I took Goldberg’s statement to Kennedy at 363 Old Senate Office Building . He read it, his brow furrowed with frowns, and asked, “Did you write this?” “No,” I said. “Goldberg did, and his pride of authorship is such that he doesn’t even want a comma changed.” Kennedy smiled wryly. “You know that it isn’t my style.” “I told him that,” I said. “But he didn’t listen. So I am just here as a messenger . He is totally meshugenah about no changes.” Kennedy called Ted Sorensen in, explained Goldberg’s intransigence, and gave him the statement. I went back to my office. A couple of hours later, Sorensen brought me his revision. As bad as Goldberg’s “cruel steel barons” prose was, Sorensen’s was worse. It was filled with enough pabulum for a mother-love resolution. Per instructions, I dictated his revision to Molly Lynch, Goldberg’s secretary, and waited for the explosion. It came almost immediately. “Hold everything,” Goldberg raged. “I’m coming on the next flight.” I don’t know what transpired between Kennedy and Goldberg, but soon I was informed that the Kennedy resolution was now the Symington resolution. The senator from Missouri had agreed to introduce it with Arthur’s statement unchanged by a comma or a curlicue. That behind us, I 168 no vestal virgin in the whorehouse settled down to loading up the resolution with co-sponsors. I went after the...