The Heroic and the Notorious: U.S. Senators from Illinois

14. A Professor in Politics

140 ★ A PROFESSOR IN POLITICS 14 ★A Professor in Politics When Paul Douglas took his seat in the Senate in 1949, he joined fellow Democrat Scott Lucas to make up a team of two from Illinois . Lucas was majority leader in the Senate, and the newly inaugurated president was one-time Senator Harry S Truman, who now had a term of his own in the nation’s highest office. As vice president , he had succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. It must have seemed to Douglas to be quite a good time to begin Senate service, yet his naturally suspicious nature made him see conspiracies against himself on all sides. The good times were not to last, perhaps to confirm his fears, as Lucas fell before Everett Dirksen in 1950 and the war in Korea brought increasing unpopularity to President Truman. Paul Howard Douglas (1949–67) Paul H. Douglas, scholar and wounded war hero, entered the U.S. Senate from Illinois in the company of men destined to become national political stars. The class of 1948 (senators newly elected in that year) included Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Russell Long of Louisiana, and Robert Kerr of Oklahoma. Johnson brought a new force to the Senate, and before his first sixyear term ended, he had become the minority party leader. 141 PAUL HOWARD DOUGLAS ★ Following Johnson’s landslide reelection in 1954 (in contrast to his first hair-breadth win six years earlier, which had earned him the name “Landslide Lyndon”), and his party coming to majority status in 1955, he became majority leader, the youngest in the history of the Senate, as he had been the youngest minority leader. Each of these newcomers, in his own way, became a pillar of the Senate, judged at the end of his senatorial career as a mover and shaker of the institution and a major influence on public policy. Douglas chose a different path from the beginning of his three full terms. He spoke loud and often but did not carry a big stick when it came to determining the outcome of legislation. As a result, Douglas has been placed by historians in the category of long on principle, short on votes. Edward L. Schapsmeier evaluated Douglas’s work in the Senate in this way: “Douglas . . . was more prone to view rigid consistency of principle, even in defeat, as more important than flexibility. Therefore, he was less effective as a legislative leader and more often found himself standing alone” (83). From his earliest days in the Senate, Douglas was defiant toward authority. He wrote in his memoir, titled In the Fullness of Time: I began my senatorial career by becoming involved in no fewer than five struggles. . . . This did not make me popular with the elders of the Senate, who demanded decorous silence from newcomers during first year of service and allowed only muted murmurs during the second . But these struggles, largely forced on me, helped to set the pattern for my later activities in the Senate. (269) The five issues that Douglas became embroiled in combat over were civil rights, equal housing opportunities, repeal or modification of the Taft-Hartley Act, preservation of legitimate economic competition , and pork barrel legislation. Douglas was relentless in his lack of respect for colleagues with whom he disagreed. In a speech early in his Senate career, he denounced southern Democrats for their racist approach to civil rights legislation. He never let up in his criticism of fellow party members who did not share his view of the need for equal rights, and it cost him dearly. The southern senators, many of whom held leadership positions coming to them through the working of seniority, never allowed Douglas a place of honor or strength. In this characteristic of differing sharply with others on matters of principle, Douglas was very 142 ★ A PROFESSOR IN POLITICS different from Everett Dirksen, who served during nearly the same period of time as Douglas. (Their differences are discussed in the next chapter.) Even though Douglas in 1955 was eminently qualified for a seat on the Finance Committee, the Senate’s principal arm for writing tax legislation, Majority Leader Johnson did not place him there. The committee had to do with the oil-depletion allowance against the income tax, and it was stacked with senators favorable to the oil and gas industry. Douglas might have been a thorn in...