The Running of the Bulls: Is Harry Reid the Next Scott Lucas?
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Senator George Norris was stunned.
“Why should people be so mad at me?” he wondered in
amazement to a reporter for the New York Times.
It was November, 1942. And Senator Norris, one of the most
famous and powerful American progressives in the land, one of the
Senate’s “Old Bulls” (he was, among other things, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee and the “father” of the Tennessee
Valley Authority ), had just lost his longtime
Nebraska Senate seat in a landslide. Said the angry and
depressed Senator, tears filling his eyes: “The more I think of
it, the more I get bewildered. I can’t understand it. I simply
can’t understand it.”
And then it surfaced.
The Old Bull viewed himself as a righteous man. And without
a trace of irony, even the smallest sense of recognition that his
ego had perhaps gotten a wee bit out of control, he insisted that
“in my view, righteousness has been crucified.” Crucified. Just
like, well, Christ.
Yes, he acknowledged reluctantly, every Nebraska voter had
a right to vote “as he saw fit.” But? “But I think sometimes in a
democracy, in the excitement and on the spur of the moment, that
it [rewarding the faithful servant like George Norris] is not
observed.”
Which is to say, George Norris, then 81 years old, who had
begun serving in Congress with his election to the House in 1902,
followed by his first election to the Senate in 1913 — making
his time in Washington a very ripe 40 years even — just felt
those poor Nebraskans weren’t smart enough to appreciate him.
Elected first as a Republican, he had become so disenchanted with
Republicans and enamored of the Progressive movement he had long
since been calling himself an Independent. This was, the Old Bull
intimated, his Senate seat. Nebraskans had no idea what fools
they were in voting for someone else (Nebraska Republican
Congressman Kenneth Wherry). Didn’t they know George Norris was
the father of the Tennessee Valley Authority? The man who
successfully sponsored a constitutional amendment to, good
government style, change the date of presidential inaugurations
from March 4 to January 20? That he was the powerful chairman of
the Senate Judiciary Committee? There wasn’t a progressive cause
out there with which Norris was not associated. Everybody who was
anybody in Washington and the media of the day knew George Norris
was as much a part of the town’s landscape as the Washington
Monument.
And yet — in one night, George Norris’s political career
was over. The Old Bull had been run to political ground, just as
the bulls of Pamplona are run into the bullring to be killed at
the hands of the matador. Except in this case, the matador was
the Nebraska voter.
So. What do we have here? We have Mr. Man of the People
spends decades in Washington, morphs into an Old Bull, and is
absolutely clueless — stunned, infuriated, bitter — that in
fact the voters of his state had just waved the red cape of an
election in his face. Charging the red cape as he has for years,
to his shock he found himself suddenly staring at a gleaming
political espada, a political version of the Spanish
killing sword used to end the life of the real bulls after the
real running of the bulls. In this case, the
Nebraska political sword had cut Old Bull George Norris#039;s
political life dead.
Sound familiar?
Of course it does.
So does the reaction to Norris’s defeat sound familiar.
President Roosevelt was so upset he invited Norris to the White
House for a private lunch. Progressive champion Vice President
Henry Wallace, shocked at his friend’s defeat, was the main
speaker at a hastily organized testimonial dinner for Norris,
saying of Norris that he was “one of the far-visioned social
planners of his time.” Unintentionally revealing of the
progressive mindset (not to mention the incumbent mindset),
Wallace lauded Norris the Old Bull as one who belonged to “that
small group of wise public men who clearly see the future and are
willing to do something about it.”
As poll after poll in 2010 signals Big Trouble for today’s
Old Bull Senate Democrats, from Harry Reid in Nevada to Arlen
Specter in Pennsylvania to Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas to Barbara
Boxer in California (to name but a few — and we’ll stick with
the Old Bull definition for women senators out of a spirit of
equality if not decorum… Old Cows would somehow seem a tad
ungentlemanly) nothing is clearer in the wake of the Scott Brown
victory than the historical fact that America has been in
this political bullring before. Many
times.
This particular political
bullring proving time after time after time that Washington
fills up with all manner of men and women in the United States
Senate (and the House and, yes, the White House) who come to view
the seat they occupy at the governing table as theirs. Not their
state’s or district’s. Not the nation’s. Theirs. Even more
telling is the acquiescent view of the mainstream media, agreeing
as a routine matter of political fact that such political pillars
are somehow immune to defeat because they are, as Wallace said of
Norris, part of “that small group of wise public men.” The now
immortalized question during the Brown-Coakley
Massachusetts Senate debate from Washington
insider David Gergen asking Brown whether he was really serious
in opposing health care if he sat in “Teddy Kennedy’s seat”
captures the Save-the-Old Bulls
mind-set precisely.
The hard political and historical fact is that famous and
powerful Old Bull United States Senators aplenty have quite
frequently found themselves, as did George Norris, shockingly put
to the sword in the political bullring. The list includes both
Senate Majority Leaders (three of those) and powerful committee
chairs (lots of those.) It politically spears Senators formally
in line for succession to the presidency along with those
mentioned as potential presidential candidates. Their defeats,
with the predictability of the sun rising in the East, always
sends shockwaves of political panic through an absolutely agog
press corps (or “press corpse” as President Obama might say), a
press corps that had convinced itself (if not their fellow
Americans) that the Old Bull of the moment was invulnerable in
the bullring. After all, “everybody in Washington” knew this Old
Bull was the indispensable genius, right? “Everybody in
Washington” also knew the Old Bull’s home state political base
was as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. Only to find the reality
of the political bullring in state X,Y or Z was something
different — quite different entirely.
Here’s but a small list of famous and powerful Old Bull
United States Senators who suddenly realized that the political
sword had just extinguished their senatorial careers.
• Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas in 1950 — An Illinois
Democrat, a potential presidential candidate if President Harry
Truman declined a third term in 1952, as 1950 dawned Lucas was
presumed unbeatable. His opponent: a little-known Republican
Congressman from downstate Pekin named Everett Dirksen. But
something began going wrong for this Old Bull. By May, Lucas was
struggling. The Truman White House was so alarmed they set up a
three-day rally for national Democrats in Chicago, calling it the
“National Democratic Conference and Jefferson Jubilee.” The
objective: to tout the Truman “Fair Deal” program and map out a
strategy for Democrats in Congress. President Truman himself
would attend to make his case — and not so coincidentally, help
focus the presidential spotlight on Illinois Senator Lucas, the
Senate Majority Leader. The Old Bull
was invited to a much-ballyhooed lunch in Truman’s hotel suite.
He was on the podium to speak. When Truman took the podium, the
President – a former Senate Old Bull himself
– went out of his way to spend time in his speech
praising the “fine work” of Lucas as a great Senate leader who
was “responsible for guiding our program through the Senate.” A
few days later, Lucas took to national radio to scorch Truman’s
critics as a thank-you to the President. By October, Lucas was
changing his tune, defecting from Truman’s call for — wait for
it — national health insurance. It was too little, too late.
Dirksen pulled an upset — and the once invincible Scott Lucas
was out for good, the political sword swiftly ending his Senate
career and onetime presidential hopes.
• Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland in 1952 –
Senator McFarland of Arizona replaced Scott Lucas as the
Democrats’ Senate Majority Leader in a classic case of the new
Old Bull is the same as the last Old Bull. He was popular in
Arizona for using his considerable Old Bull power to get a $700
million Central Arizona Irrigation and Power Project through the
Senate (if not the House). Like his predecessor, as the Senate
leader he too was thought of as an invincible powerhouse,
an Old Bull with lots of clout.
McFarland’s opponent was an unknown Phoenix city councilman
dismissed in a sentence by the New York Times as “Barry
Goldwater, a wealthy Phoenix department store owner and civic
leader.” The press assumed McFarland a winner. Why
not? Forgetting Lucas’s fate, they believed Old Bulls who are
also Senate Majority Leader can’t lose. They were
wrong, making the Arizonan the second Senate Majority Leader in
two years (Harry Reid, take note) to lose his re-election
bid.
• Senate President Pro Tem Kenneth McKellar in 1952 — A
Tennessee Democrat first elected to the House in 1910, followed
by election to his first Senate term in 1916, McKellar was by
1952 the ultimate Washington Old Bull. Not only was he a
fixture on the political landscape,
as Senate President Pro Tem he
was officially third in line for
the White House after the vice
president and Speaker of the House. Yet his challenger in a
Democratic primary (in 1952, there was no effective statewide GOP
in Tennessee) persisted. In a huge upset the challenger won. His
name: Congressman Albert Gore — father of today’s Al
Gore.
• Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee J.
William Fulbright in 1974 — Fulbright, a 30-year Arkansas Senate
veteran in 1974 (who had as an intern a young Bill Clinton), was
internationally famous as the folksy yet caustic Old Bull critic
of first Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policy.
A signer with other Old Bulls of the so-called “Southern
Manifesto” that sought to preserve segregation, a former
president of the University of Arkansas and a Congressman,
Fulbright (and wife Betty) epitomized the Old Bull Senator as
liberal institution. Seeing an opening no one else saw, Governor
Dale Bumpers, in office barely four years and a little-known
lawyer until his surprise defeat of ex-Governor
Orval Faubus in 1970, stunned liberals
by challenging Fulbright — and beating him in a primary.
Fulbright and his supporters both in Arkansas and Washington, not
to mention the media, never saw it coming, with Fulbright
confessing election night that he was “shocked.”
The list of Senate Old Bulls speared unexpectedly goes
on…and on. Florida Democrat Senator Claude Pepper of Florida,
famous as a champion of Social Security and ally of FDR,
the “Red Pepper” as his enemies nicknamed him, was
upended in a 1950 primary by George Smathers, who won the
seat. (Truman, who couldn’t stand Pepper, inserted himself on
this one and successfully backed Smathers. Pepper lived to fight
again, returning in the 1960s as a Congressman and becoming –
yes — an Old Bull of the House.) Then there was Senate Labor
Committee Chairman Elbert Thomas of Utah, a Democrat Old Bull who
lost his seat to Republican Wallace Bennett, father of today’s
Senator Robert Bennett, in a 1950 upset that stunned both Thomas
and his Old Bull allies in Washington — organized labor.
Perhaps the most famous upset of 1952 was of a Republican
Old Bull, the still youthful Henry Cabot Lodge. Like his famous
namesake Old Bull grandfather who had similarly served as Senator
from Massachusetts and defeated Woodrow Wilson’s League of
Nations, the younger Lodge was a considerable Senate powerhouse.
A prime mover in the drive to nominate and elect Dwight
Eisenhower over fellow GOP Old Bull Senator Robert Taft, Lodge
was blindsided by a young Democrat who was the grandson of
the elder Lodge’s defeated
1916 opponent. The congressman grandson of
Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald came from nowhere to
put the sword to Lodge’s Senate career, introducing John F.
Kennedy to the U.S. Senate — in the seat now held by Scott
Brown.
The relevance of this? History is always relevant. And in
this case, it teaches that there is no one out there in the
United States Senate who is “unbeatable.” In fact, Old Bulls –
the Senate powerhouses thought to be
politically invulnerable in their home state political bullrings
— are all too frequently the most vulnerable of all. In 1980 one
longtime Senate Old Bull after another fell by the wayside in the
Reagan landslide. Washington pillars Birch Bayh of Indiana gave
way to challenger Dan Quayle, Idaho’s Frank Church (chairman of
the Foreign Relations Committee) was upset by young GOP
Congressman Steve Symms, Georgia’s real Old Bull Herman Talmadge
lost to an unknown Mack Mattingly. Liberal icon and 1972
presidential nominee Senator George McGovern was upset by
Congressman Jim Abdnor. Washington State’s Warren Magnuson, the
powerful Old Bull chairman of the Senate Appropriations
Committee, went under in an upset by state attorney general Slade
Gorton.
In one election year after another, whether its 1942 or
1950 or 1952 or 1966, Old Bulls kept getting the sword. In 1966
the legendary liberal Paul Douglas of Illinois was upset by a
young Republican Charles Percy…who was in turn upset by underdog
Democrat Congressman Paul Simon 18 years later in 1984 while –
yes — serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee (J. William Fulbright’s and Frank Church’s old job).
Pick an election year — almost any election year — whether 1980
or the year Democrats seem to be fixated on — 1994 — and it
will be seen that upsets of Senate Old Bulls are as regular as
stampedes in Pamplona.
In 2010, the polls are already telegraphing this old story
afresh.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Scott Lucas and
Ernest McFarland (and yet another defeated Democratic Senate
Majority Leader, South Dakotan Tom Daschle) of 2010, is trailing
all of his prospective GOP opponents in Nevada. Just as Lucas
tried to recover by frantically pushing the Truman agenda, so too
is Reid out front for President Obama. While Lucas backed off his
support of Truman’s health care reform at the end of his campaign
— too little too late — Harry Reid seems determined to cling to
ObamaCare even as the Nevada political sword glistens in the
hands of opponents.
So too out there this year are the Old Bulls of today, the
Norrises, McKellars, Fulbrights, Lodges, Douglases and Magnusons,
in 2010 bearing names like Specter, Boxer, Lincoln, and Patty
Murray. And yes — the name of New York’s Chuck
Schumer.
The latest Franklin and Marshall poll
in Pennsylvania has Specter trailing Republican Pat Toomey (the
man South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham once assured Fox viewers was
a loser) by 14 points. Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln is
trailing GOP Congressman John Boozman by 23 points. In
California, Barbara Boxer is unexpectedly losing ground to Carly
Fiorina, holding a statistically insignificant lead of a mere
three points (46%-43%) according to the latest California
Rasmussen
poll, while slipping against the two other potential GOP
contenders as well. In Washington State, a new poll has longtime
Democratic incumbent Patty Murray trailing
GOPer Dino Rossi 45% -43%. In tantalizing news to
New York Republicans, Old Bull Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer
finds himself
slipping in the polls as he enters the New York
bullring.
And so on.
Can powerful Senate Old Bulls like Harry Reid be beaten? A
Specter, a Boxer, even a Schumer? Yes. House Old Bulls too. Can
enough Democrats fall by the wayside to turn the Senate over to
the GOP? Yes. In fact, what seems to be happening to the Old
Bulls of 2010 happens all the time.
It’s something that Old Bull Harry Reid may be pondering
the next time he walks through the Capitol Hill landmark named
for Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas’s unknown but ultimately
successful 1950 opponent.
That would be the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
