Spearless Leader of the Senate
DOUGLAS, PAUL H.
Spearless leader of the Senate BORAH By Marian C. McKenna Michigan. 450 pp. $7.50. Reviewed by PAUL H. DOUGLAS U.S. Senator from Illinois This is a competent biography of a somewhat faded...
...Like William Jennings Bryan, Borah was a rebel who thought of himself as a reformer...
...He remained aloof from the La Follette campaign of 1924 and, unlike Norris, never supported Franklin Roosevelt...
...Like Bryan, too, he found Southern Illinois in the 1880s too tame and moved westward, settling in Idaho in 1890...
...In the Senate he is traditionally known as one who would never help colleagues pass progressive legislation and would never take any real part in the conferences of the insurgents...
...Borah had to be at the center of the stage, playing the part of lone wolf, with the spotlight full upon him...
...When Borah came to the Senate in 1907 it was still a millionaires' club dominated by stand-pat Republicans under the leadership of Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island...
...He initiated little or no legislation, and since he was unwilling to help others they gave little support to his proposals...
...His support of Bryan in 1896 as a Silver Republican had taught him a lesson...
...Coming to the Senate almost immediately thereafter, Borah, together with La Follette and the Democrats, was instrumental in getting the Constitutional amendments through Congress which legitimatized the direct election of Senators and a Federal income tax...
...Let justice make us friends...
...There, he speedily rose to prominence as an able lawyer, married into one of the leading families and became a leader of the insurgents within the Republican party...
...I well remember a summer I spent in the Rockies during which the troubles of Europe seemed so far away and all about me appeared safe and secure...
...Borah was a man of contradictions in his domestic programs as well...
...Finally, while a sincere opponent of the industrial monopolists of the east, Borah was very helpful to the powerful economic interests of Idaho...
...Senator from Illinois This is a competent biography of a somewhat faded political figure...
...He lacked the moral nobility and dogged constructiveness of George Norris, and the fighting bravery of Bob La Follette...
...Students of American politics often wonder how it was that Borah, who was constantly at war with nearly everyone and seldom went back to become reacquainted with his constituents, managed to win no less than six elections to the Senate and survive many political upheavals...
...This feeling was particularly strong...
...In 1906, he was the special prosecutor in the celebrated trial of Bill Haywood for the murder of ex-governor Frank Steunenberg...
...In alliance with the Wilsonian liberals of the Democratic party, they helped to pass the great mass of progressive legislation during the years 1913-15...
...While he fought a sincere battle against the industrial trusts and extoled competition, he believed in the protective tariff on articles produced in Idaho...
...George Norris was elected to the Senate in 1912...
...Miss McKenna's fine biography helps to delineate—but only in part to explain —the apparent contradictions in his nature and record...
...In the early summer of 1939 he made his celebrated assertion that, contrary to the warnings of FDR, he knew there would be no war that year because his sources of information were "better" than those of the President...
...On the whole, Borah must be regarded as a brilliant and moving orator and an independent but essentially negative thinker...
...Insular in viewpoint, he refused to travel abroad and he could not understand that even in the high Rockies there were no islands of safety any more...
...Although nominally a Republican, he never followed the party line but crusaded for the direct election of Senators and a progressive income tax, as well as against the League of Nations and all foreign "entanglements...
...The conservative regulars were always fearful that Borah would bolt, but he never did so—which was his way of forcing the regulars to accept him as a necessary evil...
...Unlike La Follette and Norris, however, he did not oppose our entry into World War I, but after it ended he and Hiram Johnson waged a bitter and successful struggle against our entrance into the League of Nations, and Borah remained an implacable foe of that organization...
...It was during this struggle that Borah rose to his greatest heights...
...The reasons, I think, are very simple: First, the people of the small state of Idaho were proud of his national and international prominence and did not want to lose the fame which came to them through him...
...Although he was an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt and his strong backer in the 1812 Republican convention, Borah would not join with TR to help form the Progressive party...
...Surveying his long career, the overall feeling is one of disappointment at a waste of great powers...
...La Follette entered at about the same time and, in 1910, Albert Cummins and Jonathan Dolliver of Iowa swung over to join them...
...For a full quarter of a century these and other Western and Midwestern Republicans kept the fires of domestic liberalism burning...
...In a sense, Borah, along with Burton K. Wheeler, Robert La Follette and, in our day, Bill Langer of North Dakota, embodied the strengths and weaknesses of the Populist movement...
...thereafter he was always a "regular" when the chips were down...
...In attacking our Mexican policy in the days of Calvin Coolidge, he coined the memorable phrase "God has made us neighbors...
...Fourth, despite Borah's attacks between election years against the conservative leaders of the Republican party, he never bolted the party at election time once he had become prominent...
...In the 1920s, they were a healthy source of dissenting but constructive criticism...
...He died early in 1940 and hence was spared the trials to which the next two years would have subjected him...
...Third, Borah's isolationism fitted the mood of those who dwelt among inaccessible and high mountains...
...Moreover, the general anti-imperialism of this group helped to save us from permanent involvement in the Mexican and Nicaraguan imbroglios and eventually to terminate our long-continuing occupation of Haiti and San Domingo...
...He was an active member of the silver bloc, a promoter of big reclamation projects and a successful worker for the tariff on wool...
...40 years ago in the far West, made up as it was of men and women who had not hesitated to null up stakes and venture their fortunes in a new region...
...Like most Senators from beyond the Mississippi, Borah was a confirmed and convinced isolationist...
...Second, many voters have a healthy liking for the political non-conformist and maverick...
...Despite his third of a century of service, Borah left nothing behind...
...For all his independence, therefore, Borah was a shrewd politician who knew well the moving forces in his own state...
...They helped to expose Teapot Dome and aided in driving Harry Dougherty, Albert Fall and Edwin Denby from the Cabinet...
...As I noted, his relationship with the timber owners was very close...
...His role in history will thus be distinctly minor compared to theirs...
...For over 30 years William E. Borah of Idaho was the most impressive orator in the Senate...
...As an attorney, Borah represented lumber interests mixed up in timber steals...
...Here he was pitted against and worsted by Clarence Darrow, who was then at the height of his great powers and whose closing address to the jury is one of the masterpieces of American courtroom forensics...
...After Hitler came to power and began his conquests, Borah was very insistent that we should take no step to deter him which might possibly involve us in war...
...His fellow insurgent, Hiram Johnson, once unkindly but not inaccurately characterized him as the "spearless leader...
...Similarly, he successfully fought our joining the World Court, although at the same time he was a sponsor of the movement to outlaw war juridically and helped to stimulate the 1928 Pact of Paris...
...Speedily ratified by the necessary three-quarters of the states, these two great steps in the democratization of American political life went into effect in 1913...
Vol. 44 • October 1961 • No. 34
