Memoirs of an Original

...Douglas' view of the workings of the upper house will prove fascinating to students of the legislative process In a curious sense, he was in the Senate but not of it, and what emerges from his memoir is essentially the viewpoint of a loner, of what the British call an "unclubbable" person But unlike John Kennedy, who had much the same status, Douglas did not see the Senate as a launching pad for his career Perhaps because of his professorial bent, he wanted to use it as a forum for popular education Naturally enough, this brought him into a head-on collision with Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B Johnson, who once observed that "Paul would rather make a speech than win a vote " By nature they were on different wavelengths John-son maneuvering in the back rooms to achieve halt a loat, to slip one by the conservative barons whom he knew had the votes to win it they were alerted, Douglas on the floor or out in the country, sounding the trumpet-often in such vigorous fashion that Johnson felt his colleague's main legislative function was to keep the Southerners awake I Although President Johnson later expressed his great respect for Douglas, and Douglas reciprocates in his discussion of the Johnson Administration, they were basically men from different worlds...

...The more one knows of American history, the more leery one is of these dramatic exercises in nostalgia, but it is nonetheless true that today American politics is on one of its periodic trips to the Dead Sea With the interesting exception of Spiro Agnew, everyone seems to be engaged in role playing President Nixon is playing the role of President Nixon (one can almost see him watching himself on a hidden monitor) and the five or six leading Democratic Presidential contenders seem to be engaged in a competition as to who can best play the part of the late Gerald P Nye George Wallace, m his own corner, must be busy reading All the King's Men...

...He would smolder for a while, and then erupt (He always reminded me-with his hunched shoulders and that great beak-of an angry eagle ) With perfect rhetorical courtesy, and in his distinctive Yankee dialect, Senator Douglas would cut loose It was, frankly, a quite terrifying experience, but after one session when, quivering inside, I had mustered my courage to argue back, I suddenly saw the other side of Paul Douglas He came over to me, put his arm around my shoulders, and said "I'm glad to see liberals who fight for what they believe '. This, indeed, is the central theme of Douglas' life, that men should fight for what they believe In the Fullness of Time is the chronicle of his battles, first as a child m a harsh environment, later as a reformer in Sam Insull's Chicago, then as a 50-year-old ex-pacifist (who would accept no special handling) in the World War II Marines, and finally as senator from Illinois The bulk of the volume deals with his work for civil rights and other progressive measures after he entered the Senate m 1949...

...Though the defeats he suffered would have turned off another man, the fact is that this indomitable fighter (like Wayne Morse, another original of that era) did not know the meaning of defeat He was no fool-he could count votes as well as the next man-yet he possessed (possibly as part of his New England Puritan legacy) what David Riesman once called the "nerve of failure," the capacity to go dedicated into battle even with the foreknowledge of defeat...

...The reason for this, I suspect, is that for Douglas the real struggle was for the long-run convictions of the American people, not merely for the United States Senate We still have a long way to go, but already there is substantial evidence that on this battlefield Paul Douglas will ultimately emerge victorious As he sits now in his wheelchair, he should know that throughout the nation there is a constituency of Douglas-liberals who hold him in deep affection, who assert that he has earned the right to be righteous And who have also learned from him what it really means to fight for what you believe...

...To return to the original theme, however, we need both kinds Whether you like Lyndon B Johnson, or Paul Douglas-and I like them both-they were their own men, not politicians from central casting Douglas couldn't have cared less what the Senate Majority Leader, or the President of the United States, thought of his positions on matters of public policy He simply went ahead, guided by his inner compass, he was a man perpetually ahead of his time, but one who laid the groundwork for many of the liberal accomplishments of the middle 1960s...

...This kind of introspective exercise can sometimes smack of false humility, yet those of us who have had the privilege of knowing and working with Paul Douglas will recognize in his book the quality of genuine humbleness that was his saving grace God, could he be a rough man to deal with 1 I recall vividly in the middle 1950s, when Senator Douglas was active in Americans for Democratic Action, the explosive force he could generate The one issue in particular that would activate him was the recognition of Red China There were those who favored recognition because they thought we should be nice to the Chinese Communists, there were a few like myself who favored recognition because we thought it was a matter of no ideological consequence -and there was Paul Douglas...

...Against this background of political repertory it is a joy to read the memoirs of an honest-to-God original, Paul H Douglas In the Fullness of Time fully reflects the strengths and weaknesses of its author his massive integrity, his total commitment to his ideals and, perhaps above all, his candor in acknowledging the extent to which his integrity sometimes verged on arrogance, his commitment on selfrighteousness Paul Douglas, now 80, has had the guts to look at himself m a spiritual mirror-and to admit that on occasion he did not like what he saw...

...Memoirs of an Original In the Fullness of Time: The Memoirs of Paul H. Douglas Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 642 pp $13 50 Reviewed by John P. Roche Morris Hillquit Professor of Politics, Brandeis University One of the dangers in political analysis is the tendency to create fictional "golden ages"-those eras m the past when leaders were men of charisma and integrity, when politicians were originals, not dummies made to order by an image factory...