Herbert H. Lehman: A Profile in Courage
Neuberger, Senator Richard L.
Herbert H. Lehman: A Profile in Courage by SENATOR RICHARD L. NEUBERGER In the Denver Post Roscoe Fleming recently described George W. Norris of Nebraska as the one authentically great Senator of...
...His eye twitched with fatigue...
...Whenever fundamental bills dealing with civil rights reach the Senate calendar, I know that I shall look back at the desk along the wide center aisle, in the very rear of the Senate chamber...
...Instead, he referred to his fight against Mc-Carthyism and to his efforts to protect men and women who had been unjustly or unfairly accused of a lack of patriotism...
...I think it was typical of Herbert Lehman that he left the Senate with pennon flying...
...He left the Senate while he was ahead...
...It was a description which fit like a satin glove...
...And when our bill was under discussion to protect the resources of the Klamath Indian Tribe, Herbert Lehman volunteered an interest in it on several occasions...
...He never even called the episode to memory...
...It was our fight, on one side or another...
...Personal embarrassment meant nothing to him if he could serve his friends...
...His reply was in keeping: "I thought you and Wayne and Scoop Jackson might need me, so I decided not to go home...
...Acts of nobility are rare...
...It would not have been in character for him to do so...
...And I wondered how often so generous an opinion ever was vouchsafed in politics about a man of another party, with whom one had just been debating an issue of major importance...
...As newcomers, Pat McNamara of Michigan and I stood in a remote corner...
...Men eye their own constituencies with a fixed stare, but with only a side glance for the other fellow's bailiwick...
...At nearly 10 o'clock, the late Senator Herman Welker of Idaho was criticizing the proposal for a high government dam...
...Then I turned to the rear of the chamber...
...Gentlemen," said Herbert Lehman, "you are making a very serious mistake...
...I remember the night we were debating the Hells Canyon bill in July of 1956...
...Fortunately, there are isolated exceptions to this...
...Yet these Indians were people, and Herbert Lehman was concerned about people, especially people who needed help...
...There we sat, all the interested parties: Senators Magnuson and Jackson of Washington, Dworshak of Idaho, Watkins of Utah, Murray and Mansfield of Montana, Morse and Neuberger of Oregon...
...Yet departing from the solemn prestige of the Senate has not meant for Lehman a musty retirement...
...Cruelties in politics might put to shame the Mau-Mau...
...When he was interviewed by Edward R. Murrow on "Person to Person," Lehman was asked which deed of his long career in Congress had given him the greatest satisfaction...
...He had called a conference in his office of all liberal Senators to thrash out civil-rights legislation...
...At the age of 78, he was gray and tired...
...He never needed Harry S. Truman's admonition, delivered in February, that some men do not know when to quit...
...Irving has been quite ill lately," Lehman answered...
...Characteristically, on his 80th birthday he asked for no gifts or presentations...
...Senate should not be open only to rich men but to all American citizens, regardless of financial status...
...It also was in keeping for this singular man to talk about a topic appropriate to his own career...
...Politics, alas, is a self-centered game...
...Herbert Lehman may not participate in these epochal roll-calls, but the victory and the glory will be his, nevertheless...
...Herbert Lehman's devoted friend and sponsor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, once described Senator Norris as "the very perfect gentle knight of American progressive ideals...
...He discussed courage, particularly the capacity to place principle above politics, to think of future generations rather than of future elections...
...1 "You're the only Senator here \ who isn't from the Northwest...
...At the 1957 San Francisco conference of the Democratic Party, he made the most militant speech of all about the need for a fighting party dedicated to active and affirmative liberalism...
...You are trying to postpone something which cannot be postponed...
...He refused to wait until he nodded at his desk or bumbled in debate...
...Our states were directly involved...
...Around the room ranged a wide spectrum of Senate liberals from all sectors of the nation...
...Undoubtedly the mold was broken with "Uncle George," who came from the crunching poverty of a stump farm to pioneer for the TVA and to defy lynch-mobs because of his hatred of war...
...Why take the risk...
...With typical candor, Lehman said he had been fortunate enough in life not to need the higher pay...
...Lehman, alone of the entire group, wanted to wage a stubborn fight, then and there, to change Rule XXII of the Senate, which permits unlimited debate...
...I knew Norris, I know Lehman— two of the greatest privileges I have ever enjoyed...
...Don't underestimate him...
...Herbert H. Lehman: A Profile in Courage by SENATOR RICHARD L. NEUBERGER In the Denver Post Roscoe Fleming recently described George W. Norris of Nebraska as the one authentically great Senator of modern times...
...When the bill was before the Senate to increase Congressional salaries, a long speech had just been made against it by a wealthy Republican Senator...
...Herbert H. Lehman has just marked his 80th birthday anniversary...
...He might have referred to any of a dozen bills that provided projects or brought funds to the State of New York...
...Yet to his illustrious name I should like to add that of another great Senator—a man whose leave-taking of Congress early in 1957 received far too perfunctory recognition...
...I will hear again his solemn warning to us that this is an issue which liberals cannot delay or postpone, regardless of the political difficulties it might precipitate...
...I imagine that is why his speech may have lacked fire or forcefulness...
...Such tactics have not been their nature...
...He voluntarily withdrew, in full possession of all his faculties...
...Indeed, he confessed that the increased salary would merely add to the federal income taxes collected from himself and his wife...
...It has been a passion with him that neither the color of a person's skin nor the manner of his worship shall interfere with access to the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" which Jefferson enshrined in our Declaration of Independence...
...But it helped to pass the Congressional pay bill, and Lehman felt that some of his impecunious friends in the House and Senate desperately needed the increase...
...The significant thing was that Lehman himself never rubbed it in...
...I inquired...
...When he and his New York colleague, Senator Irving M. Ives, were engaged in caustic debate on the question of public versus private acquisition of kilowatts from Niagara Falls, I remarked to Lehman that Ives had not made a particularly effective presentation...
...An elderly man sat there in solitary exhaustion, at that weary hour of the evening— Lehman of New York, representing a state 3,000 miles from Hells Canyon...
...In contrast to Norris, this man came from wealth and from the metropolis...
...The stakes for us were as vast as the great canyon itself...
...But Norris is gone now, and nobody is so qualified to inherit the glowing phrase as former Senator Lehman...
...I shall never forget Herbert Lehman as he was on the day that I became a Senator, back in January of 1955...
...Irving is really a very able man...
...This was an issue (Continued on Next Page) (Continued from Page 25) so remote from the Empire State that a Senator from New York could barely communicate with it by smoke signals...
...In my mind's eye, no matter who sits at that desk, I know that I will see the balding, gray-fringed old man with the gentle smile and the kindly eyes...
...He did not stay there to vegetate with age...
...Not once have I ever heard either of these truly noble Americans deride an adversary or run down an antagonist...
...Many times later I was to hear men like Senators Douglas, Murray, Hennings, and Humphrey admit that Lehman had been right...
...Herbert Lehman always has seemed just the opposite from the politician who tries to torment his foes...
...Such a speech could not have been calculated to help Herbert Lehman politically in New York...
...But he declared that the U.S...
...This was never a man to inflict personal hurts...
...And when finally the great government of 'the United States guarantees the liberties of all its citizens, I will have no doubt as to whom much of the credit really belongs...
...I looked around me on the Senate floor...
...What are you doing on the floor, Herbert...
...Both Norris and Lehman have been men capable of fervent advocacies and creative ideas, without ever resorting to assassination of the reputations of their political opponents...
...In or out of the Senate, he never did the corny thing...
...In this year of 1958 he has been honorary chairman of another cause which claims his complete allegiance, the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Israel...
...For varying reasons, none of the others chose to support his stand...
...He has not been one to sulk because his own vote-getting career is at an end...
...And from the way Edith Lehman nodded her handsome white head in vigorous assent, viewers knew one reason why Herbert Lehman had never lacked for courage on his travels through life...
...But he combined in himself the qualities which I am certain must have helped to make Norris great—sublime political courage, personal unselfishness, a gentle and kindly nature, and an understanding of people and their frailties...
...Instead, to commemorate the start of his ninth decade on earth, he gave a check for $5,000 to one of his favorite "causes"—Brandeis University...
...Politics can be a brutal game, full of haranguing and personal abuse...
...Yet it is civil rights legislation with which the name and career of Herbert H. Lehman are most inextricably identified...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
