SCOOP' JACKSON: HALF AND HALF
CONNELLY, JOEL R.
SCOOP' JACKSON: HALF AND HALF JOEL R. CONNELLY The formal announcement came November 19, 1971. in the Caucus Room of the Senate. Standing before reporters and cameramen, Washington's Senator Henry...
...Again during the Ninetieth Congress, Jackson voted to retain the Subversive Activities Control Board...
...Don't you ever do that to me again...
...Bryant...
...Liberals were upset with the Senator's 1958 campaign tactics, but they were back in the Jackson coalition six years later...
...In the 1968 campaign, a strong movement for Eugene McCarthy developed in Washington...
...The Senator's work habits are legendary...
...From his place at the head of the receiving line, an affable Henry Jackson swapped stories with old friends...
...A year later, Jackson voted against efforts to remove "no-knock" entry provisions from the Nixon Administration's anti-crime package...
...Jackson described himself as a middle-of-the-roader who would not "knuckle under to these people...
...He is the co-author of a book on the University of Notre Dame to be published by Hawthorn next autumn...
...Gerry Hoeck, Jackson's media specialist, flooded the airwaves with television spots showing Jackson walking through the woods with his family and teaching young son Peter to fish...
...His managers have labeled George Wallace as the chief obstacle confronting their man in that state...
...Jackson is today a man of the boardrooms and is used to dealing with like-minded individuals...
...Jackson's business support held solid, and the Senator was again able to cast his challenger in the role of the extremist...
...The Senator stressed his support of the Nixon Administration's foreign policy and boasted of his key role in securing approval for the ABM...
...His rating by Americans for Democratic Action soared to 100 per cent during the late 1950s, and though it dropped to fifty-six per cent for the first session of the Ninety-second Congress, the overall Jackson score remains at 83.4 since 1947...
...A recent poll reported that fifty-two per cent of those surveyed recognize the name Henry Jackson, a jump from the twenty-nine per cent in May, but a figure well below the recognition level of other candidates...
...To reinforce the message, computerized mailings reached the membership of every environmental organization in the state...
...In 1968, he voted against an amendment to strike Title III (permissive wiretapping) from the omnibus crime bill...
...Even after the 1968 Robert Kennedy assassination, the Senator voted against an amendment to the omnibus crime bill to prohibit interstate mail-order sale of rifles and shotguns...
...His words were beamed via special television hookup to fifteen major population centers...
...Where applicable, the conservation spots will reappear, and "law and order" commercials are in the works as well...
...Today Jackson is one of the Senate's most influential members...
...Aside from Los Angeles Mayor Samuel Yorty, and possibly Representative Wilbur Mills of Arkansas, Jackson faces no competition for the support of conservatives in the Democratic Party...
...Organized labor joined the coalition, noting Jackson's ability to secure public works projects for Washington while in the House., The business community was also included, for aircraft industry officials were impressed with Jackson's stand on national defense...
...A Republican newspaper editor from Jackson's home state visited the Senate Office Building late on a Saturday afternoon several years ago...
...To be sure, Jackson has supported the social legislation of four Democratic Presidents...
...Thus, the 1972 Presidential primaries may reveal that it is Henry Jackson, not the "absolutists of the Left," who is out of step with the wishes of the real majority of Americans...
...Publications from Human Events on the far right to The New Republic at the liberal end of the spectrum have spoken of the Senator's liberal record on domestic issues...
...The Senator's temper flared anew recently when two Democrats, Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma and Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York, publicly suggested that a Jackson nomination would result in the creation of a new party...
...Hell, Gummie," snapped one Seattle member, "every one of us has bought a ticket to Jackson's dinner...
...As portrayed by Ben Wattenberg, the American working man is sick of "mockingbirds," "absolutists," and other creatures of the political left...
...In his thirty-year Congressional career, the Senator has been a master at pleasing powerful interests...
...They're a danger to this country...
...He withheld support until Senate approval was certain...
...Four foot high letters, carved out of ice, spelled out the slogan Scoop in '72 on the front lawn...
...Moreover, the outcome of the 1970 Congressional elections revealed that the old gambits of labeling and Redbaiting have lost much of their effectiveness...
...Jackson is a master at the identification and destruction of straw men...
...The Medina dinner raised more than $175,000, the same amount the same business leaders contributed to Jackson's 1970 Democratic primary campaign against peace candidate Carl Maxey...
...I'm proud to say that I've now been opposed by both McCarthys," he fumed, "and I'll say that I've opposed everything McCarthy's crowd has been doing...
...snapped a red-faced Jackson...
...Nixon asked...
...Pro-Japanese influence still exists in the United States, having gone underground temporarily," he declared in introducing legislation to create a standing committee to investigate Japanese infiltration into American economic, political, and social life...
...Lumber barons at Jackson's dinner could remember backstage maneuvers against the outlawing of clearcut logging, the practice whereby timber companies can completely strip a region of its forests rather than leave clumps of trees behind...
...The Senator saw Vietnam as part of a continuing Cold War: "The truth is that the Cold War is going on with great vigor in many parts of the world...
...Jackson's domestic record has been weak with respect to Congressional reform as well...
...Jackson solidly supported President Johnson's Vietnam policies, expressing reservations only over the extent of U.S...
...Defense has been Jackson's preoccupation from the time he entered Congress in 1941...
...His denunciations of Senator Kennedy's position marked the opening of Jackson's battles with antiwar Democrats...
...In a political season when candidates are boasting of their ability to construct coalitions, few if any can equal the record of Scoop Jackson...
...Alice Franklin Bryant, an outspoken opponent of nuclear testing...
...Said Jackson: "The essence of my view on this treaty, which has been referred to as a limited treaty, is that it is indeed limited...
...Alarmed at Mrs...
...Despite the presence of his family and fellow Senators, Scoop Jackson appeared ill at ease...
...For a while during this period, the Washington Senator was a close ally of the Kennedys...
...However, the Senator's record has been conservative with respect to issues of institutional reform...
...As a Congressman, he voted against the initial appropriations for the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...During the 1970 campaign, the Senator's Republican opponent, Charlie Elicker, dropped into a party for the state's leading businessmen...
...Jackson was again the doubter when President Kennedy submitted the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty for ratification...
...In the Democratic state convention, challenged county delegations were permitted to vote on the question of their own seating...
...the program was entitled "Our Next President...
...A poor boy can make it, Jackson tells them, and presents himself as a case in point...
...Money raised at the Medina affair has already been invested in media...
...Few could miss locating the house where Jackson's posh dinner party was held...
...In the 1970 Democratic primary, an estimated 200,000 Republican voters crossed over to vote for Jackson, a practice permitted by Washington's election laws...
...The candidate also hopes to secure the support of organized labor at the national level...
...From such advocacy Jackson helped develop the now discredited missile gap argument used by the Democrats in the 1960 campaign...
...Jackson openly courted Republican support in the battle with Maxey...
...Defending the air war, he stated: "There is no other example in military history of bombing operations that have been conducted with equal restraint and precision...
...Lights illuminated the slogan and helped guide expensive cars into the driveway...
...Bryant's calls for a reduction in the defense budget, Boeing officials and the officers of Seattle banks fell over each other to buy tickets to Jackson's fund-raising functions...
...The Washington Senator took a skeptical view, holding that maintenance of nuclear superiority was the only way to protect American interests...
...Pledging to "tell it like it is," the candidate modestly compared himself to Harry Truman...
...Beyond this, if the gains appear worth the costs, the Soviets would not even shrink from an all-out nuclear attack against our American homeland...
...Such tactics helped Humphrey carry two-thirds of Washington's votes in Chicago...
...In the final election, Republican nominee Elicker could do no more than make jokes about his predicament...
...The editor has passionately supported Jackson ever since...
...John Salter, Jackson's former administrative assistant, swears to this day that the Senator was Robert Kennedy's choice for the Democratic Vice Presidential nomination...
...One is identification...
...Out of the crowd came Jackson, who put his arm around Elicker and introduced him with the words, "Fellas, I'd like you to meet the young man they've got runnin' against me this time...
...When I first came to the Senate few people were closer to my wife and myself than Scoop and Helen Jackson," Bayh reflected, "but over the years we grew apart and he got wound up in defense priorities...
...As Eugene McCarthy recently noted correctly, "I have always thought it unfair to label Henry Jackson as 'the Senator from Boeing.' I think he would have supported increased appropriations for bombers and missiles had these devices been constructed in Little Rock, Arkansas...
...At first glance the rhetoric reminds one of Spiro Agnew, and some of the descriptions used by Jackson seem borrowed from Archie Bunker...
...While Jackson's positions have produced political rewards, Boeing and other defense-related industries have never demanded a quid pro quo in their support of him...
...However, the Washington Senator eventually broke with the Kennedy Administration on the issue of national security...
...Said Jackson: "I do not want to see the Democratic Party become a party which gives any comfort whatever to people who applaud Vietcong victories or wave Vietcong flags...
...In the Sixth District, ballots were burned to prevent a recount after Humphrey forces narrowly won contests for national delegation positions...
...And so Jackson, who had been offered the Defense and State portfolios in the Nixon Cabinet late in 1968, ran a Republican-dominated campaign to retain his Democratic Senate seat two years later...
...Conservation was the issue chosen to counter liberal opposition...
...One of the Senator's chief advisers is Ben Wattenberg, co-author of The Real Majority...
...Should those interests be jeopardized, we shall be released from our commitment...
...In his travels through Florida, he has been observed courting the segregationist vote by taking a strong anti-busing line...
...He then took to the Senate floor and, in chilling language, discussed the treaty in terms of the national interest...
...In this excerpt from a 1956 speech, the Jackson view seemed borrowed from the long discredited position of the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles: "The basic aim of the Kremlin remains unchanged —a Moscow-dominated world...
...How you doing with my good friend Scoop...
...Their methods were rough...
...Whereas Hoeck's soft sell is the Jackson television technique, the candidate will present a different image on the stump...
...Jackson's Florida and Wisconsin hopes rest on his ability to capture the labor vote...
...Few Jackson speeches are complete without references to "those who would leave us open to a nuclear Pearl Harbor...
...Jackson's list of home state acquaintances makes him Washington's leading backslapper among politicians...
...The Senator identified his opposition as "the far out New Left," "apostles of national weakness," and "apologists for those who want to destroy us...
...Washington Republican Chairman C. Montgomery Johnson, seeking $50,000 for a token campaign against Jackson, was rebuffed by his state finance committee...
...The point is that Henry Jackson has been a leading advocate of the position that national security is wholly a function of one's deterrent capabilities and force levels...
...The private party was an appropriate place to launch the campaign of a man like Henry Jackson...
...forces from Vietnam, and they also show a desire for reallocation of the nation's priorities...
...Said Jackson: "They will pick up their ball and bat and look for a new ball game because what they are interested in, in the final analysis, is not victory for their party and people but a petty triumph for their faction...
...These weapons are well-known—diplomatic initiative, the smile, psychological pressure, economic warfare, political infiltration, subversion, and military conquest on the installment plan through satellite forces...
...Describing the Minnesota Senator as "a dangerous disarmer," Jackson dispatched his top political operatives to thwart McCarthy supporters in Washington's Congressional District caucuses...
...Boeing's William Allen and George Weyer-hauser, a timber magnate who usually manages Republican $100-a-plate dinners, also raised money for him...
...Gerry Hoeck's first production of the 1972 campaign was the broadcast of Jackson's announcement...
...bombing missions over North Vietnam...
...Last year the Senator voted to table a resolution that would strike at the heart of the discredited seniority system by providing for the individual selection of chairmen and ranking minority members of all Senate committees by party caucus...
...Despite his position as power broker, however, Jackson has maintained a common touch...
...Still, there could be no doubting Jackson's preoccupation with the threat of Communism...
...The Senator's leading moneymen were William Reed, chairman of Simpson Timber and a former GOP national committeeman, and Washington Natural Gas president Bill Woods...
...Six years later he was reelected with sixty-seven per cent...
...Watten-berg has called on the Democratic Party to respond to the Middle American's desire for law and order before the issue is coopted by the Republicans...
...The Senator's home state victory margins have steadily risen over the years...
...Think of it...
...In the spring of 1943, Congressman Jackson first raised the issue of the "Yellow Peril...
...as one Jackson aide put it, "There are a number of prominent Republicans here and they would be embarrassed were there to be pictures...
...The would-be Senator took some courageous positions in the 1952 race...
...Indiana Senator Birch Bayh commented on this fact during a recent meeting with anti-Jackson Democrats from Washington...
...Obstacles even greater than the Muskie candidacy may face Jackson in his efforts to stand in the middle...
...Jackson's reelection campaign six years later was different in both style and tone...
...Richard Larsen, a political reporter on The Seattle Times and Jackson's biographer, sees the early Sixties as a crucial turning point in the Senator's career...
...The Senator himself chose to apply the radical label to Mrs...
...Government camps, Jackson has until recently seen the danger to U.S...
...They could also recall Jackson's drawing of the boundaries of Washington's North Cascades National Park, a drawing which left timber-laden river valleys out of the park and hence open to "harvesting...
...This sixth most populous country in the world almost went behind the bamboo curtain...
...Jackson's record on civil liberties is marred by two crucial votes...
...Despite such attacks on fellow Democrats, Jackson's Presidential campaign must be taken seriously...
...As a Senator, Jackson supported the censure of Joseph McCarthy, although he waited until the Senate leadership had taken an anti-McCarthy stance before committing himself...
...Jackson was the first to attack Robert Kennedy's peace speech of early 1967...
...The Washington State Labor Council endorsed Jackson without even granting a hearing to Maxey...
...Aside from this wartime exercise in baiting more than 100,000 loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry then held in U.S...
...In the wake of these efforts, the Senator was handsomely endowed as he entered the Presidential race...
...In 1970, Jackson was again the "responsible" candidate...
...I guess he's sort of suspicious of where I stand now...
...The 1972 Jackson Presidential campaign really opened in Medina November 15...
...Jackson reacted with unprecedented vitriol...
...When President Kennedy began to seek a detente with the Soviet Union, however, Jackson's objections became more than a question of home state interest...
...Gone was the relaxed "old boys" atmosphere which had characterized the informal opening of the Jackson campaign in Seattle four days earlier...
...Our party has room for hawks and doves, but not for the mockingbirds who chirp gleefully at those who are shooting at American boys...
...Actually it is not a treaty, but a loose commitment, a statement of present intentions of the parties not to engage in nuclear weapon test explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space, or under water...
...When Andrews charged Jackson with not working to secure the TFX fighter-bomber contract for Boeing, the company's president, William Allen, called a press conference to ridicule the accusation...
...His 1972 target is again the Eugene McCarthy-Kennedy segments of the Democratic Party...
...Most of us are raising money for his campaign...
...Delegates were appointed at the last minute to keep the Seventh District from going for McCarthy...
...The community is a Republican bastion, giving most GOP candidates eighty per cent of its vote...
...From early 1966, the Washington Senator advocated air strikes against the port facilities of Haiphong...
...Jackson's refusal to accept detente with the Soviets was coupled with increasing intolerance toward its advocates...
...It was in Florida, too, that Jackson echoed the Nixon theme that people ought to choose work over welfare, a choice that millions of jobless persons, including many in Seattle, would make if they had the chance...
...As a result of these efforts, every major Republican newspaper in the state of Washington endorsed Jackson in the Democratic primary, and GOP voters crossed over to help defeat Maxey...
...Scoop Jackson worked with AFL-CIO President George Meany during the SST battle and other Congressional scraps, and has endorsed many of the Cold War foreign policy positions taken by the labor chief...
...Wattenberg's opinions have supplemented Jackson's own political reasoning, for the Senator's attacks on "absolutists of the Left" are calculated to place Jackson in what he considers to be a middle-of-the-road position but more objective analysts consider to be right of center...
...With business groups the Senator extols the work ethic and free enterprise...
...The other factor is Jackson's ability to dominate the center position...
...The portrayal of Scoop Jackson as a smart politician who knows how and when to please influential constituencies is incomplete, for it ignores the absolute sincerity with which Jackson approaches some issues, such as those relating to national security...
...To labor audiences Jackson pays tribute to "the working man who has made America what it is today...
...He gets angry about it, though, and has been known to display his temper on occasions...
...From the time of his 1952 Senate race, Jackson has striven to occupy the center of the political spectrum...
...In the end, Jackson's campaign will stand or fall on two factors...
...If the observer wishes a true picture of the man, and the resources supporting him, he would do well to look at the Seattle fund-raising dinner, rather than the formal announcement ceremonies in the nation's capital...
...In that role, Jackson faces competition from Maine's Edmund Muskie...
...Already columnists friendly to Jackson have hinted that the Washington Senator is Meany's real favorite for the Democratic nomination...
...This nation's commitment will rest on the assumption that certain conditions are met—including the condition that the supreme interests of this nation are not jeopardized...
...The exception is Democrat Henry Jackson, who carried Medina with seventy-five per cent of the vote in his 1970 Senate race...
...This time the Senator's opponent was a Goldwater Republican, Lloyd Andrews, who had himself used Red-scare tactics to win election as Washington's Superintendent of Public Instruction...
...security as coming from outside the boundaries of the country, rather than as an internal menace posed by subversive forces...
...But this is Jackson^ style, and there is some cold political reasoning behind it...
...When Wisconsin's McCarthy campaigned for Cain and charged Jackson with receiving campaign money from "known Communists," the young Congressman held that such scare tactics would not work in the state of Washington...
...Hoeck produced a television spot showing the Senator chatting with sawmill workers about his youthful days at the mill...
...Polls show that a majority of Americans favor the immediate pullout of all U.S...
...Joel R. Connelly is a graduate student in political science at the University of Washington...
...This stands in contrast to the record of fellow Washington Senator Warren G. Magnuson, also a Democrat, who has worked closely with Ralph Nader from his position as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee...
...The Senator was challenged in the Democratic primary by Mrs...
...Jackson-style tactics were used against a dozen fellow Democratic Senators...
...Indonesia, a country of 109 million, came within an eyelash of going behind the Communist curtain—not the iron curtain, the bamboo curtain—but still the Communist curtain...
...For his part, Jackson has earned the nickname "the Senator from Boeing" as a reward for his close ties with the aircraft industry...
...Medina is a fashionable lakeshore suburb of Seattle, "near ultimate living" in the words of a local magazine...
...The point was driven home when "Gummie" Johnson met President Nixon at a White House reception...
...In recent years he has expressed contempt for the popular movements which have challenged official dogmas and unresponsive institutions in America...
...Jackson had been strongly critical of the Defense Department and Secretary Robert McNamara when the TFX contract had been awarded to General Dynamics...
...The Seattle press corps was kept at a safe distance...
...A man in Jackson's position could actually afford to refund small campaign donations, which is exactly what the Senator's staff did in the latter stages of the one-sided race with Elicker...
...The "give 'em hell" phase of the Jackson campaign began last August with an address to the New York State AFL-CIO...
...While continuing to attack the left wing of his party, Jackson still identifies himself as a "true liberal...
...During the Maxey-Jackson contest, Eugene McCarthy broke a forty-year Senate tradition by coming to Seattle and speaking against Jackson's renomination...
...Jackson labeled her "one of these unilateral disarmers who would leave us defenseless...
...Reacting to this, Jackson labeled as irresponsible Muskie's statements concerning the Attica prison uprising which the Maine Senator sees as illustrative of a social sickness in America...
...most of them survived...
...A soft voice in the background reminded listeners that the Senator has received the Sierra Club's John Muir Award...
...Recoiling from Cain's record, liberals supported Jackson without hesitation...
...During the 1960 Presidential election, Jackson served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee...
...The tab for the dinner was $1,000 per couple...
...He is chairman of the Senate Interior Committee and a ranking member of three other committees— Armed Services, Government Operations, and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy...
...Jackson was elected to the Senate with fifty-three per cent of the vote, besting the Eisenhower tide in 1952...
...Before Johnson could reply, the President continued: "I just don't want anything to happen out there which would cause a schism with the White House, or give him anything to think the White House doesn't support him...
...While his Cold War rhetoric has not changed, and his intolerance of opposition will no doubt hurt his coalition efforts, the Washington Senator remains an enormously successful politician...
...Jackson's sincere obsession with security can be seen in a quick look at the man's record...
...His closest confidants lament the fact that Jackson has no sense of humor and is unable to endure even light-hearted criticism...
...Jackson stood by the Fair Deal, and defended his votes to uphold President Truman's vetoes of the Taft-Hartley Act and the McCarran Act...
...Leaders of the Washington Environmental Council and Clean Air for Washington were enlisted to extol Jackson's conservation record...
...That figure rose to seventy per cent in 1964, and hit a high of eighty-four per cent in 1970...
...That year he challenged Senator Harry Cain, one of Joseph McCarthy's chief allies in Congress...
...Jackson touts himself as a liberal at times, but he is given to wearing more conservative colors when he feels the need...
...The Washington Senator has continued to make bitter remarks about his former Minnesota colleague...
...The lumber money raised for Jackson's campaign was spent in an emphasis on the Senator's environmental record...
...Faced with liberal challenger Maxey, the Senator first turned to his GOP business allies for support...
...The tactic worked, and Jackson received a heavy Republican crossover vote to help win renomination...
...The portrayal of Scoop Jackson as a smart politician who knows how and when to please influential constituencies is incomplete, for it ignores the absolute sincerity with which Jackson approaches some issues, such as those relating to national security...
...A Republican dinner speaker once used the Boeing nickname in jest, only to be grabbed by the lapels afterward...
...He is a self-made man who does not hesitate to remind listeners of his days as a newsboy and his work in the lumberyards of Everett, Washington...
...Thus Jackson promises to step up the Agnewesque rhetoric in the months ahead...
...His techniques were borrowed from Richard Nixon, or perhaps even from Harry Cain...
...Standing before reporters and cameramen, Washington's Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson told the nation that he was a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination...
...Aircraft industry officials could recall Jackson's efforts to save the supersonic transport plane (SST) as well as the Senator's advocacy of Boeing in the TFX military plane controversy...
...In 1967, Jackson voted against the proposed requirement of asset disclosures by members of Congress...
...It was only because of our efforts in Vietnam, and other efforts that we made, that made it possible for the generals, one day in October of 1965, to make the decision they did in starting a countercoup...
...The corridors and offices were deserted, but in his suite Jackson was working—alone...
...His tie-ins with the dinner guests could be traced back many years, for a number of the Senator's legislative battles understandably have been waged on behalf of home state interests...
...The strategy of coalition and the techniques of 1970 will be employed again in the upcoming Presidential primaries...
...In line with his analysis of Communist intentions, Jackson became a leading advocate of nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union...
...The Soviet rulers stand ready and able to employ every last weapon in the Communist arsenal of conquest...
...But Hoeck's soft sell and the candidate's hard line do not tell the full story of Jackson's efforts at coalition...
...Unions immediately began distribution of literature cataloguing the accomplishments of Jackson and the public works projects supposedly acquired through his efforts...
...The battles of 1968 helped produce Jackson's primary opposition two years later...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
