Morris Udall: Playing by Winners' Rules

...Already he had the Library of Congress looking into t h e question of who first got the idea that every time the President walks into a room t h e band has to play Hail to the Chief, a song that would not be heard during his Administration...

...Udall's wide-awake glass eye is the kind of cosmetic detail that sometimes decides elections, a 1976 equivalent of t h e sweat on Nixon's lip or the sea breeze in John F. Kennedy's hair...

...Now there's a way to whip inflation," Udall says...

...In 1942 he left school to serve in the Army Air Corps, enlisting as a private and coming out a captain four years later...

...Stewart Udall's role as his brother's campaign manager made the Udalls " t h e first brother act in national politics since the Kennedys," as Stewart always put it...

...There are many in Arizona who find it only natural and welcome and high time that a Udall should be running for President...

...an infection set in that reached the optic nerve and threatened the undamaged left eye...

...The grave questions of the 1970s nd 1980s, he said, would center on energy, the environment, and the^ economy, and he spoke of these matters with such assurance that it only jarred the ear to hear him bind them together in a term that seemed to belong to a time and politics past: they are, he said, "the three E ' s ." Pointing out that the great crises of the next decade are unknowable at present, t h a t t h e ' 'tough decisions" are all "down the road" and around the corner, Udall said he thought voters did best to look for character, common sense, roots, a philosophy among the men aspiring to the Presidency...

...This showing among rank-and-file and some state Democratic leaders was reinforced when the Wisconsin State Journal of Madison, a Republican daily, conducted a double-header mail poll of all seventy-two Democratic county chairmen...

...Morris set up a practice in Tucson, then ran for Pima County attorney in 1952 and was elected...

...Rockefeller will bring it up...

...He challenged the House leadership in two losing battles that cost him the good will of many senior members...

...In 1880, the eldest of their sons, David King Udall, received instructions from the church to go "across the river" into Arizona Territory and settle in the village of St...

...I'm a lot tougher, harder, and more realistic now...

...The Malibu group defined the term so well that for years it had managed to summon all the top liberal candidates to similar screen-test gatherings inside its compound of oceanside villas...

...I think this imperial Presidency idea has harmed the country more than is generally realized," he said...

...Still, Johnny's silence seemed to define the state of Udall's campaign at that point: hot enough for the evening news, but not for the "Tonight" show...

...He proposed the construction of rapid-transit systems in the hundred largest cities as a means of combatting unemployment, air pollution, and energy waste in a single stroke...

...He has been asked the question countless times, and answers it this way: "No one starts down this obstacle course from a single motivation...

...An issue-oriented Congressman, Udall has built an impressive record in behalf of liberal legislation during his seven terms in the House...

...In January 1929, when he was six, he suffered an eye injury while playing...

...Well, that wasn't so then, and it isn't so now...

...Smith Goes to Washington quality that puts voters quickly at their ease...

...Even the governor of a large state doesn't come to the job prepared to oversee three million bureaucrats...

...Some liberals at home accuse him of being a conservative in disguise, but his votes on civil rights, labor, education, welfare, and housing have generally earned him scores in the mid- to high-80s in the ratings published by COPE, ADA, and other groups that monitor liberal performance in Congress...

...Among the top candidates there is no one who comes across better on television or has more friends in the press...

...I 'm part of the old Kennedy network," he said, "and I'm having some extraordinary success putting it back together for Mo's campaign...

...I was also content to accept general protestations of support and good will...

...Fiftytwo years old: ideal...

...With t h e self-effacing modesty so characeristic of my profession, I believe that I have something different and better to offer: a vision of America returning to the basics, understanding the difference between living affluently and living well, understanding that 'consent of the governed' is not a blank check but a credit card, subject to revocation for a b u s e ." These, Udall muses, are the things that cross his mind on late-night jet flights and in drafty auditoriums...

...Hello there, I'm Mo Udall and I'm running for Presid e n t . " "Yes, yes, I know...

...Because of the remoteness of the settlement, the injury was not adequately treated...

...This was a marital arrangement that eventually produced a family of eighteen children...

...They know that Stewart was the first native son to reach the Cabinet, and thathis wife, Ermalee, wastheone who pushed Arthur Schlesinger Jr...

...Udall led t h e pack in that strategic primary state, rolling up 151 votes to 129 for Harris, again the nearest contender...

...Why does Udall want to be President...

...If it is said that a seat in the House is a leaden springboard to the Presidency, Udall will observe that the last time it worked was in 1880, when James A. Garfield was elected—"and look what happened to h i m . " If his 1966 divorce is mentioned as a possible encumbrance, he will say that he doubts that Mrs...

...apparently "Mo Udall" was a name that tickled Johnny Carson...

...Maybe, the aide suggested, Johnny would seize the occasion to invite him on the show if they could get word through that he was in the building...

...No matter what real or imagined handicap might b e called to his attention, the Congressman himself is always ready with the topper: "Talk about Sammy Davis...

...We were laughing about it just the other night...

...Mo Udall said he represented "the progressive center" of the Party, "the Humphrey-Muskie spectrum" from which he felt sure the candidate would b e chosen...

...Some of Udall's advisers caution him against giving free rein to his love of a laugh...

...I'm in it because I believe I can do something for the country...

...He doesn't tell them because he sees the next election as a fundamental turning-point in the nation's history and believes himself to be equipped to negotiate it w i t h ' 'two or three qualities the other candidates don't have...

...In September, when 1,500 Midwestern liberal Democrats assembled in Minneapolis to hear five progressive Democratic contenders discuss the issues, David S. Broder, chief political analyst for The Washington Post, took an informal poll...

...He was sharp and persuasive during the interview, but by the time it was over there was still no word from Carson...

...As county attorney, he was chief legal adviser as well as prosecutor—a job that he recalls with mixed feelings...

...With the consent of his wife, Ella, he proposed to Ida that she become his "plural wife...

...Truman was great because he never forgot where he was from...

...The second assumed Kennedy would not be a candidate...

...I assumed that because a man was with me ideologically, h e ' d b e with me when it counted...

...But this air of accomplishment was tempered by an almost brooding quality that led some to think that a vital part of him still resided in Camelot...

...He came out against the war at a time when Arizona was as hawkish a state as any, and well before his older brother, Stewart, had left the Cabinet of a President famous for his vindictiveness...

...H e ' d get a laugh and deftly trump it with the story of how he went up to New Hampshire to break the big news to the man in the street...

...Morris was the fourth child born to Levi and Louise Lee Udall...

...These little stories, and many others like them, identified the Arizona Congressman as a candidate who could look at himself with modesty and humor—which many thought was probably just as well, since he had entered the race as the least well financed and perhaps the least well known of the top five or six candidates...

...Udall received twice as many votes as the runner-up, Senator Henry Jackson, and three times as many as Harris and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey...

...Many are good men and good leaders, and by and large they are perceived as wedded to the dogmas of yesterday or trained by past defeats...

...Udall's assets as a campaigner also include good health, good looks, a good disposition, and a sincere Mr...

...His attack on corporate privilege includes a determination to build a new tax structure that would end the rampant favoritism now enjoyed by huge monopolies: "We have got to ferret out and correct the myriad ways in which the tax code favors big companies over small companies...

...All the same, his leadership challenges did work to hasten reforms that modified the House seniority system, and there are now more than a few subcommittee chairmen and party leaders in Congress who owe at least a part of their stature to Udall's early efforts...

...as with most human desires, thereasonsare a composite—concern about national problems and a belief that you have some answers, ambition, desire to serve in a challenging position, and the excitement of being a major actor in really big events...

...His stride is so long that he can make excellent time down a corridor while appearing to amble along, and with little sign of rush he keeps a tight and demanding schedule...

...into the pool at Hickory Hill...

...The tradition of fecundity has remained almost as strong among the Udalls as their typically Mormon enthusiasm for genealogy...

...They know that Mo and Stewart's father, Levi S. Udall, was chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, and that when he died in 1960 another Udall joined the high court in his place...

...But to the degree that he stresses his long-standing "difference of conscience" from Mormon teachings—often adding that he has "not found a need for organized religion in my adult life"—Udall will establish himself in the public mind as a man who is not churchly, surely a rare stance among those who aspire to the Oval Office...

...Having served as Interior Secretary through the Kennedy and Johnson years, Stewart had about him a convincing scent of high Federal office that did the campaign no harm: He had been there before, so to speak...

...The effect of the accident on Morris's childhood has been variously interpreted by family and friends as accounting for his shyness, his ambition, even his humor: He feared that girls thought him ugly, driving him on to greater accomplishments, better jokes...

...His leadership in winning reforms in the Congress and the Government, his early opposition to the war in Southeast Asia, and his expertise in the fields of energy and t h e environment are all important credentials which, Udall hopes, will allow him to emerge as "the man liberals can agree on...

...But Udall's impressive early showings in several key states have made his candidacy seem much less quixotic than it may have six months ago...

...It is not unlike Udall to take important political risks...

...I was aghast at how great the factor of self-interest was even among the freshmen, most of whom were grabbed aside by senior members and warned to stay in line...

...there are now well over 500 descendants of David and his brother John...

...I underestimated the strength of the buddy system there...

...At the University of Arizona he was student body president and high scorer on the school's nationallyranked basketball team...

...four sell 70 per cent of all dairy products...

...In industry after industry we see a pattern of non-competitive practices— high prices, high profits, high barriers to entry, little innovation...

...In doing so, Udall became the first House member in the century to challenge a sitting Speaker, and his temerity was rewarded with a sound thrashing, as McCormack beat him in a secret ballot, 178 to 58...

...They were people in whose houses Bobby Kennedy was said to have stayed the night, who could introduce you to Paul Newman, who spoke of Gene, George, and Teddy, but not yet much of Mo...

...Morris Udall: Playing by Winners' Rules BARRY FARRELL During his first national tour as a Presidential candidate —a six-month, holidays-and-weekends tour that took him back and forth from Washington to cities in forty-four states—Representative Morris K. Udall would often begin his talks by saying that when he announced his intention to seek the Democratic nomination, "they told me to take a number and wait in line...

...I t 's made people suspicious of anyone who thinks he just might be capable of it...

...And now, as a candidate, he has taken positions which indicate he has embraced even more progressive approaches to contemporary problems than have been evident in the House...

...But the market-research approach to politics has little attraction for him, especially since his readout would not be wholly encouraging...

...Udall recalls that he and several of his House colleagues "agreed that the country had been trapped by reflection into considering the same list of names that have dominated the national polls for a decade...

...This article is one of a series, of profiles of Presidential contenders to be published by The Progressive in the coming months...

...Now he says it's more like swimming in a mountain lake...

...He returned to school, played one season for the Denver Rockets in the old National Basketball League, and in 1949 was graduated from Arizona Law School, placing first in the state bar exams...

...The election, Udall says, was actually " a lot closer than it looked," but it still left him with little more than another instructive experience and the enmity of some important members...

...The Udall family is such an institution there that even people who are unacquainted with any of its members can often discuss them at length...

...Perhaps the worst Presidents are those who might try to escape that, who need to be President because they might not have made the team at Whittier High...

...Udall' s vocation for Congress has allowd him to survive a deeply conservative turn in his state, and for years he has been the only Democrat Arizona sends to Washington...

...Like you're a mortal who wishes to join the gods...

...Udall was rated as the first choice of half of those who heard all five candidates," Broder r e p o r t e d . " He was named by twice as many people as the runner-up, former Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma.'' In June, at the Wisconsin Democratic convention in Eau Claire, the Leader-Telegram polled 511 delegates...

...You have to take office before you can demonstrate your ability to hold office...

...The father of six gorgeous kids: four too many...

...In his first months as a candidate, he was given to describing a Presidential campaign as an obstacle course designed to test a man's sanity, stamina, digestion, and marriage...

...Then it was time to drive back down the coast and across Los Angeles to t h e NBC studios in Burbank, where Udall was scheduled to be interviewed on the evening news...

...five months after the accident the right eye was removed...

...There is a much greater factor: the desire to help a troubled nation...

...And when it was suggested that the Democrats still lacked a strong ideological center, Udall citied figures from a study conducted by " my friend Lou Harris, the pollster.'' There was nothing that rang false in t h e s e exchanges, nothing to contradict Udall's plain-spoken stands on the issues...

...Stewart Udall was serving his third term in Congress when he joined the Cabinet in 1961, and in May of that year Morris won the seat in a special election...

...When someone asked about his stand on the Middle East, he mentioned that the Israeli ambassador had been in his office for "a long and very confidential briefing" just two weeks before...

...On his way inside the Burbank studios, Udall was reminded by one of his aides that Johnny Carson had been having some fun with his name on the "Tonight" show...

...It was a model speech for the occasion, an all-purpose, twenty-minute soft-sell, blending humor, good will, and concern in approximately equal measure...

...By late 1968, Udall had been in the House for seven years and, as he recalls, "had heard the grumbling about seniority and the talk about revolution, but when the crunch came along nobody would rock the boat...

...But he doesn't tell those self-effacing little stories any more...

...Stewart Udall, then serving as his brother's campaign manager, was waiting to meet the car when it arrived outside the Malibu beach house where fifty or so "people with reach" were waiting to meet the candidate.'' People with reach " w a s the candidate' s term for people who have money and are listened to by others who have money, too...

...He is six-foot-five: fabulous...

...The family has provided the state with so many ranking politicians of both parties, so many doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, merchants, and ranchers, that when the Udall Family Organization holds its annual reunion the event is often reported in the press...

...Ten Udalls were practicing law in t h e state at t h e time, and five Udalls were judges...

...Seeing Udall with hometown friends in Tucson, at work in his office, at home with his wife Ella, campaigning in several different cities, one is struck by his abundant calm, his graceful manners, the deep attention he seems to give to every conversation...

...I'm in this, and I'm in it to win, but not just for myself...

...The corporate income tax is riddled with concessions, exceptions, loopholes, and plain giveaways...

...I think I know who I am and where I'm from and I know where my roots a r e , " he said...

...Once in the car, Udall wedged a knee against the dashboard and settled back for a meditative chew on a small cigar stump he withdrew from a jacket pocket...

...His first wife, Pat, did not take well to life in Washington, and in the fall of 1965 she asked for a divorce...

...Ihappen to think that I've got as good a shot as anyone...

...I am co-author of new legislation designed to end the practice by which Government agencies set up to police industry on behalf of the people become t h e fawning stooges and 'yes sir' errand boys for those very industries...

...Barry Farrell, based in Los Angeles, is a contributing editor of Harper's...

...I keep getting this reaction, 'You seem like such a normal, sensible person—how come you're running for President?' I say I'm reasonably certain that come July '76 there will be a convention, and that the Party will choose its nominee, and that the nominee will be ahuman being...

...I keep pointing out that there's no training school for the Presidency...

...But life has been pretty good to me, and I don't have any reason to want to take myself too seriously or to go out after more...

...Two years after his challenge a> McCormack, Udall ran against Hale Boggs for Majority Leader...

...The forty-three House members who formally urged him to run in a resolution calling him "one of the most engaging personalities" in Congress have since been joined by more than fifteen others who have offered him assurances of support when the time is ripe...

...Applause rippled across the sunny Malibu patio as the Congressman stepped forward...

...Johns...

...It is a place of cactus and adobe, of dry winters and hot summers, of deserts and piney mountains, of towns like Bisbee, Tombstone, and Oracle Junction, of Indian reservations and bombing ranges and treeless national forests...

...Udall said to give it a try, explaining that " w e ' r e trying to get on talk shows to take advantage of my humor.'' Then he headed downstairs to be made up for the news show, and in the bright lights, with the makeup man working over him, he looked brilliantly cast to play Lincoln...

...Ford or Mrs...

...The first Udalls in America arrived from England in 1851 and soon journeyed west with the persecuted Mormon " s a i n t s . " They settled farmland around Nephi, Utah, and became prosperous in the service of the Deseret Kingdom, which Brigham Young had established in the great, silent canyons of the country he called Zion...

...The 1960s were filled with personal and political crises for Udall...

...He has never been the kind of Congressman who counts his mail before voting...

...The Presidents we now revere weren't recognized for their greatness at birth...

...Udall then often turns to the food industry, pointing out that three companies sell 82 per cent of all cold breakfast cereal...

...Udall has been among the first to denounce one of the devices by which corporate power has grown to such staggering lengths: " W e must act swiftly and decisively to halt industry domination of so-called 'independent' regulatory agencies...

...A Tucson city official recalls that Udall quietly broke the news to friends and associates, managing everything so discreetly that when the announcement appeared in the newspaper, "even the Mormons weren't too u p s e t . " Three years later, he married Ella Royston, an attractive, irrepressible woman who then worked as a secretary on Capitol Hill...

...Richard Nixon spent twenty-five years making 'ambition' a dirty word, but I think my ambition is different from a raw desire for glory or for power over t h e lives of millions...

...Lines well received in this seaside enclave were lines that went over well the day before at a garden party in Tucson, and the day before that at a banquet in New Orleans...

...You feel invigorated, strong, and pretty soon you're telling yourself, 'I can stay in here forever if I like.' " In t h e early days of the campaign, before he had begun to gather his present momentum, there were some awkward moments...

...At election time, Udall turns up in all corners of the district, flying in by Piper Arrow, and the people have returned him to office six times, always by a margin larger than the time before...

...In a speech in El Paso, he returned to the subject: "The 'free enterprise' system we speak of so often and so proudly isn't very free and doesn't show much enterprise any more...

...As a divorced and remarried man, a sipper of scotch, a chewer of unlit cigars, and an old-fashioned Truman-style cusser, Udall is what the Mormons sadly call a "jack...

...Instead of setting up a Western White House or a Florida White House, he would just go away for the weekend...

...A year after their arrival, they were well enough settled for David to hire a bookkeeper, a woman named Ida Hunt whom he described in his memoirs as " a charming girl with a wealth of auburn hair and the gift of song...

...He broke with the church over its exclusion of blacks from the priesthood while still in his early twenties, and a few years after going to Congress (and having the last of his children) he chose the Mormon Tabernacle to deliver a speech on zero population growth that many in Salt Lake City regarded as an act of genuine heresy...

...His soundings had convinced him that he could count on as many as 100 votes on t h e first ballot, but Boggs finished well ahead of him, with 95 votes to his 69...

...Even those who might have felt unsatisfied with its substance could not have been displeased with its tone, and Udall was warmly applauded when he closed his remarks with the story about the politician who runs through his platform for the home folks and winds up saying, "Them's my views, and if you don't like 'em, I'll change ' e m ." There was, of course, something theatrical in the process...

...they beg him not to forget ' 'the curse of Adlai Stevenson.'' But while his humor may sometimes get the best of him, it also serves to shelter his abiding optimism—he seems to have a joke to deflect every doubt...

...That Christmas Eve, h e made up his mind to run against the venerable John McCormack for House Speaker in order to pose the issue of new leadership...

...And I think that thing we call roots can be very important...

...Itis, rather, the kind of ambition instilled by my background...

...He once had a murder conviction reversed by his father's court because of his inflammatory language and overzealousness, and on another occasion he argued unsuccessfully for the death penalty in a case in which he found the defendant so likable that upon his release from prison he set him up with a loan...

...But the accident happened at such an early age tht he was able to compensate spectacularly for whatever it had cost him...

...He has struck harder than ever on corporate monopolies, emphasizing in speeches around the country that the major industries of the nation, including oil, steel, and automobiles, are dominated by a few huge corporations which earn fabulous profits by controlling the market and fixing their own prices...

...Among those who support himforthe Presidency, his willingness to swim against the tide is the quality most often cited as showing his fitness for the job...

...Perhaps the Fairness Doctrine got in the way—there were hardly days enough in a month to allow all t h e candidates to appear...

...The very evils attributed to state socialism are present in many of our major industries without the benefits of administration in the public interest...

...four sell 80 per cent of all canned goods—and just one company sells 90 per cent of the soup in the country...

...His near two-to-one victories in recent years have been so commanding that one of his last challengers saw fit to run under the brave slogan, "Sink the Mighty Mo...

...The potential of religion to emerge as an issue in Udall's campaign is complicated by his apostate status within his church...

...He said he would work to break up the vertical integration in the oil, auto, food, and drug industries, restoring competition, cutting prices, curtailing the powers of "corporate executives who are answerable neither to the public nor the marketplace...

...A yet-to-be-released Congressional staff study will show, he says, that if the food monopolies were broken up, prices would drop 25 per cent...

...An athlete and pilot: sensational...

...Running through a brief account of his stands on the major issues, he promised a "tough, lean, adequate" national defense that would pare at least 15 per cent from the Pentagon's budget...

...He is intelligent, articulate, conscientious, and witty, and his rangy western manner seems to work as well in New England as it does in the South...

...Basically, I underestimated the extent to which the House is a comfortable haven," he says...

...In high school he was captain of the basketball team, editor of the newspaper, star in the school play, president of the student body, and quarterback of the football team— a quarterback who also marched in the band at halftime...

...The district stretches across the southern portion of the state, with almost 90 per cent of its half-million residents centered around Tucson...

...His Administration, Udall added, would undertake "a massive re-education of the American people,'' who had yet to learn t h a t ' 'the free ride is over'' in their use of land and energy...

...When asked about detente, he said that "the top Soviet people I'm in touch with say they want stability...

...This set of facts could cost him the black vote, the Mormon vote, both, or neither, depending on how it is approached...

...For him, far more than press clippings and applause, they make t h e chase worth while...

...His poise and intelligence were equal to the few barbed questions the luncheon guests had for him, and soon it was evident that he had made some new friends among the king-makers of Malibu...

...The first half included Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who won handily...

...Having come from relative obscurity into serious contention in a short time, Udall is still in full possession of his wit and in fair control of his ego...

...So is his Mount Rushmore profile...

...4 'At first it's an awful shock, but then it starts to feel good...

...A Mormon: forget it...

...Udall is a politician who is used to winning, and he plays t h e game by winners' rules...

...I lost the votes of all kinds of liberals who saw their self-interest threatened...

...I'm a one-eyed Mormon Democratfrom Arizona...

...I'm speaking hypothetically, of course—such a thing could never happen...

...Although Udall retains considerable pride in the ' 'willingness to face a tough decision'' that his challenge displayed, he concedes that his optimism misguided him...

...Gazing out at the beach beyond the roadside, he said that if he were elected the first thing he would do would be to rid t h e job of its imperial tone and trappings...

...Wisconsin's Udall-for-President organization was strengthened by the announcement that five of the seven Democrats in the state's Congressional delegation as well as the speaker of the state house of representatives and a number of ranking legislators were supporting Udall...