Gaylord Nelson and the Myth of the White Knight
Shapiro, Walter
Gaylord Nelson and the Myth of the White Knight by Walter Shapiro The Mayaguez crisis provided Gaylord Nelson with the kind of exposure most Democratic presidential candidates would swap half...
...There is an inherent strain in interviewing someone and trying to divine what sort of President he might make...
...It’s different with Nelson...
...Nelson did, however, oppose Nixon’s general revenue-sharing bill because it separated the ability to tax from the ability to spend...
...A year later Nelson turned down an opportunity to become a national celebrity by spurning an invitation from Sam Ervin to serve on the Watergate Committee...
...But the real issue which dominated this period was Nelson’s decision to depart from liberal orthodoxy and support a sales tax to pay for his programs...
...Contrary to expectations, Nelson won on Truman’s coattails and began a ten-year career in the state senate...
...What must be recognized is that politics is a comparative, as well as a competitive, sport...
...sooner or later, you’re going to pass the first story...
...When questioned by the press about his silence, Nelson would say somewhat petulantly, ‘‘I don’t think there’s any more to say...
...However, in 1965, he did join Morse and Gruening in voting against Vietnam appropriations...
...Repeatedly, Nelson, who grew up in rural Wisconsin, returns to his frustration that his children had to attend large suburban high schools: “I see where Birch Bayh wants federal funds to fight crime in the schools...
...Long calls Nelson “one of the most effective” Senate liberals, but what he means is that Nelson is not above a little mutual back-scratching...
...For example, he refused to support the very popular Jackson Amendment, which made a domestic political issue out of the plight of Soviet Jews...
...Ths was about the same time that the Madison Capital-Times, the leading liberal voice in Wisconsin, tried to promote Nelson with a fr on t-page article headlined, “Nelson Presidential Bid Pushed...
...Nelson’s speculative mind seems more suited to larger conceptual questions than to the detail work inherent in drafting complex legislation...
...Mary McGrory portrayed the Wisconsin Senator as a courageous public servant “berated by his constituency” for refusing to take a jingoistic stand...
...In late January, Arthur Schlesinger, writing in The Wall Street Journal said, “If Senator Gaylord Nelson, who was an admirable governor before he became a wise and effective senator, were to offer himself, he would instantly command wide support throughout the party, but he remains obstinately resistant...
...Nelson’s s ta teme n t wasn’t deliberately calculated to galvanize a national movement...
...One hour later Eagleton’s name was offered to the convention...
...Among those listed as part of an “informal coalition of state and national Democratic leaders and labor union executives” backing a Nelson campaign were William Fulbright, Leonard Woodcock (who immediately denied any involvement), the head of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, and several figures long active in state politics...
...Crime in the schoolswhat the hell does that say about our educational system...
...It’s like jumping off a high building...
...Anthony Lewis of The New York Times likened the incident to the Gulf of Tonkin and hailed Nelson as “the outstanding voice of reason and proportion...
...Take the 1968 primary contests between McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy...
...Here is the man who will lead us into the sunlight of a brighter tomorrow...
...At a time when most liberal Democrats were preoccupied with the civil rights struggle, Nelson was calling preservation of our natural resources the “most urgent domestic crisis...
...It was this network of Senate friendships which led to Nelson’s involvement in the Eagleton affair...
...The insularity of the life experience of a good man like Gaylord Nelson should be a reminder of how difficult a country we are to understand, let alone govern...
...Close friends have noted how little Gaylord Nelson has changed since he entered the Wisconsin legislature in the late 1940s...
...Perhaps his finest moment came during the 1964 debate on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, when he argued vigorously that it might be construed by the President to imply that Congress “consents to a radical change in our mission...
...Jimmy Carter is not even considered because he was, after all, governor of Georgia...
...Bureaucrats are afraid of their shadows,” Nelson said in another context...
...For Gaylord Nelson, this hero’s role came almost by accident...
...Most men in public life leave the small towns of their boyhood far behind, resurrecting them only for the most contrived of campaign appearances...
...Gaylord Nelson’s last words to me were, “I still don’t know why you’re doing this, but...
...In an America where many highly educated people are not entirely fulfilled by their work, politics has increasingly become a mode of personal expression...
...Nelson wanted Kennedy to turn a routine conservation tour into a national crusade to sound the alarm about the impending cataclysm: “The destruction of the landscape, the pollution of our air and water [and] the overuse and abuse of our outdoor resources...
...He was born in 1916 in Clear Lake, a small village of about 700 people in northwestern Wisconsin...
...His father was the kind of country doctor who placed his faith in the Progressive Party and the LaFollettes...
...Walter Mondale called him “the best-liked man in the Senate...
...It is hard to resist the temptation to see hidden insight in pedestrian statements such as, “The Senate is a hell of a place to learn anything...
...I once had my staff figure out how many square miles we’ve paved over with highways in this country...
...Wisconsin politics and Gaylord Nelson’s career were shaped by the 1946 Republican primary in which Joseph McCarthy defeated “young” Bob LaFollette for the Senate nomination...
...Friends tell of Nelson slipping out the side door of his office late in the afternoon while his staff is lined up outside his office, vying to see him about their pet projects...
...He is a shy man who often shambles into a room awkwardly if he isn’t expected or hasn’t a well-defined role to perform...
...This suspension of dsbelief most strongly afflicts two different types of participants in the campaign dramathe campaign workers and the magazine profile writers...
...Bill Cherkasky, who until recently was Nelson’s administrative assistant, describes Nelson’s schedule as pretty much nine-t 0- five, nine- to-six, and admits, “Generally he doesn’t take things home with him to study all night...
...This year Nelson remembered the favor and supported a similar tax break (ultimately defeated) for Chrysler...
...Yet in the end Nelson backed down...
...Although his amendment to limit the Resolution was rejected, he, unlike Morse and Gruening, voted for final passage...
...What people want from a candidate is to know where we are going, what the big picture is, and what sacrifices may be required...
...Considered one of the intellectual leaders of the state senate, he had, and then lost, the post of minority leader...
...Nelson, of course, declined, explaining recently, “When I told George ‘no’ I exaggerated a little...
...But there was no pattern to these efforts, no master $an, and soon Nelson’s connection with Earth Day was largely forgotten...
...It is almost that if a man as ordinary as Jerry Ford can be President, then one can find somethng latently presidential about the way Gaylord Nelson talks about planting a Japanese tomato ring in his garden...
...In an earlier draft of this article, I actually found myself writing about how “Nelson’s strength is conveyed by the way he leans forward and stares at you intently...
...Thanks largely to Republican support, the sales tax was enacted...
...No Masochist, He The erratic quality of Nelson’s legislative performance has given him a reputation as a “lazy senator...
...More than seven months later, Mondale’s farewell statement still hovers over the Democratic Party...
...What Udall failed to overcome was the Mondale Paradox: anyone who is willing to run for President is temperamentally unsuited for the job...
...He has grown adept at discouraging such speculation with comments like, “If I ever said what I really think, it would scare the hell out of people so much, it wouldn’t get me anywhere...
...He even holds the unique distinction of having opposed the confirmations of Henry kssinger, Jerry Ford, and Nelson Rockefeller...
...There is another reason for this passionate approach to presidential politics...
...The prevailing attitudes toward the Mondale Paradox reflect something larger: a widespread longing to view presidential candidates as white knights in shning armor...
...The Last of the Early Doves The other leading example of Nelson’s foresight is, of course, Vietnam...
...Washington Post columnist Tom Braden, who generally only gushes over Nelson Rockefeller, devoted a whole column to praising Nelson for following Adlai Stevenson’s dictum of “talking sense to the American people...
...Nelson is the last of the early critics of the Vietnam war left in the Senate...
...Russell Long, chairman of the Finance Committee, on which Nelson also serves, implied this when he described Nelson as “well-versed in those areas where he takes an interest...
...But Nelson complained that an independent cancer agency would undermine the concept of the National Institutes of Health by giving special treatment to one disease...
...Throughout 1965 and 1966-the key years of the Vietnam build-up-there were long periods during which he did not even mention the issue...
...To Nelson, the love of the outdoors is not abstract but personal...
...One does not come away from a conversation with Gaylord Nelson awed by his brilliance...
...Nelson’s Senate voting record has been almost impeccable by ADA standards...
...It shouldn’t be surprising...
...He has neither a breath-taking command of the specifics of government nor a way of speaking which leaves the listener transfixed...
...When reality was finally perceived, this myopia led to bitter disillusionment and its crippling aftereffects...
...Nelson, then practicing law in Madison, where he had attended law school at the University of Wisconsin, was in the forefront of this crossover...
...This idea is refreshing coming from a liberal Democrat, since it is inherently anti-bureaucratic...
...One reason for their duration is the difficulty that Nelson has had in turning the voluminous testimony into legislation...
...Udall tried to explain how his desire for the presidency was different from the sort of naked ambition so recently displayed by Richard Nixon...
...While understandable in human terms, there is something faintly disquieting about Nelson’s friendships with Senate conservatives...
...These days Nelson admits that his record on the war was not flawless...
...On the positive side, this illustrates that Nelson is not the sort of senator who delights in manipulating the levers of power, but it also suggests the difficulty he may have in accomplishing anything...
...3) detente and the military budget ; 4) transportation...
...McCarthy’s and McGovern’s limitations should have been apparent from the beginning, and acknowledged, but most liberals chose to ignore them...
...Screw Mississippi, it’s their problem...
...Nelson was even more adamant about ducking the spotlight in 1972 when George McGovern made hm his second choice (after Ted Kennedy) for vice president...
...Yet the passions of the McCarthy backers, in particular, are a reminder that those primaries symbolized much more than simply slightly differing approaches to government...
...Searching for a Pattern It isdifficult to get a handle on Nelson’s 12-year Senate career...
...After declining the nomination himself, Nelson recommended Eagleton enthusiastically, telling McGovern “I know him...
...David Carley, who was in charge of natural resources when Nelson was governor, said, “I don’t think that Gaylord Nelson wants everyone in the world to know him...
...Eagleton, the central figure in the whole psychodrama, had nothing but praise for Nelson’s conduct in an awkward situation: “It was an emotionally charged atmosphere...
...My kids went through Be thesda-Chevy Chase High School...
...It was a small, two-man practice with labor unions as the major clients...
...I said my wife would leave me...
...The greatness of the American system was built on waste,” continued Nelson with a refrain which he has obviously repeated many times...
...This group still gets together about once a month, and, as Stevens put it, “is held together by the compatibility of our wives and financial circumstances...
...But why screw up all 50 states because of the six corrupt ones...
...Clearly, Gaylord Nelson should be taken at his word and not be viewed as a candidate for President...
...Instead, Nelson complained during our interview, “Kennedy screwed it up, he just didn’t understand the issue...
...When he wants to, however, Nelson can be a highly effective senator...
...My son said to me,” Nelson recalled, “you should be on the Senate floor filibustering against the war every day...
...This lack of apparent ambition is characteristic of Nelson...
...I Just an Intellectual Exercise “I don’t know why you are doing this,” were virtually Gaylord Nelson’s opening words as I entered his Senate office for the first of two lengthy interviews for this article...
...Although he has held office continuously for 26 years, Nelson’s political experience is limited because Wisconsin is less than a microcosm of the union...
...Senate are quick to use each minor elective post as a stepping stone, Gaylord Nelson in ten years made only one bid for higher office-an uphill 1954 congressional race which Nelson admits he was not “that anxious to win...
...A friend of Nelson’s described him as the last man to go to if you had a cousin who needed a job in a hurry...
...Health has also been the area of Nelson’s most single-minded congressional effort-seven years of hearings on the drug industry, which aides claim is a record length...
...Is there a perfect presidential candidate just waiting in the wings, far too sensitive to ever declare himself and come right out on stage...
...Nelson never took it too seriously: “I worked just hard enough at the law to feed the family and pay off the mortgage...
...Asked about turning points in his career, Nelson drew a blank, finally muttering something about no other Democrat wanting to run for the state senate in 1948...
...This magazine has shared in these attitudes...
...Heading the list of potentially attractive candidates was Gaylord Nelson, whom Clancy described as “one of the least likely to run, and at the same time the man regarded by many as the most suited for the job...
...Despite the furor, Nelson probably could have been elected to a third term as governor in 1962...
...The legslation to establish the National Cancer Institute as an independent entity was as close as Congress ever came to a roll-call vote on death...
...The only way we could get Gaylord to run was to promise him that he would lose,” McMillin recalled...
...This is basically a conservative notion Since it would place a tremendous burden on the states to justify any new spending program which would cancel out the tax rebates...
...On the first anniversary of Earth Day, he made another college tour...
...Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...For a while that was my feeling about Gaylord Nelson...
...He still sees hmself as a Clear Lake boy,” said Joe Miller, a labor lobbyist who has known him since the 1950s...
...On reflection, I realized that I had been inadvertently down-playing evidence, like the implications of Nelson’s lack of ambition, which didn’t fit my thesis...
...He still has that country boy sense of awe, asking, ‘Is it really me who’s governor...
...As Bill Cherkasky, staff director of the Small Business Committee, explained, “Teddy Kennedy gives us a few hearings on things, but more often he tries to swipe our ideas on drug legislation...
...We have become an urban nation, but Gaylord Nelson’s standards of reference are still Clear Lake and Madison...
...There is a certain type of liberal who differentiates himself from the mass by the type of political candidate he supports...
...Still, Nelson was denounced by Pat Lucey, who was then state Democratic chairman, and most of the other liberal and union leaders in the state...
...It was either that or going back to the full-time practice of law,” he recalled...
...On that score Nixon was talking the right language, even though I don’t think he understood what he was really getting at with the revenue sharing...
...But there is a larger question involved as well...
...Nelson is clearly not driven ’ by an intense desire to get thngs done, but that does not mean that he is a lightweight who sees the Senate as just a high-class sinecure...
...Moreover, there is nothing about Nelson’s views on the military budget or transportation to differentiate him from other liberal Democrats who want to cut defense spending and upgrade mass transit...
...But it is clear that Nelson is too much a man of the Senate to be much of a radical...
...None of the candidates currently seeking the nomination has aroused much enthusiasm, and one reason for this curious lassitude is that they have somehow become tarred by the very act of seeking the office...
...It was not so long ago that liberals regarded Gene McCarthy and George McGovern as exemplars of the heroic ideal...
...Although Nelson’s position was unusual during the week of the crisis, in hindsight its wisdom won him the praise of many leading columnists...
...I’ve gone fishing with him and his kid and my kid...
...Here, in this office, things are the other way around...
...For this reason alone, Gaylord Nelson is worth examining in some detail...
...When Nelson decided to run for governor, there were those who feared that he might be too indolent for the job...
...But for Gaylord Nelson it was another brief flurry of attention which soon gave way to the low profile which has characterized his 12-year career in the Senate...
...True, the modern presidential campaign, with its emphasis on total professionalism, has tended to become as homogenized as the Holiday Inns which house the candidate...
...He has few qualms about standing alone on an issue...
...Even Nelson’s friends acknowledge the charge, although, of course, they de-emphasize its importance...
...Nelson’s views on both decentralization and the environment have been shaped by his life experience...
...One observer said that Nelson’s close friends tend to be mostly “good drinking companions...
...Gaylord Nelson remains a little difficult to fathom...
...Nelson’s habits sometimes frustrate excessively zealous staffers...
...We depleted the resources of an entire continent...
...To Gaylord Nelson giantism also has a personal side...
...I’ve argued the states rights side of things for 15 years,” he said...
...Nelson was described by aides as a “man who won’t act on proposals for months, but a man who they can brief in five minutes on complex issues when his interest is aroused...
...I’m for more social security and raising the minimum wage, too,” Nelson said, “but you can’t run a presidential campaign on that...
...This would give each state the option of spending it themselves or returning it to State residents in the form of rebates On their federal income taxes...
...One of our major political problems is how to get short-lived individuals to face long-term problems which require immediate sacrifice...
...He is convinced that the energy crisis has not disappeared and can only be solved if this nation develops an ethic of self-sacrifice...
...For campaign foot soldiers who sign on with a candidate months before the first primary, this ego-involvement in the fortunes of their boss is understandable...
...They didn’t know the student council, they didn’t know the football or basketball players, they had no real sense of belonging...
...Nelson’s roots are rural, rather than urban...
...But few of Nelson’s Senate friendships are designed to be functional...
...The Clear Lake BOY Nelson’s life may not have been filled with high drama, but the biographical facts are significant...
...Since, in those days, the state legislature was a part-time affair, Nelson continued to practice law...
...The best regional unit of government is state government...
...Gaylord Nelson and the Myth of the White Knight by Walter Shapiro The Mayaguez crisis provided Gaylord Nelson with the kind of exposure most Democratic presidential candidates would swap half their entourage for...
...Here he paused for emphasis...
...Nelson recalled with relief that “the whole thing was unnecessary because when I saw Tom, he told me that he agreed to get off the ticket.’’ Nelson also was asked to be present during the meeting where McCovern and Eagleton worked out the details of the abdication...
...Only with such a compromise candidate is there the possibility of nominating someone who has not been tainted by the very process of seeking the nomination...
...Friends suggest that he has never totally absorbed the implications of his painless rise in politics...
...Profile writers suffer from a similar, if less often perceived, malady...
...That’s 76,000 square miles of asphalt...
...Because of his affable nature, Nelson is sometimes too willing a compromiser, going along with Russell Long too readily on matters before the Finance Committee...
...Frank Church, for example, is automatically dismissed because he opposed gun control...
...It was a move which was fiscally necessary, since the state’s income tax was already the highest in the country and it would have been painful to increase it...
...There is much that is praiseworthy in the way he has not lost his identity in the transition from Madison to Washington...
...In an interview in April, Wisconsin Governor Pat Lucey said that at the end of last year he had failed in an attempt to convince Nelson to run for President...
...Ted Stevens, Republican Senator from Alaska, recalled that back in 1970 Nelson had taken the lead in organizing a small, informal group of senators who could not afford-or were not interested in-the glitter life in Washington...
...Similarly his failure to assert himself in the Senate, let alone dabble in presidential politics, reflects the languor which has characterized his entire career...
...In 1948 at the urging of his law partner, John Lawton, and Miles McMillin, who later became publisher of the Madison CapitalTimes, Nelson was induced to run for the state senate...
...In fact, it was the need to make ends meet which helped force Nelson into running for governor in 1958...
...Mondale’s withdrawal touched off an avalanche of praise for his candor in dramatizing the pointless brutality of the quest for a presidential nomination...
...Instead, he said, the campaign is much too fragmented, with candidates running around the country making 657 specific appeals to 657 specific groups...
...Even this chairmanship carries limited responsibility, since the Committee has no legislative functions and can only hold “educational” hearings...
...Nelson never took his political career that seriously either...
...This enchantment with reluctant candidates meshes well with the current Harry Truman revival and its comforting message that greatness is to be found in unlikely places...
...Nelson’s concern with conservation was apparent from the day he entered the Senate in 1963...
...In March we published “All the Presidential Men” by Paul Clancy, which listed eight reluctant congressional Democrats who seem to have the ability and the imagination to serve as effective presidents...
...Relations with the state legislature were amicable, considering that it was dominated by Republicans during his four years as governor...
...That same year, Nelson, in one of the more foresighted moves of his career, tried to alert President Kennedy to the “awful dimension of the [environmental] catastrophe...
...Sooner or later, we must lower our sights to realistic levels, rather than continue this self-defeating quest for the Holy Grail in the form of the perfect, unblemis hed presidential candidate...
...From here it is but a short step to the kind of political purism which dogmatically rejects candidates because they don’t meet exalted standards of perfection...
...it was made largely to satisfy the Wisconsin papers who had been badgering him for a reaction...
...Gaylord Nelson fancies himself something of an incendiary: “On most congressional staffs, you have the staff trying to make a radical out of the incumbent...
...For a campaign profile to work it has to take one of two tacks: either it has to be denunciatory or else the writer has to declare, “Eureka, I have found him...
...Long gave this specific example: In the late 1960s he helped Nelson by arranging a $22-million tax break for American Motors, headquartered in Kenosha, Wisconsin...
...Gaylord Nelson, fresh out of the Navy, ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature that year as a Republican on the LaFollette ticket...
...It’s 76,000 square miles...
...In retrospect, the policy differences which separated them seem laughably narrow...
...In my home town of Clear Lake there were just 28 of us in my graduating class...
...Gaylord Nelson comes out of an entirely different small-town tradition...
...Is It Really Me?’ What sort of man are we left with...
...Despite his reputation, Nelson was a surprisingly vigorous governor...
...I’ve argued the case against excessive federal control since I’ve been here...
...Hell, I needed some excuse...
...Then there is Nelson’s narrowness...
...Sure, there are corrupt states, sure, there are incompetent states...
...One symbolic gesture which bore legislative fruit was his lone vote against the War on Cancer in 1971...
...The real problem is giantism, but instead we’ll just end up appropriating some money to fight crime in the schools...
...And that is the validity of the Mondale Paradox...
...Much of Proxmire’s vigorous activity is, of course, little more than frenzied self-promotion...
...This dilemma explains the current enthusiasm for candidates who might be drafted, kicking and screaming, by a Democratic convention...
...instead, after some hesitation, he ran against and defeated Republican Senator Alexander Wiley...
...To remedy this lack of accountability, he talks with enthusiasm about a proposal “to cede to the states a certain percentage of federal tax money...
...For most public figures such national exposure would be linked with some sort of ambition for higher office...
...This mood found its symbol last November when Walter Mondale dropped out of the presidential race because he couldn’t stomach spending the next two years in motel rooms living out of a suitcase...
...drove my mother to dream for, to work for, a better life for the Hopi Indians...
...To cite an inconvenient example, the current rapprochement with China was a direct result of Richard Nixon’s obsession to leave tangible monuments of his Presidency...
...Laziness is a difficult characteristic to judge, since it requires an evaluation of the work which is being avoided...
...Part of Nelson’s appeal is, of course, his deep and sincere reluctance to be a candidate...
...They draft insurance policy after insurance policy to prevent themselves from being caught in a mistake...
...After the 1972 presidential campaign, armchair analysts stressed that George McGovern’s real problem was that he is the son of a Methodist minister...
...Running for President forces a candidate to come to grips with varieties of people and issues: which would remain abstractions if life were encompassed by just Wisconsin and Washington...
...Even during the 1960s these issues were always a bit peripheral to Nelson’s basic concerns...
...The one issue which seems to genuinely arouse Nelson’s interest is conservation...
...Nelson fears “another Quemoy-Matsu campaign” in 1976 and complains that no one who runs for President “talks about the big picture...
...In a sense, Nelson some times appears radical almost because h s life has been-for want of a better word-so sheltered that it is radically out of tune with the rest of the country...
...Walter Mondale, too, is the son of a small-town midwestern minister...
...But as long as we begin each campaign with t h e hope of canonizing a candidate we are doomed to become cynically disillusioned when the glow finally wears off...
...I clearly could have said more than I did...
...If we had the refinery capacity, sure, we could pump all the oil we need,” he said, “but then you are talking about running out of oil in 10, 20, or 40 years...
...For someone without either money or a famous name, Nelson’s rise in politics has come with surprisingly little personal cost...
...Nelson sketched out four basic themes he would raise in a presidential campaign- 1) giantism...
...That’s as big as the state of Wisconsin with another 20,000 square miles thrown in...
...That’s why most federal regulations are so complex...
...For those wanting executive experience, Nelson was a strong and effective governor of Wisconsin from 1959 until he entered the Senate in 1963...
...2) the resources question...
...In an effort to win this sort of acclaim, the average liberal senator assembles a staff of top-flight foreignpolicy consultants poised to dispense statesmanlike advice during a crisis...
...Is it really me who’s in the Senate?’ He also has a country-boy inferiority complex and that kind of humility explains a hell of a lot of his charm.’’ Another old friend could see Nelson happy as the kind of attorney who Jimmy Stewart portrayed in Anatomy of a Murder-the underambitious northern Michigan lawyer, whose major interests are hunting and fishing and maintaining just enough of a law practice to make ends meet...
...talking with supporters in Florida, or trying to win the allegiance of black leaders in Los Angeles...
...Sure, the liberals respond by saying state government is corrupt, incompetent, and discriminatory...
...To an ideologue like Fred Harris, the phrase “giantism” immediately conjures up the ritual cry to break up the large corporations...
...There is no logical pattern to the issues with which he has been identified-automobile tires, generic drugs, Vietnam, the National Cancer Institute, and small business...
...Gaylord is still quite devoted to the LaFollette tradition,” explained John Wyngaard, the dean of Wisconsin political reporters...
...Part of the problem is that he has to get the cooperation of Ted Kennedy, who chairs the relevant legislative subcommittee...
...He even allowed the publication of a small book featuring some of the youthful correspondence he received about the environment, modeled after Children’s Letters to God...
...A Senate colleague said, “He’s a very private sort of guy...
...A campaign like ths isn’t perfect, but it is the only crash course we have to teach potential Presidents what sort of country they are seeking to govern...
...When a special Democratic convention was called in opposition to the sales tax, Nelson told them, in effect, “If you don’t like what I’m doing, you can get yourself another boy...
...Nelson reportedly said at the time, “I am not an intellectual whore...
...Relations between the two have never been close...
...and it was good to have a common-sense mutual friend there to help us put things together...
...But there is much which can be learned from traveling around the country before the primaries...
...Once having taken the latter tack, the author is as committed, if not more so, as any campaign worker...
...Is your standard of living higher with three cars or with one car and a good mass transit system...
...He likes nothing better than to be told that he’s a fit successor in the Senate to old Bob and young Bob...
...Nelson was one of the few Northern senators who supported Russell Long over Kennedy for Senate Whip in 1969...
...Given the current mood, it is easy to take a man’s protestations that he does not want to be President as evidence of such a finely developed sensibility that ths alone becomes a compelling reason why he should be given the job...
...It is not enough to say that ambition has become discredited by Watergate...
...In a sense, the Clancy article was designed to be a shopping list of dark horses for delegates at a deadlocked convention...
...I told Fritz, I’ve told Mo,” Nelson said, “don’t get caught in a situation where you have the presidential nomination and nothing to say...
...the Nelsons never have had much money...
...The anecdotes which friends tell about him seem to automatically revolve around hunting and fishing trips...
...Nothng materialized, but one of those involved, former state party chairman David Carley, said later that he had been on the verge of organizing a Nelson for President Committee when he was dissuaded by a phone call from Nelson himself...
...Although Udall struggled manfully, it wasn’t easy...
...While everyone else was rallying around the flag, Nelson had the presence of mind to raise the right questions...
...The problem has so affected active candidates that Morris Udall felt obligated to meet it head-on in an article written for The New York Times in late May...
...In the midst of the ensuing crisis, McCovern requested that Nelson ask Eagleton to leave the ticket...
...In a revealing comment, David Carley noted that Nelson was really a conservationist, rather than an urban environmentalist...
...Wisconsin state senator Carl Thompson, a friend from law school, said, “Gaylord looks at the kind of activity of someone like a Bill Proxmire as some thing resembling masochism...
...Although Nelson’s reluctance is genuine, he has, almbst as an iiitellectual exercise, developed strong feelings about what a presidential campaign ought to be...
...There is a flatness to the landscape of Gaylord Nelson’s life, a lack of any evident conflicts or difficult decisions...
...Back in 1970, he was the originator of Earth Day and had an opportunity to become the political incarnation of the entire ecology movement...
...Until he became chairman of the Senate Select Small Business Committee this year, there was no central focus to his committee work...
...On paper, Gaylord Nelson seems to be the ideal liberal dark-horse presidential candidate for 1976, the lund of nominee who might give smoke-filled rooms a good name...
...Nelson’s omissions are revealingnowhere does he mention the urban crisis, race, or poverty...
...its population is just threepercent black and its major urban center is Milwaukee...
...in South Vietnam...
...But it also suggests that Nelson has not been that deeply affected by much that happened along the way...
...His maiden speech was in support of a ban on non-biodegradable detergents...
...The day after President Ford sent in the Marines, Nelson said simply and forthrightly that he believed that absolutely no “vital interest was at sta-ke to justify such a precipitate and violent response...
...It was LaFollette’s defeat which convinced most young Progressives that their political future lay in reviving the state’s moribund Democratic Party...
...His views on decentralization, for example, are a direct outgrowth of h s small-town origins and his experience as governor of a progressive state...
...There must have been a thousand kids in their class...
...While most politicians who make it to the U.S...
...There is, of course, a major distinction between not rejecting candidates for a single blot on their records and ignoring the pattern of entire careers, as in the cases of Henry Jackson and Lloyd Bentsen...
...David Obey, who represents the area of Wisconsin where Nelson grew up, explained, “You really have to see northern Wisconsin to understand what Nelson wants to preserve...
...Not only was he asked to run for vice president in 1972, but later he also played the sensitive role of an honest broker between McGovern and Tom Eagleton...
...that] drove my father to study law by mail and...
...Other than expressing the predictable “desire to help a troubled nation,” the best that Udall could come up with were a few comments about being motivated by “the kind of ambition...
...Our resources are like a bank account...
...In contrast to many politicians, Nelson’s languor has spared him from many of the well-publicized effects that a congressional career has on family life and ordinary human relationships...
...Even before the Muyuguez incident there were others who saw Gaylord Nelson as the ideal reluctant candidate for 1976...
...That’s 76,000 square miles taken away from our protein reserves...
...Nelson danced in the limelight for a moment, following a whirlwind schedule of appearances at college campuses around the country...
...More so than many professions, politics is not an occupation for saints...
...The original virtue of a long presidential campaign was that it could be a learning process for the candidate, as well as for the electorate...
...Both this lack of religious emphasis and his family’s Progressive politics had their impact...
...Are the kind of candidates who would never dream of entering the rough-and-tumble of presidential primaries really superior to those who do...
...He is also a man who was right on the crucial issues of the last decade-Vietnam and the environmentand was right early enough to give him a reputation as a prophet...
...Nelson is a rarity in the Senate: an intelligent, gregarious man who is neither manipulative nor dogmatic...
...Yet Nelson was never really on fire over the Vietnam war...
...Everybody knew everybody, everybody met each morning down at the post office to pick up the mail...
...As for discrimination, with the Voting Rights Act, the voters themselves can deal with it...
...Since none of the likely contenders in 1976 meets this ideal, liberals are now looking elsewhere for salvation...
...Nelson’s destination is often the Monocle, a Capitol Hill bar-restaurant, where he retires to have a drink with friends...
...This has helped Nelson to enjoy a Senate career in which he never really has had to face the consequences of his legislative actions...
...It was a fair criticism...
...It becomes an indicator of Nelson ’s wi de-ranging intellectual tastes that he has a copy of a book, Animal Navigation, resting on top of a recent issue of The Economist...
...But this assessment does not explain the reasons for the uncritical acceptance of the Mondale Paradox or the current fascination with undiscovered presidential prospects...
...or] social ambitions...
...The distinctiveness of Nelson’s views about our national problems lies primarily in the areas of “gmntism” and, to a lesser extent, the “resources question...
...A 1958 Milwaukee Journal profile noted that “Nelson has never shown driving ambition, a fact which some times makes his friends despair...
...Despite opposition from the entire philanthropic health community, Nelson carried the fight to the House, where he helped get the bill modified in conference committee...
...For example, he won the passage of a $50-million land acquisition program to preserve wild and unspoiled portions of the state against the encroachments of developers...
...Clear Lake seems to genuinely provide him with roots and an identity: “It’s a great place, I wish my children grew up there...
...I didn’t do much, though,” Nelson said...
...But this becoming modesty is only part of Nelson’s appeal...
...Further examination may reveal that none of the above candidates is worthy of support for President...
...You can’t afford the depletion of your assets...
...A1 though strongly held, Nelson’s views on the environment are not so vivid and idiosyncratic...
...Although concerned about the concentration of economic power, Nelson, unlike conventional liberals, is also extremely enthusiastic about governmental decentralization...
...Since personal ambition is now suspect, Udall had to make his case entirely in idealistic terms...
...Many of Nelson’s more strongly held views about government are drawn from personal experience rather than any larger conceptual framework...
...It was somewhat disconcerting to hear a would-be presidential candidate say, as we sat on the porch of his suburban Washington home, “This is the only city I’ve ever lived in, except for a short time in Denver during the war...
...How many times do you say it...
...Russell Long praised Nelson as a “catalyst” bringing together such unlikely senators as James Eastland and Mondale...
...Morris Udal1 becomes suspect because at times his congressional voting record reflects more the realities of Arizona politics than .the canons of liberal orthodoxy...
...While George talked with the psychiatrists, I talked with Tom...
...True, he resented the 24-hour-a-day demands of the office, but he got things done...
...After Richard Nixon, a lack of personal assertiveness has become a quality we find attractive in national leaders...
...While that may be an over-statement, Nelson is unique in having a wide range of friendships which cut across ideological, regional and party lines...
...In our infatuation with passivity in politics, we have forgotten that a passion for personal advancement is inextricably connected with the passion to get things done...
...A similar theme emerged from the 1972 Ralph Nader Congress Project, whose profile of Nelson was one of their better efforts...
Vol. 7 • July 1975 • No. 5
