CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

April 10, 1967

Page 8850

SENATOR MUSKIE LAUDED

Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, when a colleague is accorded recognition as an outstanding public servant, it reflects great credit on the Senate as well as on the Member's own State. The latest to be so honored is the junior Senator from Maine [Mr. MUSKIE].

In a Wall Street Journal article of March 28, Senator MUSKIE is accurately portrayed by newsman Norman C. Miller as a man whose "name seldom lands in the headlines," but who is "one of the Senate's most skillful legislators, a pragmatist who works quietly and effectively."

Mr. President, I know of no Member who is more worthy of this praise. The Senator from Maine eschews publicity, works hard, and has gained a well-deserved reputation among his colleagues for integrity, fair dealing, and effectiveness. What is more, his stature grows with each passing year. As a lawmaker, as a great American, and as a thoroughly decent human being, ED MUSKIE has few peers; he is a Senator's Senator.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal article on the junior Senator from Maine be printed at this point in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

MUSKIE OF MAINE -- THOUGH HE SHUNS THE SENATE LIMELIGHT, HIS INFLUENCE IS CONSIDERABLE, AND GAINING

(By Norman C. Miller)

WASHINGTON.-- The tall, lean Senator relaxes in his back-row seat on the Democratic side, his craggy countenance impassive as the orations flow on. A gallery visitor might well conclude that this quiet Senator is just another backbencher, a man of little influence in the chamber.

In the popular sense it is no doubt true that Edmund S. Muskie, the junior Senator from Maine, is a relatively obscure member. His name seldom lands in the headlines; his appearance on national television is rare. But the fact that the limelight has eluded Ed Muskie during eight years in the Senate does not mean that he has failed to achieve an influential role.

On the contrary, in cloakroom speculation about who may someday succeed Mike Mansfield as Democratic Leader, Ed Muskie's name is high on almost everyone's list. Such talk is premature, but it demonstrates the high regard colleagues have for him as one of the Senate's most skillful legislators, a pragmatist who works quietly and effectively for liberal goals without inflaming feelings by indulging in doctrinaire debate. And, since Sen. Muskie has a record of winning by massive margins in Maine, chances are that the 53-year-old Senator will steadily expand his Senate influence for years to come.

This prospect is particularly welcome at the White House. For Ed Muskie has guided through the Senate some of Lyndon Johnson's most controversial programs, notably last year's model cities bill, a legislative innovation given little chance of success until a Muskie compromise disarmed the opposition without sacrificing the essentials. Clearly, the President hopes to make use of Sen. Muskie's talents in future legislative battles.

"The President regards him as a real powerhouse," says a former White House aide. "He's one of the few liberals who's a match for the Southern legislative craftsmen."

There's irony in this admiration. for Ed Muskie is hardly one of Lyndon Johnson's Senate proteges. In fact. when he entered the Senate in 1958 he quickly found himself in the then-Majority Leader's doghouse. and there he stayed for quite some time.

A DEMAND UNHEEDED

The run-in occurred when the Majority Leader demanded the freshman Senator's help in defeating the biennial liberal attempt to amend Senate rules so filibusters could be curbed more easily. Sen. Muskie rejected the demand and voted with the anti-Johnson liberals.

But LBJ won anyway, and his retaliation was swift. Sen. Muskie was assigned to three moribund committees: Government Operations, Public Works and Banking. The assignments were far from satisfying to a man whose ambition on coming to Washington had been to work in the foreign affairs field. In his early years in the Senate, he recalls. "I was very frustrated, lonely, disillusioned and disconsolate."

The Washington letdown was particularly jarring for Sen. Muskie after his remarkable rise to the top in Maine politics as a Democrat in a traditional Republican stronghold.

Son of a tailor who had emigrated from Poland to Rumford, Maine. Edmund Sixtus Muskie worked his way through Bates College, winning a Phi Beta Kappa key, and got his law degree from Cornell in 1939. War interrupted his efforts to establish a practice in Waterville, Maine, and he spent the duration as a junior officer on destroyer escorts in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Returning to Waterville, the inexperienced lawyer found clients scarce. Thus, when local Democratic leaders approached him hunting fresh candidates for the state legislature, young Ed Muskie quickly accepted. The New Deal had cemented his allegiance to the Democratic Party, he recalls, and "I thought it would be interesting to be in the legislature once, while I was waiting for my law practice to build up."

Mr. Muskie won and was quickly captivated by politics. He was to stay in the Maine house for six years, becoming minority leader of a small band of Democrats. During this time, too, he married Jane Gray of Waterville and the first of the couple's five children was born.

In 1952 the rising politician became Maine's Democratic National Committeeman -- just in time to preside over the near collapse of the state's shaky party. Dwight Eisenhower's triumph over Adlai Stevenson wiped out the Federal patronage that had sustained Democratic Party workers for years. And political misfortune was compounded by personal disaster. Early in 1953, while working on a second-story addition to his home, Mr. Muskie fell and broke his back. Almost a year passed before he was fully recovered, and by then he was almost broke financially.

Seemingly, it wasn't a promising prelude to another political campaign. Yet Mr. Muskie and a few other Democrats in 1954 found themselves in control of the Maine party by default; the old leaders had lost interest with the lapse of Federal patronage. Mr. Muskie was picked to run for governor, and scored a stunning upset.

His election as Maine's first Democratic governor in 20 years was less a personal triumph, however, than a product of voter reaction against long years of the GOP's one-party rule.

Actually, Maine knew very little about its new governor; state politicians recall finding Yankee Protestants astonished to learn they had voted for a Catholic of Polish descent.

But Gov. Muskie established himself solidly with the voters during his two two-year terms.

Taking a nonpartisan approach emphasizing economic and educational problems, he maneuvered most of his program through the Republican legislature. In 1958, when he made his bid for Washington, he rolled up 60% of the vote to become the first popularly elected Democratic Senator in Maine's history.

In Washington, however. Mr. Muskie was just another freshman from a small state and one, moreover, laboring under the handicap of having crossed Majority Leader Johnson. But in time the committee assignments that seemed second-rate gave Sen. Muskie his chance to make his mark.

Both pollution control and the problems of Federal-state relations came under the jurisdiction of Sen. Muskie's committees. In the late '50s and early '60s these were matters of scant public concern, but they were familiar to the former governor and he immersed himself in them.

Consequently, when water and air pollution suddenly developed into major political issues in response to grassroots demands for clean-ups, Sen. Muskie was prepared to lead the long legislative battles that resulted in the Clean Air Act of 1963 and the Water Quality Act of 1965, which gave the Federal Government money and authority to begin policing pollution. This year he will lead the effort to enact President Johnson's proposal for Federal enforcement of new regional air pollution standards, which Sen. Muskie has long urged on the Administration.

UP FROM OBSCURITY

Similarly, Sen. Muskie's post as chairman of the once-obscure Senate subcommittee on intergovernmental relations has become a strategic spot. His panel's hearings have helped spotlight the shortcomings of proliferating Federal grant-in-aid programs intended to help states and local governments. But, while he has been sharply critical of bureaucratic bungling and red tape, he has disdained publicly-seeking exposes to concentrate on legislative remedies.

Sen. Muskie's legislative specialties now so absorb him that he has forsworn his original ambition to join the Foreign Affairs Committee. Having worked up to a senior position on all his committees, he has twice rejected chances to give one up for a junior seat on Foreign Affairs.

That decision has curbed his participation in the Senate's highly publicized Vietnam debates. For, though he generally supports the Administration's war policy, he refrains from making a lot of speeches on matters unrelated to his specialties, recognizing that a Senator who talks too much loses influence in the chamber.

Anyway, dealing with practical problems like controlling pollution and making Federal-state programs work better is shrewd politics for a Democrat from a state that's still predominantly Republican. "In Maine they don't even think of me as a Democrat," Sen. Muskie says with satisfaction.

Indeed, his personal appeal back home is markedly similar to that of his popular four-term Republican counterpart. Margaret Chase Smith; both are disdainful of partisan bickering. Yet. while Mrs. Smith is truly a lone wolf in the GOP, Sen. Muskie always campaigns as a member of the "Democratic Team" (he is careful never to criticize Mrs. Smith, however -- which makes some Maine Democrats unhappy).

On the home stump, speechmaker Muskie can deliver a stemwinder, and in the Senate it was his eloquent appeal that carried the day for the model cities bill last year (afterward, Majority Leader Mansfield remarked to colleagues. "It's rare for a Senator to win any votes by a floor speech, but Ed did and pulled the bill through"). Yet, except about subjects on which he enjoys a special competence, he is reluctant to speak out, and this evokes misgivings among some other liberals. They fault him for shying from open combat on issues.

There are those, too, who think he is reticent about seeking power. This year and next he will have an opportunity to show his mettle in an additional assignment as chairman of the Senate committee that works to get Democratic members elected.

That job is another that probably won't win headlines for Sen. Muskie. But Senators do not rise in the club because of publicity. It is their "inside" performance that counts with their colleagues. and in that respect Sen. Muskie has no worry about his accomplishments escaping attention.