September 16, 1968
Page 27086
HON. ROMAN C. PUCINSKI OF ILLINOIS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, September 16, 1968
Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Speaker, recently the New York Post carried an excellent article by Mr. Warren Hoge on the Democratic candidate for Vice President, Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE, of Maine.
This is an excellent biography of the Senator and I am including it in the RECORD today so that all of our colleagues can become better acquainted with the young man who is destined to become the Vice President of the United States.
Mr. Hoge's excellent article follows:
MAN IN THE NEWS: MUSKIE OF MAINE
(By Warren Hoge)
CHICAGO. -- Senator Edmund S. Muskie, a Roman Catholic who once aspired to the priesthood, and his flock, the diffident and laconic citizens of Maine, keep a tight rein in their words and emotions at times of excitement.
The two largest radio stations in Portland were back playing Dean Martin and Mantovani records within minutes of Thursday's announcement that Maine's favorite son had been named Hubert Humphrey's running mate.
An elderly Portland man was asked his reaction to the biggest event to strike Down East in memory. "Muskie's a good fella so far's he's been," he remarked with the characteristic economy of the region.
Portland ship's chandler John Lawless found that too wordy. "As a man, he's a man," he commented.
Simple, to the point, blunt, they're Muskie people. "Sham and pretense grate on him like sandpaper," a Senate aide said, explaining his boss' rapport with his Down East constituents.
Though an imposing figure of a man at 6-foot-5, the lanky senator from Maine has come upon success in an unimposing fashion. He's practically backed into it.
"He's never mentioned the Vice Presidency until this year when he has been talked about and we've known it was a possibility," said an old friend of Muskie's, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Frank Coffin, 49, of South Portland.
"His attitude about it has been about the same as his attitude toward Majority Whip in the Senate a year ago, when he was prominently named. He just said he wasn't going to push himself," Coffin said.
Muskie is 54, Polish-American, a part-time carpenter and a Democrat but most importantly, he is a native of the state of Maine.
The region has shaped the man. In the Senate he is known for a calm and deliberate manner, a tendency to speak softly and briefly and a degree of modesty unusual in a chamber of such towering ambitions.
Among many liberals he is suspect for his hesitance to speak out. To Vice President Humphrey however he remained out of a list of a dozen names the man most qualified to bring peace to the snarling factions of the Democratic party.
The son of a Polish immigrant, he has gained and kept political office through the votes of old-line Yankees. A Catholic, he has been elected and reelected in a state that is predominantly Protestant. A Democrat, he represents in Washington a state that is traditionally Republican.
He has earned high marks from his fellow Senators for his thorough preparation and his low-key approach. "He is a Senator's Senator," said Senate Majority Leader Mansfield of Muskie. "He is a man who eschews publicity, works hard, and has gained a well-deserved reputation among his colleagues for integrity, fair dealing and effectiveness."
The Muskie method is solid homework in the details of legislation, a deferential diplomacy that avoids personal attacks on opponents and an understated eloquence that harbors and occasionally turns loose stemwinders of speeches.
He is hardly a man to set off explosive reactions, and in the wake of the Chicago brouhaha, that must be credited as an asset by Hubert Humphrey.
Muskie's role in the coming campaign is unclear. Noting his experience in the Senate as the floor manager of the Model Cities bill, Humphrey quickly handed Muskie the mantle of urban affairs specialist in discussing his pick at a press conference announcing the choice Thursday.
Like Humphrey, Muskie will also give top priority to reconciliation within the party. A document from the fledgling Humphrey-Muskie campaign organization says too that the Maine Senator will devote himself to "federal-state relations.” Aware of his Republican constituency, Muskie, has always been an advocate of local jurisdiction over much of the federal legislative program, and possibly that explains the added campaign duty.
He will also campaign hard, according to Judge Coffin. "When he gets into a fight, whether it's on a bill or in an election campaign, he's just a crackerjack," the jurist said.
Muskie was born on March 28, 1914 in Rumford, Me., the son of Stephen and Josephine Muskie. His father, now dead, was a tailor who had come from Poland to the U.S. in 1903 and in the process had changed his name from Marciszewski. His mother, still living today in Rumford, was a native of Buffalo.
The parents saw big things in their son's future and for that reason gave him the middle name of Sixtus, after five popes. Though quiet and shy as a child, he still managed to impress people as a boy who would go places.
"I know at one time a lot of people thought he might be a priest," Muskie's sister, Mrs. Henry Paradis, 52, recalls. "When he was younger -- he couldn't have been more than five or six -- we lived in this apartment house and the man who owned the building said that he thought that when Ed grew up, he would either be a bishop or President of the U.S.
The timid youth began to emerge in high school where he joined the debating team and put his towering height to work as a high-scoring center in basketball. He graduated from Rumford High School in 1932 and worked his way through Bates College in Lewiston as a bellhop at a summer resort and as a college waiter and dormitory proctor. He graduated cum laude in 1936 and attended Cornell Law School, where he earned his LL.B. three years later.
He was establishing a law practice in Waterville, Me., when World War II called him to duty. For the duration of the conflict, he served as a junior officer on destroyer escorts in the Atlantic and Pacific.
When he returned to Waterville in 1945, he sought to pick up where he had left off in building a law practice but abandoned it a year later to run for the state legislature.
In 1947 he lost the only election in his career when he was defeated in a bid to become the mayor of Waterville. He was reelected to the state legislature in 1948 and 1950. In 1948 he became the floor leader of the handful of Democrats in the body.
Soon after his second reelection to the legislature, he resigned to become Maine director of the Office of Price Stabilization.
In 1952 he was approached by a group of prominent Democrats to run for the governorship, but he declined because he felt that the state party organization was too weak. In 1954 he had decided to run for Congress when the same group of men again urged him to make a bid for the statehouse. He reluctantly agreed to try.
Coffin, then the party's state chairman, remembers those lean days well:
"He was willing to run for Congress if we could find a candidate for Governor, for Senator and the two Congressional seats. So a small group of us would stump the state looking for good candidates.
"We couldn't find anyone for the Governor spot and so he agreed to run for that although that had not been his original idea. We put together around him a fine ticket and we staged a campaign using radio and television. In those days it cost us about $85 for 15 minutes of prime time.
"The whole campaign for the successful gubernatorial fight and unsuccessful but creditable fights for the Senate and Congressional seats, the total amount the state committee had to handle, was $18,000.
"It was an aggressive campaign of visiting towns and factories and appearing effectively on television. People were ready for a change and I knew that his age and his vigor were such that he could look forward to much more than his two terms as Governor," Coffin said.
Aided by the widespread disenchantment with the administration of incumbent Republican Gov. Burton Cross, Muskie went on to win by a margin of 22,375 votes to become the first Democratic chief executive of Maine in 20 years. In 1956, he amassed the largest vote ever given a Maine governor, 180,254.
In 1958 Muskie decided to challenge Republican incumbent Frederick Payne for the Senate, rather than seek a third term in the statehouse. Though the underdog at the outset, he overwhelmed Payne and became the first Democratic Senator ever elected by the people of Maine.
Four years ago he easily won reelection over U.S. Rep. Clifford McIntire.
In his first weeks in Washington, he committed a grave error in crossing one of the Capital's most powerful men, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Paying a courtesy call on Johnson, Muskie was given sage counsel by the canny Texas legislator. Johnson told him that he personally liked to keep his voting options open "until the roll call gets to the J's."
Several weeks later, Muskie attended a caucus of all the freshmen Senators at which Johnson asked for their support in beating back the biennial liberal attempt to change the Senate rules to weaken the grip filibustering southern Senators could exercise over the body's affairs. The others agreed to help Johnson, but Muskie declined to predict how he would go.
He later voted against Johnson and soon after quipped to the majority leader, "I like to keep my options open until the roll call gets to M."
The incident was no laughing matter to Johnson. He assigned the upstart to his fourth, fifth and sixth requested committees, passing over Muskie's earnest plea that he be appointed to the Foreign Relations Committee.
"I was frustrated, lonely, disillusioned and disconsolate," Muskie remembers. However, in his 10 years in the Senate, Muskie has become the leading voice on air and water pollution and a member of the Senate leadership as the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a fund-raising group.
Twice since 1965 he has passed up the opportunity to advance in the party leadership because of his deference to the wishes of others. In 1965 he declined to seek the office of Majority Whip being vacated by Hubert Humphrey and deferred instead to Sen. Pastore (D-R.I.). The Rhode Islander eventually lost to Sen. Long (D-La.).
Early in 1967 Muskie was widely believed to be in the forefront of candidates for the office of secretary of the Democratic conference, the third-ranking post in the party hierarchy. Instead, he yielded to Sen. Clark (D-Pa.), who in turn lost to Sen. Byrd (D-W. Va.). Again the man whom Muskie had been supporting lost to someone whom Muskie apparently could have beaten himself.
Muskie's recent positions have been liberal on domestic issues and pro-Administration abroad. He has demonstrated tepid support for the Administration's conduct of the war in Vietnam and has hinted that he is more inclined than is Hubert Humphrey to halt the bombing of the North in the interest of speeding up the peace negotiations in Paris.
Muskie married a Waterville girl, Jane Frances Gray, in 1948. The couple has five children, Stephen, Ellen, Melinda, Martha, and Edmund Sixtus Jr. This summer a sixth child, Gregory Singleton, 7, a Negro from Washington, is spending the summer with the Muskies. He calls them Mom and Dad.
Mrs. Muskie is an able campaigner and has been by her husband's side on political rostrums since the early days of his appearances at Midwestern Democratic Pulaski Day and Kosciusko Festivals.
He continues today to cultivate a consuming habit of reading. According to friends, he reads political biographies, history and international affairs.
He loves to swim in his native state and around the house he is an amateur carpenter. He fishes, hunts, and shoots a high 80 in golf.
Despite his rise to the state house in Augusta, thence to Washington and now to the nomination for the second highest office in the land, at least one admirer, Mrs. Minerva Anderson, 72, of Rumford, is unimpressed by any change in his station.
“I wouldn't call him humble," Mrs. Anderson, Muskie's general science teacher in high school, declared, "but he wasn't fresh. He was just a nice homey sort of boy. He was always very cordial. There's nothing high hat. He's just a home towny. He's very jolly. He's a nice boy.
"I think of him as a boy."