July 29, 1974
Page 25414
THE DEATH OF WAYNE MORSE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I was deeply saddened by the death of Wayne Morse. I had the honor to serve with him in the Senate for 10 years and came to know him as both a dedicated public servant and an individual of rare wit, candor, and perception.
He was a man who defied easy description, although he earned many sobriquets over the years.
He began his public service in the Democratic administration of Franklin Roosevelt. In his 24 years in the Senate, he was, by turns, a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat. It was not that he despised political parties. He preferred his own counsel to any party line, and his independence became legendary.
He was called the Lone Ranger for his independence, and for a fearless willingness to espouse unpopular causes when he believed in their rightness.
Others called him Mr. Education because he shaped a national education policy which will affect the lives of generations to come.
He was also known as the Tiger of the Senate, after a biography by that title, because of an acid tongue which could and often would cripple arguments opposing his. Those who bore his assaults probably had other names for him as well.
And he was wryly called the Five O'Clock Shadow for the regularity with which he took the Senate floor at the close of the business day to speak on a staggering range of issues, large and small.
In fact, his enthusiasm for oratory was unbounded. He once spoke here for more than 22 hours, a feat of physical as well as intellectual strength.
But even together, the nicknames do not describe the man.
Tutored in the populist traditions of Bob LaFollette, he always asked what was good for the people, and when he felt he had the answer, no special interest could sway him from his chosen course.
He was also a brilliant labor mediator, an expert in labor law, a leader in the cause of education, an ardent advocate of civil rights. He is known by a younger generation primarily for his prescient opposition to the Vietnam war and his lonely and costly vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Those who knew him here also remember his puckish wit, his affection for people, and his boundless energy. It is one measure of the man that he was ardently seeking to regain his Senate seat when he died at age 73.
Fittingly, Wane Morse provided us with the best short description of his life and philosophy. He said a couple of years ago:
If the truth is intemperate, then I will continue to be intemperate.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an editorial on Senator Morse's death appearing the New York Times of July 23, 1974, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the New York Times, July 23, 1974]
THE SENATE'S LOSS
Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon was too much the maverick to be a reliable party man, too much the gadfly to be a hero of the Senate Establishment, too much the independent to be predictable even in his proven liberalism. He was a superb public servant not in spite of those attributes but because of them.
Originally a Republican of the Western progressive breed known in an earlier day as the "sons of the wild jackass," Wayne Morse broke with his party when General Eisenhower, whom he had warmly supported, made peace with the conservative senator Robert A. Taft. He sat in the Senate for a time as an independent by name as well as by nature and a few years later won re-election as a Democrat. He did not disparage the party system as such; he just gave principle a higher priority than party or, for that matter, than the views of his constituents.
Believing with Edmund Burke that a representative's first loyalty is to his own judgment, he took counsel with himself and had the courage to act on it. He could be wrong-headed at times – but most of the time he seemed magnificently right – especially, in the light of history, when he and another great independent liberal, Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, who died only a few weeks ago, stood alone against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
Right or wrong, Wayne Lyman Morse went his own way, cavalierly crossing party lines to vote his conscience. At his death he was in the thick of a fight to make a last comeback to the United States Senate. The Senate lost.