Scoop Jackson: Running Hard Uphill
The scene is the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, where 1,100 people have gathered for dinner. Many of the women are dressed in long gowns. The men are in dinner jackets and patent-leather pumps. It is a merry, excited, optimistic crowd. In the center, sitting at a table on a round, raised platform is a rather penguinesque, stolid son of Norwegian immigrants, Henry Martin (Scoop) Jackson. It is difficult to conjure up a truly merry Senator Jackson, but as he smiles and nods to well-wishers, he is obviously pleased this evening, happy in his work, which is running flat-out for the presidency of the U.S.
Many prominent California Jewish philanthropists and political angels are present at the dinner, Jan. 26. But lesser-known and less wealthy people are there as well. Most paid at least $250 into his campaign war chest for the privilege of attending--one reason why he beams so happily. But he looks well in any case. He has lost 12 Ibs. and fully recovered from two operations late last year--one to remove a kidney stone, the other to correct a drooping left eyelid. At 62, he looks perhaps 15 years younger.
Off the Cuff. The audience belongs to him, heart, brain and pocketbook. But Jackson's speech--as usual, delivered off the cuff--is for the most part flat and dull. He dwells on the energy crisis, pushing out statistics like a bookkeeper. He lectures, informs, but does not inspire until the last part of the speech, when he talks of international human rights. "I want to see a clear movement of people and ideas across international boundaries," he says, "and, may I say, not just machinery and wheat."
The audience frequently interrupts Jackson with applause, but it is polite applause, not the huzzahs of which American political dreams are made. Afterward, a man in a brocade dinner jacket observes: "A great evening, just a great evening." But the pros in Jackson's entourage know better. They are unhappy with most of the speech, know that it lacked fire and vision, that Jackson should have had this audience standing on the tables. After dinner, a Los Angeles businessman approaches two of Jackson's aides and says: "I know he's a great man, and I'm going to support him no matter what. But that speech! I want to make a deal. I want to buy you a video-tape machine for Scoop to use when he's speaking. He can look at himself and see what he looks like to others." The offer is accepted.
Actually, professional camera crews had been filming nearly every facet of the dinner for use in Jackson's unusual, slickly contrived announcement last week of his candidacy for the presidency. The five-minute documentary, created for Jackson by Producer David Wolper at a total cost of $30,000 (including air time on the CBS network), opened with the candidate rising from his table at the Century Plaza to the applause of the guests and beginning his speech to them. The scene set an affective cinema verite tone for the filmed highlights of Jackson's career that followed.
Dinner and documentary were vivid examples of the meticulous planning that Jackson is bringing to his challenge for the 1976 Democratic nomination. Thirteen months before the first primary election, 17 months before the party's national convention, it seemed an almost indecently early march on 1976 and an undue claim on the attention and patience of the electorate. Jackson's reply to such criticism, offered in a Washington press conference the following day: "The 1976 presidential campaign really began the minute this nation was given its first appointed President and Vice President; this nation has a critical agenda that cannot wait until November 1976 to get started." He might have gone on to add what every politician knows: that unless the economy improves sharply in the next 21 months, almost any Democrat who gets his party's nomination will require a kind of perverse genius to lose. The far more difficult task will be to capture the Democratic nomination. Given the stakes for the nation, Jackson may well be right in declaring that the contest--and the scrutiny--are beginning not a moment too soon.
Acute Shortage. Another reason why Jackson's announcement, which otherwise could have been the no-hum event of the year, drew so much early attention is that the Democratic Party seems to be facing its great presidential opportunity with an acute shortage of convincing leaders. So far, three others have formally entered the race, and at least one more will declare next week (see box page 20). But Jackson has put together a combination of skilled organization, nationwide support and, most important, nearly $1.5 million in cash that makes him, if not quite the front runner in a race as yet too formless to have one, at least the Democrat with the mostest at the moment.
It will be an uphill run for him because, as Columnist James A. Wechsler observed, all too often Jackson "seems to personify what Aldous Huxley once called the 'insistent bore.' " The only flaw in his televised announcement was that eventually the documentary had to stop and Jackson had to look directly into the camera's eye and speak for himself. Oddly, he never quite made eye contact, and the speech was pure Jackson, a style best described as pedantic populism. Still, for a colorless man, Jackson evokes a surprising amount of hostility from many people, particularly liberal supporters of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 and George McGovern in 1972, who feel that he embodies a rare combination: both dullness and danger. Many Democrats believe that he will never be able to convert the liberals and as a result will lose the nomination.
Broken Barrier. Despite 34 years in Congress, Jackson until recently was well known only in his home state of Washington, the nation's capital and among politically savvy groups, including lobbyists for the oil and aerospace industries and Jewish organizations. Most Americans had no idea who he was, let alone what he stood for, even though he ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972 and finished second in the convention balloting to McGovern. But in the past year or so, Jackson has broken through the national-recognition barrier. Several recent polls show that well over half of the American public now at least know who Jackson is, and the proportion is rapidly rising.
He is still notably opaque for a man in public life. The private personality behind the long face, doleful eyes and resonant voice is known only to his family and a few close friends, though one crony insists: "There is no such thing as an off-the-record Scoop. What you see is what he is. He's that way at home, he's that way with his friends." Almost completely dominated by politics, Jackson has shown himself to be aggressively ambitious, rigidly self-disciplined and often unwilling to tolerate criticism or forgive a slight. He has been known to berate hostile questioners, but normally he is unemotional in public, though on rare occasions he explodes in private. One close associate has seen him in a rage on only three or four occasions, but each time Jackson became sick to his stomach.
Jackson's political viewpoint defies easy categorization. Says he: "I am a composite of many different things. I don't worry about ideologies. I've been called a Communist, a socialist, a conservative." Yet his views actually have been largely consistent through the years, so much so that some people suspect that his mind is closed to new ideas. On domestic issues, he has shown himself to be a middle-of-the-road Democrat: backing labor but friendly to business, backing conservation but fighting against "environmental extremists," backing social legislation but opposing radical solutions. On questions of defense and foreign policy he is unyieldingly conservative: deeply suspicious of the Soviet Union, stridently in favor of new weapons like the B-l bomber and the Trident submarine. He was a bitter-end backer of the Viet Nam War, believing that the fall of the South would lead to Communist domination of all Southeast Asia, and that eventually "Europe would very probably fall." He has been a fervent supporter of Israel since the country was founded in 1948.
For years he has been one of the Senate's most effective members, in part because of his deft ability to draft bills with broad appeal and his powers of cloakroom persuasion. His range is indicated by two pieces of legislation that he considers to be major achievements: 1) an act creating a comprehensive federal policy on environmental protection, and 2) an amendment directing that future arms agreements with Russia do not leave the U.S. with inferior numbers of weapons. Critics point out that numbers alone are largely meaningless, but this hardly bothers Jackson.
As his presidential ambitions grew, so did Jackson's eagerness to make headlines by launching probes by his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which sometimes turned out to be mostly ballyhoo and bluster. During an investigation of crime on Wall Street, he was much embarrassed by trumpeting a shady witness's wild charge, backed up by no evidence, that Elliott Roosevelt, son of President Franklin Roosevelt, had plotted the assassination of Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling of the Bahamas. Last year he recklessly called executives of the major oil companies before the subcommittee and harshly accused them of jacking up prices and making extortionate profits from the energy crisis. The oilmen argued that the high earnings were for only one year, came after several years of modest profits, and were largely from big sales overseas. At one point, Exxon Vice President Roy A. Baze could not recall the size of his company's 1972 dividends. Jackson angrily threatened "to start slapping subpoenas on some of you," and then telephoned a stockbroker and announced that the dividends had been $3.80 a share.
To prepare for the campaign, Jackson has been polishing his policy positions, some of which he is carefully modifying to appeal to a broader spectrum, of Democrats without violating his long-held principles. Among his views:
THE ECONOMY. The recession gives an extraordinary opportunity to any Democrat who can produce a convincing alternative to Ford's program. Jackson has always believed that the power of the Government is the most effective way to bring order to the marketplace (see interview page 19). Among other things, he has proposed setting a national goal of 2.6 million housing starts a year, including 2 million federally subsidized units for low-and middle-income families, creating a temporary agency to provide emergency capital funds to business and giving the Government the authority to delay wage and price hikes. Such views place him in the Democratic mainstream, though Republican critics regard him as a big spender who promises more than he can deliver.
ENERGY. Jackson first and presciently warned of the coming oil shortage in 1971; two years later, he urged that Congress enact a $20 billion program for energy research and development. He believes that the answer to the problem lies in increasing domestic production rather than in cutting demand heavily to reduce imports. Jackson would have Congress roll back domestic oil prices. He thinks that the companies' profits are so high that a substantial price cut --he has not settled on a figure--would still leave the incentive to increase domestic exploration and drilling. Oil company executives argue that the current price is necessary to pay the cost of new domestic production, but Jackson responds: "Baloney. Just look at the record: production has gone down steadily." To boost U.S. production, he would open to production the federal reserves at Elk Hills, Calif., and Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 4 in Alaska, and set up a board to coordinate and accelerate development on the continental shelf, perhaps through a Government-assisted consortium of several companies. Jackson considers Ford's immediate goal of cutting U.S. oil imports by 1 million bbl. per day to be unrealistic. Some conservatives regard Jackson's energy program as inimical to the free enterprise system.
FOREIGN POLICY. He gives unswerving support to Israel, not only on principle but to preserve the U.S. position in the Middle East, and implacably mistrusts Russia. Both came together in his most dubious effort: his insistence on amending the U.S.-Soviet trade agreement so that the Russians would have to liberalize their emigration laws --which would chiefly benefit Soviet Jews--in exchange for U.S. trade concessions. The Administration and many others regarded the amendment as a perilous and unwarranted intrusion into Russian internal affairs. But Jackson looked upon it as "one small step along the road to an international community based on law." Such was Jackson's clout in the Senate that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for a time seemed to be negotiating with two sovereign powers--the Kremlin and Jackson. When the Russians appeared to give in to the demand, he boasted that he had demonstrated "what tough bargaining can accomplish."
But last month the Soviets repudiated the deal. Ford and Kissinger pinned the blame on the Jackson Amendment, arguing that Jewish emigration had in fact been increasing as long as quiet pressure was being applied, but that Russian leaders could not countenance Jackson's advertisement of it as a condition, especially since Congress had failed to make it worthwhile by the piddling credits offered. Many people at first feared that the debate and collapse of the agreement had seriously jeopardized detente. Jackson blamed Moscow for an "egregious breach of good faith" and insisted that the U.S. would be wrong to back down. Though Jackson says that he believes in detente, he argues that Presidents Nixon and Ford and Henry Kissinger have been too willing to give too much away to Russia in its name. It remains to be seen how much all this has hurt him among voters who might consider that his personal foreign policy, however motivated, had backfired. The Soviets leave no doubt about their sentiments toward Jackson. Recent Russian press articles have called him the "demonic advocate of the military-industrial complex," "the devil of Seattle" and the "henchman of Zionist circles."
The bitterest liberal criticism of Jackson has been over his support of the Viet Nam War. In 1970 peace activists vainly tried to defeat him in the Senate primary (he won it with 87% of the vote); when he spoke on college campuses, students pelted him with marshmallows. But Jackson is still unrepentant. Says he: "I always wanted to go in there, fight the war quickly and get out." When he decided that the U.S. could not win the war, he favored a withdrawal. Now, in a switch that may shake his conservative support by seeming to renege on his principles, Jackson no longer will even back the Administration's request for $300 million in additional aid to South Viet Nam, arguing that "it has to end somewhere." Says Jackson: "The Thieu government is repressive. We had these promises that he would liberalize and broaden his base, but it just didn't happen."
DEFENSE. Jackson has always been a proponent of new military hardware, and he shows no signs of changing. Critics charge that his views reflect the fact that his state's largest employer is the Boeing Co. (hence "the Senator from Boeing"). The charge is not quite fair. Jackson has worked on the company's behalf, and during the SST debate he let a Boeing lobbyist work out of his office. But Jackson fundamentally believes that new technology is essential to preserve peace and U.S. freedom. As he once said, "The way you get the Soviets to the conference table is from a position of strength." He provided much of the impetus behind the Navy's decision to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and led the fights for the anti-ballistic-missile program and the supersonic transport.
Jackson is close to Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, consults with him frequently, and is likely to recommend only minor cuts in the Pentagon's proposed $9 billion increase in defense spending next year, even though it is unpopular with liberals. He favors mutual arms reduction by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. He faulted the interim arms agreement because he thought it favored the Soviets. More recently he agreed with liberals that Ford's Vladivostok agreement set too high a limit on the two countries' strategic weapons.
Jackson actually has been campaigning for the presidency since 1971, when he played a spoiler role in the campaign for the 1972 Democratic nomination. Poorly organized and poorly prepared, he showed traces of demagoguery in his desperate bid for attention. He ignored a lifetime dedication to civil rights by proposing a constitutional amendment against busing to desegregate public schools. He called McGovern the candidate for "amnesty, acid and abortion," an unfair phrase that stung and stuck. After the campaign, Time Oil Co. and Gulf Oil Corp. were fined for giving him illegal contributions. In addition, the Senate Watergate committee reported that Oilman Leon Hess, chairman of Amerada Hess Corp., secretly channeled $225,000 to Jackson through other people.
In that campaign, Jackson was trying to give Democrats on the right and in the middle a choice between McGovern and George Wallace. This time Jackson is trying to put together a program appealing to all shades of Democrats, including liberals who have not forgiven him for backing the Viet Nam War and attacking McGovern but who are now in disarray and in search of a candidate for 1976.
Wallace Constituency. Last fall Jackson pointedly campaigned on behalf of many liberal candidates, including Father Robert F. Drinan of Massachusetts, Allard Lowenstein of New York, Abner Mikva of Illinois and Gary Hart of Colorado, who was McGovern's campaign manager; of the four, only Lowenstein lost. Albeit somewhat reluctantly, Jackson also supported liberal reforms of the party's delegate selection rules at the mini-convention in Kansas City in December. So far, however, his efforts apparently have brought few liberals into his camp.
A further problem for Jackson is the diehard constituency of Wallace, whose unannounced campaign is similarly well financed ($1.8 million at the end of 1974) and well organized. Indeed in the polls Wallace continues to lead Jackson by a substantial margin as the Democrats' choice as their nominee, now that Ted Kennedy has declared himself out of the race. The Alabama Governor is so intensely disliked by liberals and many moderates that he is exceedingly unlikely to win the nomination. But he may still wind up with enough convention delegates so that no one will be able to get the nomination without first making a deal with him. Significantly, Jackson has said that Wallace is "eminently qualified to be Vice President," and that he "would welcome him on a ticket if he were the choice of the convention."
Unflagging Support. Jackson's traditional backing by American Jews because of his unflagging support of Israel is stronger than ever these days, owing to Israel's heightened anxieties for the future and its declining support in many quarters. Much of his national campaign funding thus far has come from Jewish contributions. But Jackson's appeal to another traditional constituency, organized labor, has slipped somewhat. He had earlier appeared to be the AFL-CIO'S first choice for the nomination. Lately, however, associates have reported that the AFL-CIO'S George Meany has been increasingly unhappy with Jackson, first for visiting China in 1974 and then for backing the trade bill in the first place, which Meany considered a threat to American jobs.
Jackson intends to concentrate principally on fund raising this year. His campaign treasury of nearly $1.5 million was collected in the past six months and is second only to that of George Wallace among prospective Democratic presidential candidates. Jackson's early contributors have included Leonard Davis, director of the Colonial Perm Group Inc. of New York, and his wife, who gave $6,000; Max Karl, president of MGIC Investment Corp. of Milwaukee, $3,000; Investment Banker William R. Salomon of New York, $1,000; and Charles Wohlstetter, chairman of Continental Telephone Corp. of Chantilly, Va.,$ 1,500.
Jackson hopes to raise between $7 million and $10 million by Feb. 1, 1976. The new federal campaign-finance law offers presidential candidates matching funds of up to $5 million for primary expenses but only if they first get contributions of at least $5,000 from each of 20 states. As a result, Jackson will depend heavily on a direct-mail appeal for funds, coordinated by Morris Dees, the liberal Montgomery, Ala., lawyer who raised $20 million by mail for McGovern in 1972. By year's end, Jackson expects to have sent his appeal to about 2 million people.
It is far too early for Jackson to make firm plans for the primaries. State parties have until July 1 to decide how to choose their delegates. Until then, says a top Jackson aide, "we won't even know the rules of the game." But some tentative strategies are under consideration. For example, Jackson believes that he should spend money evenly on the primaries rather than concentrate on the early ones. He explains: "Some candidate might spend a bundle in New Hampshire and a few others and then find that he is nearly out of money by the time that he gets to California [in June]."
The forces that shaped Jackson included the prolabor, internationalist traditions of Washington State, and his close-knit family. Born May 31, 1912, he was the youngest of four children in a working-class family in Everett, a small mill town 28 miles north of Seattle. His Lutheran parents had emigrated from Norway in the 1880s; Father Peter was a cement worker, Mother Marie was a stern but loving matriarch who infused in her son a strong sense of right and wrong.
Delivery Boy. As a boy, Jackson was a poor athlete, an avid Boy Scout and a skillful debater. At 13, he won a prize from the Everett Herald for diligence as a newspaper delivery boy. Its comic page chronicled the adventures of a newspaper reporter named Scoop, who was the inspiration for Jackson's nickname. His newspaper route included Everett's red-light district, where Jackson was appalled to find prominent men patronizing whorehouses, gambling dens and speakeasies. Indeed, in his commencement speech at his high school graduation in 1930, Jackson primly lectured his audience about the evils of disrespect for the laws.
After working his way through the University of Washington, where he graduated barely in the top third of his law school class in 1935, Jackson returned to Everett to practice law. He also became active in local politics and soon seized control of Everett's Young Democrats organization, using it in 1938 as a base to run for Snohomish County prosecutor, soundly beating the alcoholic incumbent. Two years later, after earning the nickname "Soda Pop" Jackson and a reputation as an aggressively moralistic prosecutor for running the gamblers, madams and bootleggers out of the county, Jackson easily won election to a vacant seat in the U.S. House.
In Congress he established himself as a New Deal Democrat. In 1952 he moved up, bucking the Eisenhower landslide to win election to the Senate over conservative Republican Incumbent Harry Cam. In the Senate, Jackson was soon enlisted in the Democratic campaign to bring down Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and end his witchhunt for subversives in Government. Among other things, Jackson asked a series of ironic questions during the Army-McCarthy hearings that helped reduce the Wisconsin Senator to an object of ridicule. The strain of those hearings led to an attack of fibromyositis, an extremely painful, body-wide muscular cramp that Jackson likens to "a giant charley horse." To avoid future attacks, he still exercises daily for 45 minutes, usually in the Senate gym, where he swims a quarter of a mile and then vigorously pedals an exercise bicycle.
For much of Jackson's political career, three men have helped shape his political views and still act as a frequently consulted, yet sometimes critical, home-town kitchen cabinet. They are:
> John Salter, 62, a boyhood friend who served as Jackson's political strategist and chief aide until 1961. Later he founded a political consulting firm in Seattle, with Boeing as one of his biggest clients. A gregarious backslapper, Salter describes his main service to Jackson now as making certain that he "doesn't get too big for his britches." Salter lately has urged his friend to pay more attention to domestic affairs. He explains: "Some guy working in a paper mill in Everett can't even spell detente, but he knows that he can't afford to pay a doctor to get his kid's busted leg fixed."
> Stanley Golub, 61, a wealthy Seattle jeweler who attended law school with Jackson. He talks to Jackson by telephone several times a week on all manner of subjects, from editors he thinks Jackson should meet to foreign policy matters. A strong supporter of Israel, Golub is somewhat more liberal than his friend, and regrets never having been able to convince Jackson that he was wrong to support the Viet Nam War. Golub accompanied Jackson to China last year.
> Jerry Hoeck, 53, a wealthy retired Seattle advertising executive who met Jackson during his 1952 campaign. More conservative than Jackson, he is called on chiefly for advice on press-relation problems and for occasional help in writing speeches.
For 20 years, Jackson was one of Washington's most eligible bachelors; yet he scarcely took advantage of the glittering social life that was in his reach. He lived in a series of cluttered apartments, shared usually by other bachelors. When not politicking back home, Jackson routinely spent Saturdays in his office, devoted evenings to dining with constituents who came to Washington or, more frequently, to poring over staff and technical reports, newspapers and magazines. On Sundays he would some times play softball with the Kennedy clan in Georgetown. Teammates describe him as an adequate second baseman but a rather weak hitter. Occasionally he would date; his most frequent such companion in the 1950s was Helen Langer, niece of the late Senator from North Dakota.
Tea Date. Then, on the day that the Senate convened in January 1961, Senator Clinton Anderson introduced his new blonde receptionist to Jackson. She was Helen Hardin, a divorcee, daughter of the president of American Gypsum Co. in Albuquerque and graduate of Scripps College and Columbia University, where she earned a master's degree in contemporary literature, specializing in Virginia Woolf. A date for tea in the Senate dining room led to bicycling dates and to marriage in December. Jackson was 49; his wife was 28.
Despite marriage, politics still dominated Jackson. Characteristically, he interrupted his honeymoon to attend a naval briefing at Pearl Harbor. But his wife brought new grace and style to his life, though he still wears undistinguished suits and black wingtip shoes, and drives a 1961 Chevrolet. The Jacksons own two houses, one in Washington's fashionable Spring Valley, the other a large house in Everett that was once the home of a banker who was the richest and most powerful man in town when Jackson was a boy--a bit of symbolism much appreciated by the Senator's friends. But Jackson's family still lives relatively modestly, its only income being Jackson's $42,500 annual salary and a small return--$3,238 last year --from stocks owned by his wife and their two children, Anna Marie, 12, and Peter, 8. Since 1952, Scoop has donated all of the money he earns from speeches and articles--totaling $34,350 last year--to scholarship funds in the state of Washington.
At this early stage in the campaign, Jackson's candidacy has failed to stir much enthusiasm in the Democratic Party. Pollster Patrick Caddell of Cambridge, Mass., reports that "70% or more of the party activists are not supporting anyone. They are all still looking for a candidate." Moreover, party leaders are also withholding their endorsements, and for an excellent reason. Explains Deputy Mayor John DeLuca of San Francisco: "A lot of the boys learned a political lesson the hard way last time. They came out early for Muskie and were left holding the bag." Adds Illinois Democratic Chairman John Touhy:
"Anybody that tells you now what's going to happen in '76 would have to have a beatific vision." There is a widespread feeling among party professionals that Jackson is the best prospect around at the moment, but that somehow he cannot survive the long road to the convention and nomination.
No Name. As a result, there is a currently fashionable speculation in Washington and elsewhere that might be called the Mr. X theory. It holds that either in the primaries or at a deadlocked convention a new candidate, Mr. X, will sweep the exhausted and disarrayed Democrats off their feet. The one major flaw in the theory is that no one has yet come up with a plausible name. Some Democrats believe that Senator Edward Kennedy might be persuaded to accept a draft; others keep hoping for Senators Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey or even McGovern; still others yearn for a genuinely fresh face and a fresh start for the party. But for the moment, at least, Jackson is out front and going for broke. For the present, as never before in recent times, the rest of the field is clear. Says California Democratic Pro Bill Holzman of his party's prize: "There's no one there to beat. It's there to take."
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