Unsung Heroes: US Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL)
First of an occasional series on Members of Congress who made history that still effects us today. This one is dedicated to former Senate GOP Leader Everett Dirksen.
It’s funny what you remember from your earliest memories. In my case, I watched the funeral of President John F. Kennedy as a 7-year-old with my grandmother on a small black-and-white television.
In subsequent years, I remember my family tuning in for every speech by President Lyndon Johnson before a Joint Session of Congress, often about Vietnam, or as Johnson pronounced it, “Vie-ett-NAMM.” For some reason, I became enamored with politicians early, a trait (some might say a disease) that inspired and molded my career and sticks with me as an itinerant blogger today. I still have the worn cassette tape of President Richard Nixon’s resignation address from my parents’ stereo on a sunny Oklahoma evening on August 8, 1974. I caught the bug early.
I also remember the sonorous baritone and distinctive appearance and characteristics of the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL), who served as Senate GOP Leader from 1959 until his death on September 7, 1969, due to complications from lung cancer surgery. He loved his Kent cigarettes. It impressed me that he took a briefcase brimming with papers to the hospital with him, thinking he wouldn’t be there long and could get work done. Oops.
To this day, if there’s a presidential or congressional museum or library near any place we happen to be, we stop. This happened on my wife’s and my recent excursion to the 2023 Iowa State Fair. Our journey included stops not just at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, but also at the Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Center in lovely Pekin, Illinois, not far from the Ronald Reagan Trail, including his birthplace (Tampico), where he grew up (Dixon), and graduated from college (Eureka). There is so much history and historically significant leaders in this part of “flyover” America that most don’t see or even know is here.
It’s too bad that as time passes, the memory of Dirksen fades outside of the region where he was born, raised, and later represented for 16 years in the US House of Representatives and later for 18 years as a US Senator from Illinois. While the lines have changed, Dirksen’s estimable successors from his House seat include the longest-serving House GOP Leader, the late Bob Michel, and his long-time aide, US Rep. and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. LaHood’s son, Darrin, now represents a district that has shifted north of nearby Peoria. Both former US Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Cheri Bustos (D-IL) have placed their official papers at the Dirksen Center. No doubt others will follow.
As a media maven, I best remember Dirksen as the first Republican congressional leader who embraced the role of a public salesman for his party’s agenda. He teamed with then-House GOP Leader Charles Halleck (R-IN) for weekly press conferences to espouse Republican points of view on issues of the day during Democratic dominance in American politics. The New York Times’s Tom Wicker mocked it as the “Ev and Charlie Show.” Still, it pre-staged an era of media activity by congressional leaders that has evolved into “pen and paper” press conferences into the most dangerous place in the US Capitol today - between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and a microphone.
“Ev and Charlie” are to blame, in part, I suppose. Since they lacked a president of the same party and suffered from lopsided minorities in Congress, it was about the only card they could play. They figured out how to “feed the beast” (the media) and earn media coverage from a large and, at that time, talented congressional press corps that included legends such as United Press International’s Allen Drury.
Dirksen was born in 1896 as the son of German immigrants who became strong Republicans. Using “McKinley” as his middle name was always prominent in campaign literature and derived from the Republican President he was partially named after - William McKinley. His two siblings also featured middle names representing prominent GOP politicians of the day.
First elected to a non-partisan position on the Pekin City Council, he narrowly lost a campaign for the GOP nomination for Congress in 1930. He ran again in 1932 against the same GOP incumbent and won. He supported much of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs and eventually retired from the House in 1946 after dealing with a medical issue involving an eye (he recovered despite advice to remove it). He was immediately recruited to run for US Senate against the sitting Democratic Leader, Scott Lucas (D-IL).
His skills were quickly recognized and rewarded by colleagues, starting with immediately serving as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee - the official campaign committee of Senate Republicans - during his first year. Just four years later, he was elected as the Senate GOP Whip - assistant GOP leader - and only two years later, replaced William Knowland (R-CA) as the Minority Leader. He was barely into his second term when he became Senate GOP Leader.
As he tells it in the following 1968 interview with ABC’s Howard K. Smith, he conducted a vote of his family on whether to run in 1950 for the US Senate. He voted no. The rest of his family voted yes. The rest, as they say, is history.
By the way, this is a fabulous tour of the US Capitol led by Dirksen. As a veteran Capitol tour guide, I learned things. His ability to quote from famous statesmen from memory was impressive and enviable, something I hope to add to my repertoire.
When I entered the Dirksen Center this month from my tour, I best remember him for two things: delivering GOP votes for the 1964 (and subsequent) Civil Rights Act, which southern Democrats strongly opposed, and his promotion of his beloved Marigold as the national flower. He succeeded in the former, less so with the latter. Pekin today is known as the national Marigold capital.
Dirksen did much more, including his work for the first nuclear non-proliferation treaty. He mastered the Senate rules and procedures and proved adept at speaking to the public via the media, and mastered legislative details. He clearly loved the Senate as an institution and a vessel for exercising the public will. He was both an insider and a communicator to the outside. That skill set evades most Senate leaders, who excel at one or the other but not both.
Dirksen also was not afraid to change his mind on issues. During his pre-World War II US House career, he was an isolationist. He changed his mind and later strongly supported President Johnson’s execution of the Vietnam War. Given what we know now, I wonder if he might regret that today.
Dirksen’s impact on the culture wasn’t limited to his weekly press conferences with Halleck and, later, his successor as GOP leader, Gerald Ford (R-MI). He also appeared on numerous other media shows (“What’s My Line”) and even produced award-winning records, including this one as a 1966 tribute to our servicemen in Vietnam. He produced others.
Dirksen was also no stranger to war as a World War I veteran. He served in the infantry, and you can spot his goggles at the Dirksen Center from his service in the balloon corps.
Praise from Dirksen’s colleagues is preserved by the Dirksen Center on its estimable website, and many are worth noting. Son-in-law and future Senate GOP (and Majority) Leader Howard Baker (R-TN), elected in 1966:
“. . . I think really he had strength in several categories that added up to effectiveness. One, he got along pretty well with everybody; he had a real, genuine concern for the other fella’s requirements, other member’s requirement and sensibilities. Yet he was strong and tough when the occasion demanded. He had an enormous respect for the institutions of government. He was a party loyalist, but, most of all, he had a great affection for, and respect for, his colleagues in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle. That’s one reason he and Mansfield got along so well, I think. I’m certain that they never spoke with less than complete candor to each other. And I’m sure that there were many, many accommodations reached between those two men that the Senate never fully understood and that contributed to their respective roles in leadership. You gotta remember that a leader in the Senate, whether majority or minority leader, really doesn’t lead as a drill sergeant leads, or even as a whip in the House leads, because in the Senate there’s so much more individuality, so much less party discipline. The rules are so much less restrictive. Seniority means so much less in the Senate than in the House that you don’t really lead in the classical sense. You sorta ‘urge’ and create a previous inclination to follow, rather than leading.”
US Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-KY), who lost the contest for Senate GOP leader in 1959 to Dirksen and mentored the current GOP leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY):
I liked him, we were friends. He had another characteristic, I think was helpful. He didn’t hold any malice toward people who didn’t go along. I suppose he knew himself he didn’t always go along, he’d change . . . but he didn’t hold any bitterness or malice. I think he had a feel of himself, too, in a historic sense, that he would attach himself to major legislation in a way which he could believe and could say, with a good deal of truthfulness, that his influence had made it possible. . . .
There are no Everett McKinley Dirksens in the US Senate today. Tribalism, partisanship, social media, and the consequences of 1970s campaign reform laws have produced a different breed of Senator. I doubt you’ll see or hear any Senator talk with pride about the Senate as an institution as Dirksen did, given Americans' antipathy towards Congress and federal agencies). But he reminds us of a golden era of country-first unity and civility that we should aspire for and that his House successors, Michel and LaHood, clearly represented and carried on as their legacy.
History matters. Most Americans visiting Washington today only know of Dirksen as one of the names of the three US Senate office buildings. He deserves much more time and attention.
"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money." Dirksen may or may not have uttered that phrase attributed to him, but it fits him well. One of the things Dirksen deserved credit for was how he rallied Republican support to the 1964 Civil Rights bill. LBJ called and asked for help when it became obvious there were not enough Democrats to support the bill. Dirksen rallied the Republicans and one of the country's transformational laws was passed.
Great article, Kelly.