(Written just before his death in 1969, a recently discove...)
Written just before his death in 1969, a recently discovered memoir by the U.S. congressman and senator from Illinois ranges from his boyhood through his election to the Senate in 1950, where his honesty and hard work won him praise. UP.
https://www.amazon.com/Education-Senator-Everett-Dirksen/dp/0252024141?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0252024141
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Dirksen was born on January 4, 1896 in Pekin, Illinois. He was one of twin sons of Johann Frederick Dirksen, a design painter, and Antje Conrady, German immigrants and staunch Republicans who named their children after the leading Republican politicians of the day. His childhood was marked by poverty and hard work.
Dirksen graduated with honors from the local high school in 1913. Involved in many activities, he was a finalist in a national oratorical contest. After working for a year, he entered the University of Minnesota with the objective of becoming a lawyer but left to enlist in the army, primarily to demonstrate the patriotism of his German-speaking family. He was, however, destined for the bar, to which he was admitted in 1936 after attending law school at night in Washington, D. C.
He was the recipient of honorary degrees (LL. D. ) from Hope College, Bradley University, DePaul University, Lincoln Memorial University, Hanover College, Lewis University, and Illinois College.
Sent to France in 1918, Dirksen saw action as a balloon artillery observer and then served with occupation forces in Germany. He was discharged in October 1919 and settled in Pekin, where he worked in a grocery store owned by his two brothers, went into an unsuccessful venture to manufacture electric washing machines, and became a partner in the family bakery. He was active in local theatrical productions and also wrote about a hundred plays, short stories, and poems, only one of which was ever published.
Dirksen entered politics in 1926 by winning election to the Pekin City Commission. He narrowly lost the Republican primary for the United States House of Representatives in 1930, but two years later defeated incumbent William Hull and subsequently won the general election. Through hard work and an amiable personality well suited to the folkways of the House, Dirksen won rapid prominence among the small band of Republicans who survived the early New Deal. He was appointed to the powerful Appropriations Committee in 1937 and a year later became chairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee, a position he held until 1946. Widely considered one of the ablest members of the Republican delegation and positioned near the ideological center of his party, he undertook an abortive candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in 1944. Actually, he aspired to the vice-presidency, but his hopes for a vice-presidential offer in 1952 and 1960 proved to be equally futile.
After World War II, Dirksen played a key role in drafting the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946. He announced his retirement in 1948 as a result of a serious eye disease, but he recovered after several months of therapy and rest. In 1950 he ran for the Senate against Scott Lucas, Senate Democratic leader. The campaign against Lucas brought about a political metamorphosis that illustrated the changing center of gravity in Dirksen's party and the special imperatives of Illinois Republicanism: Dirksen became a conservative isolationist and McCarthyite, and his reward was the support of the influential Chicago Tribune, then the voice of right-wing Republicanism in the Midwest. The Democrats were hampered at the national level by reverses in the Korean War and at the local level by scandals in Chicago. Dirksen won the election by nearly 300, 000 votes. In the process, he lost the respect of many independent observers who had praised him in earlier years. The Eisenhower victory, the death of Taft, the censure of McCarthy, and Dirksen's upcoming 1956 reelection campaign all effected another change of heart. Wooed by a White House that appreciated his abilities and needed his Senate vote, he became an Eisenhower loyalist, a course made all the easier by the death of Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.
Dirksen was easily reelected in 1956, and was chosen Republican whip in 1957 and Republican leader in 1959. For the next ten years he functioned as a strong, effective leader of his party. In many ways, he emulated his Democratic counterpart, Lyndon Johnson, but never resorted to the occasional strong-arm tactics for which Johnson was known. His methods included rational persuasion, consensus-building, calling in personal favors, and assiduous logrolling. Typically working a sixteen-hour day despite precarious health, he achieved mastery over both the tactics of political maneuver and the substance of major legislation. His tenure under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson was the high point of his career. Although by then the minority leader, he tended to overshadow Johnson's self-effacing successor, Mike Mansfield of Montana, and became the most powerful and respected Republican in Washington. In return for recognition, patronage, occasional substantive compromise, and administration abandonment of other objectives, he delivered key Republican votes on major issues, among them the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the 1964 tax cut, and the Civil Rights acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968.
He won considerable praise for his statesmanship, and both Kennedy and Johnson avoided giving significant help to his Democratic opponents in 1962 and 1968. During the 1960's Dirksen became a public figure almost as visible as the president. He instituted weekly televised press conferences with House Republican leader Charles Halleck (succeeded by Gerald Ford in 1965). At times he lapsed into clownish parodies of himself that seemed unbecoming a Senate leader, as when he undertook a tongue-in-cheek crusade to make the marigold the national flower. Investigative journalists delved into his finances time and again, especially his connections with a Peoria law firm. Dirksen had never actually practiced law, and his relationship with the firm was unclear. Despite allegations, it was never proved that he accepted payments for his legislative influence, and his lifestyle was in fact relatively modest. With Richard M. Nixon's accession to the presidency in 1969, Dirksen's influence diminished. He was overshadowed by the new president and became the object of restlessness from a large number of young Republicans who owed him no favors.
Dirksen died on September 7, 1969, in Washington, D. C.
As Senate Minority Leader from 1959 to 1969, Dirksen played a highly visible and key role in the politics of the 1960's. He was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 1966 in the area of Government. In 1972, one of the Senate's buildings was renamed the Dirksen Senate Office Building in his honor. The federal courthouse/building of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago is also named after him. Dirksen's statue, originally located adjacent to the Illinois State Capitol and is now in Mineral Springs Park in his hometown of Pekin, Illinois, includes two objects iconically identified with the senator: an oil can and a bunch of marigolds.
(Written just before his death in 1969, a recently discove...)
In Washington, mindful of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's strength in his district, Dirksen supported many New Deal measures, but in foreign policy he hewed to a steady isolationist, anti-administration line, reflecting his German background, the outlook of the voters at home, and Roosevelt's declining popularity in his district. In September 1941, however, he delivered a speech in which he pledged to back the president's anti-Axis policies. He usually supported President Harry S. Truman's foreign policies but opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal measures.
He began his first term in the Senate as a loyal supporter of the conservative wing of the party, exemplified by Senators Robert A. Taft and Joseph McCarthy, and, as such, regularly flailed away in extreme fashion at the Democrats and their programs. He bitterly opposed the Eisenhower movement in 1952 and continued to be a leading McCarthyite through 1954. He delivered key Republican votes on major issues, among them the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the 1964 tax cut, and the Civil Rights acts of 1964, 1965, and 1968.
He represented Illinois in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He helped write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, both landmark pieces of legislation during the Civil Rights Movement. He was also one of the Senate's strongest supporters of the Vietnam War and was known as "The Wizard of Ooze" because of his flamboyant oratorical style.
Quotations: Dirksen displayed in his office the motto, "The oil can is mightier than the sword. "
Young Republicans lamented Dirksen's aged, ruffled appearance, his verbosity, and his old-fashioned oratorical style, but television effectively projected his essential warmth and good humor. He acquired the nickname Wizard of Ooze, an apt description of a speaking style that most of his listeners found entertaining - so much so that in 1966 he even made a record album, Gallant Men, a collection of patriotic readings that sold 500, 000 copies. Still, he remained controversial.
A consummate politician of the old school, Dirksen was admired by traditional Republicans and considered an engaging old rogue by many of his opponents.
On December 24, 1927, Dirksen married Louella Carver. They had one daughter, Danice Joy, who in 1951 married Howard H. Baker, Jr. , of Tennessee, later to become Republican majority leader of the United States Senate and then President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff.
