William Fife Knowland was an American newspaper publisher and politician. He served as the United States Senator from California from 1945 to 1959 and as a Senate Majority Leader and Senate Minority Leader. He was also an editor of the Oakland Tribune from 1966.
Background
William Fife Knowland was born on June 26, 1908 in Alameda, California, United States, the youngest of three children of Ella J. Fife and Joseph Russell Knowland. He spent part of his childhood in Washington, D. C. , where his father served in the House of Representatives. In 1914, Joseph Knowland lost a race for the Senate and bought a half-interest in the Oakland Tribune, which he used to dominate the California Republican party and to promote his son's political career. Knowland's idea of a childhood game was to stand on a box and make a speech. At age twelve, he spoke for Warren G. Harding's presidential election, and at sixteen was finance chairman of the local Coolidge-Dawes Club.
Education
Knowland's family believed that as early as high school William determined to become president of the United States, which was also his father's ambition for him. He was sent to study at the University of California, Berkeley. As a student, Knowland served as a copy boy and held other jobs on the Oakland Tribune. He graduated from Berkeley in 1929.
Career
In 1929, Knowland worked for the Tribune, becoming assistant publisher in 1933. At age twenty-four, he survived the Democratic landslide of 1932 to win election as a Republican to the California State Assembly. He was elected to the state senate in 1934, named to the Republican National Committee in 1938, and became chairman of its executive committee in 1941.
Drafted into the United States Army as a private during World War II, Knowland attended officers candidate school and rose to the rank of major; among his duties was the writing of combat histories. In August 1945, while at the army historical section in France, he learned via telegram that Governor Earl Warren of California had named him to fill the vacancy caused by the death of U. S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson--an appointment arranged by his father, one of Warren's chief supporters. He assumed office on August 26, 1945.
In 1946, Knowland retained the seat by defeating a popular Democrat, Will Rogers, Jr. In 1952 he ran on both the Republican and Democratic tickets, amassing more votes (almost four million) than any previous California candidate. Initially perceived as a moderate Republican, Knowland joined a "Young Turk" insurgency that challenged the leadership of Senator Robert A. Taft. Moderates nominated Knowland for Senate floor leader in 1948, but Taft's supporters defeated him, 24 to 14.
As a Pacific Coast senator, Knowland endorsed a bipartisan foreign policy in defense of Europe and argued that Asia was equally vital to American interests. After touring the Far East in 1946, he warned the Senate that "someday in this age of the airplane and the atom, a twentieth-century Genghis Khan may come forth to jeopardize the security of this nation. " As the Nationalist Chinese government collapsed, Knowland dismissed the State Department's white paper on China as a "white-wash" and denounced its Far Eastern Division as defeatist. In November 1949, he visited Chungking the day before Communist troops conquered the city. He returned obsessed with defeating Communism in Asia. Knowland's hard-line, Asia-oriented policies and passionate support for Chiang Kai-shek earned him the title "Senator from Formosa, " and steered him into the Republican party's right wing.
At the Republican convention in 1952, Knowland chaired the California delegation, pledged to Earl Warren. When Robert Taft tempted Knowland with offers of the vice-presidential nomination in return for California's votes, he declined to break his commitment to Warren. Caught unaware when the state's junior senator, Richard M. Nixon (whom he considered his protégé), maneuvered in favor of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Knowland was relegated to nominating Nixon for vice-president. He never trusted Nixon again. Eisenhower's election in 1952 carried Republican majorities into Congress. Taft became Senate majority leader and appointed Knowland chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. In June 1953, the terminally ill Taft made Knowland acting majority leader, explaining that "nobody can push him around. " Although Knowland shared Taft's political integrity and personal decorum, he lacked his parliamentary skills. A ponderous speaker with little humor, burly and gruff, and "as subtle as a Sherman tank, " Knowland was often compared to a football player for his muscular physique and unyielding positions.
As Republican majority leader from 1953 to 1955, and minority leader from 1955 to 1959, Knowland proved no match for his wily Democratic counterpart, Lyndon B. Johnson. Although they often joined forces, Johnson could not resist imitating Knowland's lumbering walk or ridiculing his legislative ineptness. During the Eighty-third Congress, the parties were so nearly equal in numbers that replacements for deceased Senators at times gave Senate Democrats a numerical advantage. Once, after Johnson defeated him on a vote in 1954, Knowland lamented his predicament of "being majority leader in this body without having a majority. "
Knowland struggled to maintain Republican unity behind Eisenhower's domestic policies, particularly in support of civil rights legislation. He set in motion the legislative machinery to bring down Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, although he voted against McCarthy's censure. But he absolutely refused to "rubber stamp" foreign policy. He advocated a naval blockade of China and opposed foreign aid to neutral nations. When Senator John Bricker sponsored a constitutional amendment requiring Senate approval of executive agreements, Knowland implored the Eisenhower administration to compromise. He temporarily vacated his seat as majority leader to endorse a milder substitute for the Bricker Amendment; the substitute failed by a single vote. Knowland withdrew his name from several presidential primaries when Eisenhower decided to stand for reelection in 1956. Rather than run for reelection to the Senate in 1958, he announced that he would campaign instead for governor of California.
As governor, he believed that he could better control the state's large delegation and prevent Nixon from gaining the Republican presidential nomination. Knowland planned to challenge California's liberal incumbent governor, Goodwin Knight, but Nixon's supporters convinced Knight to run for the Senate to avoid splitting the party. In his campaign against Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown, Knowland made "right to work" (opposition to closed union shops) his major issue, thereby alienating the labor vote that Warren and Knight had courted. An economic recession, grass-roots organizing of the Democrats through federated clubs, and the state's rapidly changing demographics contributed to crushing defeats for both Knowland and Knight.
Returning to Oakland, Knowland became editor and publisher of the Oakland Tribune when his father died in 1966. Through the paper's editorial influence, and as chairman of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, he ran the city, whose mayor and city council were regarded as "Knowland's appointees. " Concerned that poverty and unemployment were spawning such radical groups as the Black Panthers, Knowland promoted urban redevelopment, especially through federal funds from the Office of Economic Opportunity, and opened his paper to more extensive coverage of Oakland's black community.
In 1964, Knowland headed the California campaign committee for Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, whose victory in the state primary secured him the Republican presidential nomination. Knowland suspected radicals of using the Berkeley campus as a staging ground for demonstrations against Goldwater and the Tribune. By pressuring the university to restrict campus speakers, he inadvertently helped trigger Berkeley's "Free Speech Movement, " which stimulated greater student activism. However, public reaction to campus turmoil helped to elect a conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan, governor two years later. In 1968, Knowland endorsed Governor Reagan in a last, unsuccessful attempt to block Nixon's presidential nomination. Knowland dramatically altered his private life in his sixties. He and Helen divorced in 1972 after forty-five years of marriage, and he married Ann Dickson, twenty-five years his junior, on Apr. 29, 1972. Knowland soon cautioned his new wife that he was "not an Onassis or Hughes" and could not afford her lavish spending. He was deeply in debt when they separated in December 1972. By 1974, he owed more than $900, 000 in personal loans, secured by his Tribune stock. When the loans came due, Knowland stepped onto a dock on the Russian River, at his weekend retreat near Monte Rio, in Sonoma County, and fatally shot himself in the head.
Achievements
James Proctor Knott distinguished himself during his service in the state legislature and U. S. Congress. He was considered the most powerful member of the Senate and was instrumental in defining the national foreign policy regarding Vietnam, Formosa, China, Korea and NATO, and other foreign-policy objectives.
Knowland was a member of Republican Party. He opposed the Communism in China under Mao Zedong. He was an ardent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy and opposed the Senate resolution censuring McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade.
Connections
On December 31, 1926, while a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, he married his classmate Helen Davis Herrick; they had three children. He and Helen divorced in 1972 after forty-five years of marriage, and he married Ann Dickson, twenty-five years his junior, on April 29, 1972. Knowland soon cautioned his new wife that he was "not an Onassis or Hughes" and could not afford her lavish spending. They separated in December 1972.
