Senator James E. Watson: The Professional Public Servant
I
THE Honorable James E. Watson, Senator from Indiana, is one of the most colorful characters on the American political stage, upon which he has strutted for a great many years. He has represented his state in the Senate since 1916. Twice he has aspired to the Presidency — once covertly in 1920, once openly in 1928. His name was presented for the Vice Presidential nomination at the 1924 convention of his party, and he is now the Republican leader of the Senate. It can hardly be denied that these things make him a national figure. Certainly he is one of the ‘rulers of America,’ a man who influences national legislation, affects the country currents, a person of real importance in the national scheme.
It is somewhat startling to those who know him well to consider Jim Watson, the Indiana politician, as affecting the affairs of the world and dealing with the destinies of the human race. It is no more remarkable, however, when all three are accurately measured, than that Harding and Coolidge should have been President, and the latter even now be the most popular man in the country, regarded generally by the masses, and by some really intelligent people, as great. The reason, of course, is total lack of popular appreciation that a combination of politics, prosperity, and propaganda can make a minnow seem a whale. Actually, Jim is by no means inferior to the other two. Actually, he is much the most personally attractive. That they became President and he not was a matter of luck. It might just as easily have come his way — because he had gotten in reach of the White House just as they did, coming up along the same machine-made political path, riding on the organization escalator, the beneficiary of the same system. All he needed was ‘the break.’
Now, how did he make the grade? How did he get as far as he has? What sort of man is he? What is his record? What his qualifications?
To those who lack a clear understanding of practical politics as practised in America — and it is amazing how many do — such questions will instantly call to mind two baffling problems about which, in one form or another, there have been much vain oral argument and many confusing written words. One is: Why, in a nation of some 130,000,000 people, when the two great party conventions meet to nominate candidates for President, is their choice always limited rigidly to a ridiculously narrow field? Never by any chance, at any time, are there more than three or four available men in either party. The other: How is it possible for men with not a shadowy claim to greatness or the thinnest pretension to statesmanship, with neither outstanding qualifications nor impeccable records, extremely ordinary, very poorly equipped men — how do such men become national political figures and get within striking distance of the Presidency, some achieving it?
Though they diverge, there is a close relation between these questions. The discussion of one leads into or goes back to the other. There is a book in each. Each goes to the very roots of our political system and to the bottom of the psychology and nature of the American people. Fundamentally, they are the same questions asked from different angles, and the answer to each is the same. The answer, of course, is the primaries, which are the key to all politics, infinitely more vital than the general election, and without a clear grasp of which there is no comprehension of politics.
It is not proposed in this article to go deeper into this basic fact, the truth of which is beyond dispute. Instead, I want to deal with the second angle of the question — and deal with it, not by analyzing in the abstract the conditions that make it possible for these men to obtain national prominence, but by presenting a concrete example of one who has done so. An interpretation of him as a personality and a political figure may be the better way of shedding light on the subject. Certainly it is the more interesting way.
II
The story of Senator Watson is a fascinating one — but the same sort of story could be written of Coolidge, of Harding, of Charley Curtis, of Hiram Johnson, of McKinley, of many another, living and dead, some of whom have made the White House and others just missed it. The thing that makes each story different is the personality of the man, but the road they traveled is the same. In Jim’s case the distinctive character is given by the color, the charm, the gusto and humor of the man, his Gargantuan amiability and friendliness, his extraordinary lack of conviction, amazing flexibility, and robust nature. In many ways he is the ideal politician, built for the game as it is played in America ‘from the ground up.’
For the purposes of this article it is neither necessary nor possible to deal with Jim’s boyhood or babyhood, to discuss his ancestry or birth. It is enough to say that Jim was born in Indiana, and had behind him neither an influential family connection nor large wealth. He has made his own way; there is no doubt of that. Of course he inherited his Republicanism, and the two things to-day in which he firmly believes are the Republican organization and a high protective tariff. He always has believed in those, he always will; but if there is any other question, issue, idea, subject, measure, proposition, proposal, or association concerning which he has a stable conviction, his closest friends do not know it and there is nothing in his record to reveal it. Expediency is the keynote of his existence. He can shift from one position to another with extraordinary celerity and practically no inconvenience to himself. His basic political philosophy is never to let himself be caught in a minority. Out in Indiana there is a favorite saying; ‘Jim loves a majority.’
It was in 1894 that Jim first broke into politics. Through personal friendship with the local leader he got the regular Republican nomination for Congress in the district, and was elected. Prior to that he had been practising law and making friends. For the latter he has great natural gifts. It is almost impossible not to like him. In those days Jim was young, handsome, and eloquent. Tall, straight as a column, with a fine head, a great mane of wavy black hair, and a big, booming voice, when he came to the town of Richmond it made what amounted to a municipal holiday. Everybody turned out to see him — and hear him. He radiated geniality and good humor. He knew everybody in town, called them all by their first names, shook hands and slapped backs all over the place.
As a hand-shaker Jim comes pretty close to being the world champion. He loves it. He never wearies of it. It is as natural to him as breathing. When he sees a man whose face he knows, his hand goes out automatically and without thought. He was in those days a fine figure of a man — is still, for that matter, at sixty-seven, though the black has gone out of the mane, the shoulders are not so erect, and he carries the usual Senatorial paunch. It is interesting that Jim’s first reputation was made in Indiana, delivering memorial addresses at Elks Lodges. Always a joiner, Jim early became an Elk, and could on these occasions make the most hardened brother weep. Often he would weep himself — crocodile tears.
His oratorical mechanics on the stump used to be marvelous to watch. With the years he has acquired a certain dignity, but in the old days he really gave a wonderful show. He would work himself up to an astonishing pitch, tear off first his collar and necktie, then throw aside his coat and vest, until, clad in trousers, shirt, and suspenders, he could really let himself go. It was all clearly a staged performance and Jim was not a bit excited, but they loved it out in Indiana, and the state has had few more entrancing spellbinders.
With his first election to Congress Jim was really launched. He came down to Washington and in an amazingly brief period, through his exhilarating personality, was one of the most popular men in the House. More than that, in a short time he was one of the little circle that ran things. A good companion who told a good story, played a good game of poker, and enjoyed a drink, he became one of ‘Uncle Joe’ Cannon’s most intimate friends. He was one of the real Cannon protégés, and Uncle Joe, then Speaker, used him in a lot of ways, sending him to New York on ‘party business,’ trusting him with the inner House strategy, making him an important cog in his House machine, putting him on good committees, seeing that he got what he wanted to strengthen him ‘back home.’
Renominated and reëlected for five consecutive terms, Jim began to branch out in Indiana, and became a recognized factor in the state organization. Popular, useful, and available, in 1908 he had no great trouble in getting the Republican nomination for Governor, but he was beaten by the late Tom Marshall.
III
Out of office, Jim did n’t stay out of Washington. On the contrary, the following April he appeared in the Capital as the paid representative of certain subsidiaries of the American Manufacturers Association, for which Michael Martin Mulhall was chief lobbyist. Mulhall hired Watson to advocate the insertion of a tariffcommission proposal in the PayneAldrich Bill, and this turned out to be one of the first of the various not entirely creditable spots in his career. A Congressional committee began an investigation of lobbying, and Mulhall, turning on his employees, said Watson had interested himself in rates as well as in the tariff commission. In its formal report the House Committee said: —
The Committee questions the propriety of one who has been a member of Congress and attained a personal and political influence, capitalizing that influence in pressing legislative proposals upon Congress for hire, by personal contact and personal efforts with members, as was done in this case. And we confess to a feeling of regret that upon any question, whatsoever its merits, the lobbyist for it should be able to say, as Mr. Watson said in this case, ‘I had various members of Congress coming to report to me how their delegation stood.’
This was rather severe on Jim, and one would think it would have damaged him in Indiana politics. It might have damaged some other man — but not Jim. A curious thing about him is that matters such as these, showing him in what may be mildly called ‘an unfavorable light,’ — and in the course of his more than a quarter of a century of active politics he has had quite a few such, — never seem to do Jim any particular harm. For one thing, he just laughs them off. For another, there is so clear an understanding of the man that these things do not seem incongruous or shocking when revealed about him.
Take, for example, the most recent disclosure. A few months ago a Senate committee declared that Jim, in 1929, had secured from a sugar lobbyist, interested in the sugar rates of the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill, a block of stock in the sugar company of which the lobbyist was the head. Jim had given for the stock his unsecured, unendorsed, non-interest-bearing note, which had been returned to him with the stock. In other words, Jim got the stock without paying a nickel, and later voted for the sugar rates. When the facts came out, Jim loudly laughed and said, ‘There is n’t anything in it.
The stock’s no good and my note’s no good, so the score is 0 to 0, with no hits, no runs, and two errors — the first error, me taking their stock, the second error, them taking my note.’
That is a typical Watson reply, characteristic of his attitude and feeling about these things. Imagine, if you can, a Glass or a Borah or a Norris making a deal like that, or treating its disclosure like that! To some men it would be a ruinous incident. It will hardly cost Jim a vote when he runs again this fall. Out in Indiana they just laugh and say, ‘ Well, I see they’ve got another one on Jim.’
The Mulhall business did n’t damage him a bit. In the years immediately following he continued his Washington connection, but likewise devoted a great deal of time to strengthening himself at home, with the result that when, in 1916, Senator John W. Kern died, he became a candidate for the Republican Senatorial nomination for the short term. It was in these primaries that he had perhaps the bitterest fight of his life. Harry S. New, later Postmaster-General under Harding, was his opponent. The contest was a terrific one, in which many terrible things were said of Jim and each side left little undone to discredit the other.
After it was over and the convention about to meet, it was clear that Jim had a majority of the delegates; but Harry had such convincing affidavits of fraud that, once they became public, Jim’s nomination would have meant party defeat in the election. And Mr. New had every intention of making them public. At this critical stage Mr. Shively, the other Senator from Indiana, died, thus creating two vacancies. It was a great piece of luck for Jim. The convention met and in effect said, ‘Here, the nomination of either of these men alone will disrupt the party, but the nomination of both will save the situation. There are two vacancies. The thing to do is to nominate them both.’ And that is what they did.
IV
Jim went to the Senate that year, and there he has been ever since — three times reëlected. He has had to trim and hedge and shift and fight and forgive and dodge and defend and laugh and work and talk more than most men to keep there; but there he is, and there, unless his luck leaves him this fall, he will stay, for he is sure of unopposed renomination this summer. The seniority rule of the Senate made him the Republican floor leader in 1929, and his control of his party organization in Indiana since 1922 has been practically undisputed and complete. All of his really formidable enemies have passed out of politics or passed away altogether. To-day he not only is unbeatable in an Indiana Republican primary, but, so far as the Republicans are concerned, is the dictator of the state, without whose support no man can be nominated for a state-wide office.
The development of this sort of power is by no means to be attributed to his personality. A personality such as Jim’s is a great political asset, but it could not make him or anyone else a Republican boss in a state like Indiana. What has done it is patronage — largely Federal patronage. In every state the Republican machine is built up around the Federal officeholders. To a remarkable extent they are the state machines. Through them is achieved control of the primary gate through which all aspirants to elective office must first pass. Control of the primaries is control of the party. Jim has that now, has had it for ten years, and he got it because since 1916 he has been practically the sole distributor of the Federal patronage in his state.
It is completely a Watson machine now, but it has taken more than a decade to construct it. During that time he has stood a good deal of punishment, been called a lot of hard names, sustained numerous bruises, cuts, and contusions. He has had covert alliances with the Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan, though at heart no one thinks or ever thought he was in sympathy with either. But ‘Jim loves a majority,’ and when they seemed a majority he was an exceedingly friendly, even affectionate fellow. To-day the Klan has shriveled and lost its Indiana powder, but the Republican alliance with it, for which many blame Jim, resulted in a series of scandals in Indiana that made the name of the state a byword in the country and sent various high Republican wheel horses to the penitentiary, including one governor. Through it all, conciliating, compromising, negotiating, placating, promising, pleasant, shaking hands and telling the boys ‘Everything will be all right,’ Jim Watson has moved, survived, retained his urbanity, held on to his leadership. And there he is on top, the dominant force in his state, Indiana’s ‘favorite son,’ whose name has been presented for the Presidency, and who still cherishes hopes — particularly when he thinks of Harding and Coolidge. He is an extraordinary character.
In brief, that is Jim’s political career. When one looks back over it, a period of nearly thirty years in Congress, it is astonishing how thin it is. His successes have been local successes — appropriations for Indiana post offices and projects, pensions for his constituents, and jobs, jobs, jobs. But no great measure bears his name; no constructive piece of legislation was ever enacted through his efforts; no policy initiated, no proposal inaugurated. His career is in fact completely barren of accomplishment, but it does not greatly differ in that respect from dozens of others with the same opportunities. It is typically political.
Jim is not a well-informed man, not a student of public questions, not a reader of books. All he wants to know about a subject is enough to make a flamboyant speech about it. The details bore him. He has a fairly good mind, but he is intellectually lazy, superficial, not to say trifling — but likable. He has n’t even a well-defined political philosophy, unless it is contained in one of his favorite sayings. ’If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em.’ Party regularity is his fetish, conservatism is in his blood. Through all his political life he has leaned to the side of the railroads, the banks, the corporations, the ‘interests.’ There is not an ounce of radicalism in his whole gigantic frame, not the smallest trace of progressivism. To mention the word ‘reform’ in the presence of Jim is a joke. He is an Old Guardsman from the heart, a reactionary, a regular stand-pat Republican, who will go any limit in a personal fight, and abandon any principle to promote his party.
Yet, despite this, there have been times when Jim, now a party leader, forsook his party leader, even hobnobbed and flirted with the Western radicals. For example, there was his vote against the World Court protocol in 1926. Up to that time he had been a World Court man, counted upon as an unshakable advocate. The explanation given by his Indiana friends is that word came to him from home that the late Albert J. Beveridge proposed to enter the Senatorial primaries against him, making opposition to the Court his issue. So Jim shrewdly shifted, voted against the Court, and sent word to Coolidge, then in the White House, that he had to do it, ‘but don’t hold it against me.’ In reply to a hot letter from an Indiana friend, Jim wrote in effect: ‘Don’t get excited. I voted against the Court, but I got six other Senators to vote for it.’
The Capital is full of stories like that about Jim which, better than any psychological analysis, illustrate and interpret the man. Once a group of newspaper men surrounded him as he came out of the Senate and asked his position on a pending bill. ’Well, boys, it’s this way. You see, I’ve got friends on both sides of this measure and you know I’m the kind of guy who stands by his friends’ — and away he walked, with an arm over the shoulder of one, a hand clasping the arm of another, and the infectious Watsonian laugh ringing through the corridor.
V
It was during 1928 that he had his flirtation with the radicals. At that time Jim was strongly antagonistic to the nomination of Mr. Hoover. So was Vice President Dawes. Jim and the Vice President became ardent exponents of the equalization-fee system of farm relief, to which Hoover was opposed as economically unsound and savoring of socialism. Jim did not then, and does not now, know what the equalization fee really meant, but he made some stirring speeches on it just the same, and conferred with the Western Progressives as one of them. Carrying the scheme West after the adjournment, Jim did considerable toward stirring up the farmers and arraying his section against Hoover. Announcing himself as a candidate for the Presidential nomination, he became exceedingly bitter when Hoover entered the Indiana primaries, and, denouncing Hoover all over the state, Jim carried them handsomely.
At Kansas City, Jim was really in charge of the anti-Hoover allies, planned their campaign, organized the demonstration against Hoover, and made a violent pre-convention speech in which he said things about Hoover much more severe than any Democrat later did. But once the nomination was made, Jim supported the ticket in the most whole-hearted fashion, put aside the last remnant of bitterness, wanted Hoover elected, wanted him to succeed after he was elected. That’s Jim. There is no vindictiveness in his nature. He harbors no grudges, and the party and the party leader always get his support — except upon certain rare occasions, such as those noted above, when local political expediency compels a momentary irregularity. This, to Jim, is entirely excusable if it does not happen too often and does not imperil party success.
If Mr. Hoover had a better understanding of Jim, he would have had, perhaps, better coöperation in the Senate. It was, of course, something of a jolt when he became President to find the Senate presenting him with Jim Watson, his most violent preconvention enemy, as administration leader, through whom he was supposed to deal, and in whom, to deal effectively, he had to repose every confidence. It was natural for him to feel that Jim was a hostile Indian, to regard him as tricky, treacherous, and unreliable. Before his nomination Jim might have been all those things, but not later. Hoover nominated and Hoover in the White House became at once to Jim his party leader — and to the party leader he is loyal. He wanted to be, was, and is loyal to Hoover as the party leader, but only for that reason.
Of course he and the President are such widely different types that there could hardly be anything like personal cordiality between them. They do not speak the same language or think the same thoughts. Their reactions are as dissimilar as their tastes, their talents, and their personal appearance. They are both members of the human race, but that is the only tie between them.
It is hard, then, to blame Mr. Hoover for not having much confidence in Jim. In view of what he knew about Jim, it would have been remarkable if he had. Nevertheless, if he had trusted Jim a bit more and understood him a bit better, Mr. Hoover would have had a more effective loyalty and a warmer support from him. Probably it would have made very little difference in the net results of the last session, or of the present one. Still, the idea that Jim has ‘let things go in order to give Hoover a black eye’ is not fair. He has done the best he could. A leader much abler and far more gifted than Jim could have done little more than he, for the very simple reason that there is no way to keep a majority behind him. The regular Republicans were at all times in a minority, and their leader was distinctly out of luck. He is even more so this time.
Yet, curious as it may seem, Jim Watson, the least sensitive of men, accustomed to laughing off the most virulent newspaper attacks and making a jest of disclosures about his private finances and political skullduggery, is somewhat sensitive about being referred to as a poor leader. It rather hurts his feelings. He does not think it should be done. He does not believe it true. When he first took over the Senate leadership, his idea was to become the great conciliator, and for months he industriously conciliated all over the Senate Chamber. It is true that he did not get very far; but then who could? How could anyone conciliate Borah and Smoot, George Norris and George Moses, Hiram Johnson and Simeon Fess? But Jim tried, and is still trying. Somewhat mortified as well as handicapped by not having the complete White House confidence, he is still in his way loyal to Hoover, though not liking him.
Whatever may be said about Jim politically, — and there is not much that has n’t been said, — there is no room at all for criticism of his life as a family man. Mrs. Watson is a charming and lovely lady, to whom he is completely devoted. He is proud of his boys and worships his grandchildren. No one really knows whether Jim is rich or not. The Watsons live in a handsome but leased house in Washington, do not entertain a great deal or lavishly, but when they do, they do it extremely well. Jim travels about quite a bit, dresses rather expensively, and never seems to lack money, notwithstanding his expressed opinion about the value of his notes.
Politically he is not a wicked man. There is nothing really evil about him. He is not really immoral politically — just non-moral; not unprincipled, merely non-principled. He is one of the world’s greatest promisers. ‘Yes, you bet your sweet life I’m with you for this job, old boy. You can count on me till the cows come home,’ he tells them, walking to the door of his office, arm over the applicant’s shoulder, a note of complete sincerity in his rich voice. And then he forgets all about it — but he meant it at the time.
He does not whimper when he is beaten; he is not afraid of a fight,though he never fights unless it is necessary; he is a gorgeous bluffer and he bears no malice. Also he forgives you so charmingly that you like him forever. A year or so ago some fellow wrote a piece about Jim in which he called him a ‘lovable old humbug.’ A few days later Jim was introduced to the writer. His arm went right around the latter’s shoulder and, affectionately calling him by his first name, Jim said, ‘You wrote something pretty hard about me in your paper the other day, but I knew damn well you didn’t mean it and so it’s all right. Don’t worry about it.’
That’s the story of Jim, the lovable old humbug. Politically, he is n’t very different from a good many others, and has reached the peaks by pretty much the same path. But personally, if there is a match for him anywhere, his name cannot now be recalled.