National Affairs: Professional Common Man

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On his farm in Platte County, Mo., a friend of Estes Kefauver sat musing about why he likes the Senator from Tennessee. “I think,” said Missouri’s cattle-raising Democratic Representative William Hull Jr., “that he is the type of fellow who, if he was out campaigning and came across a farmer pitching manure, would take off his coat, grab another pitchfork and start to work.” This week, pitchfork in hand, Vice-Presidential Nominee Kefauver was all set to start work on the key part of his Democratic campaign job: winning votes for his ticket in the twelve-state Midwestern farm area with a soft pitch of faith, hope and parity.

Although Estes Kefauver’s appeal is not limited to the farm country, it is there that he has proven his credentials: in 1952 and 1956 he entered a total of ten Midwestern presidential primaries, came out of them undefeated, and, in Minnesota last March, very nearly closed the barn door on Adlai Stevenson. It is his appeal to farmers that best explains Kefauver’s vote-pulling powers wherever they exist. Many another Democratic politician can point to a farm record as staunch and steady as Kefauver’s; Kefauver himself is almost inarticulate in expressing his policies. When asked precisely what he stands for, he is likely to hesitate, ponder painfully, and finally come up with some such phrase as “a place in the sun for the farmer,” or “the best interests of the plain people of this nation,” or “an even break for the average man.” But the Midwestern farmer cares much less about what Kefauver stands for than about how he looks and acts.

Goodness Is As Goodness Does. Estes Kefauver, 53, looks and acts like a hulking (6 ft. 3 in., 220 lbs.), humble, approachable, kindly man. Says Minnesota Farmers Union President Ed Christianson: “It’s because of his personality and the way he presents things to us. It’s his speech and his manner.” Explains Kansas Wheat Farmer Jerry Risely: “I met him in a restaurant and had a chance to talk to him. I thought he had something about him—that his words carried tremendous importance.” Adds Minnesota Cattle Raiser Norman Hanson: “Stevenson doesn’t come down to where the farmers are. Kefauver does.”

It is because of his ability—and Stevenson’s comparative inability—to project a just-plain-folks personality that Kefauver, the professionally common man, is of uncommon value to the Democratic ticket. He stands high with labor (A.F.L.-C.I.O. Vice President Walter Reuther was one of his boosters for the vice-presidential nomination). Two presidential primaries showed clearly how the New Hampshire housewife felt about Kefauver. Professional Southern politicians dislike him intensely—but even they admit that Southern voters by the thousands are likely to fall hard for Kefauver’s poor-mouthed Southern drawl.

To exploit Kefauver’s appeal, he is being given equal, if hyphenated, billing on Stevenson-Kefauver campaign posters, and party strategists plan to let him have more campaign money than any previous vice-presidential candidate. It should be money well spent. Said a correspondent traveling with Kefauver: “He’s the single strongest asset Stevenson’s got.”

More than Skin-Deep. Thus has Estes Kefauver’s plain and simple exterior made him Adlai Stevenson’s right-hand man in the 1956 national campaign. But behind that Kefauver there is another Kefauver, neither plain nor simple.

Everything about Kefauver points to birth in a log cabin, but he was actually raised on his family’s 600-acre farm near Madisonville, Tenn. (pop. 1.500), where his father was a well-to-do real-estate operator, hardware dealer and five-term mayor. Kefauver’s whole demeanor speaks of an education limited to the little red schoolhouse, but he graduated from the University of Tennessee and Yale Law School. (His top adviser, Washington’s “Jiggs” Donohue, says Adlai and Estes get along well because, “after all, they’re both Ivy Leaguers, you might say.”) Kefauver has won a name as an outspoken critic of big business, but he was once a highly successful Chattanooga corporation lawyer. He appears to be a happy, stunt-loving, political extravert, but beneath the calm, smiling surface is a tense introvert.

Estes Kefauver has met, talked to and sympathized with as many people as anyone in the U.S., but his own wife, redhaired, Scottish-born Nancy Pigott Kefauver, has said that he is “not much interested in individuals.” Thousands of U.S. farmers, factory workers, shopkeepers and elderly ladies feel, on the basis of a moment’s acquaintance, that Kefauver is an old friend. But his oldest friends sometimes feel that they do not know him at all. Recalls his 1948 senatorial campaign manager, Charles Neese: “I was riding with an assistant of his one day, and I asked, ‘Do you understand him?’ The answer was, ‘No, do you understand him?’ ” Neese’s reply: “No.”

The Life of Two Boys. The key to an understanding of Carey Estes Kefauver lies deep. From his father, Robert Cooke Kefauver, who is now seriously ill in Tennessee, Estes inherited a pre-Revolutionary name (it had originally come from the German Kefober) and a penchant for Wilsonian liberalism that, although fuzzily expressed, has remained constant. From his mother, Phredonia Estes,* came a lineage tracing back to Renaissance Italy (Villa d’Este, the family seat in Tivoli, is famed the world over for its fountains and terraced gardens).

But Phredonia gave Estes something more than a proud bloodline; she instilled in him the overwhelming, sometimes smothering sense of kindness that is one of his most notable characteristics. Even when he was in college, she wrote every other day with homely admonitions; e.g. “Leave no tender word unsaid” (he has not left one), and “Do good while life shall last” (he tries desperately). The Bible she gave him as a boy had pasted in it a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox :

If you are sighing for a lofty work,

If great ambitions dominate your mind,

Just watch yourself and see you do not shirk

The common little ways of being kind.

When Estes Kefauver was eleven, the family suffered a tragedy that shaped his life. His brother Robert, two years older, was the great light of the Kefauver family. “He was the bright one,” says Estes. Adds Kefauver’s Aunt Lottie: “Robert was the smartest child that ever lived. He was the one the family pinned their hopes on. Estes was just the sweetest child in the world.” One day Estes, Robert and some other tads were swimming in the nearby Tellico River. Suddenly Robert went under. Estes was on the other side of the river, arrived after the other boys had pulled Robert out, worked desperately to help revive his brother. But Robert died convulsively a few days later.

For months Estes mourned, brooding alone in his room through long, tortured hours. When he emerged, he was changed. Says Kefauver: “I became more serious and studious. I felt I had to do better to make up to my parents for his loss.” Many of the paradoxes and contradictions of Estes Kefauver may be explained by a lifelong friend, who says: “It seems as though Keef were trying to live the life of two boys.” One boy might have settled for life as a gentleman farmer or a lawyer. But the other had visions of a greater destiny—as President of the U.S.

The Coon in the Drawer. Kefauver has never since let his eye stray far from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. “There have,” he says, “been active times thinking about it and inactive times.” His entire career testifies to the fact that the active times far outnumber the inactive. Even in high school, when asked to sign a girl friend’s album, Estes Kefauver stated his ambition: “To be President.” He began as a campus politician at Tennessee, where he was known as “Big Stuff” in tribute to his achievements as senior-class president, editor of the campus paper, football tackle and star discus thrower. In 1939 he cheerfully gave up his lucrative Chattanooga law practice to enter, and win, a special House election. Re-elected four times, he saw a chance in late 1947 to move up the political ladder to the U.S. Senate.

To get there, Kefauver had to beat both the incumbent and the hand-picked candidate of Memphis’ mighty political boss, Ed Crump. When Kefauver began making headway, Crump lashed out viciously with a full-page newspaper ad that said: “Kefauver reminds me of the pet coon that puts its foot in an open drawer in your room, but invariably turns its head while its foot is feeling around in the drawer. The coon hopes, through its cunning by turning its head, he will deceive any onlookers as to where his foot is and what it is into.” Estes Kefauver replied promptly, and with a humor rare in him. Donning a coonskin cap, he told his audiences: “I may be a pet coon, but I’ll never be Mr. Crump’s pet coon.”

The Flypaper Grip. Kefauver’s coonskin cap caught Tennessee’s imagination, and he handily won both the Democratic nomination and the general election. But infinitely more important to his long-term ambitions was the advice given him early in that senatorial campaign by Nashville Tennessean Publisher Silliman Evans Jr. and Campaign Manager Charles Neese. They told him that if he could shake at least 500 hands a day until election time he could beat the Crump machine. He did—and won—and it has since been a slugabed campaign day that has not seen him pump at least 500 hands.

The Kefauver handshake has deservedly become a national monument. It is not bone-crushing, or even firm. It is limp but not clammy. An inward turn of the wrist prevents pressure that would later cause aches and pains. Unlike Adlai Stevenson, Kefauver does not chatter as he shakes; he utters one friendly sentence and reaches for the next hand. As he shakes with his right hand, he applies a light pressure with his left on his well-wisher’s right elbow, thus keeping the line moving. When someone launches an extended conversation, Kefauver seems to give undivided attention—but he grabs for the next hand in line. The resulting traffic pile-up generally gets rid of the talker.

Kefauver’s handshaking fetish has caused the Stevenson entourage some anguish. Admits a Kefauver assistant: “It’s like pulling a fly off flypaper.” Even Nancy Kefauver has her tale of woe. Campaigning with Estes one time, she stepped from a plane to face a howling wind and the prop wash of several other planes. Nancy’s hat was imperiled, her skirt began to balloon. Says she: “Just as I grabbed for the hat with one hand and for the skirt with the other, an eager, friendly crowd swarmed up to greet us. Someone thrust at me the usual welcoming bouquet, which I, not being endowed with three hands, frantically considered gripping with my teeth. Estes, pumping away with both fists, looked over at me, a little annoyed. Above the hubbub of wind, propellers and introductions, he called out, ‘Honey, why can’t you shake hands with all these good people?'”

“Shame on You, Estes.” In just such resolute fashion, Estes Kefauver shook his way into the U.S. Senate. There, his voting record showed heavy emphasis on TVA, other public-power projects and farm subsidies. It followed Fair-Deal doctrine (up to 95% pro-Administration in 1949-50) and this year won him a rating by the Americans for Democratic Action as one of the eleven Senators most pleasing to that organization’s left-wing position. But among his own colleagues Kefauver’s popularity rating years ago dropped through the floor; he probably has fewer Capitol Hill friends than any other Senator. Hardly any have supported him in his quest for the presidency. Many feel that he has shamefully neglected his Senate duties to engage in that quest (in 16 years in the House and Senate, he authored not a single major piece of legislation). Others consider him the rankest sort of opportunist, who will do anything to grab a headline.

Kefauver especially failed to endear himself to Southern Congressmen. Early in his House career he co-authored a book urging congressional reorganization that would have relaxed the South’s hold through seniority on committee chairmanships. He has voted against poll taxes, and has favored an antilynching bill; his present stand on civil rights is at least as straightforward as Stevenson’s. Mississippi’s old Demagogue John Rankin was only expressing the consensus of Southern Congressmen when, years ago, he arose on the House floor, wagged an accusing finger, and bellowed: “Shame on you, Estes Kee-fow-vuh!”*

“He Perked Right Up.” In 1950-51 came the opportunity that Estes Kefauver had been seeking since boyhood: the Truman Administration was rocked by a succession of scandals, some big-city politicians were obviously in cahoots with racketeers—and the U.S. was ready for some simple morality. Estes served up that morality in Phredonian quantities. As chairman of a special Senate committee investigating interstate crime, he became the honest face on the television screen, the painfully sincere voice asking “Greasy Thumb” and “Tough Tony” and “Murray the Camel” why they were such naughty boys. Kefauver’s probe had little lasting effect; it resulted in the passage of only one relatively unimportant public law. It made him some powerful enemies, especially among Democratic city bosses —but it made him a leading candidate for the 1952 Presidential nomination.

Kefauver gave it a terrific try, beating Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary (a political sin that Harry neither forgot nor forgave), collecting about 275 delegates in other primaries, leading on the first two convention ballots at Chicago. And then Estes Kefauver watched, stunned and shocked, as his Democratic enemies turned over the prize he coveted above all others to a man who had said he didn’t want it: Adlai Stevenson.

After Stevenson was nominated, some of Kefauver’s friends feared for his selfcontrol. He lay awake nights suffering over his defeat, wondering how he had lost, blaming only himself. One night, in an air-conditioned hotel room, he arose three or four times to change the pajamas that had been soaked through with the cold sweat of his torment. But he was saved by his dream of destiny. Chicago Lawyer A. Bradley Eben, a top Kefauver adviser, recalls telling the still-dazed Estes: “Well, now we’ve got to plan for 1956.” Says Eben: “He perked up immediately when he heard that.”

Postcards from Moscow. Kefauver began pointing for 1956. Increasing the number of speeches he made for fees, he paid off the debt—estimated at $30,000 —incurred by his 1952 campaign. He held his place in the Senate by carrying 91 of Tennessee’s 95 counties against a tough, helicopter-hopping war hero who accused Estes of coddling Communists. With his investigations of juvenile delinquency, violence and sex in motion pictures, pornography, black-market babies and Dixon-Yates, Kefauver went prospecting for publicity. He became one of the first Democrats to speak out squarely against Dwight Eisenhower (“Eisenhower is a disappointing President”). Whereas most prospective presidential candidates make one trip abroad, Kefauver made three, covering Europe, the Middle East and Asia. And when the Soviet Union relaxed its restrictions against U.S. travelers. Kefauver was among the first to pop over to Moscow.

Estes Kefauver’s travels brought no great contributions to U.S. foreign policy. He remained, as for years before, an enthusiast of Clarence Streit’s dreamy Atlantic Union, under which the U.S. would give up significant rights of sovereignty to participate with other free nations in a constitutional federation.

What Kefauver’s journeys did bring was a blizzard of postcards and notes from all points of the world to all parts of the U.S. To Texas’ Senator Lyndon Johnson came one beginning: “Dear Lyndon. I am at the airport waiting to get on a plane for Helsinki. I want you to know I am thinking about you.” In one of the choice seats of a Moscow theater, with Soviet culture cavorting all around him, Estes Kefauver sat scribbling away on his postcards to prospective supporters. And finally, thousands of miles and three months after Moscow, to a man in Illinois came a message from Washington: “Dear Adlai. As you know, I am announcing tomorrow. I do hope we can get together.”

Nettles from Adlai. In 1956 Kefauver had to fight a personal as well as a political battle. Wife Nancy, 45, who had campaigned with him in 1952, was at best unenthusiastic this time. Kefauver’s four children (three girls and an adopted boy) were extremely unhappy about Daddy’s leaving home again. The oldest daughter, Linda, 14, refused to speak to Kefauver for three weeks after his announcement. But Estes Kefauver knew what he wanted, and he had only one way to go after it. Says he: “If you seek anything, you ought to do it with all your might.”

He did just that, and his win over the favored Stevenson in Minnesota again demonstrated Kefauver’s great strength in the farm states. After that the campaign got rougher—and the two men who are now running mates said things they wish they had swallowed. Directly or indirectly, Kefauver accused Stevenson of bossism, mudslinging, fair-weather liberalism, inconsistency on civil rights, and of being a “silver-platter candidate.” Said Stevenson: “I find this very irksome.” Then Stevenson charged Kefauver with neglecting his Senate duties. Said he: “There may be such a thing as wanting to be President too badly.” Retorted Kefauver: “Mr. Stevenson is not talking sense; he is simply talking nonsense, and he is doing it in the manner of a man who is desperate.”

California, most crucial of the state primaries, wrecked all Kefauver’s chances and brought, less than two months later, his withdrawal in favor of Stevenson.

When Harry Truman’s Chicago endorsement of Averell Harriman seemed to throw the nomination open again, some of Kefauver’s supporters urged him to jump back into the contest. Kefauver refused; Phredonia’s lessons were too strong in him. “I felt,” he says, “that I had given my word.” He worked hard and faithfully to switch his delegates to Stevenson —and his efforts helped give Stevenson a first-ballot nomination.

When Nominee Stevenson announced that the vice-presidential candidate would be chosen in a wide open convention, such Kefauver managers as Jiggs Donohue urged Estes to stay out. The whole thing was a phony, they argued. Stevenson had really chosen a running mate; the best Estes could get was another slap in the face—and he was running out of cheeks to turn. But Kefauver talked to Stevenson at Adlai’s victory party and received personal assurances that the race was indeed open. He left the party, huddled with aides in a post-midnight session, talked it over with Nancy and decided to make the fight that he won on the wild second ballot.

Alka-Seltzer & Vitamins. Last week Estes Kefauver and Adlai Stevenson, men who had fought and made up, were together on the campaign road. Before leaving Washington, Kefauver worked on routine chores in his office and in his six-bedroom English Tudor home in fashionable Spring Valley. (Richard Nixon lives about eight blocks away, the two Nixon girls and the two youngest Kefauver girls go to the same public school, Nancy Kefauver and Pat Nixon shop in the same neighborhood stores, belong to the same P.T.A. chapter.) Kefauver also went to Farnsworth-Reed Ltd., an exclusive 17th Street custom shop, bought a blue suit and a grey suit, discovered that his campaign exertions had reduced his waistline from 41 to 39 in. and his collar size from 17 to 16½.

In Kefauver’s hand as he boarded the Chicago-bound Capital Airlines plane was his enormous, ever-present briefcase, stuffed with all the items that long campaign experience has taught him he needs: an extra shirt (he perspires heavily), his slippers, silver-blue eyeshade, mail, vitamins, Alka-Seltzer, cigars (he chews them still unwrapped), cigarettes and a holder (to keep fit for campaigning he tried to quit smoking, failed, settled for filtertipped cigarettes puffed through a filtered holder), three or four pairs of reading and sunglasses, shaving equipment—and a fat, black contact book with all the important political names in the area about to be toured.

Alphonse & Gaston. In Chicago, waiting at the airport for Stevenson, Estes reached for the sky (while photographers clicked madly away) to save himself from the cap pistol of a 3½-year-old Roy Rogers. When Stevenson and Kefauver started to board their chartered plane in Chicago, their aides looked for a routine that had already become familiar. At the foot of the ramp (or when getting into a car or starting through a doorway), Estes places his big hand between Stevenson’s shoulder blades, pushes gently and says, “After you, Adduhlay.” Adlai places his smaller hand on Kefauver’s elbow, pushes softly and says, “After you, Estes.” Stevenson, the more impatient of the two, always gives in and goes first. Comments a Stevenson assistant: “This is the greatest Alphonse and Gaston act since—well, Alphonse and Gaston.”

Landing in Los Angeles, Stevenson and Kefauver faced a mob scene sufficient to warm any politician’s heart. As they prepared to meet the crowd, someone remarked that it was a greater throng than the one that recently met Rock-‘n’-Roll Star Elvis Presley. “Who,” asked Stevenson, “is Elvis Presley?” As usual, Estes Kefauver was right on hand to help fill Stevenson’s fund of commoner knowledge. Elvis the Pelvis, he said, was “a fine boy” from Tennessee.

“Ah Need Your He’p.” As the campaign party moved through Los Angeles and San Francisco, Estes Kefauver seemed as placid and happy as ever—but inwardly he was beginning to boil. Campaigning with Adlai was all right, but the closely timed schedule sort of cramped Kefauver’s style. He wanted to get out by himself and start beating the bushes, taking all the time he needed to shake every hand he could find. He means to do everything that energy and ambition can accomplish to win the election. The Vice President’s chair is not quite what he set his sights on as a boy, but it will do—for a while. If the Democrats win, Kefauver will be closer to the presidency than ever before.

But even a Democratic loss does not mean the end for Estes Kefauver, especially if he can show his strength by carrying some farm states against the formidable Republican team. He will still be in the Senate, and, having run on the national ticket, may be known as a team player instead of a loner. He faces a 1960 campaign for reelection, and may therefore have to skip his quadrennial fight for the presidential nomination. But he is relatively young, and there are other years and other elections. The chances are good that Iowa farmers, New Hampshire lumberjacks and California avocado growers will some day be confronted again by the tall man with the outstretched right hand and the quiet drawl: “Ah’m Estes Kefauver. Ah’m running for President and Ah need your he’p.”

* He carries not only her maiden name but the less-known maiden name of her mother, Judith Carey.

* Correct pronunciation: Estis Key-fawver