CONNECTICUT: Good Governor & Fighting Lady

Like many another able, honest politico, Governor Raymond E. Baldwin of Connecticut found himself last winter well on into middle age (52) with little or no money in the bank. Wherefore he decided—definitely, he said—to give up public life and work for Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company at $30,000 a year, with prospects of becoming president of the company at $75,000. But people wondered: could Ray Baldwin really bring himself to give it all up—a prospective seat in the U.S. Senate and further opportunities to serve his country in a great period of history.

Like few women, Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce found herself last winter with an outstanding position in public life but also acutely aware of its hardships and harassments. Besides, she had become a Catholic and there were other things she wanted to do (mainly writing). Wherefore she announced that — definitely — she would not run again for the House. But what about the Senate? People wondered whether Clare Luce could really bring herself to give up a very good chance of becoming the first woman ever elected, in her own right, to the U.S. Senate.

One or the other—Baldwin or Luce—would have to run for the Senate. They were the two top Republican votegetters in Connecticut. Last week Ray Baldwin and Clare Luce sat down to find out who meant what most. Result: Governor Baldwin agreed to give up the money and run for the Senate.

Said he: “I had hoped that Clare Boothe Luce would be a candidate for the United States Senate. She told me on Tuesday that her decision, made some months ago, was final and that she would not be available. She urged me publicly a long time ago to run and has been consistent in her stand. This was a very influential factor in my own decision.

“I thought she would have made an excellent candidate and that she would have been sure to carry the state.”

With a good record in state affairs and on broader issues, three-term Governor Baldwin was well set to lead Republicans to victory in November.

The Pressure. Thus ended the notable political career of Clare Luce. It had begun, formally, in September 1942 when she accepted a nomination for Congress as her war-job. The U.S. was still on the defensive. Before Pearl Harbor and afterwards, Clare Luce had seen as much of the war around the world as any American civilian—and she had very strong ideas on the nature of the catastrophe into which the U.S. and the world had been betrayed by a variety of follies and stupidities. She wanted a more vigorous war effort and a more intelligent foreign policy after the war than the U.S. had had before. The voters of the Fourth Congressional District (one large industrial city, Bridgeport, several smaller ones, and farming and commuting towns) were a little dubious about such a fighting lady but were glad to vote for someone who seemed to know what it was all about.

From the day she arrived in Washington, Clare Luce was under such a pressure of public curiosity as few Representatives had ever had to endure. Some of it was well-meaning, some of it silly, some of it vicious. She became gradually a heroine to thousands and a menace to other thousands of Third Termites.

Her four years in Congress were in some ways deeply frustrating. She could get no important bill of her own passed—because the Democrats were in the majority. But she had the satisfaction of seeing the Government adopt, gradually, many of her basic policy views. Thus, her first speech attacked the international aviation policy of the Roosevelt administration as “Globaloney”; in 1946 the Roosevelt policy was entirely scrapped in favor of her own basic and practical ideas of separate negotiations. She helped to lead the Republican Party away from isolationism to a sane and realistic internationalism—but avoiding the pitfalls and oratorical dishonesties of extreme “one-worldism.”

The Attacks. She was bitterly attacked by the Communists, pinks and New Dealers because she was among the first to forecast difficulties with the Soviet Union which are now obvious. Throughout, as Military Affairs Committeeman, she was a stout backer-up of the armed services—as was well appreciated by topmost military men (though they had to be careful about showing it for fear of getting in wrong with F.D.R.). She visited the European battlefields, went into the foxholes with the G.I.s, was among the first to dramatize the grim lot of the U.S. Fifth Army on the “Forgotten Front.” Her last work in Congress was to lead the debate in the House on the Atomic Bomb Commission, in which she supported the McMahon Bill but pointed out the dangers to free society which it contained. Hers was the only notable speech on the subject.

The Rewards. Aside from the enormous amount of work she did in public affairs in the House, she was in daily demand for speeches and appearances elsewhere. And she had more than one unique achievement to her credit: first womankeynbter of a Republican National Convention (1944); known throughout China and India as an outstanding American friend; an able and eloquent partisan of Negro civil liberties. She became, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the two best-known American women in public life.*

In 1944, she was up for reelection. Next only to the presidential campaign itself, hers was the most hotly fought contest. In the last weeks of the campaign it seemed as if the whole of the New Deal descended upon the Fourth Congressional District to get “that woman.” But she took them alone— largely owing to her strength with labor. Said the New York Herald Tribune: She is a one-woman army.

In 1946 it looked like a Republican year—and the prophets were saying the Republicans would be elected to govern the nation in 1948. If victory comes, some Republicans in every state in the Union will remember the fighting lady who was with them when the going was tough.

*The story of Clare Luce, though told in nearly every other publication in the land, has been told hardly at all in the pages of TIME or its sister publications. TIME-editors, beginning with Editor-in-Chief Henry R. Luce (husband) fumbled the story, because they were too fearful of being damned if they told it or damned if they didn’t. Despite the reticence of TIME Inc. publications, Clare Luce’s enemies were continually yawping about the vast publicity support she got from the “Luce publications.”