Dynasty & Destiny

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Twenty minutes before the rapping of gavels convened the 85th Congress, a massive, bull-shouldered man entered the empty Senate chamber and moved with long strides to his desk in the front row, right side. For a few moments he sat alone among the curving rows, rustling through the pile of documents he had brought with him. Then one by one, two by two, his colleagues began drifting in through the swinging doors. The man leaped to his feet, began greeting each and every one with booming-voiced gladness, in the manner of one who truly loves his club and its members--not for what they may be individually, but simply because they are members of the club. William Fife Knowland, 48, Republican from California, minority leader of the Senate, was back in his element, pleased with his lot, and eager to come to grips with the conflicts facing a party that has just triumphantly won the White House, and lost control of the Congress.

Already Bill Knowland had met with fellow Republican congressional leaders at a nine-hour White House session, lunched with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, attended a bipartisan legislative conference at the White House, worked at reshuffling the Senate's Republican high command, helped draft a unanimous-consent agreement under which the Senate would debate a change in its rules, and assisted in writing a resolution paving the way for President Eisenhower's Middle East message to a joint session of Congress. All this was part of Knowland's job as leader of a Senate minority that represents a party in executive power. It was also prologue to a political challenge that has no precedent in U.S. history.

As leader of the G.O.P. Senate forces, Bill Knowland's job is to transmit the plans and attitudes of a majority President to the minority party in the Senate, to seize the initiative, where possible, in a chamber balanced at 49 Democrats and 47 Republicans. As the most spotlighted Republican on Capitol Hill, Knowland's responsibility (which he shares with House Minority Leader Joe Martin) is to see to it that the Republican congressional record will contribute to Republican congressional victory in a 1958 that looks all too shaky. Moreover, if the U.S. is to get value received for its national electoral choice, Bill Knowland and his Republican colleagues must give legislative expression to the mandate awarded Dwight Eisenhower.

Under these compelling terms, the job of leading the Senate Republicans is not one for a wire-pulling maneuverer, an obstructionist or, in the proud U.S. Senate, a White House errand boy.

Qualities of Leadership. The U.S. Senate respects only those who respect it; no man has a deeper feeling for the Senate than Knowland. A party leader, by definition, must be a party man; Knowland has been a Republican from birth, and his attachment is to the party itself, not to any of its factions. "I consider myself," he says, putting first things first, "a member of the Republican team, and the President certainly would be the leader of that team."

Above all else, Knowland brings to his leadership post an absolute, unflinching integrity that rises above politics. It inspires faith in his motives and gives weight to his words. Says Senate Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson: "Any time Bill Knowland tells you something, you can believe it." In 1949 Knowland voted against the confirmation of Dean Acheson as Secretary of State in the Truman Administration, and he was the leading Senate critic of Acheson's Far Eastern policies. But he did not hesitate to stand on the Senate floor and pay tribute to Acheson's handling of the Japanese peace treaty. When Harry Truman was subjected to a below-the-belt attack by Idaho's pink-tinged Democratic Senator Glen Taylor, it was Republican Knowland who arose roaring in wrath. "As long as he sits in the White House," said Knowland, "President Truman is my President."

Such behavior is strange in the political rough-and-tumble. But Knowland has never known any other way to act. The essential to understanding William Fife Knowland is that although he is driven furiously by a sense of destiny, he is always controlled by the traditions of dynasty.

First Family. Billy Knowland was no ordinary kid growing up around Alameda; he was a Knowland of California. His grandfather had come West from New York to dig for gold, instead found wealth in an empire of lumber, shipping, mining and banking interests. Billy's father, Joseph Russell Knowland ("J.R." to most of California and "Papoo" to his now-adult grandchildren), served in the state assembly, the state senate, and was elected five times to the U.S. House of Representatives. Defeated as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1914, J.R. bought into the Oakland Tribune (1956 circ. 208,000), assumed complete control, and turned it into one of the state's most formidable political powers. Of his three children, Billy, whose mother had died of an embolism following his birth, was J.R.'s great pride.

While his father was still in Congress, Billy lived part-time in Washington, became a familiar sight in the Capitol corridors. He was a political prodigy. "His idea of a game," recalls J.R., still alive and alert at 83, "was to get a box to stand on and make a speech." With a lisp caused by two widely separated front teeth, Billy Knowland would get up on his box and proclaim: "Wepwethentative government ith the way we do thingth in thith country." The inscription on his grammar-school graduation program read: "Appearance--politician. Besetting sin--politics." At twelve he spoke for the Harding-Coolidge ticket. He thrilled to the drama of his first national convention in 1924, returned to take over the chairmanship, from an adult who had fallen ill, of the finance committee of Alameda's Coolidge-Dawes Republican Club. Billy raised funds, paid bills and shared in the credit for Alameda's thumping Republican majority. His age: 16.

No sooner did Billy Knowland arrive at Alameda High School than he set about organizing a student Conservative Party ("Economy But Not False Economy"). He held nearly every school office, graduated as president of his class and of the student body. His rival candidate has a rueful memory of the occasion: "I was an athlete and a popular guy. Billy didn't play anything. But he knew how to make other kids take him seriously."

"You Had to Admire Him." Knowland attended the University of California, came home after 3 1/2 years with an A.B., an executive job with the Tribune--and a wife. Characteristically, he had known Helen Herrick since the sixth grade, had gone with her for eight years, bought a ring, made careful arrangements and then--on New Year's Eve, 1926--eloped.

Young Bill (made the Tribune's assistant publisher in 1933) had always had a sort of proprietary relationship with the newspaper. As a boy he decided he did not like its Sunday comics and demanded--unsuccessfully--that J.R. fire the managing editor. During his school years he had sometimes worked summers and weekends at the Tribune, at one time conducted a children's column called "Aunt Elsie." One of his efforts began: "Heidie-ho, kiddies, this is Billy Knowland with another story." Now, however, his duties were vague. He put in some time on the Tribune's business side, helped streamline the logotype--and feverishly pursued his political career.

That career was soon linked, in a way that made political history, to the career of another fast-rising California Republican: Alameda County District Attorney Earl Warren. Old J.R. always had been a staunch backer of young Earl Warren. Warren and Billy first met about the time Herbert Hoover was campaigning against Al Smith in 1928. Warren was struck by the political skill and vigor of the man 17 years his junior. Says Warren: "You had to admire him." The admiration was mutual. Knowland became a leading spirit among the young California Republicans who were later Warren's greatest political strength. There is a California legend that Warren, repaying his debt to Joe Knowland, lifted Bill to political prominence. Actually, Earl and Bill helped each other in near-equal degree. Explains Warren: "It was a friendship of honorable men." For more than two decades, Earl Warren and Bill Knowland fought side by side in California's bloody political wars.

"Billy's Done It." Bill's first try for public office came in 1932, when he ran for state assemblyman in the same district his father had represented. In Republican Alameda, the payoff was in the primary, and it was a hard four-way fight. On election night tough old J.R., weeping tears of delight, went around to all his friends to boast: "Billy's done it!" As the youngest (25) member of the state assembly, Billy sponsored successful legislation that ranged from an anti-lynching bill to one that protected cactus. Two years later, again following after his father, he entered the state senate. Named chairman of the finance committee, he authored the personal-income-tax law that still remains on California's books.

When his first senate term expired, Billy quit. His ambition was pointing to Washington, where California's aging Senator Hiram Johnson was living his last years.

Succeeding Earl Warren as California's Republican national committeeman (Warren resigned to become state attorney general), Knowland used the post to travel the length and breadth of the state, getting to know people and letting them know him. He made news on being elected chairman of the Republican National Committee's executive committee, posed for pictures with every leading G.O.P. candidate who came through town, including Republican Leaders Tom Dewey and Wendell Willkie. He was, in fact, carefully preparing for the day when Hiram Johnson's Senate place would become vacant.

His strenuous efforts were interrupted. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Knowland was having breakfast in bed when Tribune City Editor Al Reck called with the news of Pearl Harbor. Scrambling out of bed, Knowland sent his breakfast dishes flying in all directions. Six months later he was off to the Army, soon was bound for Europe as a public information and military government officer. It was in the summer of 1945 when Major William Knowland, drinking coffee in an Army cafeteria in Paris, picked up a copy of Stars and Stripes and read that he had been appointed by Governor Earl Warren to succeed the late Hiram Johnson in the U.S. Senate.

Busting his Britches. The new Senator hustled himself onto the first plane to Washington, received his Army discharge there in a single afternoon. He was a strange sight. He had put on weight in the Army (the harder he works, the more he eats and the rounder he gets), and now, with no time to waste on clothes-buying, he tried to stuff himself back into his prewar civvies. For months, until Helen Knowland finally took charge and ordered him some new suits, Washington held its breath in anticipation of the occasion when California's young Republican Senator William Fife Knowland would literally bust his britches.

Knowland was a britches-buster in other ways to the august U.S. Senate. In a forum where youngsters are supposed to be seen but not heard, Knowland set out by tackling--and tumbling--none other than Mr. Republican, Ohio's Bob Taft, on an issue of budget policy. In an institution where seniority is the road to prominence, Knowland leaped to the forefront before his first full term was half over. He became the Senate's leading Republican spokesman on the most acrimonious issue of the day: U.S. policy toward Asia. How it happened is typical of Bill Knowland.

In the winter of 1945-46, Knowland made his first trip to the Far East with a Senate committee investigating the disposal of surplus war properties. In Tokyo he met General Douglas MacArthur and was enormously impressed, but not overwhelmed (Knowland is a hard man to overwhelm). He was fascinated by Asia's political and economic problems and, once back in Washington, began studying them. After hours and weeks and months of concentrated self-education, he came to an unshakable conviction: in its preoccupation with Europe, the U.S. was disastrously neglecting Asia.

Making the Issue. With a single exception (a 1946 loan to Britain), Knowland has supported every proposal to bolster Europe. But his studies convinced him that the U.S. was failing badly in its Far Eastern policies. While the State Department was enamored with the Chinese Communists, Knowland saw Asia as the vital back door through which the Communists could get to Europe, often cites Lenin's thesis that "the road to Paris lies through Peking."

In 1948 Knowland succeeded in getting $400 million into the Marshall Plan appropriations for "the general area of China," because he was convinced that Nationalist Leader Chiang Kai-shek had not received "sufficient support, both moral and material, from the U.S." In 1949 Knowland fought Dean Acheson's confirmation as Secretary of State, partly because Acheson--as Under Secretary--had had much to do with a U.S. policy that pressured Chiang to make peace with the Chinese Communists.

Knowland thundered warnings day after day on the Senate floor as Acheson wrote off Formosa and Korea as beyond the areas of U.S. vital interest. He later leaped again to the attack when congressional investigators discovered that the State Department was distributing to U.S. embassies and consulates in the Far East copies of an issue of The Reporter magazine with articles and an editorial highly sympathetic to Red China. Sure that he saw signs that the U.S. was getting ready to recognize Red Peking, Knowland planted himself solidly in the path of recognition--and from that position he has never budged. Always a stout anti-Communist--even in the days when many of his colleagues still thought warmly of Russia as a trusted wartime ally--Knowland sensed accurately that the Communist struggle for Asia was as desperate and critical as the struggle for Europe. In 1950 he spoke 115 times in the Senate on Far Eastern policy. His voice carried the authority of careful preparation, and other Republican Senators took up the cry, making Bill Knowland's Asia issue one of their basic articles of faith in the 1952 elections.

Up for re-election himself that year, Knowland was overwhelmingly vindicated by both parties. His opponent under California's cross-filing system sneered at him as "the Senator from Formosa." Knowland had only three set speeches. One took five minutes, one took 15 and one half an hour, but each said the same thing: the Truman-Acheson Far Eastern policy was catastrophic. Knowland won both the Republican and Democratic nominations and stood as a political power of the first magnitude.

The Unbreakable. Selected to lead the California delegation to the Republican National Convention, Knowland was avidly wooed by presidential hopefuls. From the Eisenhower camp came strong hints that the vice-presidential nomination could be his. From the Taft forces (but not from Taft himself) came a direct promise that support for the Ohioan would give Knowland second place on the national ticket. But Knowland and his delegation were pledged to back Earl Warren for President--and Bill Knowland has never broken his word. At Chicago, disturbed by reports that his Senate Colleague Richard Nixon was trying to get the California delegation to defect to Ike. Knowland called a secret caucus arid faced his delegation shaking with anger. "I just want everyone in this room to know," he rumbled, "that never in history has any delegate ever violated his pledge and been respected again." There were no defections: California stayed solid for Warren through the first (and only) ballot. Then Bill Knowland saw Dick Nixon nominated for Vice President of the U.S.

With his own re-election just a formality, Knowland rode the 1952 Eisenhower campaign train all fall, and it was on Bill's broad shoulder that Nixon fell sobbing in Wheeling, W. Va. when Ike declared his running mate guiltless in the campaign-fund uproar. The elections were barely over when Knowland announced that he was a candidate for majority leader of the 83rd Congress against anybody except Styles Bridges, the Senate's senior Republican and one of Knowland's closest Washington friends. By mid-December, it was obvious that Bob Taft also wanted to be majority leader, and a first-class fight appeared to be shaping up. In the end, a slate was worked out: Taft for majority leader; Knowland, just beginning his second full term, for chairman of the powerful Republican Policy Committee; Bridges for president pro tempore.

If Taft had been one to harbor grudges, there were plenty he could have harbored against Bill Knowland, who had challenged him in the Senate and refused to deal with him for the presidency. But Taft was perfectly aware of Bill Knowland's basic quality. Late on the afternoon of June 9, 1953, Bob Taft, fatally ill, entered Styles Bridges' office, dropped heavily into a chair and said quietly: "I'm going to be away and I've asked Bill to carry on for me. Nobody can push him around."

The Unpushable. Taft was all too right. Nobody could push Bill around and, elected majority leader in his own right after Taft's death, Knowland soon ran into trouble trying to push the unpushable Senate around. In his rush to political power, Knowland had learned how to handle issues--but not men. Senior Republicans began grumbling: "He treats us like kids." Once Knowland called for a night session without consulting Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson. Johnson rounded up enough Senators to hand Knowland one of the worst indignities that can be inflicted on a majority leader: he adjourned the Senate right out from under Bill's nose. Again, Knowland's impatient ways led him to try to cut off debate on a bill to revise the Atomic Energy Act. His move so irritated a minority of liberals that they launched into a 13-day filibuster. Knowland, who loves a good fight, was unbothered. One morning during the filibuster he arose from his office couch after a few hours' sleep and rushed forth announcing happily: "Boy, will we give 'em a fight today." In the end, the filibuster was broken--but the Senate had wasted a lot of time.

Knowland also had some rough sailing in his relations with the White House. He is proud of his voting record of support (88% in the 83rd Congress, 91% in the 84th) for the Eisenhower Administration, but he has made some of his biggest, blackest headlines breaking with the Administration. Perhaps the low point, in the Administration's eyes, came during the 1954 debate on the Bricker amendment, designed to dilute the President's treaty-making power. Just when Senate leadership was needed most, Knowland abandoned his majority leader's desk, walked to the rear of the Senate, announced that he was speaking as a rank-and-file Senator, and argued in favor of the amendment.

Thus, Bill Knowland's first years of leadership were disappointing to both the Administration and the Senate. He has since come a long way.

Unrequited Love. The White House knows that it still cannot depend on Knowland for down-the-line support, but it respects his sincerity of purpose and--because they are always the result of careful thought--his opinions. Ike, carefully cordial toward Knowland, unfailingly calls him "Bill." Knowland, carefully correct, unfailingly calls Ike "Mr. President." In the privacy of his office Ike sometimes grows hot under the collar when Knowland challenges a cherished White House plan, but the President is a confirmed Constitutionalist and neither asks--nor expects--Knowland to toe the executive line. On one vital point Ike has no worries: he knows that honest Bill Knowland, whatever his personal stand on an issue, will report the Eisenhower views to the Senate faithfully, accurately and dispassionately.

In the Senate, Knowland has won the regard of the old Taft loyalists. He publicly urged the Republican national committee to give them responsible assignments during the 1956 campaign. Although he followed his considered judgment of the merits in each case, his votes for the Bricker amendment and against the censure of Joe McCarthy (even the club's pariahs have their rights, reasoned Knowland) further endeared him to the Republican right wing. But there is a wide gulf between Knowland and the Neanderthals--the McCarthys, the Bill Jenners and the "Molly" Malones. The gulf was widened considerably last fall when Knowland campaigned 25,000 miles for Eisenhower and Nixon--and especially when he accepted appointment as a U.S. delegate to the U.N. Knowland owes the Neanderthals nothing; it is they who want the favors from him.

Time for a Drink. The Senate's close party balance requires a harmonious relationship between the Democratic and Republican leaders. After a cool start, Knowland and Lyndon Johnson have become warm friends. When Lyndon was convalescing from his heart attack, Bill twice weekly wrote long, gossipy letters with news of the Senate and its members. He also assured Johnson that he would work to prevent anyone from taking political advantage of Lyndon's absence--and he did.

The most valuable lesson Knowland has learned is that a leader must generally ease his way through the Senate, that the Senate cannot be battered into submission. The Senate's informal life can be as important as its parliamentary procedures. When Knowland first became majority leader, Lyndon Johnson once dropped by his office for a drink and a chat. Knowland had one bottle on hand, which he kept in a refrigerator. He had no corkscrew, and his ice trays were frozen fast from long disuse. Bill struggled futilely for 15 minutes, trying to get the cork out of the bottle. Lyndon finally dragged him upstairs to his own office--"where we know how to open bottles." Now Knowland keeps a well-stocked refrigerator for thirsty colleagues. Such concessions to Senate society have helped him in his work--but they have not slowed his man-killing pace.

Wed to a Whirlwind. In his two-bedroom, $175-a-month Berkshire Hotel apartment, Knowland is up six mornings a week by 7 o'clock, reads the Washington Post and Times Herald and the New York Times in his official limousine (a perquisite of his position as minority leader) on his way to the Capitol. The Senate restaurant normally opens at 8:15, but one waiter comes regularly at 8 to serve Knowland his orange juice, eggs, toast and coffee. It is always a working breakfast, once a week with White House Legislative Aide Jerry Persons, other mornings with Cabinet officers or sleepy-eyed Senators. Then, with the giant stride that often forces his companions to a dogtrot, Knowland plunges onward into his day. That day continues even after he arrives home with what Helen Knowland calls his "bulging 20-lb. briefcase." Says she: "He opens that old briefcase, spreads papers all over the place, gets on the telephone, and in minutes the room looks as if a whirlwind had struck."

Living with Bill Knowland may be like living with a whirlwind but, as their son Joe, an Oakland Tribune deskman, remarks: "Mother knows how to handle him." She handles by helping. In his earliest California campaigns she worked night after night addressing campaign literature and copyreading speeches. When Bill went into the Army, Helen took over his job, but not his title, assisting J.R. at the Tribune. Bill rarely spares more than 15 minutes apiece for visiting California constituents (he eases them out of the office by rising, walking to his window, remarking on the beauty of the view and, when they come to admire, shaking hands in farewell), so Helen lunches with visiting firemen three or four times a week in the Senate restaurant.

Bill Knowland is a tireless public speaker, but strains painfully in his attempts at casual conversation, even with his family (the Knowlands have two daughters, one son). But Helen says: "But we know he loves us ... It's Billy's way, and it's all right with me." Bill once reprimanded her for jaywalking on the grounds that the wife of a lawmaker should avoid even the slightest infraction of law. But Helen merely says, half facetiously: "His high principles can be almost a nuisance at times." She encourages him in his only real hobby: pasting items about the life and times of Bill Knowland into scrapbooks. Begun when he was nine years old, the scrapbooks now number 41, increasing at a current rate of four a year, with entries ranging from college dance programs (filled out mostly by Helen) to some of the press's sharpest jabs, e.g., Knowland is an "old man's young man," a "young fogy," etc.

The Critical Test. Despite Knowland's devotion to the Senate, it does not fully satisfy his sense of destiny. When nobody was certain whether the 1955 heart attack would keep Ike from running, Knowland began making presidential noises. Recalls young Joe Knowland (who is devoted to his father but somewhat awestruck): "The hardest thing I have to do is carry on a conversation with my father. Everything has to be just right or he won't talk. But he was so happy when he was getting ready to run for President that he was bubbling. He could talk about anything. He was relaxed and gay." Knowland never did announce his candidacy, but he kept hinting strongly that Ike should reveal his intentions or throw open the lists. After Ike's announcement Knowland gave up without a struggle.

Some Knowland associates believe that his political destiny, as well as the responsibilities of dynasty, may take him back to California after his Senate term expires Jan. 3, 1959. There he could be on hand for the inevitable day when J. R. Knowland leaves the management of family interests in his hands. There too, he could run for governor on the theory that Senators rarely get presidential nominations.* California's present Republican Governor Goodwin J. Knight might have plenty to say about that. Although a Knight-Knowland battle would be a historic political struggle, Knowland is in a strategic position. Goodie Knight and Dick Nixon are longtime feudists. Knowland has maintained cordial relations with both, taken sides only when he thought one clearly right and the other clearly wrong, and he is generally conceded to hold the balance of California's political power.

The minority leader of the U.S. Senate admits only that he has not yet made up his mind about 1958. Indeed, he has enough cause for concern with events already at hand. For the session of the 85th Congress that began last week is the critical test of Knowland's leadership. And the record written by the 85th may decide once and for all the ultimate political future of William Fife Knowland.

* The last was Warren G. Harding in 1920. Since then, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, Alf Landon, Tom Dewey and Adlai Stevenson have demonstrated the affinity of governors for top place on the ticket.

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