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A different take on Mike Mansfield |
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By The Hill Staff
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Posted: 02/05/04 12:00 AM [ET] |
Don Oberdorfer has written one of those rare biographies of a familiar public figure that sheds important new light on his subject — in this case, the late Mike Mansfield, one of the most important and respected Americans of the 20th century.
It’s not surprising that a different Mansfield emerges from Oberdorfer’s book than the one who died two years ago at the age of 98 after 34 years in Congress, including a record-breaking 16 years as Senate majority leader before retiring in 1976. This was followed by almost 12 years as U.S. ambassador to Japan under Presidents Carter and Reagan, and a dozen more as a Washington-based adviser on China for Goldman Sachs.
Famed for his terse “yup” and “nope” responses to reporters’ questions, the taciturn Montana Democrat was notoriously resistant to talking about himself. “When I’m gone, I want to be forgotten,” he invariably told those — including this reviewer — who implored him to write his memoirs or cooperate in an oral history project or biography.
But Oberdorfer persisted, and Mansfield basically agreed not to stand in his way. Oberdorfer, a former Washington Post reporter and author of four previous books, including two about Mansfield’s favorite subject, Asia, persuaded Mansfield to share his lifelong diaries and his voluminous archives at the University of Montana, and to sit down for 32 interviews in the last three years of his life.
And what a remarkable life it was. Born in New York City to Irish immigrants, he and two sisters were sent to live with an uncle in Great Falls, Mont., after their mother died. He ran away from home and joined the Navy before his 15th birthday by falsifying his age, and served in all three military services before he was out of his teens.
Most important, the Marines sent him to China, which sparked a lifelong interest in East Asia. He returned to Montana and worked for 10 years as a copper miner in Butte, where he met his wife, Maureen, who steered him away from the brutal mining life to the university, a professorship in Asian history and, ultimately, a life of public service.
While Oberdorfer’s brilliant book gives Mansfield his due, it also disproves his widely held image as a kind of laconic, pipe-smoking Gary Cooper who was devoid of ambition and above partisan politics, and was beloved by all as he ran the Senate with an egalitarian hand.
Indeed, Mansfield was, at least in the early years of his public life, as ambitious as any young gunslinger out to make a name for himself. He also wasn’t above padding his résumé, courting powerful politicians, resorting to racist language (about the Japanese) or even telling a lie to advance his career.
For example, when recounting the “single most important event” in Mansfield’s career after he was elected to Congress in 1942 — his mission to wartime China in 1944 as the personal envoy of President Roosevelt, a mission for which he aggressively lobbied — Oberdorfer points out that Mansfield had greatly exaggerated his experience in Asia, which consisted mainly of brief visits to the Philippines, Japan and China as a Marine.
“He had told his constituents in the 1942 election campaign that he had served overseas in ‘China, the Philippines, Japan and Siberia,’ but actually had only been in Japan overnight when his ship refueled in Nagasaki and had never been to Siberia,” Oberdorfer writes. “When I asked him about his Siberian service — which he once claimed had extended for six weeks — he responded, ‘That was a lie.’ I was so stunned by this confession from a man known for his truthfulness and candor that I did not ask the obvious follow-up to determine why he had lied.”
So much for the legend of St. Mike. Nevertheless, Oberdorfer’s masterful biography gives credence to the notion that Mansfield had become, before retiring from public life, “the greatest living American,” in the words of The Washington Post’s David Broder.
There is far too much to Mansfield’s long career to deal with in this limited space, but Oberdorfer examines at length all aspects of that career, including Mansfield’s deep involvement in many of the turning points of 20th century history through his interaction with every president from FDR to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Especially valuable is the author’s treatment of Mansfield’s role as, first, a strong supporter of U.S. policy toward communist China and our disastrous involvement in Vietnam and, then, his increasing opposition, and his solitary and often confidential efforts to persuade John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon that the war was a grave mistake.
Characteristically, when Mansfield retired from the Senate, he walked out of the chamber when his colleagues began a round of tributes and registered his objection to a resolution calling for a room in the Capitol to be named in his honor.
Even before the death of his beloved wife in September 2000, Mansfield’s own health had begun to decline, and he was ready to join her. Oberdorfer writes that on Sept. 25, 2001, his last visit with Mansfield, “I thought to myself how amazing he was at age ninety-eight, and began to believe that he actually might be alive when my biography was finished.”
The last words he heard from Mansfield, who died 10 days later, were those of the miner’s warning when placing dynamite charges, “Tap ’er light.”
Book reviewed:
Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat
By Don Oberdorfer
510 pages; $35
Smithsonian Books, 2003
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