Word: dirksenism
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...DIRKSEN : PORTRAIT OF A PUBLIC MAN by Neil MacNeil. 402 pages. World...
...essentially a legislative man, not so much an ideologue as a hierophant of parliamentary procedure. He embodied much that is best and some that is worst-or perhaps silliest-in the American congressional tradition. His talent for the political about-face was acrobatic. Everett McKinley Dirksen, said his Illinois colleague Paul Douglas, "is a man of no principles." Dirksen preferred to call it "flexibility," and that kindlier word, which suggests growth rather than knavery, often proved accurate enough to describe his shifts in policy. During his 35 years in the House and Senate, Dirksen was isolationist, internationalist, champion...
Neil MacNeil observed Dirksen's career for 19 years-the last twelve as chief congressional correspondent for TIME. He is best when narrating the intricate workings of Congress, fondly chronicling the stratagems of cloture and bombast. His portrait is judicious and frequently admiring. Only occasionally, though, does he step back and render judgment: "Using a rhetorical ready-mix of melancholy and country humor, Dirksen mouthed the platitudes of an earlier America as though they were beatitudes, and he sensed himself as the appointed guardian of those values...
...lamented, "but I obviously miscalculated. I just must have misread what people were really concerned about." Actually, Smith had little chance, regardless of his strategy. The Stevenson name and stolid, sincere persona were just too potent for the Republican state legislator who had been appointed to fill out Everett Dirksen's unexpired term...
...flag-pin in his lapel-and this evidently enabled him to hold on to his early campaign lead. He is expected to take 58 per cent of the vote in winning the seat from Smith, who had been appointed to finish out the term of the late Everett Dirksen...