ESTES KEFAUVER: A Biography

by Charles L. Fontenay ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1980

Estes Kefauver, Senator from Tennessee (1949-63), has been a perplexing figure: instigator and ringmaster of several important congressional probes--including the investigation into organized crime that first put him in the spotlight--and a serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and '56 (when he was Stevenson's running mate), Kefauver was often accused of demagoguery, laziness, and even of corruption (by Bobby Baker, an expert himself). Fontenay, a former Nashville newspaperman and friend of Kefauver's who did the work for a campaign biography, The Kefauver Story, published under Jack Anderson's name in 1956, doesn't resolve any of the controversies. After a long and reverential treatment of Kefauver's Tennessee boyhood and early career in law, Fontenay devotes another long section to the nuts-and-bolts of his senatorial and presidential campaigns, into which is inserted the story of the anti-crime commission. The emphasis on Kefauver's campaigning--possibly thought to be justified by his reputation as a campaigner--only tends to fortify the charge, denied by Fontenay, that Kefauver maneuvered the hearings to give himself maximum exposure for a presidential race. And in the last third of the book the thought lingers that Kefauver still harbored presidential hopes when he assumed control of Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee and began a long string of battles against monopolies and price-fixing. Crucial to this effort was John Blair, an economist and longtime anti-trust specialist who did the committee's legwork; but Fontenay focuses narrowly on Kefauver and fails to explore the relationship between the two. As for corruption, Fontenay can't imagine Kefauver as corrupt, though he has to admit the Senator's lust for women (staff members even acted as procurers on occasion) and for scotch. Throughout, Kefauver appears as a loner who was anathema to the Democratic leadership (Eastland hated him; and while Kefauver was ""spotty"" on civil rights, his opposition to the poll tax was enough to incur Southern wrath); but the demagogic tag still hangs on. An adulatory biography that's spotty, moreover, on the all-important anti-trust years.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION