The story that still nags at me - Edward S. Muskie

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1987 by David Broder

The key was the "Canuck letter' Muskie mentionedin the interview with White. It was a curious document, which had appeared two days earlier along with a front-page editorial, signed by Loeb and headlined, "Senator Muskie Insults Franco-Americans.' With the bold-faced type and capital letters Loeb used to hammer home his message, the editorial concluded: "We have always known that Senator Muskie was a hypocrite. But we never expected to have it so clearly revealed as in this letter sent to us from Florida.'

Along with the editorial was a photocopy ofa hand-printed letter with many misspellings, in an almost childlike hand, sent to Loeb by a Paul Morrison and postmarked Deerfield Beach, Florida. It said the writer had encountered Muskie and his party in Florida, and that Muskie had been asked how he could know much about the problems of blacks, since there were so few of them in Maine. "A man with the senator said, "No, not blacks, but we have Cannocks',' according to the letter. Muskie, it said, laughed at the remark and invited the questioner to ""come to New England and see.''

Loeb's editorial comment was that if Morrison"hadn't taken the trouble to write about his experience . . . no one in New Hampshire would know of the derogatory remarks emanating from the Muskie camp about the Franco-Americans in New Hampshire and Maine--remarks which the senator found amusing.'

Since French Canadians are a major Democraticvoting bloc in New Hampshire, particularly in Manchester, and since "Canuck' (as it is usually spelled) is an offensive epithet, it was not surprising that Muskie's phone canvassers quickly found a negative reaction to the senator and pressed him strongly to denounce the Union Leader editorial as a lie.

Muskie did not need much urging. Like manyother Democrats, he regarded the Union Leader and its publisher as one of the most flagrantly slanted opinion-mongers in the business. Among other things, Loeb and his paper had labeled the senior senator from Maine and 1968 Democratic vice presidential candidate "Moscow Muskie,' "Flip-Flop Muskie,' and "a phony.'

Far worse, in Muskie's eyes, was Loeb's decisionto reprint, as another front-page editorial, a bitchy portrayal of his wife, Jane, that had originally appeared in Women's Wear Daily and was picked up in edited form by Newsweek. The article depicted her smoking, drinking, cussing, and generally behaving in a was conservative New Hampshire voters might not think becoming in a prospective First Lady. Muskie decided to hit back at Loeb.

At that point, some of the internal dynamicsof the press took over the operation. One of the central paradoxes in any journalist's life is that we crave novelty, but live in a world where routine is vital. Freshness and surprise are built into the definition of news; the unusual, the unexpected and, best of all, the unprecedented are what we seek. But we know the world is full of repetition, because the daily routine of our own organizations is rigid and unvarying: deadlines must be met so that presses may roll and papers be delivered on time. Hence, the requirement for those who are seeking to "make news' is itself paradoxical: They must, ideally, do something unusual, unexpected, or unprecedented. But they must do it in a time, place, and manner that fit the unvarying routine of the news organizations.