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

Washington Monthly, Feb, 1987 by David Broder

The Muskie appearance at the Union Leadermet both needs. It is unusual for a candidate to denounce the publisher of the leading newspaper in a state where he is campaigning. The normal rule in political campaigns is to ignore such attacks, or deal with their instigators at arm's length, through a letter to the editor or a rebuttal from the press secretary; "you don't get into a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel,' as the saying goes. Muskie's denunciation came at a time when Loeb had more than a week before the primary to reply. And the picture of a major presidential candidate delivering his denunciation on the doorstep of the newspaper--rather than from a distance--was also unusual enough to guarantee attention.

Still, the question is: Did we see what wethought we saw? Years later Muskie told me:

I arrived in Manchester tired, nearly exhausted.The staff said that I had an opportunity to make a point about Loeb, who was personally unpopular with Democrats in the state. So I yielded.

I did not cry. I know it is not easy todistinguish between anger on the verge of tears and crying, but there was no flow of tears . . .. There was melting snow. But I choked up in my anger, and it was a bad scene, whatever it was. Interestingly, the first reaction I heard that day was positive, that I had confronted Loeb and told him what I thought. Only later did I hear the reaction that it was a sign of weakness on my part, that it was disturbing people. Eventually, the reaction was devastating.

Jim Naughton, who covered the story for theTimes, told me that he was standing at Muskie's feet, "looking up directly into his face . . . and I swear to this moment I'm not sure if he was in tears.'

Neither then nor later did I have much doubtabout what I wrote. I was standing there and had recorded the statement. But did I check with Muskie to ask if he had wept? I did not. I did follow him to a nearby hotel, where he filmed a brief interview with a Boston television station. Standing in the improvised hotel room studio, watching the interview, I remember thinking that I had never seen Muskie so ravaged and worn. I certainly had the opportunity there to ask him. But whether from sympathy or timidity, I did not walk over to him and say, "Well, senator, what the hell happened up there? Have you flipped out--or what?' Instead, I included in my story the next day a comment Muskie made in his interview:

Muskie told an interviewer after his speechthat he felt that in reprinting the item [from Women's Wear Daily and Newsweek] Loeb was "just deliberately slurring . . . a good woman . . . deliberately cutting down her character just to get to me. I guess the full realization of what he'd done just hit me this morning, suddenly, and I couldn't go on.'

But as far as I can recall, there was no internalquestioning of the accuracy of the story then, or later, at the Post. Still, it nags at me as few other stories I have written.

Systematic sabotage

What Muskie did not know, and what I certainlydid not know at the time, was that there was another set of facts that would have put the incident into a very different context. Those facts related to a series of actions, ordered and coordinated by the Nixon White House and designed to harass, to vex, and to embarrass the frontrunning Democrat who was judged a serious threat to Nixon's re-election. The "Canuck letter' was part of that plot.