Sept. 5, 2022
The topic of this episode is, “Who was the meanest man in Congress?”
My guest is Timothy J. McNulty, who taught journalism at Northwestern University and spent more than thirty years at the Chicago Tribune. During his years as a journalist, Tim was a national and foreign correspondent, and also an editor. He logged untold hours paying attention to Congress and its many characters. And importantly for the purposes of this episode of the podcast, he is the coauthor of a terrific book, The Meanest Man in Congress: Jack Brooks and the Making of an American Century (NewSouth Books, 2019).
Kevin Kosar:
Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be. And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation.
I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC.
Welcome to the podcast.
Timothy McNulty:
Thanks very much for having me.
Kevin Kosar:
Thank you for being here.
Jack Brooks served in Congress from 1952 to 1994. He was called a number of names: the snake killer, the executioner, and the meanest man in Congress. Why?
Timothy McNulty:
Well, each one had a very set reason in Congress. “The snake killer” was him using an old Texas term when he went after President Ford's early budget. He said to reporters then, “Well, the best time to kill a snake is when it's young.” So that's what Ford did. “The executioner” is what Nixon told some of his aides, because Brooks had been really a driving force in the Judiciary Committee. Peter Rodino was the head of it, but he was taking it very slow, and Brooks wanted to speed things up. So that's what bothered Nixon. And then “the meanest man” was something that Brooks had a great deal of pride in, because his questioning on the Government Affairs Subcommittee struck fear into a lot of bureaucrats and corporate leaders who were called to testify, because he didn't blanch at any kind of power or anything else, whether it was Marine Corps generals or heads of General Motors or government department heads. He just went after them. So he got that “meanest man” title and wore it proudly.
Kevin Kosar:
Yes, yes. Brooks himself, as you detail in your book, was a Marine, and he was in World War II. He saw many intense things and he endured a lot, both in his upbringing and before he got to Congress. But the listener might be wondering: if Brooks was so mean, how come voters reelected him every two years for four decades?
Timothy McNulty:
Well, of course, he looked after his district. No matter what other public pronouncements or other publicity he got, he was never that interested in being anything other than a congressman. And people recognized that. He of course brought home a lot of government money, especially for infrastructure down in Southeast Texas. But he also had his staff be very aware of constituent concerns, whether it was someone who's a mother who wanted her son to be able to come home because of an operation that she was having— He took care of things and made sure that his staff answered every...