The Fictional Senate of Allen Drury's Advise and Consent

by David Bratman

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959) is the most detailed novel of any reputation to focus on the U.S. Senate, and is considered by many as the best novel ever written about the workings of the U.S. government. I wouldn't go that far -- in many respects it's a dreadful book -- but it is highly readable, and great fun for political junkies. Drury had been a political reporter before turning to fiction, and many of the events and characters in the book were drawn from real-life originals, but it is not a roman a clef with one-to-one references to be decoded. (See notes following the list on Drury's possible inspirations and bibliography and links.)

Drury gives no roster for his fictional Senate, but in the course of the book's text, 90 of the 100 senators are named, and a roster may be compiled from that, which follows with each name given in the fullest available form. For each state, the first name is the senior senator, unless an asterisk follows the state's name, indicating that the senators are not identified in the book as senior or junior. When only one name is given under a state, the other senator is not mentioned in the book. Names identified or strongly implied to be members of the Majority (Maj.) or Minority (min.) parties are followed by their party abbreviation. Senators not clearly identified by party are given no abbreviation. (See notes following the list for problems with party identification.) Senate offices and chairmanships are listed as given in the book.

The date of Advise and Consent is also not entirely clear. It is in the seventh year of office of the unnamed President. Some clues, notably Senator Anderson's background timeline (p. 281-91), point firmly to the book taking place in 1957, the year Drury began full-time work on writing it. (The opening had been drafted about 1951-52.) Other clues, especially most (p. 36, 280) but not all (p. 483) of the appraisals of the general political trends, suggest a near-future setting, perhaps five to ten years after the date of writing. Perhaps the President is to be Eisenhower's successor, which would set the date at 1967. Senator Cooley is said to have been aged 17 in 1908 (p. 150-51) and 26 in 1913 (p. 149, 154), which are not consistent; as he is now 75 (p. 156), the year by this count would be approximately 1962-1967. But he appears to have been elected to the Senate in 1920 and is now in his seventh term (p. 154-56), which would be 1957-1962. Thus, various pairs of the above may be reconciled, but not all of them, and this analysis has been long and self-indulgent enough already.

It is possible that the sequels to this book fill in the gaps and explain the inconsistencies, but I have never been able to finish reading any of them. Mike Cheyne has, however, and his summaries may be found below. (Thanks!)

• For instance, the book's main plot line, the controversy over the nomination of Robert A. Leffingwell as Secretary of State, was clearly inspired by the 1948 investigation of former State Department executive Alger Hiss. There were the same suspicions of Communist sympathy, the same claims by a witness of questionable veracity that the man had belonged to a secret Communist cell, and the same intense national debate over the claims and justice of the matter. Yet the contexts are quite unalike. The Hiss case was pursued by a House committee investigating Communism, not a Senate committee reporting on a nominee for office, the nature of the proof offered in support of the accusing witness was entirely different, and where the Leffingwell case is settled in Congress and ends with his appointment to a non-controversial post, Hiss sued his accuser and the case was taken to the courts, ending with Hiss's conviction for perjury. (And his true guilt or innocence is still argued to this day.) As an experienced but controversial high-level governmental administrator, Leffingwell may also be partly drawn on David E. Lilienthal, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Atomic Energy Commission under Roosevelt and Truman.
• The unnamed President bears a strong resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt, in personality, charisma, aggressive sanguinity, and propensity for surprise decisions made without consulting aides or Congressional leaders. Like Roosevelt, this president dies just before a major peace conference which he initiated.
• The book's Senator Bob Munson, Majority leader and grandson of a senator, is sometimes said to have been inspired by Senator Robert A. Taft (R-OH), Majority leader in 1953 and son of a President, whom Drury is known to have admired. But I see more of Taft in Orrin Knox, the hero at the end of the book and a more important character in the sequels than Munson. Knox has Taft's flinty integrity, somewhat difficult personality, and refusal to abandon his principled positions even if it should cost him the Presidency, which Taft tried and failed to obtain. (I see nothing in Munson or any other character of the distinctive personality of Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), Majority leader 1955-60 and the dominant Senate personality of his time.)
• Munson's dramatic resignation and re-election as Majority leader parallels that of Majority leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY) in 1944, which, like Munson's, occurred as the result of a strong disagreement with the President. Drury witnessed this event and described it in his non-fiction book A Senate Journal 1943-1945.
• The suicide of the book's Senator Brigham Anderson resembles that of Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) in 1954. Anderson is threatened with exposure of a homosexual affair in his past, in an effort to blackmail him into canceling his investigation of Leffingwell. He shoots himself in his Senate office and dies instantly. Hunt also shot himself in his Senate office, though he lingered for some hours. The reason given publicly at the time was despair over his poor health, but while that was a factor, there was an additional story probably known to political reporters such as Drury. Democrats were eager for Hunt to run for re-election in 1954 as the best hope to retain the seat, but Republicans threatened that if he did run, they would raise as a campaign issue his deepest secret: that his son had been arrested the previous year for homosexual solicitation. Caught between them in a situation both like and unlike Anderson's, Hunt first announced his retirement and then committed suicide. (See Rick Ewing, "McCarthy Era Politics: The Ordeal of Senator Lester Hunt," Annals of Wyoming, Spring 1983.)
• Anderson is a World War II war hero. "One day in the Marianas ... a Jap coming out of the sun eluded all their vigilance and shot his bomber down. For five days he kept himself and three other survivors alive in the jungle principally by main strength of character." (p. 287) This sounds very much like the war experience of Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA), transferred out of a boat in the Solomons. Kennedy's PT-109 story was known, but was not as famous as it would become after he was elected President in 1960.
• It is possible that the intense womanizing of the book's clean-cut Senator Lafe Smith was inspired by that of Kennedy, though he was surely not the only senator to fit that description. In the 1962 film of the book, Smith was played by Peter Lawford, who at the time was Kennedy's brother-in-law.
• The book's Senator Fred Van Ackerman is a Joseph R. McCarthy (R-WI) of the left. Each is a demagogue apparently barely interested in the Communism issue he finds leads him to sudden prominence, but only attracted by the notoriety it brings him. Junior senators previously of little significance, each insults his seniors and tramples on Senate custom and prerogative, leading eventually to his censure by the Senate and the quick evaporation of his popularity. Thus far they are identical. The differences are: 1) The McCarthy era lasted much longer, over four years; 2) McCarthy had much more power over the Senate in his heyday, serving as a committee chairman and directly causing the election defeat of the first senator to investigate him; 3) McCarthy's censure was referred to a committee (the Watkins Committee, whose junior member, Sam Ervin (D-NC), chaired the Senate's Watergate Committee 20 years later), and took the normal several months to complete, instead of the reflexive one-day floor vote on Van Ackerman; 4) Unlike McCarthy, Van Ackerman makes a comeback in the sequels; 5) And, of course, the difference in their opinions, Van Ackerman being depicted by Drury as a dupe of the Communists, while McCarthy's declared aim was to remove Communists from government.
• Gregory Hlatky has observed that the book's Senator Seabright B. Cooley resembles Senator Kenneth D. McKellar (D-TN). Both are highly senior Southern Democrats who chair the Appropriations Committee, serve as President pro tempore of the Senate, and maintain long-running vendettas against a government administrator: in Cooley's case, Leffingwell; in McKellar's case, David E. Lilienthal.
• Hlatky also notes that the mushy, unintelligible voice of the book's Senator Hugh B. Root is a copy of Drury's depiction, in his Senate Journal, of the voice of Senator William Langer (R-ND).
• Names. Drury prided himself on his ability to invent regionally appropriate names, though to the reader they may seem more like stereotypes. Several names echo those of real senators, of which two are worth noting. Reverdy Johnson, used by Drury as the name of an Alabama senator, was the name of a real senator from Maryland in the 19th century. (Drury, who often used the names of acquaintances for his characters, knew slightly a descendant of Johnson's who bore his name.) Drury has a phlegmatic committee chairman named Magnus Hollingsworth, known as Maggie. At the time the book was published, the real Senate had a phlegmatic committee chairman with the rhythmically identical name of Warren Magnuson (D-WA), known as Maggie.

James E. Lessenger, who interviewed Drury near the end of his life, writes about the inspirations for Advise and Consent:

"Drury wrote about Power. He told me that all novels -- all fiction -- are about emotions and his are about power. Having said that, he was also a personal friend of Joe McCarthy, but was not an apologist for him. Certainly, the Hiss case and the McCarthy hearings were on his mind. Most importantly, he told me that Advise and Consent was a first draft. Yes, he wrote multiple drafts of the first three chapters, but the later chapters were written in first draft after the novel was accepted for publication. Once he sold the book, he realized he had to write it and completed it within a few months. His favorite character was Seab Cooley, the old senator played by Charles Laughton in the motion picture. Ironically, Allen and Laughton became good friends after the film was made. The names for his characters came from the men and woman in his church and in his father's business as he was growing up in Porterville, California. Leffingwell was the name of a big man in citrus in his home town. A tall, elegant man. A man known for being vain. In Allen's childhood friends will you find the prototypes of his heroes. But yes, the story is about the Senate and Drury did a great job."

Evan Stansbury suggests that, in the later books of the series, Orrin Knox and Harley M. Hudson contain elements of Richard M. Nixon and Harry S. Truman respectively, though there is little evidence of such identification in Advise and Consent itself. He further suggests an resemblance between Ted Jason, a character who does not appear in Advise and Consent, and Nelson A. Rockefeller.

A Note on the Otto Preminger Film: The plot of the film follows the book very closely. According to my count, fifteen senators appear, however briefly, as named identifiable characters. They are all taken from the book, although some changes are made. The membership of the subcommittee considering the Leffingwell nomination is different; Senator Lafe Smith has been moved from Iowa to Rhode Island; and Senator Orrin Knox appears to have been moved from the Majority to the Minority side of the chamber. Names in one roll call sometimes fill in gaps left in another, perhaps due to film cutting. Adding all audible names together from roll calls and from a vote-counting discussion by the Majority party leaders, there are 90 names, the same number Drury gives in the book. However, besides the fifteen senators who are actual characters, only six names overlap with the book's names, possibly by coincidence.
Notable among the film's minor characters is a Senator McCafferty. In the book he is an aged (83) but still bright senator who once falls asleep during debate. In the film he is always asleep, and when awakened calls out "Opposed, sir! I'm opposed!" regardless of what is happening. What's interesting is that he is played by an actual ex-senator, Henry F. Ashurst (D-AZ), 87 at the time the film was made.

Bibliography and Links

Some non-fiction books on the Senate of the 1940s and 1950s:

• Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate (Knopf, 2002). Many biographies of senators of the period are useful and informative on the Senate as an institution. Of these, surely the most so is this book, the third volume of Caro's biography The Years of Lyndon Johnson. More interested in character and trivia than issues, and more than a bit overwrought at times, but awesomely detailed and captivating.
• Drury, Allen. A Senate Journal 1943-1945 (McGraw-Hill, 1963). Drury's daily account of his first months as a journalist covering the Senate for UPI. Full of the kind of detail and quick personality sketches that became characteristic of Advise and Consent.
• Foley, Michael. The New Senate: Liberal influence on a conservative institution, 1959-1972 (Yale, 1980). Political science study of the decline and fall of the traditional Senate described by Matthews and Reedy and celebrated by Drury and White.
• Gould, Lewis L. The Most Exclusive Club: A history of the modern United States Senate (Basic Books, 2005). A well-researched popular history of the Senate in the 20th century, with a concentration on the mid-century period. Focuses on the Senate's institutional failings in its relations with the presidency, but also discusses its popular image (including Drury's role in this) and does not shy away from naming the Senate's biggest drunks.
• Matthews, Donald R. U.S. Senators and Their World (University of North Carolina Press, 1960). Pioneering political science analysis of the political and instutitional behavior of the senators of the post-WW2 decade. Most notable for discussing how senators' backgrounds influence their behavior in office.
• Reedy, George E. The U.S. Senate: Paralysis or a search for consensus? (Crown, 1986). Despite its vague, stuffy title, this is a lively memoir in the form of a highly pragmatic analysis of how the Senate functioned during the leadership of Lyndon B. Johnson, written by one of his aides. Full of earthy anecdotes.
• White, William S. Citadel: The story of the U.S. Senate (Harper, 1957). An interesting but oleaginous paean to the traditional Senate. This book was, reportedly, given to new senators in its heyday to acquaint them with the folkways of the institution. (This might help explain the decline of those folkways.)

• Review on Orrin Judd's Pulitzer Prize winners page (conservative viewpoint)
• "Allen Drury and the Washington Novel" by Roger Kaplan, Policy Review (conservative viewpoint)
• "Allen Drury, Father of the D.C. Drama" (tribute to the book on Drury's death) by Ken Ringle, Washington Post
• "Where Have You Gone, Orrin Knox?: The Decline of the Washington Novel" by Terry Teachout, New York Times Book Review, Aug. 27, 1995, p. 3, 25 (liberal viewpoint). Teachout's subsequent thoughts.
• Internet Movie Database entry for the 1962 film
• "Hollywood on the Hill" (on the real Senate's reaction to the film)