{"id":76815,"date":"2014-03-27T14:08:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-27T18:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=76815"},"modified":"2024-07-03T14:42:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T18:42:37","slug":"muskie-100-birthday-six-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2014\/03\/27\/muskie-100-birthday-six-things\/","title":{"rendered":"On Ed Muskie’s 100th birthday, six things everyone should know"},"content":{"rendered":"

The late Edmund Muskie ’36 was born 100 years ago\u00a0\u2014 March 28, 1914, to be exact.<\/p>\n

With help from the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library,<\/a> we celebrate this statesman’s 100th birthday by offering six things everyone should know about our 1936 alumnus and long-serving Maine governor, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state.<\/p>\n

Among various Muskie remembrances this month was Muskie Archives director Pat Webber’s appearance on Maine public radio’s Maine Calling<\/em> for “Remembering Ed Muskie.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Here are six things to remember about Edmund Sixtus Muskie:<\/p>\n

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1. He was from a Maine family that was sending its first children to college<\/h3>\n
\"Edmund<\/a>

Edmund Muskie is at back left with his siblings and his mother, Josephine. (Photograph courtesy of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Ed Muskie was the son of Poland-born Stephen Marciszewski, who changed his name to Muskie when he emigrated to the U.S., and Josephine Cznarnecka, the daughter of a Polish-American family in Buffalo, N.Y.<\/p>\n

Muskie’s father, a master tailor who owned a shop in Rumford, was outspoken in his support of Democratic Party ideology even though it conflicted with many of his customers\u2019 Republican beliefs.<\/p>\n

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2. Politics and the role of government were on his mind at Bates<\/h3>\n
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Edmund Muskie ’36 (left) and Charles Taylor ’36 study in their freshman-year room in Roger Williams Hall. Muskie later lived in Parker Hall. (Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Muskie, then known as “Eddie,” lived in Roger Williams Hall and then in Parker Hall. He was president of his class, a standout debater, and graduated cum laude<\/em> in 1936.<\/p>\n

His honors thesis in history and government made two points: (1) the U.S. needed a comprehensive national system of social security, including health, unemployment and old-age insurance, and (2) the U.S. Constitution needed to be amended to give Congress the power to check the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, since the court had shown its propensity to strike down similar New Deal legislation earlier in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

With the Depression a vivid reality, Muskie wrote that “the individual, without aid, cannot protect himself against the inevitable hazards which are his destiny as a member of our modern order.”<\/p>\n

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3. He revived Maine’s Democratic Party<\/h3>\n
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Edmund Muskie won the Maine governorship in 1954 thanks to hard campaigning and support from savvy advisers like Frank Coffin ’40 (right). In this 1956 photo, the “Muskie Coffin” sign refers to Muskie’s reelection as governor and Coffin’s being chair of the Maine Democratic State Committee. (Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1954, Maine Democrats were looking for a candidate to run for governor, and they recruited Muskie \u2014 but only after all other potential candidates declined.<\/p>\n

A Democrat hadn’t been governor in nearly 20 years, and only one had been elected in the preceding 40 years.<\/p>\n

Muskie was a weak candidate in more ways than one: He was still recovering from the physical and financial effects of a broken back suffered in 1953.<\/p>\n

But Muskie won, thanks to hard campaigning, support from savvy advisers like Frank Coffin ’40 (above) and Don Nicoll, and an intimate knowledge of the state gained during his direction of the Office of Price Stabilization. The win gained national attention, and he appeared on a new morning TV show: NBC\u2019s Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although Maine remained a bastion of Republican politics through much of his career, Muskie nevertheless garnered 60 percent or more of the popular vote in each of his four senatorial elections.<\/p>\n

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4. He was called “Mr. Clean”<\/h3>\n
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In this early 1960s image, U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie \u201936 and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, with an unidentified park ranger, visit Maine\u2019s Cadillac Mountain, located within Acadia National Park. (Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

Muskie was the grandfather of modern environmental legislation. As a senator, he sponsored both the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, which fundamentally established our federal government\u2019s duties to preserve and protect the environment.<\/p>\n

On the floor of the Senate after Muskie’s death in 1996, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, said that “because of the work of Ed Muskie, our children are growing up in a more healthy and beautiful America.”<\/p>\n

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5. He was targeted by Nixon’s “dirty tricks” in 1972<\/h3>\n
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Popular memory holds that Muskie\u2019s campaign collapsed after he allegedly teared up during a New Hampshire press conference, but the reasons are more complex, including dirty tricks by President Nixon’s Committee for the Reelection of the President. (Photograph courtesy of Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/p><\/div>\n

A front-runner for the 1972 presidential nomination, Muskie and his campaign were targeted by Nixon’s Committee for the Reelection of the President and its program of “dirty tricks.” That included the so-called \u201cCanuck Letter\u201d \u2014 a forged letter published in the Manchester Union Leader<\/em><\/a> that accused Muskie of making derogatory remarks about Maine\u2019s French-Canadian citizens.<\/p>\n