The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

182 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
siXteen yeARs oLdeR thAn goRton, Henry M. Jackson was the studious
son of Norwegian immigrants. He grew up in the gritty smokestack city
of Everett, north of Seattle. When his third grade teacher asked her students
what they wanted to be when they grew up, Henry confidently declared,
“President of the United States.” Early in their careers, Jackson
and Gorton were both seen as spoil-sports, Gorton having earned the
enmity of bingo players by cracking down on tolerance gambling. Jackson
got his start in politics as a crusading young Snohomish County Prosecutor,
targeting gambling and bootlegging. He was disgusted that “school
children were spending their lunch money on pinball games” while their
fathers squandered their paychecks on slot machines and booze. They
started calling him “Soda Pop Jackson.”
Gorton was more the intellectual but Jackson was also an avid reader.
Both were policy wonks with a remarkable command of detail and nuance
and given to encyclopedic answers. While Slade famously suffered
from a warmth deficit, neither did Scoop suffer fools gladly. When a press
conference or interview grew tedious both were known to observe that a
reporter had just asked a particularly dumb question. Jimmy Carter considered
Jackson a brilliant yet “pompous” know-it-all. (Gorton and Jackson,
in turn, considered Carter weak and naïve in his dealings with the
Soviets.) 3
Anti-war liberals loathed Jackson, the unrepentant hawk, while movement
conservatives and the New Right were wary of Gorton’s libertarian
streak. Both staunchly supported Israel and a strong military. What was
good for Boeing was invariably good for America, and vice versa. Jackson
admired Reagan as a Cold Warrior but agreed with George H.W. Bush’s
pre-vice-presidential dismissal of his supply-side strategy as “voodoo
economics.” At heart, Jackson was still a New Deal/Fair Deal Democrat.
When Gorton endorsed a one-year freeze on Social Security benefits,
Jackson blew his top. Sometimes they just agreed that they disagreed.
Gorton always listened intently to “one of the greatest senators in U.S.
history.” 4
They first met in the early 1960s when Slade was representing a Seattle
forestry investment firm before Jackson’s Interior Committee.
Jackson’s advocacy proved decisive. “Scoop went far out of his way to
help this young guy. When I was a senator I tried to act accordingly. I
tried to remember how disappointing it was to work like hell for weeks
over testimony and have one senator show up.” In 1970, however, they had
a falling out. Jackson took offense when Gorton introduced his Republican
opponent—Teddy Roosevelt look-alike Charlie Elicker—in a PBS