4. THE MUSKIE RULE
transcript
Muskie: But it’s fortunate for him that he’s not on this platform beside me. 20:54 A good woman [voice cracks, long silence, cheers]
It’s a cautionary tale. If you’re in politics, you’ve probably heard it. The Muskie rule. Don’t cry in front of the press or you’ll end up like Edmund Muskie, whose 1972 presidential bid imploded when he choked up in public.
In today’s show, which is the first installment in a series on men and crying, we will revisit the incident that lead to the Muskie Rule. I’m Jesse Rhodes and this is Mannish.
Don: What was it like on that famous bus trip when you were heading
into the North Country in a snowstorm?
Jane: Well, I think you're probably talking about the man that wasn't so nice?
Jesse: That’s Jane Muskie being interviewed by Don Nicoll in 2002. He’s asking her about a 9 hour bus ride she took, in the middle of a snowstorm, with a traveling press corps. And that bus ride, in the snowstorm, is important because it sets in motion a chain of events that will end with Jane’s husband, Ed Muskie, crying in front of the press, at the door of the man that wasn’t so nice.
Don: Ultimately, he was involved. But on that bus trip, it was very stormy, and a very difficult bus ride, and according to Mary Hoyt, you were trying to help the press people, most of whom were women, get through it.
But for any of this to make sense, we need to back up.
Because to understand these chain of events, it helps to know something about Ed and Jane Muskie.
Jim: 7:15 He had 5 brothers and sisters and they weren't well off, but they got by during the depression.
That’s Jim Witherell, who wrote a biography about Edmund Muskie.
Jim: 5:38 ...His father was a tailor and his clientele included all of the bankers and the big-shots at the paper mill, all the executives there...
Both Jane and Ed were working-class kids. Ed’s parents emigrated from Poland. Jane had a single mom who worked as a cook.
Ed, who was a shy, brainy kid, graduated with honors, got a scholarship to Bates, then a scholarship to Cornell Law School. And when he returned to Maine, after school and the war, he was no longer just the shy tailor’s son. He was the lawyer. Two ladies in town thought they’d like to fix-up Jane, who was just graduating from high school at the time, with Ed.
Jane: ...He certainly would not have married anyone who couldn’t vote, so. ... I think he was very worried that people would think that he was robbing the cradle, or, anyway. ...my brother Howard said to Ed one time, he didn’t tell me this for a couple of years, but he kept saying, “You’re too old for my little sister,” and that sort of thing.
To be clear, because this does come into play later, he was about 13 years older than her, which raised a lot of eyebrows. But Ed did win over Jane and her family, especially Jane’s mom.
Jane: But anyway, my mother loved him, because he was tall and he could change light bulbs and he always was willing to do anything around the house.
They got married three years later. Ed started working as a lobbyist in the Maine legislature. He was known for his passionate outbursts. People said he had a temper. But he was also well-liked. He built a lot of connections across the state, became a State Representative and when he won the governor race of 1954, the national newspapers took note of him as the young democrat who charmed a republican state.
Jane supported his ambitions, but she mostly stayed at home and took care of the kids, seeing Ed whenever he’d come home from campaigning. And there were a lot of campaigns. Besides the two state representative campaigns and the governor race, there were the 4 Senate races, the vice presidential race, and, then, in 1972, the Presidential bid.
And this is when Jane finds herself on a bus in the middle of a blizzard with a group of reporters. It’s the middle of December, New Hampshire, and she’s campaigning as the potential first-lady. It’s her first trip. There are banks of snow building up on the side of the road and she notices some of the reporters getting nervous. To cheer them up, she passes around drinks and starts cracking jokes. This type of hobnobbing between reporters and candidates was not unusual for the time, so Jane let her guard down.
Jane: Many of the people on the bus were scared to death to be riding out in the banks of snow, and others were, kept wanting to get off so they could, to get their articles into their press people. I don't know, we just started to sing, and we tried, Mary and I tried to cheer them up, and that didn't work obviously.
That “obviously” is referring to what happened next. Kandy Stroud, a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, filed her story, “Catching the bus with Jane Muskie,” which started out with a quote:
Stroud: “Put your notebooks away, girls, Momma’s going to sing tonight.”
With that, Jane Gray Muskie lit another filtertip cigarette and invited the members of her traveling press corps for cheese and drinks in her room…
The article described Jane as “colorful” and “outspoken.” Jane admits to being a feminist in one quote. But there was one paragraph, in particular, that people remember. Maybe because of the boozing, or smoking, but probably mostly because of the dirty jokes.
Stroud: She thinks nothing of telling you she couldn’t get her black cotton boots over her elastic stockings, that she didn’t want to wear a particular dress because someone else has “the g.d. Thing on,” or shouting, “Let’s tell dirty jokes,” or “Pass me my purse, I haven’t had my morning cigaret yet.”
And there are other gems too, like the dreaded “little dreams” that come from mixing booze with wine. Or the fact that she calls Ed, who remember is 13 years older than her, “Big Daddy.” And it’s these details in this article that kicks everything into gear.
Because, what happens next is this. The Manchester Union Leader, which at the time is one of the biggest newspapers in New Hampshire, runs a letter that claims Ed used the word canuck, which was a derogatory word for French-Canadians, on the campaign trail. And a day later, the paper runs an excerpt of the bus story with the headline, “Big Daddy’s Jane.” It focusses on the drinking and dirty jokes. And because it’s a week before the primary, Ed acts. Again, here’s Don Nickel interviewing Jane Muskie:
Don: My question to you is, before Ed delivered that public rebuke to Loeb, did he discuss with you at any length his feelings about the attack on you and how he proposed to deal with it?
JM: No, he didn't really discuss it with me. I probably would have said, “Don't do it. It'll
come home to haunt you, and I can take it.” But I didn't say that.
He’s been campaigning in other states. He’s tired. And he’s enraged at this depiction of Jane as a lush. The campaign has taken a hit in the poles, whether because of the canuck allegation or the Jane article is unclear. So he flies back to Maine.
Jane: ...he had to explain himself when we got home to Maine to a lot of audiences, though, and I felt really badly that he had to go through that. But he kept assuring me that everything would be okay...
He tells his staff to park a flatbed truck in front of the Union Leader and to call the press. He’ll address his remarks to the paper’s publisher, William Loeb, in front of his building. It’s 9:30 Saturday morning, there’s a crowd, and the snow is really coming down, but it’s just warm enough to melt. In fact, reporters are worried about their notebooks getting wet. And then Ed steps up to the mic, and speaks.
Ed: Muskie: 5:03 I think I might, then, begin.
Ed introduces the people standing on the truck with him. Colleagues and family members. With that done, he gets down to business.
Ed: 5:57 ...by attacking me, by attacking my wife, he has proved himself to be a gutless coward.
6:43 Cheers
Man: That a boy Edward, give ‘em hell. Give them holy hell.
Ed: I’ve chosen this spot in front of his building, to give him the opportunity, if he has the guts, to come down here and answer anything I have to say. I’ve also chosen this spot in front of his building because I can’t get this story told through his columns. Cheers.
Ed talks about the Canuck letter for a while. He talks about how people used to call him a Polak. How he hates derogatory language and would never use it. He sounds indignant, but in that John Wayne cool kind of way. He’s calm.
Ed: 19:30 But then, you know, I’ve been in politics all my life, I’m no child, I know that these sorts of things happen, I’ve got to be prepared to take them.
And then about 15 minutes into the speech, things take a turn for the personal.
Ed: What really got me was this editorial attacking my wife, “Big Daddy’s Jane.” 20:00 This man doesn’t walk, he crawls. [cheers] 20:21 He’s talking about my wife. 20:42 Maybe I should hold my shirt on that. But it’s fortunate for him that he’s not on this platform beside me. 20:54 A good woman [voice cracks, long silence, cheers]
Ed’s face crumples. Snow is falling on his forehead, melting, and trickling down his cheeks. Or are they tears? He wipes his nose and his eyes.
Cheers
What happens next is almost as striking as striking as the length pause. The audience quiets down and Ed, perhaps thinking better of it, just drops the thread, turning instead to a man next to him.
Ed: 21:29 I’d like to introduce you to Art Barker.
When Ed walks off the stage, he tells his campaign manager that he didn’t mean to get so emotional. He let his temper get the better of him. His campaign manager isn’t worried. It humanizes him. But when the Washington Post comes out later that day, and they see how the event is characterized, they become worried.
Broder: With tears streaming down his face and his voice choked with emotion, Senator Edmund S. Muskie stood in the snow outside the Manchester Union Leader this morning… In defending his wife, Muskie broke down three times in as many minutes--uttering a few words and then standing silent in the near blizzard, rubbing at his face, his shoulders heaving…
Across the country, newspapers reported that Muskie had broken down in tears. He couldn’t control himself at a press conference. He cried.
We could easily get lost in the conspiracy of Edmund Muskie’s tears. Reporters who were closest to the flatbed truck swear to this day that snow was melting off his forehead the whole time. There were no tears. An AP reporter later said that editors added the crying details to his version once they got word of the Washington Posts angle. Or we could disappear into the conspiracy of the canuck letter, which was later discovered to have been fabricated by a Nixon aide.
But the important thing is not whether tears were mixed in with melting snow. The important thing is what happened next.
William Loeb, the newspaper publisher, said that Muskie was “near-hysterical” and not the man to have his finger on the nuclear button. Even McGovern, the more liberal candidate, later used it against him. And bumper stickers began to appear in Florida, which is where the next primary was, that said, “Vote for muskie or he’ll cry.”
Again, here’s Jim Witherall.
Jim: 45:30 Yeah. I think the next primary was Florida. I think he won the next couple primaries, but not by as much as he should have or as he hoped to, or it started to look like he wasn’t as strong a candidate at that point, because of the dirty tricks and the New Hampshire incident.
And so Edmund Muskie’s bid for president collapsed. Not, it’s important to note, just because he appeared to cry. He was a moderate liberal in a year when many people were passionately opposed to Vietnam and Nixon. Ironically, Muskie, known for his temper, wasn’t fiery enough for the electorate. In addition, he took New Hampshire for granted and campaigned fewer days there than McGovern. The narrative quickly became, Muskie barely wins a state that should have been a shoe-in.
But those tears, or melting snow, or whatever they were, became a big part of the story too. That the Senator was unbalanced, soft, shaky. He was not only the wrong man for the job. He wasn’t even a man.
All that was left for Ed to do was slip back to his post in the senate. He never ran for president again.
Special thanks to The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, John Milne, Jim Witherall, Emily Palena, Brandon Pascal, and Shoshana Walter. To learn more about the music you heard on today’s show, go to our new website, mannish.weebly.com/
This was Part I of Boys don’t Cry, a series Mannish is doing on men and crying. Keep your eyes out for Part II to find out what would happen if Ed Muskie did it all again, all of it, today. That’s next time, on Mannish.
It’s a cautionary tale. If you’re in politics, you’ve probably heard it. The Muskie rule. Don’t cry in front of the press or you’ll end up like Edmund Muskie, whose 1972 presidential bid imploded when he choked up in public.
In today’s show, which is the first installment in a series on men and crying, we will revisit the incident that lead to the Muskie Rule. I’m Jesse Rhodes and this is Mannish.
Don: What was it like on that famous bus trip when you were heading
into the North Country in a snowstorm?
Jane: Well, I think you're probably talking about the man that wasn't so nice?
Jesse: That’s Jane Muskie being interviewed by Don Nicoll in 2002. He’s asking her about a 9 hour bus ride she took, in the middle of a snowstorm, with a traveling press corps. And that bus ride, in the snowstorm, is important because it sets in motion a chain of events that will end with Jane’s husband, Ed Muskie, crying in front of the press, at the door of the man that wasn’t so nice.
Don: Ultimately, he was involved. But on that bus trip, it was very stormy, and a very difficult bus ride, and according to Mary Hoyt, you were trying to help the press people, most of whom were women, get through it.
But for any of this to make sense, we need to back up.
Because to understand these chain of events, it helps to know something about Ed and Jane Muskie.
Jim: 7:15 He had 5 brothers and sisters and they weren't well off, but they got by during the depression.
That’s Jim Witherell, who wrote a biography about Edmund Muskie.
Jim: 5:38 ...His father was a tailor and his clientele included all of the bankers and the big-shots at the paper mill, all the executives there...
Both Jane and Ed were working-class kids. Ed’s parents emigrated from Poland. Jane had a single mom who worked as a cook.
Ed, who was a shy, brainy kid, graduated with honors, got a scholarship to Bates, then a scholarship to Cornell Law School. And when he returned to Maine, after school and the war, he was no longer just the shy tailor’s son. He was the lawyer. Two ladies in town thought they’d like to fix-up Jane, who was just graduating from high school at the time, with Ed.
Jane: ...He certainly would not have married anyone who couldn’t vote, so. ... I think he was very worried that people would think that he was robbing the cradle, or, anyway. ...my brother Howard said to Ed one time, he didn’t tell me this for a couple of years, but he kept saying, “You’re too old for my little sister,” and that sort of thing.
To be clear, because this does come into play later, he was about 13 years older than her, which raised a lot of eyebrows. But Ed did win over Jane and her family, especially Jane’s mom.
Jane: But anyway, my mother loved him, because he was tall and he could change light bulbs and he always was willing to do anything around the house.
They got married three years later. Ed started working as a lobbyist in the Maine legislature. He was known for his passionate outbursts. People said he had a temper. But he was also well-liked. He built a lot of connections across the state, became a State Representative and when he won the governor race of 1954, the national newspapers took note of him as the young democrat who charmed a republican state.
Jane supported his ambitions, but she mostly stayed at home and took care of the kids, seeing Ed whenever he’d come home from campaigning. And there were a lot of campaigns. Besides the two state representative campaigns and the governor race, there were the 4 Senate races, the vice presidential race, and, then, in 1972, the Presidential bid.
And this is when Jane finds herself on a bus in the middle of a blizzard with a group of reporters. It’s the middle of December, New Hampshire, and she’s campaigning as the potential first-lady. It’s her first trip. There are banks of snow building up on the side of the road and she notices some of the reporters getting nervous. To cheer them up, she passes around drinks and starts cracking jokes. This type of hobnobbing between reporters and candidates was not unusual for the time, so Jane let her guard down.
Jane: Many of the people on the bus were scared to death to be riding out in the banks of snow, and others were, kept wanting to get off so they could, to get their articles into their press people. I don't know, we just started to sing, and we tried, Mary and I tried to cheer them up, and that didn't work obviously.
That “obviously” is referring to what happened next. Kandy Stroud, a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, filed her story, “Catching the bus with Jane Muskie,” which started out with a quote:
Stroud: “Put your notebooks away, girls, Momma’s going to sing tonight.”
With that, Jane Gray Muskie lit another filtertip cigarette and invited the members of her traveling press corps for cheese and drinks in her room…
The article described Jane as “colorful” and “outspoken.” Jane admits to being a feminist in one quote. But there was one paragraph, in particular, that people remember. Maybe because of the boozing, or smoking, but probably mostly because of the dirty jokes.
Stroud: She thinks nothing of telling you she couldn’t get her black cotton boots over her elastic stockings, that she didn’t want to wear a particular dress because someone else has “the g.d. Thing on,” or shouting, “Let’s tell dirty jokes,” or “Pass me my purse, I haven’t had my morning cigaret yet.”
And there are other gems too, like the dreaded “little dreams” that come from mixing booze with wine. Or the fact that she calls Ed, who remember is 13 years older than her, “Big Daddy.” And it’s these details in this article that kicks everything into gear.
Because, what happens next is this. The Manchester Union Leader, which at the time is one of the biggest newspapers in New Hampshire, runs a letter that claims Ed used the word canuck, which was a derogatory word for French-Canadians, on the campaign trail. And a day later, the paper runs an excerpt of the bus story with the headline, “Big Daddy’s Jane.” It focusses on the drinking and dirty jokes. And because it’s a week before the primary, Ed acts. Again, here’s Don Nickel interviewing Jane Muskie:
Don: My question to you is, before Ed delivered that public rebuke to Loeb, did he discuss with you at any length his feelings about the attack on you and how he proposed to deal with it?
JM: No, he didn't really discuss it with me. I probably would have said, “Don't do it. It'll
come home to haunt you, and I can take it.” But I didn't say that.
He’s been campaigning in other states. He’s tired. And he’s enraged at this depiction of Jane as a lush. The campaign has taken a hit in the poles, whether because of the canuck allegation or the Jane article is unclear. So he flies back to Maine.
Jane: ...he had to explain himself when we got home to Maine to a lot of audiences, though, and I felt really badly that he had to go through that. But he kept assuring me that everything would be okay...
He tells his staff to park a flatbed truck in front of the Union Leader and to call the press. He’ll address his remarks to the paper’s publisher, William Loeb, in front of his building. It’s 9:30 Saturday morning, there’s a crowd, and the snow is really coming down, but it’s just warm enough to melt. In fact, reporters are worried about their notebooks getting wet. And then Ed steps up to the mic, and speaks.
Ed: Muskie: 5:03 I think I might, then, begin.
Ed introduces the people standing on the truck with him. Colleagues and family members. With that done, he gets down to business.
Ed: 5:57 ...by attacking me, by attacking my wife, he has proved himself to be a gutless coward.
6:43 Cheers
Man: That a boy Edward, give ‘em hell. Give them holy hell.
Ed: I’ve chosen this spot in front of his building, to give him the opportunity, if he has the guts, to come down here and answer anything I have to say. I’ve also chosen this spot in front of his building because I can’t get this story told through his columns. Cheers.
Ed talks about the Canuck letter for a while. He talks about how people used to call him a Polak. How he hates derogatory language and would never use it. He sounds indignant, but in that John Wayne cool kind of way. He’s calm.
Ed: 19:30 But then, you know, I’ve been in politics all my life, I’m no child, I know that these sorts of things happen, I’ve got to be prepared to take them.
And then about 15 minutes into the speech, things take a turn for the personal.
Ed: What really got me was this editorial attacking my wife, “Big Daddy’s Jane.” 20:00 This man doesn’t walk, he crawls. [cheers] 20:21 He’s talking about my wife. 20:42 Maybe I should hold my shirt on that. But it’s fortunate for him that he’s not on this platform beside me. 20:54 A good woman [voice cracks, long silence, cheers]
Ed’s face crumples. Snow is falling on his forehead, melting, and trickling down his cheeks. Or are they tears? He wipes his nose and his eyes.
Cheers
What happens next is almost as striking as striking as the length pause. The audience quiets down and Ed, perhaps thinking better of it, just drops the thread, turning instead to a man next to him.
Ed: 21:29 I’d like to introduce you to Art Barker.
When Ed walks off the stage, he tells his campaign manager that he didn’t mean to get so emotional. He let his temper get the better of him. His campaign manager isn’t worried. It humanizes him. But when the Washington Post comes out later that day, and they see how the event is characterized, they become worried.
Broder: With tears streaming down his face and his voice choked with emotion, Senator Edmund S. Muskie stood in the snow outside the Manchester Union Leader this morning… In defending his wife, Muskie broke down three times in as many minutes--uttering a few words and then standing silent in the near blizzard, rubbing at his face, his shoulders heaving…
Across the country, newspapers reported that Muskie had broken down in tears. He couldn’t control himself at a press conference. He cried.
We could easily get lost in the conspiracy of Edmund Muskie’s tears. Reporters who were closest to the flatbed truck swear to this day that snow was melting off his forehead the whole time. There were no tears. An AP reporter later said that editors added the crying details to his version once they got word of the Washington Posts angle. Or we could disappear into the conspiracy of the canuck letter, which was later discovered to have been fabricated by a Nixon aide.
But the important thing is not whether tears were mixed in with melting snow. The important thing is what happened next.
William Loeb, the newspaper publisher, said that Muskie was “near-hysterical” and not the man to have his finger on the nuclear button. Even McGovern, the more liberal candidate, later used it against him. And bumper stickers began to appear in Florida, which is where the next primary was, that said, “Vote for muskie or he’ll cry.”
Again, here’s Jim Witherall.
Jim: 45:30 Yeah. I think the next primary was Florida. I think he won the next couple primaries, but not by as much as he should have or as he hoped to, or it started to look like he wasn’t as strong a candidate at that point, because of the dirty tricks and the New Hampshire incident.
And so Edmund Muskie’s bid for president collapsed. Not, it’s important to note, just because he appeared to cry. He was a moderate liberal in a year when many people were passionately opposed to Vietnam and Nixon. Ironically, Muskie, known for his temper, wasn’t fiery enough for the electorate. In addition, he took New Hampshire for granted and campaigned fewer days there than McGovern. The narrative quickly became, Muskie barely wins a state that should have been a shoe-in.
But those tears, or melting snow, or whatever they were, became a big part of the story too. That the Senator was unbalanced, soft, shaky. He was not only the wrong man for the job. He wasn’t even a man.
All that was left for Ed to do was slip back to his post in the senate. He never ran for president again.
Special thanks to The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, John Milne, Jim Witherall, Emily Palena, Brandon Pascal, and Shoshana Walter. To learn more about the music you heard on today’s show, go to our new website, mannish.weebly.com/
This was Part I of Boys don’t Cry, a series Mannish is doing on men and crying. Keep your eyes out for Part II to find out what would happen if Ed Muskie did it all again, all of it, today. That’s next time, on Mannish.
credits
Special thanks to Jim Witherell for speaking with me about his book. To learn more about Ed Muskie’s early career, read Jim’s book, “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.”
Also, special thanks to John Milne, Jim Witherell, Emily Palena, Brandon Pascal, and Shoshana Walter.
Music licensed under Creative Commons:
Groovetime by Joey Kake
Shaky Vibes by Krytosss
Latin Rhythm by Sunsearcher
Plucked 0Z42 by Setuniman
The Flight of Lulu by Possimiste
Oral History Recordings:
Muskie, J.G. (May 3, 2002 ). Interview by D. Nicoll. Tape Recording. The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Lewiston, Maine.
Correction: An earlier version misstated that Edmond Muskie was the first democratic Governor of Maine since WWI. Although it was unusual for a democrat to win the governorship, there was in fact a democrat elected to the governor's office in 1933. The episode has been updated to reflect this.
Also, special thanks to John Milne, Jim Witherell, Emily Palena, Brandon Pascal, and Shoshana Walter.
Music licensed under Creative Commons:
Groovetime by Joey Kake
Shaky Vibes by Krytosss
Latin Rhythm by Sunsearcher
Plucked 0Z42 by Setuniman
The Flight of Lulu by Possimiste
Oral History Recordings:
Muskie, J.G. (May 3, 2002 ). Interview by D. Nicoll. Tape Recording. The Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library. Lewiston, Maine.
Correction: An earlier version misstated that Edmond Muskie was the first democratic Governor of Maine since WWI. Although it was unusual for a democrat to win the governorship, there was in fact a democrat elected to the governor's office in 1933. The episode has been updated to reflect this.