Daniel on Hollings and Victor, 'Making Government Work'

H-SC Daniel on Hollings and Victor, 'Making Government Work'

Review published on Thursday, February 25, 2010

Ernest F. Hollings, Kirk Victor. Making Government Work. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008. 360 pp. $32.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-57003-760-3.

Reviewed by Meredith Daniel (Piedmont Technical College) Published on H-SC (February, 2010) Commissioned by Phillip Stone

Making Government Work

The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.

--C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Woodward’s comment regarding recent history is particularly true vis-à-vis that historically sticky and frequently maligned genre, the memoir. It is one thing when “living memory” is recounted by an ostensibly dispassionate interpreter, aka an historian; it is another matter entirely when the memories recounted are of one’s own life and for the purpose of establishing one’s own historical legacy. Oftentimes, however, a well-written, frank memoir allows a front-row seat as history plays out--with all the appropriate caveats assumed, of course. As such, Making Government Work will be quite valuable to the next generation or two of historians searching for clues into mid-twentieth- century American politics and the American South during this period. For the present, it is an interesting, entertaining look at the process of American politics during that time--our time.

Hollings here writes in much the same straightforward manner as he speaks.[2] This account is anecdotal, conversational, and candid. The title indicates the book’s thesis. Throughout his political life, Fritz Hollings saw government not as an evil to be all but eliminated, per the tenets of Reaganism, nor as an apparatus to be controlled by moneyed corporate interests with their “grip of K Street” (p. 332), but as the efficient enterprise of the American people.

The bulk of the book focuses on Hollings’s tenure in the United States Senate, while approximately one-third of the book recounts his South Carolina governorship. This is not surprising considering that Hollings spent thirty-nine years in Washington and seems to have relished most of the Senate battles in which he was engaged for those six terms in office.

Hollings, by law, served only a single term as governor of South Carolina, from 1959 until 1963. During this period, he dealt with theBrown decision and its repercussions, including the desegregation of Clemson University. He cites this relatively peaceful process in which Harvey Gantt, just after Hollings left office, was the first black student admitted to the college as an example of how “government can work” (p. 83).

At the outset of his term, the governor made it clear that economic and business development would be the cornerstone of his administration. He effectively became the pitchman for South Carolina as

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Daniel on Hollings and Victor, 'Making Government Work'. H-SC. 02-19-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11282/reviews/11343/daniel-hollings-and-victor-making-government-work Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-SC he traveled in search of business opportunities for the state. As did most of his New South gubernatorial peers, Hollings took the stance that this all-out recruitment and courting of business and industry created much-needed jobs for South Carolina workers--workers who, in reality, would be provided very few legal safeguards and job protections in the face of industrial growth. Growth, however, was the first priority.

Another long-standing Hollings trademark was the unsentimental view of history and current affairs which coexisted with compassionate stances on many social issues, chief among them, the continuing shame of hunger in the United States. His genuine concern for the “hunger issue”--and at a more profound level, with the problem of American poverty--was consistent and impressive. Beginning with his “hunger tours” of South Carolina in the 1960s and the publication ofThe Case Against Hunger (1970), through his support of the food stamp and school lunch programs, Hollings was an active champion of the poor throughout his life.

Basically, the themes of this book and of the author’s political philosophies remain consistent. Hollings’s unvarnished assessments of the seven presidents under whom he served are largely based on his personal litany of modern political sins: deficit spending, the neoconservative repudiation of government, the gospel of free trade, culminating in the passage of NAFTA, and the overriding supremacy of money in the political process.

For example, he proffers some of his strongest criticism against Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Hollings writes, ran “against Washington” and held a “visceral contempt for government” (p. 203). This disdain for government clearly runs counter to Hollings’s political philosophy and his entire life’s work.

Of Clinton, he writes that, “As pleased as I was at Clinton’s serious, tough-minded approach to reducing the deficit, I was just as displeased that he decided to go along with the nonsense of free trade” (p. 251). He was further disappointed that Clinton, once in office, seemed to abandon the organized labor base which had helped elect him in favor of the “Wall Street crowd” (p. 252).

Hollings also recounts his experiences with a number of other prominent political players in South Carolina and national politics whom he encountered during his career: Olin D. Johnston, the Kennedys, and, of course, Strom Thurmond, to name a few. His anecdotes and analyses of these characters add a dose of Hollings’s personality to the book. His recounting of Clement Haynsworth’s failed Supreme Court nomination is also included.

Much is made of what Hollings perceives as the authentic bipartisanship he frequently enjoyed for many of his Senate years. He bemoans the loss of that collegiality in today’s Congress. He writes, “Here in the Senate, there is total cleavage, almost confrontation.... The Senate chamber is a boiler room for the campaigns. And the Democratic and Republican campaign committees that pour in the campaign money congeal the confrontation” (p. 330).

In fact, Hollings, for many years now, has viewed the danger of campaign finance money as the root of most evil in current politics; in his estimation, politicians are now constantly forced to raise money rather than running for office or legislating. He closes the book with this thought: “Once spending in campaigns is limited, the big boiler room of party politics in Washington will fade, and congressional

As already stated, Making Government Work is chock full of typical Hollings frankness. Candor about how politics is played and the fundamental, sometimes overriding, need for political self-preservation- -his decision to support Jimmy Carter rather than Edward Kennedy because of political fallout that endorsement would have created for Fritz Hollings, for example--is certainly not the norm in today’s political arena. This type of forthrightness underscores the ways in which politicians’ public personae have changed in just the past ten to twenty years. Of course, Hollings’s public persona was somewhat atypical all along. It seems downright anachronistic when a politician in the twenty-first century actually discusses the ins and outs of political deal-making without posturing and with a sense of humor--an incisive wit, to be more precise.

Making Government Work is a purely political memoir; there are no personal confessions or scapegoats here and no hand-wringing. This book is, rather, an apology for Hollings’s career in public service, particularly in the United States Senate. He sets out to explain his views and votes on particular issues, but nowhere in this account does he attempt to gain sympathy from his readers for any political miscalculations or mistakes in judgment. This is also Hollings’s map for future political change, which he views as necessary for a renewal of the nation’s prosperity.

In the end, the reader comes away trusting the sincerity of Fritz Hollings’s belief in the argument that government can, and must, work for its constituents. In this veteran politician’s view, the machinery of government is most certainly broken at this point in time, but it can and must be fixed in order for the nation to return to its rightful course of attempting to fulfill the promise of the mid- twentieth century. In Hollings’s eyes, the remedy lies in restoring an American belief in the value of good government and, in turn, restoring good government to the American people.

Note

[1]. The co-author of Making Government Work is Kirk Victor, a journalist who also holds a law degree and has covered politics and law for several Washington publications.

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Citation: Meredith Daniel. Review of Hollings, Ernest F.; Victor, Kirk, Making Government Work. H- SC, H-Net Reviews. February, 2010. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=29641

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.