Muskie, Edmund S.

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Muskie (Marciszewski), Edmund Sixtus (1914 - 1996)
Senate Years of Service: 1959-1980
Party: Democrat

MUSKIE, Edmund Sixtus, a Senator from Maine; born in Rumford, Oxford County, Maine, March 28, 1914; attended the public schools; graduated from Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, in 1936, and Cornell University Law School, Ithaca, N.Y., in 1939; admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1939 and Maine bar in 1940; commenced the practice of law in Waterville, Maine, in 1940; during the Second World War enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the Atlantic and Asiatic-Pacific Theaters 1942-1945; member and secretary of Waterville Board of Zoning Adjustment 1948-1955; appointed district director for Maine Office of Price Stabilization 1951-1952; city solicitor of Waterville in 1954; elected to the State house of representatives in 1946, 1948, and 1950, and was Democratic floor leader 1949-1951; Governor of Maine 1955-1959; elected a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1958; reelected in 1964, 1970 and 1976 and served from January 3, 1959, until his resignation on May 7, 1980, to enter the Cabinet; chairman, Committee on the Budget (Ninety-third through Ninety-sixth Congresses); unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1968; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter 1980-1981; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 16, 1981; member, President's Special Review Board ("Tower Commission") 1987; practiced law and was a resident of Washington, D.C., until his death on March 26, 1996; interment at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.
Bibliography
Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives; Asbell, Bernard. The Senate Nobody Knows. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978; Muskie, Edmund. Journeys. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
Source: Congressional Data Base (2008)

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BOOKS
Muskie
Governor and Senator from Maine, Candidate for US President
by Theo Lippman, Jr., and Dond C. Hansen
Edmund Muskie was elected governor, then senator, from Maine after a life straight out of the old American copy-books. The son of a Polish immigrant, Muskie worked his way through college and earned a Phi Beta Kappa key and a degree from a prestigious law school.
His political prospects were not good, however, because he chose to be a Democrat and Maine was then a solidly Republican state. With luck and personal attractiveness, he won upset elections. In the Senate his independent streak hurt him at first and he was seated on minor committees. He persevered and became a respected member of the Senate's ruling clique and its expert on pollution and urban problems.
Muskie's first interest remained foreign affairs, and he progressed from hawk to dove during the Vietnam war. He is calm, cool, and Iow-keyed, which are the qualities, according to some commentators, needed for national leadership in these troubled times.
In 1968 Senator Muskie was the unexpected star of the presidential-vice-presidential campaign. He was ballyhooed as a new party leader and potential president. He investigated this new political climate in 1969, but found that Senator Edward Kennedy probably had the 1972 nomination for the asking. When Senator Kennedy bowed out of the race, Muskie became the front runner. He has put together a staff of experts and advisers and has begun to seek the presidential nomination in earnest.
Here, two journalists - one has been covering Muskie in Maine for over ten years and the other is a veteran Senate reporter - tell about the man and his career. More than just a story, this book includes a fascinating and objective understanding of Muskie's strengths and weaknesses, the hows and whys of his past and his very promising future.
From: Muskie, by Theo Lippman, Jr., and Dond C. Hansen, W. W. Norton & Company Inc., New York, 1971

.... Muskie of Maine
Democratic nominee for Vice-President, 1968

by David Niven

In 1968, as the Democratic nominee for Vice-President, Edmund Muskie, the quiet man from Maine, turned into the most attractive candidate of the year. Since that time he nas become a dominant American political figure and has moved to the forefront of his party.

The polls continue to show Muskie's popularity among the mass of Democratic voters in the country, yet there is a surprising amount of questioning about him, especially among those whom the author of this book, David Nevin, describes as the "politically aware."

Muskie of Maine examines the basic and increasingly important issues: Who is this man? What does he believe? In a personal as well as a political portrait, the book explains Muskie with an understanding and thoroughness not before achieved.

We see the candidate as derived from and still loyal to the special style and propriety of his native state. His character is made up of opposite elements: he is a private man who finds in public life the vehicle for his self-expression. The author explores the good results - and the bad - of Muskie's deliberateness and slowness to come to decisions, his alleged temper, his political skills, his ability to move great masses of people, his stand on Vietnam, on civil rights, and on the other crucial issues of our time.

From: Muskie of Maine, by David Niven, Random House, Inc., New York, 1972