IOWA: Again, Brookhart

In 1922, heralded by reports that he possessed only one speech and no evening clothes, Smith Wildman Brookhart went to the U. S. Senate as a bull-shouldered, thick-skinned representative of Iowa. Both reports proved correct. His speech was an impassioned attack on the Interests, the Railroads, the Wets. His dress at swank Washington parties was a plain sack suit. His pugnacious cowhide radicalism nettled patrician Senators, and in a close election contest in 1924 the Senate chose to seat his opponent. In retaliation he won a smashing re-election in 1926. In 1932, annoyed by disclosures that he had...

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