Democrats: No One's Pet Coon

Tennessee's Democratic Senator Estes Kefauver was a glad-hander who never managed to look really glad. He was a campaigner who achieved a kind of glum sincerity even when his head was smothered under an outlandish coonskin cap. He was given to platitudes that put him foursquare in favor of "the best interests of the plain people of this nation" and "an even break for the average man." Some of his Senate colleagues insisted that there was a vacuum in the space between his ears. And he was a loner who became anathema...

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