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None of them have been able to understand Mills' recent erratic behavior, but nearly all of them recognize it as markedly out of character. There was speculation that the medication that Mills has taken since his back surgery in 1973 may have brought on his bizarre conduct. Friends say that lately Mills has become addled and repetitious in conversation, and makes frequent complaints of pain in his abdomen. Mills has clearly not been himself for some months, and it was his odd behavior, as much as his recent shenanigans with Fanne Foxe, that caused the Democrats in the House to move against nun.
They toppled one of the chamber's titans. After serving for four years as a judge in Arkansas' White County, Mills won a seat in Congress in 1938. He was re-elected in 17 subsequent contests, with token Democratic opposition in only three races and with no Republican opponent until this year.
Grew Tired. Since he took his seat on Ways and Means in 1943, Mills has made the committee's intricate tax-writing and budgetary chores his special province. By the time he assumed the committee chairmanship in 1958, he was the undisputed master of revenue legislation in the House. In the years since, his formidable grasp of the U.S. tax code has made committee members and Congress reliant on the chairman and consolidated Mills' power.
His power manifest, some congressional observers believe, Mills in recent years grew tired of his chairmanship. But even his colleagues were taken aback when, late in 1971, Mills decided to make a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. The move proved to be disastrous, and Mills was ignominiously ignored at the 1972 party convention in Miami Beach; some associates date his decline from then. That campaign had other negative fallout:
large campaign contributions that Mills received from dairy cooperatives and other donors are now under investigation by the special prosecutor's office.
While Mills insists that he is innocent of any wrongdoing, friends say that he fears he could be indicted.
Exactly what single cause or combination of causes—health, boredom, disappointment, anxiety—led Mills to disregard recklessly his reputation and career remains a mystery. Fanne herself, while perhaps garrulous to a fault (see box), has not provided much illumitiation. Largely guileless, enormously flattered by Mills' attentions, she is scarcely the stereotype of a designing woman. Indeed, she may not really comprehend the role she has played in the destruction of the man whom she still calls "Mr. Mills." What is certain is that what began as delicious Washington gossip has become a personal and professional tragedy in which no one in the capital can any longer find pleasurable titillation.
Sick Man. Mills, once the canny master of the cloakroom, was slow to realize that the end had come. TIME Correspondent Neil MacNeil reports that Mills' final perception of the situation came last week in a talk with Illinois Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a Ways and Means Committee man for nine years. Confessing that he had a serious problem, Mills took Rostenkowski into the chairman's private office, where he asked the Illinois lawmaker for a frank appraisal of where he stood.