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To weatherwise political observers, Vandenberg's stand looked like first-class, Grade A politics. For he stood to win much, to lose little. He had in his grasp the kind of issue politicians dream about: national, emotional, impeccably honorable. With that stick he could drum a roll that would be felt by every mother's heart in the U. S.: "I will never vote to send your sons to war."
First Drink. Plump, hobbyless, hardworking, Arthur Vandenberg has as an asset in this fight the stoutest of political virtues—consistency. Since World War I he can point to a straight, if sometimes shortsighted record of opposition to the international viewpoint; of consistent, even violent nationalism. From his 1925 book to last week he was on the record, loud and long. Last February 27 he told the Senate: "We may still complacently and shortsightedly tell ourselves that we intend to stop [intervention] 'short of war,' but we are unfortunately no longer in control of these tragic traffic lights."
On July 14 he said: "We cannot remain neutral and adjust our rules every time there is a shift in Europe's power politics."
"My passion is to keep America out of other people's wars."
Last week he said: "Repealing the arms embargo probably won't get us into war. But it's like taking the first drink of whiskey. After a while you're drunk."
From the background where he is preparing for battle (TIME, Sept. 25), Idaho's ancient of the Senate, William E. Borah, vowed that Vandenberg is as good as nominated by the Republican Party in 1940 if the embargo repeal is licked.
But Vandenberg's stakes were small as well as great—he comes up for re-election to the Senate next year, and he will face an electorate that could be the most feverishly pro-repeal of all U. S. states. Not only the motor-makers of the U. S. want repeal, in Michigan there are 330,000 Poles; 500,000 English and French-Canadians. Daily last week, however, his mail brought him courage: six 18-inch-high piles of anti-repeal letters; one eight-inch-high pro-repeal pile.
Behind those piles last week he went to work. And Vandenberg works hard. He has been called pompous, dull, a stuffed-shirt—but never lazy. For the Supreme Court fight of 1937 he wrote one speech of 80,000 words, packed with difficult legal research, just as a "prelude to a real speech." He never got a chance to deliver it.
By careful attention Vandenberg now strives to inflect his monotonous growl instead of merely shouting less loudly. But in a Senate of mumblers, where the hisses and clicks of false teeth, the hashed platform delivery and the cracked croaks of old men predominate, Vandenberg sounds good, clear and loud. His one oratorical trick is to draw a deep breath, then roar into his first paragraph until his breath is gone. His gestures are patterned around a sweeping sidearm swish, something like Pitcher Carl Hubbell.