(5 of 6)
Leverett's career began inconspicuously as a lawyer. In 1923 he was elected to the state legislature (known since 1629 as the General Court). For 16 years he was a representative; for the last eight years speaker, a record unexcelled in the Bay State since 1802. He spent much of that time trying to stop the budget extravagances of ambitious Democratic governors. Then, in 1938, Republican Saltonstall won the governorship from tempestuous Democrat James Michael Curley. Some said that the unpopular Curley beat himself, but Saltonstall was re-elected in 1940, although the Democrats that year carried the state for Franklin Roosevelt by 137,000 votes. And since his re-election to a third term in 1942, Lev Saltonstall has been governor of Massachusetts for the longest stretch in 93 years.
The American Antique. Saltonstall's political charm is that he strikes people as old shoe rather than old tie. His engagingly homely face is his No. 1 political asset, with its drooping eyelids, lean cheeks, long nose, wide-spaced teeth, and the famed "cowcatcher chin." That reassuring face has been termed "a well-worn American antique" and "the most distinctive face in U.S. public life." Deviousness would have a hard time finding a hiding place there. It is a face New Englanders trust.
Lev Saltonstall's style as governor is in keeping with the weathered plainness of his Yankee squire's face. He dispensed with the limousine and motorcycle escort his predecessors affected. Saltonstall is driven around in a two-door 1941 Chevrolet. The Governor rides up front, and Chauffeur Al Larrivee—not uniformed—is careful to keep a cache of chocolates and nuts for his boss in the glove compartment.
But he is no mere rotogravure rube. On weekends he bolts out to his 89-acre farm at Dover, 15 miles southwest of Boston. He knows that his "I'm just a simple Yankee New Englander" is good politics. But it is no pose; on his farm, he puts on old clothes, pitches hay, saws wood, beds down his horses. He "turns over" four pigs a year; sells two, eats two. Last year he sold 1,600 dozen eggs.
Plain Man, Plain Truths. Lev Saltonstall is no intellectual giant. He plods through his work. He spends too much time relaxing with his family and working in the field to get in much reading; and he takes much of his intellectual coloration from his college friends. Sometimes he goes out to Harvard to listen to the Keynesian big-spending economists. He returns wearied by such complexities. In office, he is slow to act. Many Democratic hacks are still on his payroll, and his own appointments have not been outstanding. Removals have usually been accomplished, not by sensational charges, but by a simple resignation, asked for and received. Reporters, journeying out to his farm for an explanation, have returned with a brief statement ("the case is closed") from the Governor, and a couple of dozen eggs from his wife.
Most Saltonstall speeches sound like the last one. Yet the words that turn to platitudes in the mouth of a slick politician somehow sound like plain truths from this plain man. Some of his recurrent credos: