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Such razorback independence could never be to the liking of a squire from Hyde Park. In 1938, when McClellan decided to run for the U.S. Senate against Incumbent Hattie Caraway, Franklin Roosevelt threw the weight of the whole New Deal machine against him. McClellan says that most of Arkansas' 50,000 WPA workers voted for Hattie—on orders from Washington. He also claims that two Internal Revenue agents came into the state, called on McClellan's supporters, examined their income-tax returns, then pointedly announced that Mrs. Caraway was the candidate to back. McClellan fought savagely, lost his voice to a sore throat ("I went through that campaign living on ice-cream cones"), and, by 10,000 votes, lost the election.
Safe in the Club. But John McClellan had decided to go to the Senate, and, however deliberate he may be about making up his mind, he is stubborn once it is done. In 1942 he tried again, bucked F.D.R. and the state Democratic organization, won by nearly 50,000 votes.
In the Senate McClellan has generally voted with other Southern conservatives. He is an authentic member of the Senate's clublike inner circle. Because he could be trusted not to embarrass the Senate, he was named chairman of one of the touchiest political investigations of the 84th Congress: the probe of lobbying activities which grew out of charges made by South Dakota's Francis Case that a lobbyist had tried to influence his vote on the natural-gas bill. Midway in his Senate career McClellan fastened onto the Appropriations Committee as the place where true Senate power accrues. Equally important, he takes care of the folks back home. Says an admiring Arkansan: "John McClellan is a patronage-minded fellow and a boondoggle-minded fellow, but only in the most honest sense. The people are convinced that John has sluiced more federal money into this state than any other single person—and they're probably right."
With the help of the federal bankroll, John McClellan's first two Senate terms made him an unqualified political success in Arkansas. He was a valued—by club standards—member of the Senate. But it is also true that he was little-known outside his state and his club. Except for the Army-McCarthy hearings, when Joe splintered himself against John's flint, McClellan gave little promise of real national prominence.
Perhaps the 17-year-old lawyer had matured slowly. But more likely the answer lay in McClellan's personal life; far from being conducive to greatness, its classic tragedy would have left most men in the gutter.
Death, Death, Death. In John McClellan's second marriage, to a Malvern girl named Lucille Smith, he had found rare comfort. "My goodness," says Ike McClellan, "how devoted they were to each other." During McClellan's first term in the House, Lucille decided to drive her three young children (John L. Jr., Jimmy and Mary Alice) home to Arkansas for a visit. She fell ill in Tennessee, barely made it to the home of relatives in Jackson, died a few days later of spinal meningitis. Her death, recalls Ike, had "a terrible effect on John. He had a notion to resign from the House, but I told him not to do that, stay with it."