(6 of 8)
That may have been a turning point in other ways. McClellan had always drawn within himself to answer problems. As if to spare himself future pain, he turned away from his children. They used to say of him that he never seemed to care about them until they were dead. Now there is a drawing-together. Eula's daughter Doris, whose whole life has been a fight to win her father's affection ("There's no one in the world I'd rather see walk in the door than my dad, because I just love him to death"), feels at last that she has. Lucille's son Jimmy, who had always felt left out, turned to the law after Johnny's death ("I really didn't know what I wanted to be, but I wanted to be close to my father"), now finds in John McClellan the "warmest, kindest man alive."
"You're Mad Already." Moreover, John McClellan has finally brought his temper under control. In 1954 he returned to Arkansas to run for re-election against Fair Dealing ex-Governor Sid McMath, his bitterest political enemy. McMath knew just how to get McClellan's goat: accuse him of being a pawn of the powerful Arkansas Power & Light Co. McClellan's conservatism has often paralleled that of A.P. & L., but McMath was among the few people in Arkansas who professed to believe that John McClellan was, or could be, anybody's pawn.
McClellan Adviser Q. L. Porter recalls an early strategy conference: "John said, 'If McMath wants a fight, he can sure get one with me.' I said, 'John, if you go in there with that attitude, he's gonna whip the pants off you. That's the only way people can ever beat you—by making you mad. And here you sit in my office, and you're mad already, and the campaign hasn't even started yet.'
"Well, do you know John McClellan went through that whole campaign without ever saying the name Sid McMath? That changed him. He saw what he could gain by keeping calm. Not that he became a calm person, but he practiced calmness because he could see its virtue."
McClellan beat McMath by 37,000 votes and returned to Washington. It had taken him years, but he was finally able to live up to the code set forth by the preacher of his boyhood days: to know himself, control himself, and deny himself. John McClellan would be a lesser man if he had never had problems. He is the stronger for overcoming them. His conduct at the labor-investigating committee shows it.
A Two-Word Message. In his $300-a-month Fairfax Hotel suite, John McClellan awakens daily at 7, breakfasts on bacon and eggs, glances at the morning papers, and by 8 o'clock is on his way to the Senate Office Building in a taxi. (He has rarely driven since the time he started through a red light while his mind was preoccupied with work.) A mass of business is already waiting: more than 300 letters a day, many of them with valuable tips about the investigation; conferences with Committee Counsel Robert Kennedy, who keeps McClellan thoroughly briefed on latest developments; executive sessions with fellow committee members; preparations for the day's hearings.