(3 of 7)
Disappointing Date. Throughout his schooling, Halleck was an honor student and front runner. At Indiana University he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, was student-union president in his senior year. But he was so busy gathering garlands that he made few campus friends. Recalls a classmate: "Friendship takes time—and Charlie didn't have time." Always, he thought of his future, to the point where a coed returned from her first date with Halleck complaining of that strange lad who "spent all night talking about how he was going to be President." Halleck never got another date with her, but on subsequent dates with another coed, Blanche White, Halleck must have found other things to talk about. They were married in 1927 (the Hallecks have twin children, Charles W. and Patricia, now 29).
Even before he graduated from Indiana University's law school, Halleck jumped into professional politics. In 1924 he ran for prosecuting attorney of Jasper and Newton counties, won—and has never since lost an election. He served four terms as prosecutor until, in one of the darkest of all Republican years, the chance came for advancement. In 1934, with the New Deal tide at its crest, the Congressman from Halleck's Second District died just nine days after the elections. Charlie Halleck went after the job, campaigned furiously, squeaked through by 5,000 votes. On the day he first walked into the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, the G.O.P. side of the aisle rose, cheering: Halleck was the only Republican member of Indiana's historically Republican delegation.
Always Available. For a young Republican Congressman in a hurry, the New Deal days were pretty good ones. The Republican ranks were pitifully thin. The party was about as low in spirit as it could get. A newcomer with energy and ability was bound to attract notice —and Halleck had both energy and ability. "I immediately got active on the floor," he recalls, "and whatever assignment I got, I immediately went to work on it. And I hunted around for places to do things." Before long he had earned the nickname "Available Charlie.'' He was clearly a comer.
In terms of political philosophy, Halleck's position was equally clear: "What do I stand for? First of all, I stand for a balanced budget . . . We should stop the waste and extravagance and quit piling up the debt." What the U.S. needed was a "new Calvin Coolidge." As international crisis drew the U.S. closer to World War II, Charlie Halleck took his place in the front ranks of isolationism. He voted against Lend-Lease, against the fortification of Guam, against Selective Service. "Enemy ships would have to come up the
Potomac.'' he cried, "before Congress would declare another war." It was strange, then, that his first real chance for national prominence should come at the hands of a Republican who was anything but an isolationist. That Republican was Wendell Willkie.