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Most important, he is chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee of Government Operations, a post he has used to mount assaults on Administration foreign policy. Says a Senate dove who disagrees with Jackson: "Senators like John Tower, Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond, who hold a view of the world that is similar to Scoop's, have been at a loss to know how to cope with a self-styled Republican conservative in the White House who has undertaken to establish normal relations with the Soviet Union. Jackson has found the Achilles' heel in Nixon's foreign policy. He has opened fissures that have dealt very strong blows to that policy."
For all his tough talk, Jackson is as skilled at compromising an issue as at dramatizing it. Partisan of big defense that he is, he has worked behind the scenes to scale down Pentagon budget requests so that they would be acceptable to the Senate. Though he is adamant about maintaining U.S. forces in Europe, he joined Senator Sam Nunn in introducing an amendment to the Defense Appropriation Bill that would require European nations to share the cost of the troop commitment; the amendment was passed. He and his staff are huddling with both the White House and Soviet diplomats to try to work out a compromise on the trade bill. "Scoop does not see things in black and white," says Richard Perle, a member of his staff. "His policy is usually to support an Administration's foreign policy initiatives, but to do so with reservations."
One of the obvious and highly purposeful contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, Scoop maintains his liberal domestic credentials along with his hawkish foreign policy—a delicate balancing act. He reminds his critics that he was an early, ardent foe of Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. By liberal standards, his voting record on labor and civil rights is flawless. Though he wrote the legislation permitting the Alaska pipeline, he is the only member of the Senate who has received the Sierra Club's John Muir award for his efforts on behalf of the environment. His own political conduct is punctilious; he does not indulge in inflammatory rhetoric or ad hominem attacks. "I hate emotion in anything," says Jackson, "even in religion. If you master the facts, then you can posture yourself in such a way that you can persuade people of your point of view."
One man's facts, of course, can be another man's fiction. By imputing the worst motives to the Soviets, Jackson is not likely to be proved gullible or an easy mark. On the other hand, détente will not be achieved without taking some calculated risks on both sides. What U.S. diplomacy lacked before Kissinger was a certain creative imagination. Jackson's meat-ax approach threatens to cut off any new departures before they can be proved successful.