Estes Kefauver

Fontenay, Charles L.

Estes Kefauver, Senator from Tennessee (1949-63), has been a perplexing figure: instigator and ringmaster of several important congressional probes--including the investigation into organized crime that first put him in the spotlight--and a serious candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and '56 (when he was Stevenson's running mate), Kefauver was often accused of demagoguery, laziness, and even of corruption (by Bobby Baker, an expert himself). Fontenay, a former Nashville newspaperman and friend of Kefauver's who did the work for a campaign biography, The Kefauver Story, published under Jack Anderson's name in 1956, doesn't resolve any of the controversies. After a long and reverential treatment of Kefauver's Tennessee boyhood and early career in law, Fontenay devotes another long section to the nuts-and-bolts of his senatorial and presidential campaigns, into...

See on goodreads | librarything