[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 46 (Monday, March 13, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3849-S3850]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

                                 ______


                              THE SENATOR

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, one of the members of the 
Presbyterian clergy with whom I have had the chance to work on 
historical projects and other things is the Reverend Robert Tabscott.
  He sent me some observations he made 21 years ago about our former 
colleague, Senator Bill Fulbright. Bill Fulbright was a remarkable 
public servant.
  I had the chance to work with him on exchange programs and other 
matters in the area of foreign policy.
  To get a little more perspective on the impact of Senator Fulbright 
on people, it is good to read what Robert Tabscott wrote almost 21 
years ago.
  I ask that the tribute be printed in the Record.
  The tribute follows:

                            [November 1974]

                              The Senator

                          (By Robert Tabscott)

       Reaching back in my memories I was first appreciative of 
     William Fulbright in the early fall of 1961 when he eulogized 
     the fallen Dag Hammerskijold. Six years later in Mississippi 
     I read his book, ``The Arrogance of Power.'' It was a 
     watershed for me: a provocative word in a hard and sterile 
     time. The book challenged the American dream of opulence and 
     power and called for a rediscovery of the values of Jefferson 
     and the American revolution. But more, it was a fervent 
     appeal for a new tolerance among us for people of differing 
     philosophies and cultures. The book shook my patriotic myths 
     and aroused a circumspection for which I shall always be 
     grateful.
       So when it became possible to interview the Senator on one 
     of my recent visits to Washington, I was beside myself. 
     Meeting him in the privacy of his large comfortable office, 
     it was hard to imagine him as an international figure. He was 
     surrounded by half-packed cartons of books (a prelude to his 
     departure from the Senate), a cumbersome stack of magazines 
     and papers, several botties of mineral water and at least a 
     week's supply of health foods and vitamins. Entering the 
     office, I stood motionless. ``Sit down,'' he said in a 
     sonorous voice. I was extremely nervous and he waited for me 
     to gain my composure. ``You will have to excuse me,'' I said, 
     ``but this is quite an occasion for me.'' Graciously, he 
     coaxed me on. ``Well I am glad I could give you this time.'' 
     I described my work and the Rockefeller grant and asked if I 
     could take notes. He smiled and said, ``I don't know if I 
     will say anything important, but you may.'' And so I did.
       J. William Fulbright was born in Missouri sixty-nine years 
     ago. But he grew up in Arkansas, enjoying the benefits of a 
     well-known and prosperous family. He won honors at the 
     University in Fayetteville and was awarded a coveted Rhodes 
     scholarship. His three years at Oxford were indelible. He 
     read Tennyson, Lord Byron, Dryden, inspected Norman Churches, 
     sought out Canterberry and Stradford and buried himself in 
     English history and political thought. In 1928 he settled for 
     a time in Vienna. From there he ventured with a friend to 
     Salonika, Athens, and the Balkans. But his mind probed even 
     further into Chinese history, Russian literature, and Creek 
     philosophy.
       At 34 he became the president of the University of 
     Arkansas. Two years later during a political controversy he 
     was asked to resign by the governor. He refused and was 
     promptly fired. It was 1942. That spring, young Fulbright 
     decided to run for Congress. Contrary to almost everyone's 
     expectations, he was elected. By 1945 he had become the 
     junior senator from Arkansas and had launched a career that 
     would span thirty years and bring him international 
     prominence.
       We probably know William Fulbright best as chairman of the 
     Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and for his untiring 
     efforts to achieve detente with Russia and a better 
     understanding of world Communism. For that he has been 
     labeled a liberal and Communist sympathizer.
       His greatest and most difficult years were between 1950 and 
     1973. At times he stood alone as he did against the maniacal 
     red crusade of Joseph McCarthy, or as a persistent critic of 
     two Administrations' Vietnam policies. On other occasions he 
     has been painfully silent as he was during the Little Rock 
     crisis and throughout most of the Civil Rights movement. The 
     Senator is far from the hero his supporters have wanted him 
     to be. But what is significant is that he has remained a man 
     of conscience and integrity who has not sought to cover his 
     inconsistencies but has acknowledged the painful struggle of 
     public service and the burden of political compromise.
       Two events illustrate that tension. On August 6, 1964, 
     President Johnson requested Fulbright to introduce the famous 
     Tonkin Resolution which gave the chief executive authority, 
     ``* * * to take all necessary measures to repel any armed 
     attack against forces of the United States and to prevent 
     further aggression.'' That action put us into a land war in 
     Asia. Only two Senators, Morse of Oregon and Gruening of 
     Alaska, voted against the resolution. But by February, 1965, 
     Fulbright had become disillusioned. He was alarmed, ``* * * 
     by the tyranny of Puritan virtues, of the dogmatic ideology 
     of false patriotism and a resurgence of manifest destiny in 
     American life.'' The Senator would later confess that the 
     Tonkin Resolution was one of the most regrettable mistakes of 
     his public life.
       In 1957, 19 senators and 77 representatives from the eleven 
     states of the old Confederacy, drafted a manifesto attacking 
     the Supreme Court's historic decision on segregation. ``The 
     court,'' they said, ``had substituted naked power for 
     established law.'' The signers pledged themselves ``* * * to 
     resist integration through all lawful means and by any lawful 
     means.'' J. William Fulbright signed the Manifesto.
       But there were reasons, he contended. It was an election 
     year and there was great pressure in the south. He could 
     leave his southern colleagues and go his own way or stay with 
     them and be assured of remaining in the Senate. Better to 
     compromise and to fight again. He was convinced that he could 
     not survive if he stood alone. He chose to remain silent. 
     Many were shocked and disappointed because of his actions.
       But when you consider the events of the last decade there 
     were few men and women in public life who stood apart to face 
     the crisis of Little Rock, Vietnam, Selma, Kent State or 
     Attica. At a time when the South needed the wisdom of its 
     statesmen, not one major figure dared to challenge the old 
     myths. It was left to a heroic company of black men and women 
     and an unlikely army of students, teachers, ministers, 
     editors, lawyers, judges, and businessmen to stir the 
     nation's conscience and to open a way for politicians to 
     follow.
       [[Page S3850]] William Fulbright is a scholar, a man of 
     reason and reflection. Some consider him a child of the 
     Enlightenment. Intellectually he is much like Adlai Stevenson 
     or Woodrow Wilson. He speaks of Jefferson and DeTocqueville, 
     but I would venture he is more Hamiltonian in his philosophy. 
     If he were to put this in theological terms, he would 
     probably say that God's special gift to man is his capacity 
     for reason.
       A biographer has described him as ``* * * a complex human 
     being, at times, witty, erudite, earthy, sardonic, 
     melancholy, shrewd, innocent to the point of nievete, and 
     candid--but never indifferent.'' Someone else said, ``Fifty 
     years from now when they talk of Senators, they will remember 
     Fulbright.''
       Great men and women are not perfected; they endure. They 
     survive the best and worst that is in them to become. In the 
     end, they stand apart because they are real, but in so doing, 
     they are always just beyond our grasp. Most politicians like 
     their constituents, lack the intellectual penetration to form 
     independent judgments and therefore accept the prevailing 
     opinions of their society. But there are always a few who, 
     assessing the circumstances, speak their minds and call us to 
     growth and maturity.
       At the end of his book, ``The Arrogance of Power,'' William 
     Fulbright, wrote: ``For my own part I prefer the America of 
     Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson. I prefer to have my country the 
     friend rather than the enemy of demands for social justice; I 
     prefer to have the Communists treated as human beings, with 
     all the human capacity for good and bad, for wisdom and 
     folly, rather than embodiments of an evil abstraction; and I 
     prefer to see my country in the role of a sympathetic friend 
     to humanity than its stern and painful school-master.''
       When you consider the recent revelations of our 
     government's involvement in the overthrow of the government 
     in Chili, Fulbright's words are apocalyptic. He stands apart.
       When I left the Senator's office, the long shadows of an 
     October afternoon had filled most of the street. Already the 
     leaves had begun to fall and a tinge of cold passed through 
     the air. A season was passing. I walked on through the park 
     toward the Capitol, warmed and grateful for what I seen and 
     heard. I realized that I had been with a remarkable man whose 
     wisdom, if remembered, could make a difference in our 
     world.
     

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