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Styles Bridges: Yankee Senator

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This biography of the late U.S. Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, with a foreword by Robert Novak, the syndicated columnist and political commentator, profiles the life of one of those long forgotten, but once eminently powerful Washington figures whose career offers a valuable snapshot into the politics of another era. Bridges, who generally kept a low national profile during his quarter century in the senate, but who rose to become one of that body's most skillful wheeler-dealers, entered the senate as one of only two Republicans in the Democratic/New Deal landslide of 1936. Prior to that he served one term as New Hampshire governor (the youngest governor in the nation at the time). Finding early on that money is the path to power in Washington, Bridges won a seat on the powerful Appropriations committee in his first term, rising to chairman when the Republicans won the senate in 1952. From his perch on Appropriations (and with a similar position on Armed Services), Bridges became one of a handful of go-to guys - including the more flamboyant Lyndon Johnson - who virtually ran the senate during World War II and the Cold War. The book opens with a spooky scene of Bridges being called to the White House one night to be secretly briefed by President Franklin Roosevelt on the Manhattan Project. It turns out Bridges was one of but four members of congress privy to the nation's top secret development of the atomic bomb (Vice President Truman wasn't even informed), and helped hide its funding from fellow lawmakers in other appropriations throughout the war). As president pro tempore of the senate (third in line for the presidency) and senate minority leader, Bridges was a vigorous partisan who believed in playing hardball politics (the author suggests he helped precipitate a colleague's suicide), and was also not above trafficking in (and often pocketing) large amounts of political money - common practice prior to Watergate era reforms. Although a tough anti-communist and conservative on fiscal issues, Bridges' politics nonetheless were more practical than ideological (his most controversial vote was against the censure of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy). In his fifth term at the time of his death (November 26, 1961), Bridges - as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee - was preparing an optimistic and progressive strategy for his party's future (which included cultivating the Rockefeller moderates) to combat the newly inaugurated and charismatic young Democrat in the White House, John F. Kennedy. A legend in New Hampshire politics (he attempted a run for president in 1940), Bridges controlled local party affairs in nearly every precinct for decades through a powerful network of loyalists and local officials. Styles Bridges/Yankee Senator, by retired University at Albany (N.Y.) Professor James J. Kiepper (270 pages, illustrated, indexed with bibliography) is an excellent treatment of a once important national figure. This book joins similar biographies of such Bridges contemporaries as the late Senators Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) and George Aiken (R-Vermont) - whose names are also fading from the public mind, but who nonetheless deserve to have their stories easily available for students of history and government, and popular readership alike.

This book was a major disappointment. It is a highly simplistic, broadbrush (to the point of being sloppy and slapdash) overview of Bridges' career in politics. It is shocking that a book about such a powerful congressional power broker could be so tedious, uninformative and, well, naive about the political process. It seems to be deliberately written for an elementary or high school reading level. How did Bridges become so powerful within the Senate? How did he rise to the top of the Republican congressional leadership? You won't find the answers to these questions in this book. If you are looking for a good book about politics, I would recommend any of Caro's books about Robert Moses or LBJ. The added ironic benefit is that, in a select few passages, Caro's third book about Johnson DOES contain some useful info about Styles Bridges. In a few sentences, Caro manages to tell us more about Bridges than this book does in over three hundred pages. A tragically wasted opportunity.