Beware the snows of Manchester, NH
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 3:43PM On snowy Manchester, NH, days like this one, I always feel bad for the late Edmund Muskie.
A U.S. Senator from Maine, Muskie was the front runner for the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination. He was also hated by William Loeb, the über-conservative former owner of what was then known as the Manchester Union Leader.
Loeb, whom Hunter S. Thompson referred to as a “neo-Nazi” in his tome Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 — which is perhaps the best political campaign reporting, ever — is alleged to have had a hand in forging and then publishing what is known as the “Canuck letter” during the 1972 Primary. Printed on the paper’s op-ed page, this letter to the editor “claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians” — a group that at the time made up about 40 percent of the population of Manchester, NH.
After the publication of this letter, the paper then attacked the character of Muskie’s wife Jane, alleging that she drank, used off-color language and told dirty jokes on the campaign. It was this latter incident that really set Muskie off.
In what is charitably referred to as an “emotional” speech, Muskie laid into Loeb on Saturday, Feb. 27, 1972, calling him a “gutless coward,” while standing atop a flatbed trailer parked in front of the Union Leader’s former Amherst Street location. Today, the building is home to Manchester District Court:
Writing in the Washington Post, David Broder reported that during the speech Muskie “broke down three times in as many minutes,” while the Boston Globe’s reporter noted that the candidate wept “silently.” For his part, Muskie said he did not, in fact, cry. What appeared to be tears, he said, were snowflakes melting on his cheeks, which were flush with anger:
But that’s not the way the narrative played out in the media, of course. The resulting story was one of a candidate who was not in control of his emotions, who was not the calm and reasonable man he was portrayed to be. The incident — or at least the media’s coverage of it — is widely credited with destroying the Muskie candidacy.
The Senator from Maine did, in fact, win the New Hampshire Primary, beating the eventual Democratic nominee, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern. But he won with only 46 percent of the vote, this after his campaign confidently stated their goal of getting at least 50 percent of the vote.
As Broder noted years later, “Muskie never recovered from that Saturday in the snow.”
Reader Comments (2)
I stuffed envelopes for Ed Muskie. One of the great things about growing up in Manchester is that you have the opportunity to be a part of history- even if it is a small part.
Nice story. As a canuck from Maine, I think he got a bad rap. Ed Muskie was secty of state when I was a kid. I believe he set the stage for Maine's greatest senator, George Mitchell.