Two more footnotes about Hugh Flournoy

Today held several phone calls from people, including a couple of reporters, about Hugh Flournoy. I went back to an article about his 1974 race for Governor in Time which profiled three other tough races for GOP candidates - they included Jacob Javits (who I worked with a bit when I worked for Winston Prouty) and who ran for re-election against Ramsey Clark; Bob Dole who was also in a tight re-election race(he eventually won) and Lamar Alexander (who lost to Ray Blanton). Javits was a remarkable politician and for him to be in a tough campaign and for Dole to be in a competitive race in Kansas suggests how tough 1974 was. The profile in the Time article was about right on Hugh.

The second issue was a question of why he worked for a New Jersey Senator. It turns out H Alexander Smith, who Hugh and I never talked about, was a Princeton alum. Smith had been the Executive Secretary for Princeton (after he graduated in 1901) until he went on to practice law and enter politics. Hugh never spoke much about his time with Smith. We had a lot of discussions about why he had become an academic. But Hugh's linkage of professional interests and political was pretty easy. The influence of Professor Rossiter here must have been important. Rossiter was a consummate academic but also a very practical thinker. In the late 1940s he published a book called Constitutional Dictatorship which analyzed the role of emergency powers in our system. In my undergraduate thesis I had written about the theory of power of the presidency advanced by James MacGregor Burns and then I followed it up with a thesis at the Master's level on war power in the Constitution. In both instances the professor I was working with recommended Rossiter's book. Hugh and I had several discussions both about Rossiter as a professor but also his thoughts about the appropriate balance between the branches of government.

One final comment. The best politicians mix intellect with practicality and Hugh did that in both the Assembly and the Controller's office. He confounded the pundits in part because he cared less about the dynamics of the process and more about the results.