The power and theatrical glory of Rep. Dan Flood

The Controversial Life of a Congressional Power Broker

By William C. Kashatus

Pennsylvania State University Press. 350 pp. $29.95

nolead ends nolead begins

Reviewed by Michael Pakenham

I first saw Daniel J. Flood from the press gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives in July 1963, soon after arriving in Washington as a newspaper correspondent.

He was dressed in a near-white suit and a black shirt adorned with a white tie. His black mustache's tips were waxed to needle points. Tall, he was a creature to behold. He spoke. I have no idea now what he said, but his flowing, insistent, stentorian tones still sing in my ears.

Flood was the performing superstar of the House - his theatrical genius matched only by Everett M. Dirksen, Senate minority leader, whose gifts included the voice of a cathedral organ.

Now comes the first thorough, scholarly biography of Flood, who for all his style was one of the dominant forces in U.S. - and especially Pennsylvania - politics for almost 40 years.

William C. Kashatus is a credentialed scholar, nourished by being a lushly nostalgic native of Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley - in Flood's 11th Congressional District. His excellent opening cameo: "Flood was a consummate 'pork-barreler,' a legislator who was successful in securing federal funds and projects for his own congressional district. He used his clout . . . to channel billions of dollars into northeastern Pennsylvania. He worked his will by employing the common practices that greased the wheels of the political process in the post-World War II era: persuasion, manipulation, arm-twisting, and grandiloquent oratory rarely matched by his congressional colleagues."

Flood was born in 1903 in the northeast Pennsylvania anthracite region around Wilkes-Barre that was tortured by ethnic conflict and labor violence. He was from a privileged background, went to college at Syracuse University, then a brief stint at Harvard Law School, abandoned for a five-year Broadway acting career. He earned a Dickinson Law School degree.

After a civil law practice, he was elected to Congress in 1944, at age 41, an independent-minded Democrat in a district dominated by a corrupt Republican political machine. He held the seat - which he lost twice - for 32 years.

With the help of Sam Rayburn, the legendary House Speaker, Flood rose swiftly to House committee and leadership positions. With coal in deep recession, and unemployment excruciating, his district was ripe to be developed industrially, and Flood went at that with enormous vigor and success. With lots of citations, many genuinely amusing, the author illustrates Flood's capacity to override national economic and other practical considerations on behalf of his district's narrow needs.

Mafia-based organized crime had a deep role in the anthracite world. If not directly connected with those mobsters, Flood was, at best, consciously indulgent. He was among the most hawkish of cold warriors - something like 60 percent of his constituents had family members from Soviet-dominated Eastern European countries, which amplified his zeal.

Kashatus goes into government programs in detail that sometimes teeters on the edge of mind-boggling. But that reporting underscores the book's major subtext: a succinct history of American government in domestic and international programs from midway in World War II until 1980.

In the summer of 1972 came Hurricane Agnes - and the congressman famously boomed: "This is going to be one flood against another!" The damage to his district was estimated at more than $1 billion, with 20,000 homes, 159 factories, and almost 3,000 other business establishments destroyed. Flood led salvage and recovery efforts, with immense popular success.

Flood was indicted on federal theft, bribery, and conspiracy charges that alleged he took cash and stock-share payoffs in return for rigging government contracts and subsidies. The main witness against him was his chief aide, Stephen Elko, who, according to the book, had been shaking people down for large bribes for several years, unbeknownst to his aging boss. The early 1979 prosecution ended in a mistrial. Flood was in and out of hospitals, wracked by a series of illnesses, sometimes numbed by painkillers and booze. Ultimately, the prosecutors agreed to a guilty plea to a single count of conspiracy and a year's probation for Flood, who resigned from Congress in 1980. He died in May 1994, at 91.

Kashatus has done a very thorough scholar's job - with patience, enthusiasm, and zeal. His delivery is in the most part succinct, seldom colored by political oratory. What emerges is not only Flood, but a portrait of the endemic vulnerability of U.S. constitutional and legislative processes to politicians contriving to pillage the public purse for political gain.

Kashatus confesses immense respect for the man: "Flood was no more 'corrupt' than any of the other high-profile and effective congress people or senators of the post-World War II era," he insists. "And like many of them, he too became a victim of the new morality and rules of behavior that emerged in Washington after Watergate."

I take that as far too forgiving a reading of the career of one of the most engaging crooked pols I covered in my almost 50 years as an ink-stained wretch. But grant Kashatus his sentimental license. You won't be sorry if you read his book.