Glen Jeansonne (1947–2018)

The Great Depression saw no shortage of ideas to end Americans’ economic misery, but one of the most appealing was the “Share our Wealth” program. Part of its attraction was its breathtaking simplicity: any income beyond $1 million and the excess of fortunes greater than $5 million would be confiscated by the federal government and used to fund a guaranteed income for families and pensions for old people. That the math didn’t add up was irrelevant; it spoke to the needs of millions of people out of work and desperate for relief.

It also didn’t matter for another reason, as the program was less about addressing the Depression than it was promoting the political prospects of the man behind it. That man was Huey Long, a gifted orator from northern Louisiana who in the 1920s transformed his state’s politics by appealing to rural voters whose needs had long been ignored by the state’s political elites. Through a mixture of grandiose promises and visible results Long established a near-total dominance over the state’s government, one that earned him a multitude of enemies. Winning election to the Senate, he used his position as a platform from which to nakedly pursue the highest office in the land, only to be stopped short by an assassin’s bullet.

Death did nothing to end the polarization of opinions about Long and his legacy, with books and articles interpreting him as everything from a sincere man of the people to a dangerous demagogue interested only in his own self advancement. Glen Jeansonne’s short biography of Long rests firmly in the latter end of that spectrum, presenting him as a brilliant, insecure, and undisciplined man who was driven by an insatiable appetite for power and status. These traits were evident at an early age, when Long disdained schooling in favor of opportunity and pleasure. This led him to a career as a salesperson while still a teenager, which offered him opportunities but ultimately failed to satisfy his needs.

A career in politics by way of the law proved much more appealing to Long. Though he attended a few classes, he passed the Louisiana bar mainly by reading through the law, leavened with a generous amount of charm. Entering politics soon afterward, he made a name through populist attacks on special interests sold through rapid-fire oratory, which won him a position as a commissioner regulating the state’s public services. Jeansonne makes it clear that Long had no qualms about using his position for self-enrichment as well as self-promotion, and he quickly became a force to be reckoned with in Louisiana politics.

After an initial run in 1924 failed Long succeeded in winning election as governor in 1928. Moving quickly to exploit the powers of his office, he fired hundreds of state workers, employed the state police and National Guard as his own personal force, and bribed and bullied the legislature into passing most of his agenda. Though his opponents moved to impeach him, the governor survived what Jeansonne describes as a rushed and chaotic effort, emerging with his stature enhanced. Such was his dominance of the state by 1930 that he easily defeated a three-term incumbent to win a seat in the Senate, yet he held off on taking the seat for two years in order to ensure his continued control of Louisiana while he was away.

Jeansonne treats Long’s three years in the Senate as little more than an effort to lay the groundwork for a presidential run. Unpopular with his colleagues, he demonstrated little interest in advancing legislation and often voted against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda. Instead his focus was on selling himself to the American people, which he did through his “Share our Wealth” program. Jeansonne is dismissive of Long’s sincerity in pursuing the program, and he argues that president and the national Democratic Party regarded Long as more of a potential threat to Roosevelt’s reelection than an actual one. Whether this was to prove yet another fatal underestimation of the “Kingfish” will never be known, as Long’s assassination in Baton Rouge in September 1935 brought a premature end to his meteoric rise in politics.

As a specialist in Louisiana political history, Jeansonne brings a perspective to the study of long’s life that he argues was missing from many of the previous works on his subject. This adds considerably to his analysis of Long’s rise in Louisiana politics, to which he adds telling details about Long himself that give his readers a sense of the man’s personality and how his contemporaries saw him. Yet Jeansonne’s prose is more functional than engaging, while his interpretation of Long inhibits somewhat his ability to capture why so many people were devoted to him. These issues, however, are minor when set against the value of his book both as a short overview of Long’s life and as a critical examination of his public career.… (mais)

Herbert Hoover: A Life by Glen Jeansonne is considered by some critics to be the definitive biography of Hoover. The book is a fantastic read. I came away knowing so much about Hoover-I must admit that all i knew of him was that he was President during the great market crash with implications that he may have caused it which is not true. He was called the Great Humanitarian as he was indeed. He was the major force in feeding the starving populace after the wars. He was socially a Democrat though a Republican where free markets are concerned, a small federal government, restoring the power of the Congress, and distributing power to the states and cities. In my opinion he is a very underrated President. He was terrific in all he did and I urge you to inform yourself by reading this new biography.… (mais)