Book Review

Too Funny To Be President. By Morris K. Udall. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988. xvii + 249 pp. $15.95, paper.)

The turmoil of the 1960s was reflected in the Congress of the United States, where new arrivals, chiefly veterans, challenged the established ways and means of conducting business and sought legislation addressing issues of concern to their growing number of constituents. Western members of Congress were prominent among this new breed of liberals. In the House of Representatives none was more effective than Morris K. Udall, chosen in a special election on 2 May 1961 to succeed his brother Stewart who had joined the Kennedy Administration as Secretary of the Interior. Mo, as he was widely known, was reelected to the thirteen succeeding Congresses. When he resigned in 1991, he was one of the most highly respected members of Congress and one of the most effective legislators in post-war American history.

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A one-eyed, lapsed Mormon who played professional basketball, Mo entered the House of Representatives full of ambition--only to find himself stymied by rules and procedures, which he quickly challenged. He was defeated in his efforts to become speaker, majority leader, and finally, majority whip. In 1968, he entered the presidential marathon, one of eleven Democrats and the first House member since James A. Garfield successfully did so in 1880. He finished in second place, trailing far behind Jimmy Carter in convention delegates. Thereafter known as Second Place Mo, he devoted himself full time to legislative matters, becoming chairman of the Interior Committee in 1977.

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