One step from the White House: the rise and fall of Senator William F. Knowland

Abstract

One Step From the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland. Gayle B. Montgomery and James W. Johnson with Paul G. Manolis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 361 pp. $29.95 hbk. Legendary Republican kingpin William F. Knowland and his once-monolithic Oakland Tribune are the focus of this long-needed biography. Penned by two former Tribune political writers with research help from a former executive editor, One Step From the White House succeeds in casting an objective, nonromanticized, and often-critical eye on the legacy of this publishing scion who became an influential U.S. senator. In the process, the book also weaves a classic narrative of dynastic glory and high tragedy, using American media and Cold War politics as interlocking backdrops on a grand stage The Knowland family's Tribune, along with the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, formed an axis of journalistic dominance that set California's political agenda and, in turn, America's during the middle decades of the twentieth century. The early careers of Richard Nixon, Earl Warren, and Ronald Reagan were inextricably tied to the goodwill of these newspapers. In Knowland's case, the power of the press also empowered his own agenda of personal political gain. William Knowland was born into privilege and politics. He was the grandson of Joseph R. Knowland, a Southampton, New York, farm worker who moved west and found his fortune in California lumber, shipping, mining, and banking. William's father, Joseph Knowland Jr., was a U.S. Congressman who bought the Tribune in 1915. The young heir had a manifest destiny laid out before him. But his life would not be nearly so tidy as this, as the authors so compellingly demonstrate. In the end, William Knowland was brought down by gambling, drinking, money problems, a troubled marriage to a Las Vegas actress, and, the authors suggest, the inability to control the inner flames that had fueled his big ambitions. Knowland shot himself to death in 1974. There are many scenes in this book that would fascinate historians looking for trivia about the frothy world of mid-century California journalism. Moreover, the book also adds provocative grist to the research mill for those who probe more critically for the links between media and state power. There is a scene, for example, in which an obscure Alameda County prosecutor walks into the Tribune publisher's office to seek advice for his campaign for district attorney. That young lawyer was Earl Warren, who later became governor of California and then chief justice of the United States, aided in no small part by the largesse of publisher J.R. Knowland (William's father) and favorable treatment in the pages of the Tribune. As governor, Warren appointed young William Knowland to a vacated U.S. Senate seat, thus pushing the prodigal son onto the pinnacle of Knowland-family political power and into the pages of history. …