The Story of Speaker of the House Carl Albert: The Watergate Democrat Who Put the Nation and the Constitution Above His Party

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You are now American stories and is a valued partner. Let's take a listen to Jeff Bloodworth. Carl Albert did not want to be president. The five foot four inch Speaker of the House had not risen from abject poverty to the nation's second highest office by lacking ambition. But in 1973, when the Speaker realized the Watergate crisis could elevate him into the White House, he foreswore personal ambition for the nation's greater good. We now know that Watergate was America's greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. But in the first months of the scandal, Albert tread carefully. The Senate Watergate committee began its work in early 1973, but Albert firmly resisted calls for the house to begin impeachment proceedings before it was time. By late 1973, the crisis had reached a crescendo when the vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned over charges of bribery and tax evasion. This put Albert into a political bind. With Agnew out, he, as the Speaker, was next in line to the presidency. And revelation to the Watergate tapes and the Saturday Night Massacre made Nixon's impeachment a real possibility. President Carl Albert was not just a pipe dream.

It was within his grasp. The 25th Amendment gave Congress the power to vote on Agnew's replacement. As Speaker, Albert could have killed the vote. Without a vice president, Democrats who controlled the House and Senate could impeach and remove Nixon from office, which would make the Speaker of the House, Carl Albert, president. Eager for the White House, many Democrats begged Albert to do the easy thing.

Do nothing and become president. A President Albert with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate could pursue a Carl Albert agenda, restart the Great Society, pass national health care, address Rule America's gaping needs, and achieve a more honorable peace in Vietnam. But Albert would have none of it. Born in tiny Bugtussle, Oklahoma, to hardscrabble tenant farmers, Carl Bert Albert came up the hard way. His father had quit the dangers of coal mining for the destitution that came with tenant farming.

And Bugtussle, like so many rural communities in southeastern Oklahoma, featured a grinding poverty that most never escaped. Albert found his escape in his community's one-room schoolhouse. As a young boy, Albert's school hosted a visit by Charles Carter, their district's Native American congressman. Upon meeting Carter, Albert decided he would become a congressman, too. In high school, the diminutive Albert became a veritable big man on campus.

A wrestler and member of the speech team, he won the 1928 National Oratory Contest, which netted a meeting with President Calvin Coolidge and a trip to Europe. Albert entered college at the University of Oklahoma, still poor, but with unlimited horizons. In college, Albert excelled and eventually earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University.

He spent his Oxford years deep in study, but he traveled wide and far across Europe, verging towards war. Upon graduation, he had only one wish, to return to his native Oklahoma and redeem a boyhood dream. After serving in World War II, Albert immediately ran for Congress. In 1946, Albert won the House seat in Oklahoma's 3rd Congressional District. Joining him in the House were two other freshmen, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Unlike those two future presidents, Albert had no desire for the Senate or White House. He always had what he termed the House habit. A lover of the institution's rules and procedures, he, as a freshman member, would sit on the floor for hours, watching and learning. Taking note was the legendary Democratic leader, Sam Rayburn. Hailing from a North Texas district that abutted Albert's, Rayburn felt a kinship with the whip-smart Rhodes Scholar. In 1954, a mere eight years into his House career, Albert was tapped by Rayburn to be majority whip. In leadership at a young age, Albert was on path to be Speaker of the House. To become Speaker, he had to navigate choppy political waters. Civil rights loomed as Albert's primary political conundrum. Indeed, his native southeastern Oklahoma was dubbed Little Dixie.

Settled by pro-Confederate Texans and Missourians after the Civil War, the Southern Enclave practiced Jim Crow and segregation. But Albert, who attended Oxford with classmates from all over the English Empire, was modern and cosmopolitan. As a Rhodes Scholar, he had traveled early 1930s Germany and saw Adolf Hitler give a speech and survived a run-in with brown shirts.

He abhorred racism, but he feared a strong pro-civil rights stance would lose him his seat in the House and a chance at the Speakership. In the late 50s, Albert went to Rayburn for advice. The Texan told him, Carl, every man has a right to vote. You can defend that position before any audience in this country. Albert later recalled, that cleared it up for me immediately.

For the first time, I saw the issue in moral terms. As Majority Leader, Albert pushed three civil rights bills to passage. Friends with moderates and liberal firebrands, he wooed a majority to settle on compromise bills that could pass and then transform a nation. Gaining a political fortitude and courage that could only be forged in the white-hot political battles of the 1960s, he compiled a voting record of a Northern liberal while representing a rural traditional district that abhorred the counterculture and supported the Vietnam War. But every two years, little Dixie sent their native son back to Congress with 75 to 80 percent of the vote.

Albert maintained popularity through constant constituent contact. Flying home every weekend he could, he traversed his district by car, and when forced to by floodwaters that washed out a bridge, he forded a river on horseback to meet constituents at a set time and place. When stuck in Washington, he would take out a phone book and call constituents at random to gauge voter sentiment.

Known for his scrupulous honesty, Albert had learned that his word was the only currency that mattered in a district defined by relationships and trust. When Democrats pleaded with Albert to let the presidency come to him, they were wasting their breath. To him, voters had elected a Republican to the White House in 1972.

It was not his or the Congress's place to put a Democrat in the presidency. But when Nixon met with Albert to discuss a vice president, he held firm. As speaker, he made it clear that only one nominee would be considered, Gerald Ford. A political rival, Ford as the House GOP leader, had vied with Albert throughout the 1960s. On opposite sides of the political spectrum, Ford opposed most every social program Albert prized.

Yet the two had forged a relationship founded upon respect and comity. Ford became vice president and eventually president because Carl Albert believed rightly that he possessed the requisite character for the office. Due to Albert, Congress confirmed Ford as vice president. Months later, Nixon resigned. Ford assumed the presidency because Albert put the nation above his personal ambition.

A constitutional crisis had been averted. In an era in which social media and opinion leaders heedlessly and breathlessly debunk and depose cultural and political giants, the little giant from Little Dixie might sound too good to be real. But some legends are grounded in historical truth. A terrific job on the editing, production, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Jeff Bloodworth, who's a professor of American history at Gannon University, and he's a Jack Miller Center fellow. And the Jack Miller Center is a nationwide network of scholars and teachers dedicated to educating the next generation about America's founding principles and history.

To learn more, visit JackMillerCenter.org. And what a story about the little giant from Little Dixie. And of course, we're talking about Carl Albert, Congressman Carl Albert, who decided upon meeting a congressman while in high school. That's what he wanted to do. And that's what he became right out of his time serving the nation in World War Two. He put his nation above his ambition and put the Constitution above all else. Republicans had elected Nixon as a president, and it would be a Republican that would replace him. And that would be Gerald Ford.

The story of Speaker of the House Carl Albert here on Our American Stories. Meet Meeko Mini, the AI-powered robot that's redefining learning. Dive into premium kids content. Watch your child master math, explore spellings, enhance reading skills, or just share a laugh with Meeko Mini. It's child-safe and ensures end-to-end data privacy. So this holiday season, bring home a companion that inspires and educates.

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