A very visible presence in the political world of the early 1950's, Estes Kefauver gained a reputation for his Crime Committee hearings. He would later be tapped as running mate to Adlai Stevenson in the 1956 Presidential campaign. But here is he, giving a postmortem to the 1950 midterm elections in this 1950 episode of Meet The Press.
Lawrence Spivak (Meet The Press): “Senator, there are many Democrats who believe that your crime investigations had a marked effect upon the elections. What do you think?
Sen. Estes Kefauver: “Mister Spivak, I think the Democratic Party deserves some control for fostering this committee to investigate. I think we may have done some harm to the immediate candidates in some parts of the country. But on the whole, I believe the American people approve when any Administration is trying to do something to clean up one of the greatest menaces that we have in America today. So it works both ways.”
Kefauver is all but forgotten now, but there was a time he wielded an enormous amount of influence around Capitol Hill and his Crime Commission had just as many admirers as detractors. Such is the case of politics - you can't please everybody.
