Huey Pierce Long Jr. met an early demise nearly 90 years ago from an assassin’s bullet, but he remains an enduring figure in U.S. politics. A left-wing Democrat with a populist edge, he became a folk hero in Louisiana while serving as governor and senator and toying with an independent presidential run. He criticized Big Business and capitalism and even challenged his party’s establishment, including then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
You would think there wouldn’t be much left to discuss about the Deep South’s favorite political son, who called himself the “Kingfish” because “I’m a small fish here in Washington. But I’m the Kingfish to the folks down in Louisiana.” Many books and academic papers have been written about Long’s fascinating life and career. T. Harry Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Huey Long and Richard White’s Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long stand out as penetrating historical accounts. Long also served as the template for the fictional Gov. Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, was referenced in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and was the subject of a Ken Burns documentary. But Thomas E. Patterson, a Chicago attorney, has disproven this theory — and then some. His new book, American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana, is an original, well-written, and ambitious examination of the “Kingfish’s” legacy.
Patterson felt that academic perceptions were in serious need of a corrective. There was a “myth and caricature” that needed to be dispelled. Long was “universally considered as a genius,” but critics believed he was “corrupt and intolerant” and a “dangerous rival to Roosevelt who might have become a fascist dictator.” So, Patterson attempts to transform Long from a political caricature to a progressive champion in the blink of an eye.
Long was born on Aug. 30, 1893, in Winnfield, Louisiana. He grew up on a family farm where the soil was “too poor to raise much cotton,” so they focused on cattle and hogs. It was a “self-sustaining” venture but not a profitable one. When lumber companies came a-callin’, his father sold some land and built “one of the best houses in Winnfield.” The Longs regarded themselves as “part of the upper crust” in spite of the fact that “as a matter of economics and status, they dwelt far below the planter and business aristocracy that ruled the state.”
The young Long showed off traits in childhood that would compose his character in adulthood, including “disputatious,” “curious,” “smart,” “contemptuous of rules,” and a “pesterance.” He was a voracious reader who devoured the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Hugo, and Josephus, biographies of Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Frederick the Great, and Thomas Dixon Jr.’s “racist novels of Reconstruction.” He was quite taken with Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini, calling him the “greatest man who ever lived.”
Long earned a full-tuition scholarship to attend Louisiana State University but couldn’t go because it didn’t include textbooks and living expenses. He became a salesman, which took up most of his time and led to half-hearted efforts at Oklahoma Baptist University and the University of Oklahoma College of Law between 1911 and 1912. Things changed when he met Rose McConnell at a baking contest. They got married in 1913, and he was loaned money by his brother, Julius, to attend Tulane University Law School in 1914. He was admitted to the bar the following year.
The most intriguing parts of American Populist relate to Long’s political tenure. He finished third in the 1924 Louisiana Democratic gubernatorial primaries, which only made him more determined to hold public office. His victories as Louisiana governor in 1928 and Louisiana senator in 1932 brought him into the political spotlight — and the crosshairs of Roosevelt and senior Democrats.
That’s the boilerplate biography. Patterson also analyzes certain aspects of Long’s personality and political ideology that have either been barely discussed or completely missed by authors and historians. They reveal a different “Kingfish” in terms of substance and style — Long’s natural inclination of being a born salesman, for instance. Patterson describes his career as being “fractal,” or a pattern repeated continuously. “Whether salesmanship was encoded in his DNA or learned,” he wrote, “all his life, he used the techniques and lived the lifestyle of a salesman.” Long incorporated “abstract, educated or poetic appeals” in his political speeches, could “overwhelm people with a circus whirl of talk,” and had the “prized skill” of reading people’s faces. These skills helped him acquire admirers in the heart of Louisiana and plenty of votes from an enthusiastic electorate.
Patterson shines when he disentangles much of Long’s contentious relationship and rivalry with Roosevelt. The author is harsh in some assessments of Roosevelt, suggesting he “compensated for his second-class brains by assembling first-rate advisors” and “learned to evade and lie and dissemble to deal with his domineering mother, often ignoring disagreements, hoping the matter would pass.” Long and Roosevelt were both positive, optimistic, and creative storytellers, but the former is described as “more decisive, intentional, and hands-on.” As for Long’s criticism of Roosevelt and the New Deal, it was largely ideological due to the latter’s need for state control to achieve his goals and the former’s need to be in control as a leader at all times.
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The most intriguing argument in the book is Patterson’s attack on the conventional assessment that Long, a left-wing populist, was a fascist and demagogue in disguise. The “Kingfish,” Patterson argues, “never advocated foreign conquests” and regularly spoke out against Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and anti-Semitism. He obviously craved power like most successful politicians, but he made “relevant, realistic appeals for achievable goals, and … delivered on his promises” like his Share Our Wealth plan. Is this right? There’s an element of truth in Long’s 1916 suggestion that “any champion of the people would be called a demagogue, whereas defenders of the status quo would be christened as statesmen.”
In the book’s conclusion, Patterson ponders the question of whether “Huey [is] relevant now?” What seems clear is his lasting impact. Former presidents such as Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan “showed the power of advocating a program before the actual campaign,” a tactic that Long mastered in Louisiana. President Donald Trump even has a few “superficial similarities” to Long, including media domination, political sloganeering, and a “warts-and-all authenticity.” There’s still a little “Kingfish” in the U.S. political landscape, and it’s here to stay.
Michael Taube, a columnist for the National Post, Troy Media, and Loonie Politics, was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.