Just the other day, I sat down and discussed local politics with a well-known leader of the Republican Party in Talbot County, and I was surprised and a bit sad that they couldn’t remember Rogers Morton. And just this morning, the Talbot Historical Society made him the subject of their weekly Project Rewind Spy column, which triggered some wonderful memories of him.
Rogers has not been with us for 50 years, but I can’t think of a better example of the Shore’s tradition of political moderation than when Rogers Morton represented the First District. With that in mind in 2011, I dedicated the Talbot Spy to his memory, and it’s been far too long since I republished this background for Spy readers.
This was originally published on July 16, 2012.
When the Talbot Spy formally launched in the spring of 2011, it dedicated itself to the memory of Talbot County’s Rogers C.B. Morton, a Republican congressman and former secretary of the Interior and Commerce in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
It may have seemed an odd choice for a new e-newspaper with a generally progressive point of view to honor a former Republican congressman who had died more than thirty years earlier. Even among Republicans, memories of one of the Eastern Shore’s most important political figures had begun to fade.
But Morton represented something the Spy believed was worth remembering: an ability to work across political lines without surrendering his own beliefs.
Morton, who represented Maryland’s Eastern Shore in Congress from 1963 to 1971, was a committed Republican and later chairman of the Republican National Committee. Yet throughout his career, he worked with Democrats as well as conservatives in his own party on issues ranging from civil rights to ethics reform, environmental protection, land conservation and the Chesapeake Bay.
His daughter, Anne “Babe” Wyman, recalled that her father thought of himself first as a businessman.
“He liked the fact that he came from business,” she said. “He had a love of the Bay and farming, but what he thought he brought to the table was a business-like mindset such as keeping taxes down and government’s role limited, but be fair.”
That combination — conservative instincts, a strong sense of fairness and an unusual ability to get along with people who disagreed with him — became one of Morton’s defining characteristics.
In many ways, it seemed appropriate for the Spy to acknowledge him as it began its own work on the Eastern Shore.
But who was Rog Morton? And how did his collegial style of politics fare in the policy jungles of Washington? This short bit of history might help.
On a hot August morning in 1968, Richard Nixon was completing one of the most remarkable political comebacks in American history.
Only six years earlier, after losing the California governor’s race, Nixon had famously told reporters they would no longer have him “to kick around anymore.” Now he had secured the Republican nomination for president.
The “New Nixon” had built his comeback on organization and planning. Unlike his 1960 presidential campaign, almost every detail had been considered, from political strategy to Madison Avenue’s memorable “Nixon’s the One” slogan.
But one major decision remained unsettled: his running mate.
Nixon had already met with aides and congressional leaders to discuss the vice-presidential choice, but no clear favorite had emerged. With only hours remaining, he called another meeting in his Miami hotel suite.
Among those gathered were campaign manager John Mitchell; future White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman; Nixon friend Robert Finch; convention floor manager Robert Ellsworth; Texas Senator John Tower; and Congressman Rogers Morton of Easton, Maryland.
The group considered several possibilities, including Massachusetts Governor John Volpe and Tennessee Senator Howard Baker.
Then Nixon returned to the name of Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew.
Agnew had risen quickly in Maryland politics, moving from Baltimore County executive to governor in only a few years. He was then regarded by many Republicans as a moderate and had developed a reputation for supporting civil rights.
But Nixon barely knew him.
There had also been little of the intensive background investigation that later became routine for vice-presidential candidates. Nixon wanted the judgment of someone who knew Maryland politics.
He turned to Rogers Morton.
Unlike many of Nixon’s political relationships, his affection for Morton appears to have been genuine.
Morton had supported Nixon early in 1968, but their relationship was about more than political loyalty. Morton possessed a personal quality that even the guarded Nixon seemed to appreciate.
Almost everyone seemed to like Rog.
Republicans, Democrats, Chesapeake watermen, Eastern Shore farmers and members of Maryland’s old establishment all seemed comfortable around him.
At six feet seven inches tall, with swept-back white hair and a booming laugh, Morton became known around Washington as the “gentle giant.”
Unlike his friend Lyndon Johnson, who famously used his physical size as a form of political intimidation, Morton seemed to use his own considerable presence in the opposite way. He drew people in.
Morton also came from precisely the kind of establishment background that could make the class-conscious Nixon uncomfortable.
He attended Woodberry Forest and Yale and came from inherited wealth. After the family flour business was acquired by Pillsbury in the 1950s, Morton lived comfortably.
His move to Talbot County had more to do with his love of sailing and the Chesapeake Bay than political calculation. Before entering Congress, he served on corporate boards, farmed and became involved in boat building.
Politics came somewhat later.
There is some truth to the story that Morton entered politics partly because of the friendly competition he shared with his older brother, Thurston Morton, a successful U.S. senator from Kentucky.
Rogers Morton’s own route to Congress, however, was hardly the product of a lifelong political plan.
His friend and former congressman Edward T. Miller unexpectedly decided not to seek the seat in 1962. Morton entered the race. Then, only weeks before the general election, his Democratic opponent, Congressman Thomas F. Johnson, became embroiled in a federal corruption case.
Morton won.
It was not the kind of hard political apprenticeship that Nixon usually admired.
Yet Nixon trusted him.
“Rog, what’s your take on Agnew?” Nixon asked during the Miami meeting.
Morton reportedly answered without hesitation that Agnew’s weakness was a “tendency to be lazy.”
Nixon responded, “Well, Rog, maybe you would be the better choice for me.”
Morton had an opening.
A different politician might have encouraged the conversation, however subtly. Morton did the opposite.
“If it’s between me and Ted Agnew,” he replied, “Ted would be the better choice.”
Nixon apparently understood immediately that Morton was not interested.
He turned to John Mitchell, then back to Morton.
“Call Agnew.”
The moment is revealing not because we can know what a Morton vice presidency might have meant for American history. We cannot.
But it does tell us something about Morton.
People who knew him were not surprised that, when suddenly presented with the possibility of becoming vice president of the United States, his instinct was not to grab for it.
It was not the first time.
Morton had declined to enter Maryland’s 1966 gubernatorial contest despite encouragement, including from the Baltimore Sun. He later stepped aside rather than compete with his friend Charles “Mac” Mathias for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.
Modesty may have played a part in Morton’s lack of obvious political ambition. So did something more personal: he seemed to prefer jobs in which he could enjoy the work and the people around him.
And what he enjoyed most was people.
Morton could move comfortably among very different political groups, from the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party to the young antiwar protesters emerging in the late 1960s.
His former aide Jay French remembered driving through Washington with Morton during the Nixon administration when they encountered protesters outside an event.
“We were in a place where kids were clearly going to disrupt the event we were attending,” French recalled. “They were radicals, and loud, and he walked right into the middle of the group, and of course towered over them with that six-foot-seven frame.
“By the end, everyone was laughing. It was just the way he had with people when there were disagreements. He seemed so darn reasonable to people.”
That word — reasonable — followed Morton throughout his career.
Today there is considerable nostalgia for the disappearance of the so-called moderate Republican. But some of Morton’s contemporaries resisted putting him into that category.
His congressional colleague and friend Donald Rumsfeld said “moderate” was too simple a label.
“I’m not sure we would have used the term ‘moderate,’” Rumsfeld said. “But I think we did see ourselves as reformers.”
Rumsfeld remembered Morton and a group of younger Republicans trying to improve congressional rules and procedures, establish stronger ethics standards, and support civil rights and environmental protection.
That distinction matters.
Morton was not without strong political convictions. Nor was he someone who avoided partisanship. He was a Republican politician operating at the highest levels of his party.
What distinguished him was the way he practiced politics.
He could be conservative on taxes and the role of government while supporting civil rights. He could disagree sharply with Democrats while continuing to work with them. He could hold strong views without assuming that those on the other side were enemies.
It was a political style built less around ideological labels than around temperament.
Rogers Morton believed that disagreement did not have to prevent cooperation.
In Washington, that may have been his most important contribution.