Strom Thurmond: Senate Survivor -- Controversial, Storied Career Pivots On Pragmatism

EDGEFIELD, S.C. - Down the road from the Strom Thurmond National Guard Armory, not far from Strom Thurmond High School, there's a statue of Strom Thurmond, Edgefield's most famous native son.

"Take him all in all, he is a man, we shall not see his like again," reads a small plaque on the back of the statue's base.

With that line from "Hamlet," Shakespeare inadvertently described what may be the safest bet in politics today. It is nearly impossible to imagine anyone duplicating, or even approximating, the long and storied career of Strom Thurmond: one-time die-hard segregationist, former presidential candidate and influential conservative legislator of long standing - first as a Democrat, more recently as a Republican.

At age 92 and with almost 40 years in the Senate, Thurmond wields more congressional clout than ever. He is chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. Last week, he quashed some Republican colleagues' questions about his fitness. As president pro tem of the Senate, a position traditionally given to the senior member of the majority party, he is third in line to the presidency, after the vice president and speaker of the House.

He is the oldest senator. By the end of his current term - and he fully intends to run for an eighth term in 1996 - he will be the oldest senator ever. Another 2 1/2 years in office, and he will hold the record for longest Senate service. He was first elected to the Senate in 1956.

"Strom Thurmond is interesting because . . . of where he has come from and the fact that he is still here," said Nadine Cohodas, a Thurmond biographer.

For someone with Thurmond's tenure, there can be very little new under the legislative sun. When the Senate passed a bill last month to curb unfunded government mandates, Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said: "We've dusted off the 10th Amendment."

The time of the Dixiecrats

Thurmond has championed states' rights against federal interference as provided for by the 10th Amendment. This surfaced most notably in his 1948 third-party presidential campaign under the banner of the States' Rights Democrats, or Dixiecrats, whose platform included the preservation of segregation.

"He's the original 10th Amendment man," said Cohodas, author of "Strom Thurmond & the Politics of Southern Change." She said Dole's comment probably had Thurmond "dancing on the tabletop."

Asked last week whether the issue of states' rights had come full circle, Thurmond said, "Well, it looks like they're coming my way."

Thurmond no longer preaches segregation, but some blacks in South Carolina said he hadn't changed. Others feel he is still associated too strongly with segregation.

"He's been in the Senate almost 40 years, but only about half of that time has really been involved with civil rights," said James Cross, Thurmond archivist at Clemson University in South Carolina. "It's dangerous to put somebody in a cubbyhole, because they may not wind up where they belong."

These days, Thurmond's age is more of an issue than his ideology.

Last week, he brushed off what he described as a "power play" by fellow Republicans on the Armed Services Committee to oust him as chairman. Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and John Warner, R-Va., reportedly expressed concerns about Thurmond's stamina to Dole.

But Thurmond can play the game, too. In 1993, he used his seniority to knock Warner out of the ranking minority member slot on Armed Services. Had he not done that, Warner would be chairman today. Watching his health

Though separated from his wife, he wears his wedding band, along with a Masonic ring. As he has done for years, he adheres to a rigorous regimen of diet and exercise.

"If you take exercise and watch your diet, I think that enables you to enjoy much better health and live longer," he said. "And most people won't pay the price. Who's going to get up an hour sooner every morning and take exercise? Not many people do it. Well, I take almost an hour every morning."

What do inquiring minds want to know about Strom Thurmond? In no particular order: his children, his marriages and his hair.

Thurmond gained a different kind of celebrity when he became a first-time father in 1971 at age 68. In less than five years, he and his wife had three more children. Three of them are in college. The oldest, Nancy, was hit and killed by a drunken driver in Columbia, S.C., in April 1993.

He has been separated for four years from his second wife, Nancy Moore Thurmond, who is 44 years younger than him. His first wife, Jean, was 23 years his junior when they wed in 1947, while he was governor of South Carolina.

Jean, who died in 1960, was a member of his staff. In a letter he dictated to her, he both fired her and proposed to her. She said yes - also by letter.

And then there's his hair. The color has been compared to Tang orange breakfast drink, but these days it's a dark reddish-brown. It's been several years since his last hair implant.

Back home in South Carolina, the words "legend," "institution," "folk figure" and even "god" come up often in discussions of Thurmond.

And it's only fitting that an institution should have an institute - the Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University.

The institute houses the Thurmond Collection, extensive archives containing thousands of documents, photographs and mementos from his life. Included in the vast collection are buttons and a necktie from his 1948 presidential campaign, the pajamas (both sets) from his first honeymoon and correspondence from constituents.

One word that often comes up in relation to Thurmond is "retire."

"He's done a lot for the state, but he needs to retire," said Phil Pleasants, interviewed last weekend at a shopping mall in Columbia.

Louis Robinson, a Democrat, admits that Thurmond has "done a lot of nice things for the military . . . (but) he should have retired by now. . . . His name carries a lot (of weight), but they should let somebody else come up and let them have a chance."

On that issue, Thurmond is somewhat ambivalent.

"If they pass the term-limit bill and that puts me out, so be it," he said. "I think, in the end, term limits would be helpful."

But Thurmond disagrees with those who say he should retire.

"They're wrong," he said. "It's not a person's age, it's their condition that counts." This much can be said about Thurmond and his detractors:

Many he outlives, some he wears down, others he wins over.

Tom McCain, who is black, typifies someone who was once on opposite sides of various issues - usually racial - with Thurmond, but more recently has worked alongside him.

McCain, former administrator of Edgefield County, has long fought for civil rights in the county, often through the courts.

He was a co-plaintiff in a 1984 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for single-member districts to improve minority representation in Edgefield County. In the 1970s, he and others successfully sued Edgefield's Strom Thurmond High School to keep the song "Dixie" from being played at sporting events and to ban the Confederate flag as a school symbol. Of the group's requests, only one was denied - changing the school's name.