The Kingfish as a scheming, ambitious tyrant

THE KINGFISH AND HIS REALM: THE LIFE AND TIMES

OF HUEY P. LONG.

William Ivy Hair.

Louisiana State University.

406 pages. $24.95. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt considered Huey Long one of the most dangerous men in America. The "Kingfish," as Long liked to be called, had just arrived in Washington, but the junior senator from Louisiana quickly got everyone's attention as the loudest, crudest man in town.

And he had a panacea for Depression America -- "Share Our Wealth." Don't pussyfoot: Smash the rich; redistribute their income. Give everybody a house. Forgive the debts of anybody who can't pay. "Every man a king," Long shouted, and could he yell -- and inflame the masses. Soon his Share Our Wealth clubs had over 7 million members nationwide. Respectable America shuddered.

"What, exactly, was he," asked T. Harry Williams in a huge, Pulitzer-prize winning biography in 1969, "dictator, demagogue, or democrat?" Mr. Williams acknowledged his subject's faults, including some racist asides, but argued that Long (1893-1945) was at heart a well-meaning democrat. He was foolish at times, even harebrained, and ruthless on occasion, but he was sincere in wanting to help the downtrodden. That meant even blacks, whom he never publicly slandered, as did the racist demagogues of his time.

None of that will wash, says William Ivy Hair, a scholar of standing at Georgia College. Dr. Hair, building on many of the familiar facts and his own painstaking research in Louisiana's sordid political and racial history, portrays Long as a scheming, power-mad, ruthless tyrant who cared for no one but himself.

He was an out-of-control engine of ambition. He openly boasted of his ambition for office. After being admitted to the state bar at 21 -- he'd studied a bit of law -- he left the courtroom "running for office."

The slugfest of politics was his only life. True, he had a vague, visceral desire to help the have-nots, Dr. Hair writes, but mainly Long enjoyed denouncing "the interests" and their lackeys and listening to the sweet sound of the "whines and moans" of "pie-eaters when shoved away from the pie."

Elected governor in 1928, he announced he was the "Kingfish," and said he'd be president one day. Anyone in his way was fair game for dirty tricks -- from stuffing ballot boxes to revealing that opponents had relatives in the state mental institution or black blood in their past. When a distraught legislator waved a copy of the state constitution in his face, Long snarled, "I'm the constitution around here now."