Never Stop Running: Allard Lowenstein and the Struggle to Save American Liberalism (Princeton Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Whenever I visit Arlington National Cemetery, I always go to the Kennedy gravesite. There I make three stops. First I go to the eternal flame of JFK, which is by now a national shrine. Then I slide left to the reflecting pool at RFK's site, where I view the simple white cross and read his famous quotation from George Bernard Shaw, ""Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'"

And then I make my third stop. I cross back in front of JFK's flame and shuffle right to the edge of the plot. Then I step over the low boundary chain and inch over a few steps to the first grave just adjacent. There I fulfill the true purpose of my pilgrimage, to pay the respects that I really came to offer. I stand before a modest tabular tombstone just next to the Kennedy site, one that looks like all the others in Arlington. Simple and uniform though it is, this tombstone among all the others in Arlington is the most personal to me. It is the grave of Allard K. Lowenstein.

The final resting place of this activist hero, this catalytic conscience, ironically embodies much of what Al was about, and strived for. Close to power, comfortable in the neighborhood of liberalism, admiring of the Establishment, he nevertheless remained on the margin, a little outside the true fold, never quite as inside as he yearned all his life to be. For the impact he had on the very many touched, he deserves a little more of a monument. Each time I visit his grave, by placing a little stone atop his marker as I offer a prayer of thanksgiving for his connection to my life, I try to make it so.

Never Stop Running, a fine biography by William H. Chafe, captures the essence of this man who drew me into his slipstream in May 1972 at the Americans for Democratic Action convention in Washington, DC. Our relationship deepened during the subsequent presidential campaign for George McGovern, for which I took a year off from school to serve. Then, apparently not unlike some others of his acolytes, our relationship unexpectedly soured.

At the time Al was running for the Democratic nomination in the 14th Congressional district in Brooklyn against party hack John Rooney. This was his second campaign after winning in the 5th in 1968, but then losing his seat there after only one term. He had lost the primary. Seeking to mobilize his college crusaders, he called to insist that I call the NJ State Democratic Committee to allow Al, now an independent, to have a seat on a podium at a rally featuring George McGovern, now the Democratic nominee for President. The demand befuddled me. Who was I, a county level McGovern campaign worker, to issue such a demand to NJ Democratic boss Sal Bontempo? I couldn't do it. Al and I fell out.

We met again in early 1974 when Al visited the Princeton campus while I was a junior. We patched up the rift, and I found myself again working with him, in his third campaign against Norman Wydler in the 5th district on Long Island. Though I was completely captivated, Al's magic locally was wearing out. Al lost by a significant margin. He devolved to agitate for investigations into the RFK assassination and advise Governor Jerry Brown in California. Gradually I lost touch with Al when I lived in Singapore for two years. And then I lost him forever--completely, utterly, cataclysmically--when he was gunned down in his Rockefeller Center law office by deranged former acolyte, Dennis Sweeney, in March 1980. After my father's funeral, Al's funeral at the Central Synagogue was the saddest I have ever attended.

Chafe writes a loving biography of this charismatic yet complex crusader. While the book skimps a little on transcendental magic Al had for all of his acolytes, I appreciated the depth to which Chafe investigates Lowenstein's psychology and applies it to the story of his life. Al's complexity lies in his own struggle for his personal identity. Looking back as an older man, I now see the strains caused in him by standing at the busy psychological intersection of independence, indecision, narcissism, and vulnerability. As I know from personal experience, it is true that he sought intense relationships with young WASPy men. And it is also true that, when unrequited, he could turn cold and move "through people like water", as one acolyte remarked to Mr. Chafe in the book.

Nevertheless, in all my life there has never been such a force for goodness that touched me so deeply. I am proud to have worked for Al. Like so many he touched, my conscience bears his indelible mark. Chafe does a good job to rekindle his memory and to flesh out important details of his remarkable life. Al Lowenstein was a great standard bearer for American liberalism in the 1970s. I am blessed that he included me in his circle. I am grateful for Mr. Chafe's account which helps me, and all his book's readers, keep Al's flame alive.

This is a sensitive, beautifully-written biography of a man whose life both shaped the United States in the 1960s and and reflects the promises and contradictions of the country in that tumultuous era. What Chafe does best is to place Lowenstein's complex and hurly-burly personal life amid the confusion and aspiration that marked the period. Never Stop Running is a truly great biogrpahy--a stunning combination of character and context.

Chafe is to be commended for succinctness in his presentation of the facts which he sets forth. But the heart of Allard Lowenstein's story is the power of his personality. At no point does Chafe give the reader a sense of this personality.

Frequent references to Allard Lowenstein's "biting but brilliant wit," his "superb" writing, and his eloquent speeches lead to exactly one extended quote from him- and that not until the next to last page of the epilogue. Chafe provides ample quotes from friends, relatives, aides, follwers, colleagues, casual acquaintances of Lowenstein, and we learn how all of them felt about Lowenstein's habitually untucked shirt-tail, his chronic lateness, his perpetual attempts to get young men to share a bed with him, and so on. Fine. But the man himself never appears.

Moreover, the book bears many signs of hasty preparation. While I was irritated to find that a woman named Jessie Helms had become prominent in North Carolina politics, I think I should at least mention Chafe's free and often puzzling use of square brackets in quotations.