THE Meditations OF St.JACK
HE’S NOT SURE HE SUCCEEDED.
9 really want to do something that is worth looking back on and that 9 can be proud of in the years ahead.
— DANFORTH, SENATE DIARY
Jack Danforth’s voice precedes him. I can hear it through the wall as I wait in the 19th-floor conference room of Dowd Bennett, the Clayton law firm where he is a partner: that polite basso that over the course of half a century intoned in the U.S. Senate, the United Nations, and Washington National Cathedral; the voice of Republican moderation, of civility, of noblesse oblige, of a lawyer-cum-Episcopal-minister known with affection (and some eye-rolls) as “St. Jack”; that rare conservative voice on cable TV willing to criticize the Christian right, Donald Trump, and even his own onetime protege, Sen. Josh Hawley; the voice that Danforth’s beloved GOP now seems to tune out. He lumbers in and grins. We shake hands.
Danforth is 84 and still stands well over 6 feet, yet his eyes have softened at the edges. In a phone call before this interview, he learned that my research had led me to his archived papers at the State Historical Society of Missouri-there are 377 boxes in all-to which he’d muttered, “Sounds like you have a grotesque project ahead of you.” But when we meet, he’s pleased to discuss his legacy-both the bright spots and darker ones. He settles into a swivel chair with a bottle of water and a cup of green tea.
Behind him, out the window to the east, a distant downtown rises at the end of a lush carpet of treetops. Somewhere in that skyline is the headquarters of Nestle Purina, successor to Ralston Purina, the animal-feed and cereal giant founded by Jack’s grandfather, William H. Danforth. Somewhere under those treetops is the campus named after Jack’s late brother, Bill, a longtime chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Somewhere just to the southeast of us is the collegiate-gothic house in Clayton where these brothers grew up with their other siblings, Dotty and Don Jr. And to the northwest, out of view, is the research hub and startup incubator bearing the name of their father: The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
Jack’s footprint is visible from here, too: Below us, for example, runs the MetroLink system that he championed in the Senate early on. But that’s only a slice of his legacy-and only the physical kind. For decades, in speeches, sermons, books, op-eds, and TV appearances, Danforth has offered a variety of diagnoses and prescriptions to America. America doesn’t always seem to listen. He has long called for closing the budget deficit; it’s now at its highest level since World War II, and voters in neither party list it as a high priority. He laments the reemergence of populism; it’s thriving on both sides. He has warned against viewing political opponents as enemies; negative partisanship is soaring, and the Missouri GOP’s 2022 Senate hopefuls are trampling each other to show they won’t back down to the “radical left.”
His most consistent theme, though, has been that religion can unify the country. He insists that it’s possible-necessary, even-for the faithful to participate in politics while honoring the separation of church and state. In 2009, he set up the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Wash. U. with a $30 million endowment from the now-dissolved Danforth Foundation. It appears to be the nation’s first. Currently, it has eight full-time faculty and offers a minor degree to undergraduates; a major curriculum is in the works, and its events pack the university’s chapel. Still, these are early days for the center. Its ultimate impact remains to be seen.
So I ask Danforth about the impact of various other initiatives, decisions, and pieces of legislation: Did they have the effect he’d hoped for? And over and over, in between sips of water, his answer is the same: “I don’t know.”
This astonishes me. How could Jack Danforth not know whether he made a difference? Isn’t that why he got into politics? Maybe there’s a mundane explanation: That time and age have removed him from it. Or maybe he’s honoring his grandfather’s dictum to “serve humbly.” Or maybe he doesn’t need to know because the Danforth fortune has insulated him from the consequences of his public service. Or maybe he doesn’t want to know, for fear of second-guessing and regret.
So I ask him, in essence: How do you spend your whole life swinging at pitches, connect with the ball over and over, and yet never look to see where the ball went?
He is silent, reclined in his chair, brow furrowed. He sits up straight, plunks his bottle hard onto the table, sinks back into his chair. For 29 long seconds, he says nothing.
It would be very easy to be a demagogue and to take on the very hot issues...and just get on the popular side of everything, and I could probably last forever if I did that. But it is just not worth doing.
—DANFORTH, SENATE DIARY
In late January 2006, Danforth traveled to Yale Law School as a distinguished alumnus to give a lecture. During his stay, he attended a dinner party where the school’s dean seated him next to a promising third-year student from interview request.)
