Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,802

This is the grave of Jack Miller.

Born in 1916 in Chicago, Miller grew up there. But at the age of 16, his family moved to Sioux City, Iowa. He was a rich kid. He went to a Catholic school in England for awhile, then went to Creighton University for his bachelor’s degree and Catholic University of America in Washington for his master’s. He joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and did well, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel by the time he was mustered out in 1946. He mostly was in Asia, but he was also at the Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth for a time.

Miller was in the middle of a law degree during the war and he received it from Columbia in 1946. He worked for a time in the Office of Chief Counsel of the IRS, taught for a year at Notre Dame law, and then went home to Sioux City to start his own practice. Now, a guy like this, there was no real reason career wise for him to move back home except for one–he wanted to go into politics. Otherwise, he could have taught or worked for the government, or gotten a job at one of the big law firms.

Miller started his political career in 1955, when was elected to the Iowa legislature, as a Republican. He immediately introduced an income tax law that was passed and became his signature bill. He did one term and went to the state Senate in 1957. He ran for lieutenant governor in 1958 but lost in the Republican primary. Then in 1960, he ran for the U.S. Senate. He won that too, defeating the incumbent Democratic governor in a close election. He then won his reelection in 1966, taking every county in Iowa and 62 percent of the vote.

Miller was relatively liberal on some issues, supporting all civil rights legislation, though he did not vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1968. His major impact was on financial law. He was a tax expert. Not sure if that came out of his legal practice or not, but he was the tax guy in the Senate. Senators tend to take on one policy issue as their own, or maybe two (at least back when people took the job seriously; today, most of the Republican caucus has a policy expertise in trolling) and they don’t tread on the turf of others much. Being in Rhode Island has helped me understand more about how the Senate operates because Sheldon Whitehouse is such as a figure here and the state is so small that you can actually get to know him and then really get to know lots of people who actually legit do know him in a way that would never happen in a larger state. Anyway, Miller was the tax guy. Richard Russell said he had the best mind for tax law of anyone he had ever met. Miller was on the  Finance, Armed Services and Agriculture Committees. He generally was a pro-conservation Republican and also a supporter of the United Nations. Like a lot of these moderate Republicans of this era, where he fell in line with the conservatives of his party was on financial issues and of course disliking unions. He voted against Medicare and a lot of the Great Society social programs and strongly supported prosecuting the war in Vietnam.

In 1972, Miller was defeated for his third term by Dick Clark. Nixon was furious and told Henry Kissinger, “we lost Jack Miller because he’s a jackass.” It was a tough year for Democrats thanks to the enormous albatross on the top of the ticket (sorry, McGovernites, he was a horrifically awful candidate), so for Miller to lose is something. This was a pretty localized issue though. Farm prices were in collapse in 1972 and Iowa was pissed about it. Also, Clark went after Miller for voting against both Medicare and a bunch of education legislation that evidently was popular in Iowa at the time (long way from that today!). Iowans weren’t going to vote for McGovern, but they were going to vote for a Democrat for the Senate.

Well, Nixon may have thought Miller was a jackass, but he still took care of him, appointing him to a seat on the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals in 1973. It took the Senate 11 minutes after the introduction of the nomination to confirm him. Miller remained a judge the rest of his life. That court was abolished in 1982 and became the U.S, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Miller followed his job over there and remained active until 1985. He took senior status then. He then moved to Florida like most midwesterners with any money, dying there in 1994. He was 78 years old.

Miller has to be one of the least remembered senators of the second half of the twentieth century, especially in the category of people who served multiple terms. If you Google “Jack Miller Iowa,” the Wikipedia page comes up for him (very short) and then it’s mostly about some high school basketball player.

Jack Miller is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

If you would like this series to visit other senators elected in 1960, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Clifford Case is in Somerville, New Jersey and A. Willis Robertson is in Lexington, Virginia. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.