The Finished World of George Meany

The day following the 1972 election, George Meany said that the voters “have shown that they want peace in Vietnam, but not surrender and not dishonor.” Institutions are predictable and sometimes very much like natural phenomena; Meany on the elections is like seeing a cycle of the seasons. So predictable, in fact, that we often neglect to ask why they work as they do and how they came to be that way.

Meany has never been a journalist’s dream. Successfully resisting all attempts to invade his private life, he has apparently never been tempted to use public-relations techniques for the creation of a “public image.” But, for some reason that still remains a mystery to Joseph C. Goulden, Meany decided to...