Nation: The Senate: An Individual Who Happens To Be a Negro

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During his two terms in office, Brooke dealt with a variety of touchy situations. He collided with Negro leaders in 1963, when he ruled against a plan for a pupils' hooky-for-a-day demonstration against de facto school segregation. He also clashed with both school and church by insisting that Massachusetts must observe the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling against public-classroom prayers. He injected himself in the helter-skelter investigation of the Boston Strangler murders, managed to bring some coordination to the detective work, but invited ridicule in the press when he brought in a Dutch clairvoyant, who applied his "radar brain" to the case and reeled off a minutely detailed description of the wrong man. Brooke's most celebrated accomplishment was winning a series of grand-jury indictments against more than 100 public officials, private citizens, and corporations—on charges involving graft and bribery connected with state government.

Cold Party. During his Senate campaign, Brooke responded to the exaggerated threat of white backlash by taking the unusual step—for him—of raising the racial issue. He condemned both Stokely Carmichael and Georgia's Lester Maddox as "extremists of black power and white power." Brooke swamped Chub Peabody by 1,213,473 to 744,761 votes and took the Senate seat occupied for 22 years by Brahmin Leverett Saltonstall.

Unlike dozens of G.O.P. candidates elsewhere, Brooke did not camouflage his party label. He made no secret of his belief that the G.O.P. needs a far more positive approach than it has had in the past. He refused to support Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, and early in 1966 he published The Challenge of Change, a prickly book that castigated the G.O.P.'s approach to the electorate for the past 50 years. Brooke's thesis was not so much that Republican proposals have been wrong, as that "we have often had no solutions at all. We give the appearance of being afraid of social progress. This is what has made us known as the cold party."

Measure of Success. Nonetheless, as Dirksen observes, "the Republican umbrella is pretty big"—and Ed Brooke is obviously under it to stay. In fact, his presence in the G.O.P. as a Senator offers more promise for positive change than anything he has yet said or written. And it will undoubtedly help re-establish the party's appeal to Negro voters —some 70% of whom are now registered Democrats. Indeed in the South, where Democrats have wielded a segregationist whip for decades, Brooke's kind of liberal Republicanism could become a major stimulant to a G.O.P. revival among black men—although, so far, Southern Republicans have all too often tried to outdo the Democrats at the segregationist game.