Charles Rice McDowell Jr. (June 24, 1926 – November 5, 2010)[1] was a long-time political writer and nationally syndicated columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and panelist on PBS-TV's Washington Week in Review.
When he was young, the family moved to Lexington, Virginia, where the elder McDowell was a professor of law at Washington and Lee University.
[1] McDowell was a writer for the university student newspaper, The Columns (published during the summer session after World War II).
There he saw "the gentlemen of the press" "glancing significantly at one another" during a discussion of how a Democratic Congressman's gift of a $2,500 contribution from a Republican businessman had nothing to do with a "juicy war contract" which a constituent of the latter had received — as well as a speech about "the great injustice being done" to Wyoming's wool growers without federal subsidies.
McDowell wrote three books: Campaign Fever, a journal of the 1964 presidential election; and two collections of humor columns, One Thing After Another (1960) and What Did You Have in Mind?