A talented orator with a florid style and a notably rich bass voice, he delivered flamboyant speeches that caused his detractors to refer to him as "The Wizard of Ooze".

He developed a good working relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War.

[5] Dirksen grew up on a farm managed by his mother in a neighborhood called Bonchefiddle (″Böhnchenviertel″, Low German for "beans quarter") on the outskirts of Pekin.

[10] He paid his tuition by working in the classified advertising department at the Minneapolis Tribune, as a door-to-door magazine and book salesman, as an attorney's assistant, and as a clerk in a railroad freight office.

[12] He also gained his first political experience by giving local and on-campus speeches in support of Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes during the 1916 campaign.

Dirksen's mother refused to take down a living room photo of Kaiser Wilhelm II as demanded by a self-appointed Pekin "loyalty commission" on the grounds that "it's a free country."

[19] Dirksen declined an opportunity to remain with the Army of Occupation (extended due to his fluent German), received his discharge, and returned to Pekin.

Dirksen was active in the American Legion, and his appearances on its behalf gave him the opportunity to hone his public speaking skills.

His closest challenge came in 1936, when Charles C. Dickman held him to 53.25% of the vote amid a national and statewide landslide for the Democratic Party.

His support for many New Deal programs initially marked him as a moderate, pragmatic Republican, though over time he became increasingly conservative and isolationist.

[23][24] During World War II, he lobbied successfully for an expansion of congressional staff resources to eliminate the practice under which House and Senate committees borrowed executive branch personnel to accomplish legislative work.

He reversed his isolationist stance to support the war effort, but also secured the passage of an amendment to the Lend Lease Act by introducing it while 65 of the House's Democrats were at a luncheon.

It provided that the Senate and the House could, by a simple majority in a concurrent resolution, revoke the war powers granted to the president.

However, press pundits had assumed that the candidacy was a vehicle to siphon support away from the campaign of Wendell Willkie, whose reputation as a maverick and staunch internationalist had earned him the hatred of many Republican Party regulars, especially in the Midwest.

[26] Dirksen's presidential campaign was apparently still alive on the eve of the 1944 convention, as Time speculated that he was running for vice president.

In the campaign, the support of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy helped Dirksen gain a narrow victory.

In 1952, Dirksen supported the presidential candidacy of fellow Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, the longtime leader of the Republican party's conservative wing.

At the national party convention, Dirksen gave a speech attacking New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, a liberal Republican and the leading supporter of General Dwight Eisenhower.

[citation needed] Along with House Minority Leaders Charles Halleck and Gerald Ford, Dirksen was the official voice of the Republican Party during most of the 1960s.

On several occasions, political cartoonist Herblock depicted Dirksen and Halleck as vaudeville song-and-dance men, wearing identical elaborate costumes and performing an act called The Ev and Charlie Show.

[31]: 59 As Johnson followed the recommendations and escalated the war, Dirksen gave him strong support in public and inside the Republican caucus.

Ford commented, "I strongly felt that although I agreed with the goals of the Johnson administration in Vietnam, I vigorously criticized their prosecution of the war.

[40] In 1964, amid a 54-day filibuster by Southern senators of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dirksen, Republican Thomas Kuchel and Democrats Hubert Humphrey and Mike Mansfield introduced a compromise amendment.

Finally, Republican Senator Thruston Morton proposed an amendment that guaranteed jury trials in all criminal contempt cases except voting rights.

It was approved on June 9, and Humphrey made a deal with three Republicans to substitute it for the Mansfield-Dirksen Amendment in exchange for their supporting cloture on the filibuster.

[41] At that cloture vote, Dirksen said: "Victor Hugo wrote in his diary substantially this sentiment: 'Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.'

"[42] On March 22, 1966, Dirksen introduced a constitutional amendment to permit public school administrators providing for organized prayer by students; the introduction was in response to Engel v. Vitale, which struck down the practice.

Dirksen made a cameo appearance in the 1969 film The Monitors, a low-budget science-fiction movie in which invading extraterrestrials assert political dominion over the human race.

[10] In August 1969, chest X-rays disclosed an asymptomatic peripherally located mass in the upper lobe of the right lung.

When political discussions became tense, he would lighten the atmosphere by taking up his perennial campaign to have the marigold named the national flower, but it never succeeded.