Monthly Archives: May 2018

Collateral Damage

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Eric Greitens thought the Missouri governorship would be a step toward the White House. Instead it became a step off a cliff.

He was, as he claimed in his campaign, an outsider, which might be the only part of his campaign that turned out to be true.  He did not clean up state government, as he promised.  His administration is more likely to be remembered for arrogantly being an example of what he promised he would fight.

Six days before he announced he would resign, Team Greitens sent out a typical Greitens message:

“We knew that these baseless allegations would be exposed for what they really are: false attacks brought forward by powerful liberals and Democratic leadership. And that’s exactly what’s happened. The cases against him have been dropped or dismissed.”

Team Greitens knew that not all charges had been dropped or dismissed, knew that the pit was only growing darker.  And Team Greitens surely knew the claimed falsity of the attacks was growing weaker by the day or even by the hour. 

In his announcement of his impending departure, he went back to familiar themes voiced less than a week earlier that, frankly, sounded convincing only to his do-or-die supporters:

“This ordeal has been designed to cause an incredible amount of strain on my family. Millions of dollars of mounting legal bills, endless personal attacks designed to cause maximum damage to family and friends. Legal harassment of colleagues, friends and campaign workers, and it’s clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight. I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty to the people that I love.”

He can blame the “corrupt career politicians” who were his proclaimed enemies as much as he wants.  He can blame “liberals” for destroying the “conservative agenda” he was fighting for as much as he wishes. He can claim the ordeal his family and supporters have been through was “designed.” He hasn’t used the term “fake news” to describe the media that covered his hypocrisies and his personal and political failings, but he did try to control the message and manipulate its delivery as no governor before him had done—and, we hope, as no future governor will try to do—and did blame the media for reporting “lies.”

He can blame everybody he wants to blame but the blame begins and ends with Eric Greitens.

Significantly, he did not announce his planned resignation until a former campaign worker provided some devastating information to the special House committee considering whether to file articles of impeachment and not until a Jefferson City circuit judge had ruled that the committee was legally entitled to obtain documents from the Greitens campaign fund and from the nonprofit organization he set up to push his agenda—including ads attacking those who opposed him, even legislators within his Republican Party.

In truth, Eric Greitens ran for the office of Unit Commander, not Governor.  In the end he still has a platoon of loyalists churning out toothless rhetoric blaming everyone for his situation but Eric Greitens.  Somewhere along the way this much-vaunted SEAL team member forgot the importance of being part of a team.  As far as we know, SEAL teams don’t go around calling each other names and insinuating that they’re not worth being on the same team as the leader.  But then, leaders don’t accomplish much when they shoot at the people they need to have behind them.

But Greitens did that repeatedly with his broad-brush condemnation of the members of the General Assembly. He did not seem to recognize during his campaign and never seemed to concede during his time in office that he could accomplish little without forming relationships in the legislature. Somewhere in his highly-publicized great education he apparently ignored the idea that there are three branches of government, not just the one in which he served.

There is a sense of betrayal about the governorship of Eric Greitens.  He wasn’t what he said he would be.  Some would even argue that he wasn’t even what he said he was.

The saddest thing about Eric Greitens is the damage he has done to others because people like him take others down with them, many of them innocent.  All of the people who believed he could take them along in ever-higher circles of power and influence, even as the evidence piled up against him to the contrary, are now his victims, his collateral damage. They now are seeing his disappointment while dealing with their own and that of their friends.

“The time has come…to tend to those that have been wounded, and to care for those who need us most,” he said in his resignation announcement. 

“Those who have been wounded” include many voters who supported him because they bought his promises to make government cleaner, more principled, more of a service to all of the people, more honorable. They were not wrong for believing in him because we have to believe in somebody’s words. It would not be surprising if many of those voters who supported him because they deeply distrust government find their distrust even deeper now because Eric Greitens seems to have turned out to be at least as bad as those he disparaged during his campaign. They are collateral damage not just now but perhaps in the future because some will wonder even more if they can trust anybody seeking or serving in public office.

There’s one victim in particular who might be collateral damage, who might be the most wounded of all.

We think of this person because of something we heard another former governor talk about many years ago.

In 1976, Missouri had a young, ambitious governor who was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, so much so that President Gerald Ford had him on his list of potential running mates when the party held its convention in Kansas City that year.   The young governor would be challenged for re-election by a populist who focused his campaign on promising to do what he could not do legally or economically—fire the Public Service Commission and lower utility rates.  Christopher Bond and his campaign failed to recognize the popularity of the Joe Teasdale promises, unrealistic though they might be, and never strongly attacked those promises.   In November, Bond lost by about 12,000 votes.  A career trajectory that might have taken him to the highest national levels nosedived.

Afterwards he spoke of the impact his crushing disappointment had on his then-wife, Carolyn.  His dreams of a second term as governor and then a rise to greater position nationally seemingly had been killed by that election outcome.  But, he recalled, the burden was double for her.  A First Lady of the state, married to a man whose political future seemed unlimited before November, 1976, saw her own dreams crash and burn in that election, too.  She had to deal with her disappointment while also dealing with his.  She carried a double burden.

We do not presume to know how Sheena Greitens has dealt with, is dealing with, or will deal with the events that have led to her husband’s downfall.  The cold reality is that those who attach themselves to a rising star whether family or friends or believers should understand that they can get burned when the star becomes a meteorite.  That does not, however, lessen the pain when that happens.

But wallowing in despair will do none of them any good.

The earth won’t stop turning while people such as Eric Greitens and his supporters rant against the collapse of their worlds or mourn their personal losses.  History is replete with examples of those who stumble or fall whose dishonor is not their doom.

The premature end of a governorship is not necessarily the end of life in public service, elected or not.  And the world doesn’t care if Eric Greitens and his friends feel sorry for themselves. He has no one to blame but himself although it might take a while for him to admit it.  He has to get on with life without being in government.

—because government will get on with life without Eric Greitens. And so will the people of Missouri.

We are reminded of some of the words from Carl Sandburg’s great poem, The People, Yes:

The people will live on.

The learning and blundering people will live on.

They will be tricked and sold and again sold

And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,

The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,

You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it…

 

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief

the people march.

In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people

march:

“Where to? what next?”

 

Whether state government learns any lessons from the Greitens experience and in so doing develops the courage to take actions that will rekindle confidence among the people it serves or whether it will allow the people to “be tricked and sold and again sold” is something to watch for. But many people who were skeptical about government before Greitens used that skepticism to help him get elected are even more skeptical when they see how he turned out. The job of turning them around will be even harder now should anyone make a sincere effort to try.

But, as somebody once said, the mission continues.

One word changes understanding of the past

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—and could change the future.

The scenario is a familiar one.  A tumultuous time.  A government in chaos. The prospect of internal conflict intensifying.  A crucial meeting to forestall collapse and civil war dissolves in anger.  The federal army takes control of the capital city hours after the leader of the government flees. An interim government, backed by the military, is installed. Popular elections are suspended. Imagine that you live in the capital. Imagine that you see the federal troops marching through your city and seizing the capitol.

That’s Jefferson City, Missouri in 1861 and for the first time in American history the United States Army has invaded the capital city of a state of the union and made it an occupied town.  An amphibious landing, no less.

But where did they land?  Not an important question then.  But it is now.

Conventional wisdom has held that the landing was at the foot of Lafayette Street, the street that is between the federal courthouse and the front of the old penitentiary.

I’ve been looking at some historic images of part of the area now known as the “Missouri State Penitentiary Redevelopment” project. The state has agreed to transfer thirty-two acres of the old pen to the city, which hopes to develop the area for hotels, office buildings, entertainment venues, auditoriums, museums, boat landings and marinas, and other uses.

In the process it has occurred to your faithful observer of this past and present that one word has been misunderstood for decades in the history of Jefferson City.  Herewith we will explain how the correct interpretation creates an important historic site of state and perhaps national significance within that redevelopment project.

I call it “Lyon’s Landing.”

Negotiations to restrict federal troop movements in Missouri as the nation plummeted toward the Civil War broke down in St. Louis between Union General Nathaniel Lyon and Governor Claiborne F. Jackson with Lyon proclaiming, “This means war.” Jackson and his entourage hurried back to Jefferson City by train, burning the Gasconade River bridge behind them and ordering loyalist troops guarding the Osage River bridge to disable it. The legislature was called into an overnight session, and the governor, lieutenant governor and some lawmakers fled to Boonville.

Lyon, in St. Louis, had quickly started loading two-thousand troops on four steamboats—the Iatan, the City of Louisiana, the A. McDowell, and the J.C. Swon.  Within forty-eight hours, some of those troops were pitching camp at the Capitol.

Harper’s Weekly of July 6, 1861 recounted the arrival:

“On the morning of the 15th, ten miles below Jefferson City, General Lyon transferred his regulars to the IATAN, and proceeded with that boat, leaving the SWAN to follow in his wake. As we approached the city crowds gathered on the levee and saluted us with prolonged and oft-repeated cheering. Colonel Thomas L. Price (no relative to the rebel, Sterling Price), a prominent Unionist of Jefferson City, was the first to greet General Lyon as he stepped on shore. A bar has formed at the regular landing, and we were obliged to run out our gang plank below the penitentiary, at a point where the railroad company has placed a large quantity of loose stone, preparatory to forming a landing of its own.The steep, rough bank prevented the debarkation of our artillery, but the infantry scrambled up in fine style. First was the company of regulars formerly commanded by General Lyon, but now led by Lieutenant Hare. These were sent to occupy a high hill or bluff near the railroad depot and commanding the town. They went forward in fine style, ascending the steep acclivity at the ‘double-quick step.’ In one minute from the time of reaching the summit they were formed in a hollow square, ready to repel all attacks from foes, whether real or imaginary. Next came the left wing of the First Volunteer regiment, under Lieutenant-Colonel Andrews, five hundred strong. These soldiers were formed by sections and marched to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle,’ with the Stars and stripes conspicuous, through the principal streets to the State House, of which they took possession amidst the cheers of the people of the town.

“After some delay in finding the keys, which had not been very carefully hid, Lieutenant-Colonel Andrews with a band, color bearer, and guard, ascended to the cupola and displayed the American flag, while the band played the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’ and the populace and troops below gave round after round of enthusiastic applause. Thus was the ‘sacred soil’ of Missouri’s capital invaded by Federal troops, and the bosom of ‘the pride of the Big Muddy’ desecrated by the footprints of the volunteer soldiers of St. Louis. She rather seemed to like it.”

A disgruntled apparent Jefferson City resident later complained in a letter to the St.Louis Daily State Journal about conditions in the city under the occupation, “They landed below the town at the State Prison….”    He signed his letter “American.”

It is that word “below” that has led to a misunderstanding of this historic event.  The usual assumption has been that “below the penitentiary” and the note that the troops “went up the road fronting the penitentiary” means the landing was at the foot of Lafayette Street from a location geographically lower than the penitentiary location.

But the word “below” meant something different to river travelers then. It meant downstream from.

For example, the steamboat Timour No. 2, blew up near Jefferson City August 26, 1854. A contemporary newspaper account said, “The boat was wooding at the time she blew up, at Edwards’ wood-yard, a short distance below Jefferson City.” (The original Timour  had been one of twenty-one steamboats destroyed in the Great St. Louis Fire of 1849.)

A study of some illustrations from Harper’s Weekly of July 6 and October 19, 1861 indicates the most likely place for the invasion was to the east of the penitentiary, in the cut between the present penitentiary property and the bluff known as Miner’s Hill where the Department of Natural Resources has its headquarters, at the end of a continuation of the present Chestnut Street, which a map (below) shows did not exist at the time of the war.

The illustration showing the Iatan unloading troops (above) with the penitentiary up and to the right of the boat, places the boat in the cut to the east. The troops are shown marching ashore and curving to the right, heading to the end of Lafayette Street.

The October illustration (right) shows troops unloading from a train (the eastern bridges having been repaired by then) with soldiers standing atop Miner’s Hill to the east of the penitentiary.  The drawing shows a building in the lower area west of the bluff that also shows in the image of the Iatan’s unloading.

So it appears the landing/unloading site was at the foot of what is now Chestnut Street. Two other images tend to confirm that.

An 1865 map of Jefferson City’s defenses done by the War Department’s Office of Chief of Engineers shows Lafayette Street curving behind the penitentiary and its brickyard to a place that approximately matches where soldiers are shown marching up the hill in the July 6  Harper’s drawing.  In this map, Chestnut Street does not yet exist. Today, it continues down the hill toward the river.  Had it existed in 1861, there would have been no need for the troops to follow the path they are going in the Iatan picture.

Confirming the location of that path is an 1869 “Bird’s eye view” of Jefferson City, then a town of about 3,100 residents (not counting the soldiers).

At the far left edge of the city is seen the penitentiary. The draw that is the continuation of Chestnut Street today is visible.  And the path also can be seen connecting the end of Lafayette Street with the area shown in the Harper’s drawing as the disembarkation point for the troops.

Chestnut street exists in the 1869 illustration, but only as a link between High Street and the city cemetery.

Understanding that “below the penitentiary” or “below the town” means downstream changes the understanding of that historic event.

Why is this discovery important to the city’s redevelopment of the penitentiary area?  Because it now adds a possibly important historic element to the redevelopment area.  The entire riverfront of the site from the extension of Chestnut to Lafayette is now the invasion path followed in the first takeover in national history by the United States  Army of a state capital.

Lyon’s Landing Historic Site. Could it make a difference in how the site is redeveloped?  Could it mean new funding for part of that redevelopment?   Could the designation have an impact on the ultimate development of the rest of the area to the east where DNR now has its headquarters?

Others have those answers.  We’ve just corrected the historical record—because for a reason we cannot explain, a new understanding of the word “below” popped into our mind a few days ago.

 

 

 

 

It is what it is

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And what it is, is the last week of the second session of the 99th General Assembly of Missouri. This week had been a two-fer until Monday afternoon when the invasion of privacy case against the governor was dismissed.  Reporters until then had to try to keep one eye on the legislature’s actions and the other on the court actions in St. Louis.

This session seems to have had less pointed—and tiring—partisanship than some sessions in the past, perhaps because both parties have focused on a governor who has few friends among lawmakers instead of on the politics of each other.  Legislative leaders, particularly Speaker Todd Richardson and Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, have worked hard to keep the general assembly focused on its job, even when its job in the House of Representatives has included an investigation of the governor.

Both Richard and Richardson are leaving the legislature early next year when their successors are sworn in.  Richard has had his eight years in the House and his eight years in the Senate and the people in his district will never again have a chance to let him represent them again because of term limits.  Richardson could run for the Senate someday. But he has not filed for any office for this year’s elections.

Their jobs won’t really be done as of 6 p.m., Friday, though. The special session that can focus entirely on the governor begins half an hour later.  Lawmakers will have a month to decide if he should be impeached—and the attention of an investigating committee is increasingly focused on the governor’s dark money operations, some of which have produced attacks on legislators who have not forgotten or forgiven. And new revelations keep accumulating about the governor and dark money.

This has turned into a legislative session nobody signed up for.  Events since opening day and the later State of the State message from the governor have scrambled whatever the legacy this session leaves. Maybe that legacy will include a bequest for the 100th General Assembly to handle.

One of the densest shadows over this session is that of dark money.  Lawmakers have talked of doing something about it for years but haven’t done it.  It has become, regretfully, oxygen to too much of the political system.

Memory tells us that the best time to change a poor status quo is the year after an election when the pressure of winning another term is lessened for a few months.  Perhaps 2019 will be a good time to recall a couple of memorable things attributed to the colorful former Speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse M. Unruh, who said, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

But his more important observation is, “If you can’t take their money, drink their booze, eat their food, (have sex with) their women and vote against them, you don’t belong here.”

Maybe next year’s lawmakers will be the ones to do more than complain about dark money.  Trouble is, many of them will have benefitted from it.

The Missouri Capitol has many mottos that were carved into its walls more than a century ago to inspire the public and its public officials to noble actions.  Maybe it’s time for a new one, starting with, “If you can’t take their money…..”

 

 

 

Getting an earful

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Among the greatest inventions in world history is the ability to record sound and movement. Until Thomas Edison came along with a waxed cylinder that preserved sound, there was no way to hear the great singers, orators, preachers, reformers—or others who shaped cultures unless you were where they were.  And until the motion picture, there was no way to preserve moving images of those who made those sounds.

Part of President Benjamin Harrison’s speech in 1889 is the oldest known surviving recording of a President’s voice. The oldest moving image of a President dates to 1897, a film of the inaugural procession of William McKinley.

The combination of sound and film appears to have been demonstrated in 1900 in Paris but it was more than twenty years before motion pictures with sound became commercially affordable to produce.

This around-the-barn-and-through-the-back-door kind of story-telling in which we sometimes indulge brings us to the story of the death of Judge Harry Stone on April 16.

Judge Stone was the fictional judge of a Manhattan night court, played by comedian and magician Harry Anderson.  A video of Anderson’s “Hello Sucker” night club act is available on YouTube.  At the end, Anderson passes along some advice from famed New York newspaper columnist Damon Runyon.

The advice is useful to heed during campaign years.

If you are a fan of great Broadway musical theatre or Hollywood musicals based on Broadway musicals, you recognize the names of Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson as being creations of Runyon and main characters in Guys and Dolls.

The advice comes when Detroit bets Masterson one-thousand dollars that Mindy’s delicatessen sold more strudel than cheesecake a day earlier. Masterson refuses to take the bet and explains:

“When I was a young man about to go out into the world, my father says to me a very valuable thing.  ‘Son,’ the old guy says, ‘I’m sorry that I am not able to bankroll you a very large start.  But not having any potatoes to give you, I am going to give you some very valuable advice.  One of these days in your travels, you are going to come across a guy with a nice brand new deck of cards, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear.  But, son, do not take this bet, for if you do, as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an ear full of cider.’”

Every two years when campaign time comes around, it’s advisable to recall that advice.  If you don’t, you need to always carry a towel.

Suspension (a continuation of last week’s discussion)

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Last week’s entry about whether a governor facing a criminal charge and/or impeachment could be suspended with or without pay until his or her criminal situation cleared up brought a response from longtime colleague Bob Watson, who has had his nose deeper in the statute books and the Missouri Constitution than your faithful scribe has had his.

Bob thinks we already have what was discussed in that entry, pointing to Section 106.050 of the statutes, reading, “If any officer shall be impeached, he is hereby suspended from exercising his office, after he shall be notified thereof, until his acquittal.”

Bob also recalls that when the Attorney General tried to oust Secretary of State Judi Moriarty after her impeachment, the Missouri Supreme Court suspended her with pay until her impeachment trial ended. The ruling said the only allowable means of removal of a statewide elected official is through the impeachment process and the legislature could not legally enact laws automatically removing any elected executive official.

And three responses to last week’s entry (posted with the entry) from Bill Thompson offered similar clarifications.  We thank Bob and Bill for their assistance.

Our entry last week spoke to suspension before impeachment, however.  But suspension does involve removal from the office and it seems Bob is correct that a suspension before impeachment wouldn’t work.  It seems, therefore, that our point last week that a governor is, indeed, not like other workers who can be suspended upon filing of criminal charges. In his case, impeachment charges have to be filed, too.  Or at least as we now understand it.

We had overlooked one possibility covered by Article IV, section 11B of the State Constitution, which sets up a Disability Board made up of the lieutenant governor, secretary of state, the auditor, treasurer, attorney general, the president pro tem, the speaker of the house, and the majority floor leaders of the two chambers.  That board has the power to declare a governor unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, upon which finding the gubernatorial succession protocol kicks in.

That only time we know of that such a board met and took action was in the hours immediately after Governor Carnahan’s plane crash, before confirmation of his death.  The board met and cleared the way for Lt. Governor Roger Wilson to become acting governor until there was that confirmation, at which point he was sworn in as the governor.

While some have questioned the governor’s ability to govern under present circumstances, he has been making the point that he can “discharge the powers and duties of his office,” by making appointments and making public appearances and speaking as the elected chief executive of the state.

The discussion highlights the uniqueness in Missouri history of today’s situation, however.  However it turns out will be an important guide should Missourians ever face something like this again.

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In a related note, we see that Rachael Herndon Dunn, the editor of the Missouri Times newspaper (which is different from the Missouri Times quarterly newsletter of the State Historical Society of Missouri and the earlier Missouri Times newspaper of the 1970s) says in the latest edition of the newspaper’s magazine that the three people she would pick, if she could pick three people to join her for dinner, would be Bob Griffin, Bill Webster, and Eric Greitens.

Interesting.  But what could they possibly have in common to discuss?