Category Archives: campaigns

Let America Be America Again

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For many people, America has never been as great as some have nobly proclaimed it to be or proclaim to have made it. Again.

It’s good. But great? Yes, for some. For others, no. Can it be great if it is not great for all? We explore that issue today through the words of a great Missouri writer.

Langston Hughes is considered one of the nation’s greatest African-American authors, a Joplin native whose poetry and prose spoke powerfully of the African-American experience from the time his great grandmothers were slaves to the days when segregation was still a powerful and widely-accepted social institution. He died in 1967, still writing about what this country was but aware of what it could be or should be.

In 1935, he wrote a poem that portrayed the two Americas—the one he dreamed would come with a counterpoint describing the America he knew.

In our turbulent times today, it’s a good idea to think about Langston Hughes, who hoped for a better country while the real world around him seemed far from it. His voice from 85 years ago is a voice for many in these times and a challenge for others who are comfortable with their station.

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Langston Hughes reminds us from generation to generation we have much work to do before we should proclaim ourselves great. Proclamation is cheap. Achievement of greatness is hard and the quest for it should be never-ending if we really want to create, “the land that never has been yet—and yet must be.”

It not a matter of “again.”  It’s a matter of “yet.”

Dr. Crane on thinking

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(Dr. Frank Crane left the pulpit as a Methodist minister after 28 years to become a writer and newspaper columnist. The New York Times wrote in his 1928 obituary, “His message always was one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” We could use a few doses of that sort of thing these days of division and derision, so we have been sharing some of his thoughts at the start of each week.)

SLOVENLY THOUGHTS

Clean up your thoughts.

Don’t have your mind looking like the dining-table after a banquet, or the floor after a political meeting. Sweep it and dust it and put the ideas away where they belong.

Don’t have a waste-basket mind.

Or a top-bureau-drawer mind.

It doesn’t do you much good to have a grand idea, or a wonderful impression, or a strong passion, if you don’t know where to put it.

I notice when I talk to you that you have a good many interesting notions. The trouble is they are all higgledy-piggledy; they have no unity, coherence, order, organization.

You think, but you don’t think anything out. Your wheat is full of chaff.

Perhaps I can help you if you will lend me your ear for a space.

  1. Don’t pick up some opinion you hear and make it your own because it sounds fine, and go to passing it out, without carefully examining it, scrutinizing, cross-questioning and testing it.
  2. One of the best tests of any opinion (not an infallible, but very valuable, test) is “Will it work?” If it won’t something’s wrong with it, nine times out of ten. That last brilliant notion of yours—hundreds of sensible people have had it, and discarded it, because it wouldn’t work.
  3. Don’t let anybody make you think you owe a certain amount of belief in a thing simply because you can’t disprove it. Nor be deceived by the argument, “If that doesn’t account for it, what does?” You don’t have to account for it at all. Some of the most pestiferous bunk has got itself established by this kind of reasoning. You don’t have to believe or disbelieve everything that comes along; most things you must hang up and wait.
  4. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s a sign that you know what you do know.
  5. Ask questions. Don’t be ashamed of appearing ignorant. What you ought to be ashamed of is seeming to understand when you don’t.
  6. Classify. Education is nothing but the art of classification. Keep a scrap-book. Keep an index rerum. And classify.
  7. Waste no time in acquiring “general information.” Always read and study with a purpose. Look up subjects; don’t just read books. Books are to be referred to, consulted, not to be read through—that is, as a rule.
  8. Be a friend and daily companion to the dictionary and encyclopedia. Look things up.
  9. Define. Practise defining. Practise telling what a thing is not, as well as what it is.
  10. Get clear ideas of what you don’t know. Then you can see better what you do know.
  11. Write. Not for publication, necessarily, but for yourself. Writing accustoms you to choose just the right words. Beware of adjectives, especially two of them. Favor nouns. Use simple, short words. They mean more and carry further.
  12. And never hurry or worry.

Dive in!

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A heartbeat has returned to the Missouri Capitol. The legislature is back. It’s an election year. It’s a census year.

It’s leap year, meaning lawmakers have an extra day to accomplish something.

Because it’s an election year, members will want to burnish their records to improve their re-election chances. Sometimes election years leave incumbents vulnerable to interests that can threaten to cut off campaign donations or divert donations to challengers if the lawmaker doesn’t toe the line. That’s not a comfortable position for a legislator to be in but we’ve always thought some folks too easily let themselves be pushed around when their incumbency can be their greatest strength in the face of campaign intimidation.

By mid-May the idealistic rookies who were elected just two years ago will have had a taste of the real world. Some might have thought they could change things two years ago. Doesn’t look like they have. Yet. But maybe something is still burning within them that will produce positive change as they learn more about how to make the system work for them.

It’s always good to remember something the long-time Speaker of the California House, Jesse Unruh, said a long time ago, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” And there will be some who will chug it.

But others might remember Unruh’s comments about those who try to pressure (or bully) our legislators: “If you can’t take their money, drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and vote against them, you don’t belong here.”

(We’re using the clean version because there might be ladies reading this entry)

Monday’s entry with Dr. Frank Crane suggested some things each lawmaker might say to himself or herself each day before going to the Capitol. In addition to those noble thoughts, it might be good for our lawmakers to recite the Unruh Gospel of Political Reality.

Swimming season resumes in the Missouri Capitol Shark Tank at noon today.

Notes from a quiet street—New Year’s edition

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It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth.   But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.

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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000.  And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.

We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.

Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.

By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.

When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?

Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)

To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?

When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with?  If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.

When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10.  If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.

So the decade has another year to go.

Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it.   A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.

So what the heck are we arguing about?   Let’s move on.

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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned).  As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.”   Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.

One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing.   Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.

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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth.   A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:

https://theologycorner.net/blog/blogs/idioglossolalia/the-death-of-truth-both-sides-dont-deserve-our-consideration/

The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration

Ruben Rosario Rodriguez   December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia

As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).

 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.

Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:

“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”

One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”

Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”

Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,” “Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.

This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.

In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.

Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.

 

Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:

“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”

—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.

Sponsorships

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State government never has enough money to fix the roads, educate our kids, take care of those of us in our declining years, pay our prison guards and state employees  enough to get off of food stamps, maintain hundreds of buildings it owns, keep our air and water safe, and a lot of other things.

I woke up on a Monday morning a few weeks ago with the solution.  I think it was the day after I’d watched the Indianapolis 500 in person and the NASCAR 600-mile race at Charlotte that evening on the telly.  It came to me that state government could make millions if it followed an economic model based on racing.

A few years ago the stock car race at Indianapolis was called something like the Your Name Here Crown Royal Brickyard 400 Powered by Big Machine Records.  Each year the name of some citizen—a private citizen who was a veteran or someone who had voluntarily done something of public benefit would be picked to fill in the “Your Name Here” part of the event name—a nice thing to do to recognize the importance of people like most of us who do good stuff just because we do good stuff.

And if you watch any of these events, you know that the first thing the winners do in the post-race interview is thank all the sponsors whose logos adorned their cars and are sewn onto their fire-resistant driving suits. “You know, Goodyear (Firestone) gave us an awesome tire today and our (Chevrolet, Honda, Toyota, Ford) had awesome power.  I’d like to thank Bass Pro, M&Ms, Budweiser, Coke, Monster Energy, Gainbridge, NAPA, and all my other sponsors who make this possible—and the fans, you’re the BEST!!!”

Suppose state government was run like that.

At the end of a legislative session, the Speaker and the President Pro Tem, in their joint news conference, began with “We have had an awesome, productive session here at the Anheuser-Busch Capitol powered by Ameren.”

“The Monsanto Department of Agriculture driven by the Missouri Farm Bureau will be better equipped than ever to regulate corporate farming through the Tyson CAFO Division.

“The Master Lock Department of Corrections employees are getting a significant pay increase; The Depends Division of Aging is expanding its services significantly; the Tracker Marine Water Patrol is able to hire more officers; and the Dollar General Department of Revenue is going to install new computers to get our H&R Block tax refunds out faster.

“The Cabela’s Department of Conservation sales tax renewal has been put on the ballot next year.  The Wikipedia Department of Higher Education driven by Nike has been given more authority to approve such programs as the Shook, Hardy & Bacon Law School at UMKC, the Wal-Mart Business School in Columbia, the Eagle Forum Liberal Studies program at UMSL, and technology developed at the Hewlett-Packard 3-D Missouri University of Science and Technology will now be capable of building new football facilities on our campuses for pennies..  And we found additional funding for the Cologuard Department of Health and its Purdue Pharma Division of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.

We also were able to put a proposal on the ballot next year to increase funding for the Quikcrete Department of Transportation.

“We couldn’t do all of the great things we’ve done in the 101st Session of the Citizens United General Assembly fueled by Laffer Economics without the support of all of our state’s other great sponsors.

“And we appreciate the participation of you citizens out there.  We couldn’t do this without all of you. You’re the BEST!!!”

And the confetti made from 1,994 un-passed bills would rain down and the legislative leaders would spray champagne (or, more likely, shaken-up Bud) all over each other in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Legislative Victory Circle (previously known as the rotunda) and the legislative mascot dressed as the Official State Dessert would dance to a celebratory song performed by Sheryl Crowe, who next year will be chosen as a project by a third-grade class studying state government to be the subject of a bill designating her as the Official State Country Singer.

This would never work, of course.  We can’t see members of the legislature in uniforms that have state government sponsors’ patches all over them during the sessions or campaigning in outfits that have the logos of their donors.  And the Senate would just flat out refuse to tolerate anything that would eliminate Seersucker Wednesdays.

Even if government tried something like this, the Supreme Court would be tied up for years in lawsuits determining whether sponsorships should be calculated as Total State Revenue under the Hancock Amendment, thereby triggering tax refunds that would undermine the entire idea.  And Clean Missouri would get another ballot proposal approved by voters that would tie the Missouri Ethics Commission into knots trying to define whether sponsors constitute campaign donors.

Hate to say it folks.  In the real world, if we want better services or more services or better roads or prison guards who don’t have to hold two other jobs, it’s us taxpayers who will have to be the sponsors of state government.    And after all, shouldn’t we want to be

THE BEST?

Josh and Bill

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Some capitol graybeards are watching the developing investigation of suspicions that Attorney General Josh Hawley used public money to further his successful campaign to oust Senator Claire McCaskill. We’re watching because we remember when another young, charismatic Missouri Attorney General who seemed to be a Republican shooting star crashed and burned.

Can it happen again? Let’s just wait and see.

The fact that it’s another Republican statewide office holder who has triggered this investigation adds some heft to the issue. And Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s successful involvement of State Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat, in the investigation because she has subpoena powers adds more.

Hawley proclaims innocence—just as Bill Webster did throughout the long federal investigation against him while he was successfully winning the Republican nomination for governor in 1992, beating State Treasurer Wendell Bailey and Secretary of State Roy Blunt in the primary.

Circumstances will show whether Hawley’s “innocence” is genuine or whether it’s as flimsy in the end as Webster’s often-claimed “innocence” was all those years ago.

Public officials under investigation are right to maintain their innocence for two reasons. First, our justice system operates on the proposition that all of us are innocent until proven guilty.  Second, it’s important that those who supported the office holder with their money and their votes continue to believe that person is above the suspicion swirling around him or her. While confession might be good for the soul, it’s disastrous for the career.  People have survived close scrutiny, even charges and trials, and gone on to useful political careers.

But here’s something about investigations of public officials.  Once one gets started, there’s no   telling where it’s going to go.

We told friends about  a year ago that the suggestions of sexual impropriety against Eric Greitens were a she-said-he-said matter.  But, we suggested, if a prosecutor stepped in, things were suddenly much more serious.  And if a grand jury was convened, all of the cards would be wild and who knows where the story would go. The Greitens story escalated pretty rapidly and Greitens left office to keep things from becoming even more serious, particularly on issues not connected with the first suspicions, and before light was shined on his dark money supporters.

So it was with Bill Webster, son of a powerful state senator; some said he was more powerful than some governors although he was a Republican, which then was the minority party.  Some analysts thought that Dick Webster, who lost a shot at the being attorney general in 1952 and a chance to run for governor four years later, groomed Bill to reach political levels the father never could.  He provided a good part of the money for Bill’s campaigns for state representative in 1980 and ’82. And in 1984 the elder Webster called in a lot of political IOU’s from various special interests for Bill’s attorney general campaign account. Bill was elected to a second term in 1988.  He had his eyes on the governorship in 1992 as a successor to John Ashcroft (Jay’s father).

But Dick Webster did not survive heart surgery in March of 1990.  State Senator Gary Nodler, who took the elder Webster’s seat in the Missouri Senate, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch many years later that the death of the father made the son “more driven to succeed.”

The early news stories by investigative reporter Terry Ganey in the Post-Dispatch centered on the Second Injury Fund which compensated employees whose job-related injuries make an earlier health situation worse.  The early suggestions were that a second-injury fund lawyer in the attorney general’s office also was collecting campaign money for Webster’s run for the governor nomination and that private lawyers hired by Webster were getting bigger judgments for their clients than non-Webster friends.  Webster survived the primary election but his reputation took a hit when his former deputy attorney general and a resort developer who had bought some Webster property pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. Voters took notice and made Webster a big loser in the race with Mel Carnahan in November.

The investigation shifted to Webster’s use of Attorney General employees and equipment for campaign purposes. A corruption charge was dropped against him in return for a guilty plea on two charges using state resources for political campaign purposes. Almost until the unavoidable end, Webster claimed his innocence.  In fact the federal judge in his case, who ran a multiple-day sentencing hearing, gave Webster an hour at the end to consider whether he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea or whether he wanted to accept his sentence.

He went to prison for 21 months, getting out three months early for good conduct.  When he got out, he went to work for Bartlett and Company, a Kansas City agribusiness firm.  As far as we know, he’s still a Vice-President.  Life didn’t take him where once he wanted to go, but he’s done well.

Today, one of his political descendants is being investigated for using public funds while attorney general to support his senatorial campaign.

Josh Hawley, young, charismatic, is seen by some as a shooting star in the Republican Party.  He’s entitled to proclaim his innocence. It’s unfair to assume that he is another Bill Webster despite circumstances reminiscent of twenty-five years ago.  He has his protectors who say the investigation is baseless and shouldn’t go forward, just as Webster had his protectors.  He has his critics who say smoke equals fire, as Webster did.

Time will answer enough questions, one way or another, as it did in 1992 and ‘93. We can wait.

Grasping to retain power, regardless

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We’re watching with interest efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans to limit the power of a newly-elected Democratic governor who will replace Scott Walker.                The New York Times reported yesterday:

“The long list of proposals Republicans want to consider also includes wide efforts to shore up their strength before Tony Evers, the Democrat who beat Gov. Scott Walker last month, takes office: new limits on early voting, a shift in the timing of the 2020 presidential primary in Wisconsin, and new authority for lawmakers on state litigation. The Republican plan would also slash the power of the incoming attorney general, who is also a Democrat…In recent years, single parties have come to dominate state legislatures, allowing lawmakers to make significant policy changes in states even as Washington wrestled with gridlock. But in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democrats regained governor’s offices in capitals that Republicans fully controlled for years, Republicans are making last-minute efforts to weaken their powers…It is a model pioneered in North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers in 2016 tried to restrict the power of the governor after a Democrat was narrowly elected to the post. That set off a bitter court battle that continues to this day.”

There is nothing new in this.  In fact one of the most egregious examples happened here in Missouri. Only then it was Democrats who had controlled the state government including the legislature during the depression in a way that could make today’s two-thirds Republican legislature jealous. The state constitution then in effect required the Speaker of the House to make the official announcement of the election results at the start of the next legislative session so the winners could be inaugurated a few days later.

Governor Lloyd Stark, who had broken with the political boss in Kansas City, Tom Pendergast, could not succeed himself but in the process of what happened after the election he became the longest-serving single-term governor in Missouri history. With the demise of the statewide Pendergast machine, the organization run by St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann became the dominant machine power within the Democratic Party.

Forrest c. Donnell (whose name was pronounced as if it was “Donald” without the “d”) campaigned heavily against Democrat machine politics and beat Lawrence McDaniel, his former Sunday School pupil, by 3,613 votes, the second-closest margin in state history. Democrats retained the other statewide offices.

Two weeks later, Democratic State Committee chairman C. Marion Hulen of Mexico proclaimed there was “an imposing array of reports, evidence of illegal use of large sums of money and of vote buying, of irregular voting and of alleged frauds.”  Another committee member claimed there was enough evidence to show McDaniel had won by 7,500 votes.

When the House convened on January 8, 1941, it passed a resolution barring Speaker Morris Osburn from announcing the results until a ten-member committee (of which six were Democrats) examined the ballots. Attorney General Roy McKittrick, one of those re-elected in November, held such an action was legal.

The committee recommended that Osburn certify the re-election of all of the Democratic candidates but it said Donnell should not be certified because of mistakes and fraudulent voting in the governor’s race.  The Republican committee members called the report a fraud and noted nobody had presented the committee with any evidence of fraud.

Inauguration day was January 13.  But there was no parade, no big event in the rotunda (inaugurations were indoors then), no inaugural ball.  Secretary of State Dwight Brown, Auditor Forrest Smith, and Attorney General McKittrick were sworn in for their third terms at the Supreme Court.  Lieutenant Governor Frank Harris, also a third-termer, took his oath in the state senate chamber because he constitutionally was the President of the Senate. Wilson Bell was sworn in as treasurer for his first term.

Donnell could have been sworn in by a Justice of the Peace (an office later replaced by magistrate judges who were even later replaced by associate circuit judges on the government charts) or some other qualified officer but he rejected the suggestion, saying he wanted to avoid further chaos.  Instead, he went to Jefferson City and asked the Supreme Court to order Osburn to announce him as the winner.

With those actions, Lloyd Stark could not leave office. He was to serve until his successor had been elected and qualified to take over. He was, to put it politely, urinarily agitated.

In what was to have been his final State of the State speech he announced he had vetoed the joint resolution seeking an investigation and said he would not approve spending any money for any such thing. He called for Donnell to be seated as governor and for any dispute about the results to “proceed in a legal and proper manner.”

His fellow democrats, not happy with his position, started an “absolutely bipartisan” recount anyway.  In mid-February the Supreme Court ordered the legislature to declare Donnell governor.  Osborn read the official document on February 20 declaring Donnell the winner.  The Senate majority leader immediately announced that McDaniel would file a declaration contesting the results.

Newspaper editorial writers from both sides of the aisle flayed the Democrats, the Joplin Globe saying “thousands of Democrats” had been “nauseated from the stench from the original office-stealing effort.”

Donnell finally was sworn in on February 26, in the rotunda. Stark, who said he had been “living in a suitcase since January thirteenth,” quickly headed back to St. Louis and his private law practice.

McDaniel’s 226-page election contest petition claimed that a complete recount would show him the winner by 30,000 votes.  State Republican Chairman Charles Ferguson laughed, particularly at the claim that hundreds of non-residents had voted for Donnell in Newton County in southwest Missouri: “It stands to reason that five or six hundred strangers could not show up to vote in a town as small as Neosho and get away with it.”  Neosho’s population that year was 5,318.

Donnell’s response was fifty-thousand words long and accused Democrats of the things they had said his campaign did.

The chairman of the recount committee, Senator Phil M. Donnelly of Lebanon, said the recount would not start until mid-April.   When it did, it was a disaster for McDaniel and the Democrats. By late May reports indicated recounts in eighty-one counties and St. Louis City had ADDED four-thousand votes to Donnell’s total. McDaniel met with Donnelly and agreed to file a letter withdrawing his request for a recount.  He did so without consulting party leaders who had pushed him to demand the recount and who had cooked up the claims of massive Republican vote fraud. McDaniel’s statement later seemed to be a slap at Hulen and his party allies when McDaniel said he had been “misled” by those who claimed he should be declared the winner.

The House and Senate met in joint session and in ten minutes declared the recount over with Donnell the winner.  Because the recount was never completed, his official victory margin remains 3,613 votes.

Democrats paid a heavy price for this escapade.  Several saw the writing on the wall and did not run again in 1942.  Several who did run lost their primary elections and many of those who got through the primaries were whipped in November as Republicans regained control of the House and pulled into a tie in the Senate.

Donnell was succeeded by Senator Donnelly, the senator who led the aborted recount effort. Donnelly later became the first governor to serve two full terms although he had to serve them separately because he was barred from succeeding himself but not prohibited from being governor again.

While Donnell was governor, a constitutional convention was called.  The new constitution, approved after he left office, prevents another effort to “steal” the governor’s election.  It says the Secretary of State, not the Speaker of the House, will certify the winners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The loyal opposition

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The makeup of our congressional and legislative representation was defined yesterday.  Come January, a new political chemistry will be brewed in Washington and in Jefferson City because of the decisions made in thousands of ballot boxes.

Your respectful observer wants to talk about a loser today and what that loser said many years ago about the role of the losing side.

Lynne Olson’s book, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 triggered this interest that was increased by a Kansas City Star editorial found while researching the 1940 election in Missouri.

The loser was Wendell Willkie, a name that rings only faint bells is the minds of most political observers today other than those who know he lost the presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his third term.

A week after the election, Willke went on the radio for a nationwide address. In his speech he borrowed from a phrase created in Britain in 1826—the loyal opposition—and defined it for Americans.

That speech is worth considering in these times because of what opposition has become.

Willkie’s grandson, Wendell Willkie II, wrote of his grandfather in The Atlantic earlier this year that some people have compared his grandfather’s Republican nomination for president to Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016. Both had been Democrats. Both were/are prominent business executives. Neither had held public office. “Each substantially challenged and redefined then-prevailing Republican Party doctrine,” he wrote.  But after that, the two men have profoundly different worldviews:

Willkie is remembered for his optimistic, inspiring vision of America. A thoughtful student of history and economics, he powerfully articulated classically liberal ideals of political and economic freedom.  For all of our nation’s faults, he passionately believed in American exceptionalism. He took on unpopular causes, and battled discrimination and intolerance. But he also believed the world would be a far more dangerous place without American leadership.

Willke was a Republican who fought the New Deal while favoring America’s active support of Britain against Germany—at a time when American isolationism, with Charles Lindbergh as its most prominent advocate and presidential contenders Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft speaking for it, was powerful.

His position in the Republican Party rose when Germany invaded France and other countries and isolationism began to lose public favor. He was nominated on the sixth ballot of the GOP convention.

Republicans were split on intervention in Europe with the America First movement strongly involved with the party.  As Willkie’s grandson put it, “Today, many politicians insist they put country over party, but do little to prove their ultimate loyalties. Willkie was different.”

Britain was in desperate condition and Roosevelt faced stern public opposition to sending military aid to the island and laws forbidding sending military vessels built for Britain’s defense. But this country had some old destroyers not built for that reason that could be transferred.

The plan gained public support but Roosevelt knew it could become a problem for him in the campaign. So he asked Willkie to do something extraordinary.

Olson recounts that Roosevelt sent emissaries to ask Willkie to forego making the destroyer deal a part of his campaign. Willke said he could not make a public statement of support that would deepen splits within his own party but he promised he would not attack the deal after Roosevelt announced it.  “It was astonishing thing to ask of an opponent—to turn his back on a controversial issue that almost certainly would help him politically,” says Olson.

But that’s not all.  The nation was divided despite the obviously growing threat of war on whether the draft should be re-instituted. If Willkie opposed it, isolationist Democrats would join Republicans to block it.   But in August, 1940, Willke announced support for “some form of selective service.”   He later said he would continue to support the draft even if it cost him the election.

Roosevelt won with 27.3 million votes. Willkie had 22.3 million. The Electoral College numbers made the race look like a runaway.  Sam Pryor, Willkie’s Eastern campaign manager, told him afterward, “You could have been president if you had worked with the party organization.”

The Kansas City Star said a day after his Armistice Day radio address a week after the election that it  contained “no bitterness…no narrow partisanship…The main principle that Mr. Willkie desired to impress upon his audience was the high function of a loyal opposition in the American system…It showed…the quality of constructive criticism that the President, as a patriotic American, would do well to take into account in meeting the difficult problems that confront the nation.”

The Star characterized the speech as “an appeal to reason, not to emotion.” We offer his speech to you in these much different times with little hope that recalling it will change the daily rhetorical tragedies that now befall our system, but with some hope that it might mean something useful to somebody, a sad observation of how far our leaders have sunk.

Cooperation but Loyal Opposition

DISCORD AND DISUNITY WILL ARISE IF OPPOSITION IS SUPPRESSED

By WENDELL L. WILLKIE, Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1940

Delivered over the radio, November 11, 1940

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol VII, pp. 103-106

PEOPLE of America: Twenty-two years ago today a great conflict raging on the battlefields of Europe came to an end. The guns were silent. A new era of peace began and for that era the people of our Western World—our democratic world—held the highest hopes.

Those hopes have not been fulfilled. The democratic way of life did not become stronger—it became weaker. The spirit of constitutional government flickered like a dying lamp. And within the last year or so the light from that lamp has disappeared entirely upon the Continent of Europe.

We in America watched darkness fall upon Europe. And as we watched there approached an important time for us—the national election of 1940.

In that election, and in our attitudes after that election, the rest of the world would see an example of democracy in action, an example of a great people faithful to their Constitution and to their elected representatives.

The campaign preceding this election stirred us deeply. Millions upon millions of us who had never been active in politics took part in it. The people flocked to the polling places in greater numbers than ever before in history.

Nearly fifty million people exercised on November 5 the right of the franchise—the precious right which we inherited from our forefathers, and which we must cherish and pass on to future generations.

Thus it came about that although constitutional government had been blotted out elsewhere, here in America men and women kept it triumphantly alive.

No matter which side you were on, on that day, remember that this great, free expression of our faith in the free system of government must have given hope to millions upon millions of others—on the heroic island of Britain—in the ruined cities of France and Belgium—yes, perhaps even to people in Germany and Italy. It has given hope wherever man hopes to be free.

In the campaign preceding this election serious issues were at stake. People became bitter. Many things were said which, in calmer moments, might have been left unsaid or might have been worded more thoughtfully.

But we Americans know that the bitterness is a distortion, not a true reflection, of what is in our hearts. I can truthfully say that there is no bitterness in mine. I hope there is none in yours.

We have elected Franklin Roosevelt President. He is your President. He is my President. We all of us owe him the respect due to his high office. We give him that respect. We will support him with our best efforts for our country. And we pray that God may guide his hand during the next four years in the supreme task of administering the affairs of the people.

It is a fundamental principle of the democratic system that the majority rules. The function of the minority, however, is equally fundamental. It is about the function of that minority—22,000,000 people, nearly half of our electorate— that I wish to talk to you tonight.

A vital element in the balanced operation of democracy is a strong, alert and watchful opposition. That is our task for the next four years. We must constitute ourselves a vigorous, loyal and public-spirited opposition party.

It has been suggested that in order to present a united front to a threatening world the minority should now surrender its convictions and join the majority. This would mean that in the United States of America there would be only one dominant party—only one economic philosophy—only one political philosophy of life. This is a totalitarian idea—it is a slave idea—it must be rejected utterly.

The British people are unified with a unity almost unexampled in history for its endurance and its valor. Yet that unity coexists with an unimpaired freedom of criticism and of suggestion.

In the continual debates of the House of Commons and the House of Lords all of the government’s policies, its taxation, its expenditures, its military and naval policies, its basic economic policies are brought under steady, friendly, loyal critical review. Britain survives free. Let us Americans choose no lesser freedom.

In Britain some opposition party leaders are members of the government and some say that a similar device should be adopted here. That is a false conception of our government. When a leader of the British Liberal party or a member of the British Labor party becomes a member of the Churchill Cabinet he becomes—from the British parliamentary point of view—an equal of Mr. Churchill’s.

This is because the British Cabinet is a committee of the House of Parliament. It is a committee of equals, wherein the Prime Minister is chairman, a lofty chairman indeed and yet but a chairman. The other members are his colleagues.

With us the situation, as you well know, is different. Our executive branch is not a committee of our legislative branch. Our President is independent of our Congress. The members of his Cabinet are not his colleagues. They are his administrative subordinates. They are subject to his orders.

An American President could fill his whole Cabinet with leaders of the opposition party and still our administration would not be a two-party administration. It would be an administration of a majority President giving orders to minority representatives of his own choosing. These representatives must concur in the President’s convictions. If they do not they have no alternative except to resign.

Clearly no such device as this can give us in this country any self-respecting agreement between majority and minority for concerted effort toward the national welfare. Such a plan for us would be but the shadow—not the substance—of unity.

Our American unity cannot be made with words or with gestures. It must be forged between the ideas of the opposition and the practices and policies of the Administration. Ours is a government of principles, and not one merely of men. Any member of the minority party, though willing to die for his country, still retains the right to criticize the policies of the government. This right is imbedded in our constitutional system.

We, who stand ready to serve our country behind our Commander-in-Chief, nevertheless retain the right, and I will say the duty, to debate the course of our government. Ours is a two-party system. Should we ever permit one party to dominate our lives entirely, democracy would collapse and we would have dictatorship.

Therefore, to you who have so sincerely given yourselves to this cause, which you chose me to lead, I say: “Your function during the next four years is that of the loyal opposition.” You believe deeply in the principles that we stood for in the recent election. And principles are not like foot-ball suits to be put on in order to play a game and then taken off when the game is over.

It is your Constitutional duty to debate the policies of this or any other administration and to express yourselves freely and openly to those who represent you in your State and national government.

Let me raise a single warning. Ours is a very powerful opposition. On November 5 we were a minority by only a few million votes. Let us not, therefore, fall into the partisan error of opposing things just for the sake of opposition. Ours must not be an opposition against—it must be an opposition for—an opposition for a strong America, a productive America. For only the productive can be strong and only the strong can be free.

Now let me however remind you of some of the principles for which we fought and which we hold as sincerely today as we did yesterday.

We do not believe in unlimited spending of borrowed money by the Federal government—the piling up of bureaucracy—the control of our electorate by political machines, however successful—the usurpation of powers reserved to Congress—the subjugation of the courts—the concentration of enormous authority in the hands of the Executive—the discouragement of enterprise—and the continuance of economic dependence for millions of our citizens upon government. Nor do we believe in verbal provocation to war.

On the other hand we stand for a free America—an America of opportunity created by the enterprise and imagination of its citizens. We believe that this is the only kind of an America in which democracy can in the long run exist. This is the only kind of an America that offers hope for our youth and expanding life for all our people.

Under our philosophy, the primary purpose of government is to serve its people and to keep them from hurting one another. For this reason our Federal Government has regulatory laws and commissions.

For this reason we must fight for the rights of labor, for assistance to the farmer, and for protection for the unemployed, the aged and the physically handicapped.

But while our government must thus regulate and protect us, it must not dominate our lives. We, the people, are the masters. We, the people, must build this country. And we, the people, must hold our elected representatives responsible to us for the care they take of our national credit, our democratic institutions and the fundamental laws of our land.

It is in the light of these principles, and not of petty partisan politics, that our opposition must be conducted. Itis in the light of these principles that we must join in debate, without selfishness and without fear.

Let me take as an example the danger that threatens us through our national debt.

Two days after the election, this Administration recommended that the national debt limit be increased from $49,000,000,000 to $65,000,000,000.

Immediately after that announcement, prices on the New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges jumped sharply upward. This was not a sign of health, but a sign of fever. Those who are familiar with these things agree unanimously that the announcement of the Treasury indicated a danger —sooner or later—of inflation.

Now you all know what inflation means. You have lately watched its poisonous course in Europe. It means a rapid decline in the purchasing power of money—a decline in what the dollar will buy. Stated the other way round, inflation means a rise in the price of everything—food, rent, clothing, amusements, automobiles—necessities and luxuries. Invariably these prices rise faster than wages, with the result that the workers suffer and the standard of living declines.

Nor no man is wise enough to say exactly how big the national debt can become, before causing serious inflation. But some sort of limit certainly exists, beyond which lies financial chaos. Such chaos would inevitably mean the loss of our social gains, the destruction of our savings, the ruin of every little property owner, and the creation of vast unemployment and hardships. It would mean, finally, the rise of dictatorship. Those have been the results of financial collapse in every country in the history of the world. The only way that we can avoid them is to remain sound and solvent.

It is not incumbent upon any American to remain silent concerning such a danger. I shall not be silent and I hope you will not be. This is one of your functions as a member of the minority. But in fulfilling our duties as an opposition party we must be careful to be constructive. We must help to show the way.

Thus, in order to counteract the threat of inflation and to correct some of our economic errors, I see five steps for our government to take immediately.

First, all Federal expenditures except those for national defense and necessary relief ought to be cut to the bone and below the bone. Work relief, obviously, has to be maintained, but every effort should be made to substitute for relief productive jobs.

Second, the building of new plants and new machinery for the defense program should be accomplished as far as possible by private capital. There should be no nationalization under the guise of defense of any American industry with a consequent outlay of Federal funds.

Third, taxes should be levied so as to approach as nearly as possible the pay-as-you-go plan. Obviously, we cannot hope to pay for all the defense program as we go. But we must do our best. That is part of the sacrifice that we must make to defend this democracy.

Fourth—Taxes and government restrictions should be adjusted to take the brakes off private enterprise so as to give it freedom under wise regulation, to release new investments and new energies and thus to increase the national income. I do not believe we can hope to bear the debt and taxes arising out of this defense program with a national income of less than one hundred billion-dollars—our present national income is only $70,000,000,000—unless we lower the standard of living of every man and woman who works. But if we can increase our national income to $100,000,000,000 we can pay for this defense program out of the increase produced if we free private enterprise—not for profiteering but for natural development.

Fifth, and finally, our government must change its punitive attitude toward both little and big businessmen. Regulations there must be—we of the opposition have consistently recommended that. But the day of witch hunting must be over.

If this administration has the unity of America really at heart it must consider without prejudice and with an open mind such recommendations of the opposition.

National unity can only be achieved by recognizing and giving serious weight to the viewpoint of the opposition. Such a policy can come only from the administration itself. It will be from the suppression of the opposition that discord and disunity will arise. The administration has the ultimate power to force us apart or to bind us together.

And now a word about the most important immediate task that confronts this nation. On this, all Americans are of one purpose. There is no disagreement among us about the defense of America. We stand united behind the defense program. But here particularly, as a minority party, our role is an important one. It is to be constantly watchful to see that America is effectively safeguarded and that the vast expenditure of funds which we have voted for that purpose is not wasted.

And in so far as I have the privilege to speak to you, I express once more the hope that we help to maintain the rim of freedom in Britain and elsewhere by supplying those defenders with materials and equipment. This should be done to the limit of our ability but with due regard to our own defense.

On this point, I think I can say without boast, that never in the history of American Presidential campaigns has a candidate gone further than I did in attempting to create a united front.

However, I believe that our aid should be given by constitutional methods and with the approval, accord and ratification of Congress. Only thus can the people determine from time to time the course they wish to take and the hazards they wish to run.

Mr. Roosevelt and I both promised the people in the course of the campaign that if we were elected we would keep this country out of war unless attacked. Mr. Roosevelt was re-elected and this solemn pledge for him I know will be fulfilled, and I know the American people desire him to keep it sacred.

Since November 5 I have received thousands and thousands of letters—tens of thousands of them. I have personally read a great portion of these communications. I am profoundly touched. They come from all parts of our country and from all kinds of people. They come from Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Christians, colored people and white people. They come from workers and farmers and clerks and businessmen—men and women of all the occupations that make up our American life.

All of these letters and telegrams, almost without exception, urge that the cause that we have been fighting for be carried on.

In your enthusiasm for our cause you founded thousands of organizations. They are your own organizations, financed by you and directed by you. It is appropriate for you to continue them if you feel so inclined. I hope you do continue them. It is not, however, appropriate to continue these organizations in my name. I do not want this great cause to be weakened by even a semblance of any personal advantage to any individual. I feel too deeply about it for that; 1944 will take care of itself. It is of the very essence of my belief that democracy is fruitful of leadership.

I want to see all of us dedicate ourselves to the principles for which we fought. My fight for those principles has just begun. I shall advocate them in the future as ardently and as confidently as I have in the past. As Woodrow Wilson once said: “I would rather lose in a cause that I know someday will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.”

Whatever I may undertake in the coming years, I shall be working shoulder to shoulder with you for the defense of our free way of life, for the better understanding of our economic system and for the development of that new America whose vision lies within every one of us.

Meanwhile, let us be proud, let us be happy in the fight that we have made. We have brought our cause to the attention of the world. Millions have welcomed it. As time goes on millions more will find in it the hope that they are looking for. We can go on from here with the words of Abraham Lincoln in our hearts:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Good night. And God bless and keep every one of you.

(Photo credit: TheAtlantic.com)

                       

Notes from a quiet street—elections issue

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A week from today is elections day.  We look forward to elections days for the wrong reasons.  Instead of being excited about taking part in the voting process we are excited because it’s the end of that interminable period when our intelligence is assaulted 30 seconds at a time—all the time, it seems, on the television.

—and when our mailboxes are stuffed with mailers of questionable veracity usually provided by people without the courtesy or the courage to admit they paid for the appropriately-named junk mail.

Interestingly, at the end of the day, a lot of people will transfer from being the kind of people they campaigned against to being those people. And what will they do to correct the impressions their voters have about government?

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We have been interested in some of the reasons various groups don’t want us to vote for a new system of drawing legislative districts after the 2020 census.  One side says it would be a mistake to let the state demographer (a person who spends his or her life analyzing population and population trends) draw new districts because they’ll just use statistics and will come up with districts that are more gerrymandered that some districts from the last go-around.  Others worry that letting the demographer draw the districts will weaken the political power of this or that group.   We must have been mistaken all these years because we thought reapportionment dealt with representation rather than power. Silly us.

Could it be that the state demographer won’t care if two legislative incumbents wind up in the same district instead of benefitting from a process that is suspected of protecting incumbents or at least their party majorities?  As far as the demographer coming up with screwball districts, surely that person couldn’t do worse than the creation of the present Fifth Congressional District that I dubbed the “dead lizard” district after the last congressional redistricting (it looks like a dead lizard lying on its back with its feet in the air) that has a former Mayor of Kansas City representing a rural area as far east as Marshall.

What the heck.  We can always change the constitution back to the present system if the legislative districts after the 2020 census are as bad as some interest groups forecast they will be, can’t we?

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Elections almost always have issues created by petition campaigns.  It’s an important freedom we have as citizens to propose laws or to ask for a statewide vote on something the legislature did that raises questions in the minds of enough people that they want citizens to have the final say.  But that freedom can carry with it unintended consequences because petitions don’t go through the refining process of legislative committee hearings, debates, votes, and compromises where possible.   Of course the legislature sometimes fumbles an issue and in both cases ballot issues can be issues financially backed by a special interest if not an individual.

Voters have an often-overlooked responsibility to get out the spy glass and read all the fine print in the election legal notices.  We haven’t talked to very many folks who have done that. So we get what we get and the courts often have to figure out what we got regardless of what we thought we were getting.

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The best part of election day is that all of the junk mail campaign propaganda that goes straight to our waste baskets will be replaced by Christmas catalogues.  We prefer Christmas catalogs for several reasons.  They don’t forecast national or international catastrophes if we buy something offered by another catalog.  They usually are honest about their products (the pictures usually are more accurate than the pictures of the hamburgers at fast foot joints). We have never gotten an L. L. Bean catalogue that suggests the products in a Land’s End catalogue are dangerous to our well-being because of who wears them or because of who the wearers hang out with.

And they don’t proclaim exclusive knowledge of what our “values” are.  The Vermont Country Store is filled with traditional values—soap on a rope, Adams Clove chewing gum, old-fashioned popcorn makers or hand-cranked ice-cream makers, or dresses whose styles are timeless.  Coldwater Creek is for people whose values tend toward the stylish with a little “bling” thrown in.   We have yet to see the Vermont Country Store catalogue that says the Coldwater Creek catalogue is too liberal to be good for us.

In short, the catalogues have a lot more things that we will buy than most of the campaign junk mail that winds up in landfills instead of recycle bins.

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Jefferson City is building a new fire station, replacing an older one in the east end of town (the building will be for sale, by the way, in case you want a unique home, assuming you can get a zoning change).  News of the planned sale of the old fire house brings to mind our old friend Derry Brownfield, who used to occasionally remind us why fire engines are red:

“Because they have eight wheels and four people on them, and four plus eight is 12, and there are 12 inches in a foot, and one foot is a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was also a ship, and the ship sailed the seas, and in the seas are fish, and fish have fins, and the Finns fought the Russians, and the Russians are red, and fire trucks are always ‘russian’ around.”

Uh-huh.

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Go vote next Tuesday.  Do yourself and your state a favor and spend the next seven days with your reading glass studying all that fine print.

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Sounding the bugle call to public office

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—and why it’s a good idea to know who’s blowing it and how.

We pause this week in our reveries about Africa as we reach the halfway point between the primary election and the general election to share a story that we hope reminds voters that it is wise to be careful about all of the rhetorical horn blowing that is part of today’s campaigns.

Your faithful observer and listener once heard Hughes Rudd tell the story, “Bugle Call of a Georgia Mule,” at an economic development conference at the old Ramada Inn in Jefferson City. This was in the early to mid-1970s.

Rudd (in this old CBS News photo) was a Texas-born fellow who still had a pronounced Texas twang in his gravelly voice as he told stories on newscasts, commentaries, and on the speaking circuit.  He was called by various observers “bright and bristly,” or “deft (and) sardonic,” or “puckish (and) curmudgeonly.”  He achieved his greatest popularity as a correspondent for CBS and then for ABC. He used to finish his daily newscasts with two-minute commentaries that Ted Koppel referred to as “evenhanded malice.”

Rudd didn’t read the news. He told news stories. And that’s why he was so popular. Rudd, who died at the age of 71 in 1992, had come north to study journalism at the University of Missouri but quit after three years to join the Army Air Corps early in World War II.  He had 20/40 vision in one eye so the AAC sent him to the regular Army where he became a spotter pilot for artillery batteries.

Somebody, somewhere (maybe Rudd for all I know), wrote the story I heard Hughes Rudd tell that day in Jefferson City to an audience that became increasingly amused as the story went along.  We pass it along to remind political candidates they’d best know what they’re talking about.

One fine Georgia evening a Mrs. George Wood, now deceased, called a Dr. Marvin Satterfield, a veterinarian in Hardwicke, from her home in Bryan County. It was about her mule, Horace.  She was upset and said, “Doctor, Horace is sick and I wish you would come out and take a look at him.”

The sun was setting, but there was still plenty of daylight to see by.  After asking a few questions and hearing the answers, Dr. Satterfield said, ”It’s after six o’clock and I’m eating supper.  Give him a dose of mineral oil and if he isn’t all right in the morning, phone me and I’ll come and take a look at your mule. 

She wanted to know how to give the mule the oil so the doctor said it should be through a funnel.  Mrs. Wood protested that the mule might bite her. Then Dr. Satterfield, a bit exasperated, said, “You’re a farm woman and you should know about these things.  Give it to him in the other end.’ 

Mrs. Wood went down to the barn and there stood Horace, moaning and groaning and banging his head. He certainly looked sick.  She searched for a funnel, but the nearest thing she could find was her Uncle Bill’s fox hunting horn hanging on the wall. It was a beautiful gold-plated instrument with silver tassels. She took the horn and affixed it properly.  Horace paid no attention so she was encouraged.

Then, she reached up on the shelf where the farm medicines were kept. Instead of picking up the mineral oil, nervously, she grabbed a bottle of turpentine and poured a liberal dose of it into the horn.

Horace’s head shot up with a sudden jerk and he stood dead still at attention for maybe three seconds.   Then he let out a bellow that could be heard a mile down the road.  He reared up on his hind legs, brought his front legs down, knocked out one side of the barn, cleared a five-foot fence, and started down the road at a mad gallop.  Since Horace was loaded with gas, every few jumps he made, the horn would blow.

All the hounds in the neighborhood knew when the horn was blowing, it meant Uncle Bill was going foxhunting. So out on the road they went, following close behind Horace the mule.

People who witnessed the chase said it was an unforgettable sight. First Horace, running at top speed with a horn in a most unusual position, the mellow notes issuing therefrom, the silver tassels waving and the dogs barking joyously.

They passed the home of old man Harvey Hogan, who was sitting on his front porch. It was said that Mr. Hogan had not drawn a sober breath in 15 years.  He gazed in fascinated amazement at the sight before his eyes. Up until this day he hasn’t touched another drop.

By this time, it was good and dark. Horace and the dogs were coming to the Intracoastal Waterway.  The bridge tender heard the horn blowing frantically and figured that a fast boat was approaching.  He hurriedly went out and cranked up the bridge. Horace went kerplunk into the water and drowned.  The pack of dogs went into the water, too. They all swam out without much difficulty.

What makes the story doubly interesting is that the bridge tender was also the sheriff of Bryan County and was running for re-election at the time.  When the election day came, he managed to get only seven votes and those were from kinfolks.

Those who took the trouble to analyze the election said the people figured any man who didn’t know the difference between a mule with a fox horn up his caboose and a boat coming down the Intracoastal Waterway wasn’t fit to hold public office anyway.  

That’s the story Hughes Rudd told that day in Jefferson City.  We offer it in this campaign season to those who think they have heard a bugle call to public service.  We guess citizens will be the ones who decide which end of the mule summoned the candidate to the ballot and will vote accordingly.