Category Archives: government

This One Joins Legendary Defenses

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But this time it didn’t work.  REALLY didn’t work.

The story has been told that one of Missouri’s colorful early lawyers once had a client who had been accused of libeling another person. In his closing argument, the lawyer told the jury his client could not be found guilty of libel because he was such an inveterate liar that nobody would believe him and since nobody would believe anything he said, his remarks could not have slandered the plaintiff.

The story says the jury was sympathetic to that plea and the liar was found not guilty.

Such an argument came to mind a few days ago while listening and watching and reading of of the defense attorney for Rudy Giuliani in Giuliani’s trial for defaming two Georgia women with his lies about the 2020 election. He  had said he would take the stand in his own defense and prove that everything he had said was true. His attorney did not let him testify.

The defense, in the end, was an effort to evoke sympathy from the jury for the day’s equivalent of Missour’s 19th Century liar.  Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, told jurors, “We made the decision not to have my client testify because these women have been through enough. These women were victims and, as the court has ruled, my client has committed wrongf ul actions against them.”

Sibley might have made some jurors’ jaws mentall drop when he said, “I have no doubt that Mr. Giuliani’s statements caused harm; no question about it. But just because these things happened, it doesn’t make my client responsible for them.”

!!!!!!!!!!!!

“When you see my client’s state of mind, you’re going to say, ‘You should have been better but weren’t as bad as the plaintiff’s make you out to be,” Sibley said, because, “Rudy Giuliani is a good man.  I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days. The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s a really low blow. That’s not who he is. He overcame negative stereotypes.” .

“I know he’s done things that are wrong. I know these women have been harmed. I’m not asking for a hall pass on that,” Sibley said. But damages had to be “in some way tied to what the actual damages are.”  They had to be “more closely related to the actual damage number.”

And just what would be that “actual number?”

Sibley pleaded for the jury to have mercy on Giuliani, whom he described as a “flat earther” who would never quit believing  his own lies. Sibley harkened back to the days when “America’s Mayor” was a unifying force in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. “This is a man who did great things. If he hasn’t been so great lately, I want you to judge him by the entire character of who he is.”

Let’s add some context to this:  Twenty-five years ago, a prominent Democrat was accused of (pardon the vulgarity here) diddling an intern.  Bill Clinton said, “There’s nothing going on between us,” to his top aides. When a grand jury asked him a question to the effect, “Is there anything between you and Miss Lewinski, Clinton answered with this masterpiece of gold-medal verbal gymnastics:

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is…If ‘is’ means is and never has been…that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement…Now if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relatons with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no and it would have been completely true.”

If there ever were created an Encyclopedia of Jabberwockey, the statements of Bill Clinton and Joseph Sibley would have to be featured.

Giuliani was Giuliani after the jury nailed him with a $148 million judgement: “The absurdity of the number really underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding. I am quite confident that when this case gets before a fair tribunal, it will be reversed so quickly it’ll make your head spin. The absurd number that just came in will help that, actually.”

It would not be surprising if an appeals court reduces the damage awards; they sometimes do that while upholding the defamation judgment.

Regardless of what happens on appeal, this jury sent a message to others who have espoused the “stolen election” lie and who are facing their own defamation suits from voting machine companies and from other election workers. They should be very nervous.

If reports are true, Giuliani has little money and many creditors.  Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss might see little or no cash.  But they have received justice.  Whether they ever can get their lives back, though, is questionable.

Is there any amount that could make these women whole again?  Ruby Freeman says people with bullhorns standing outside the house where she had lived for 20 years, shouting racist insults, have forced her to leave  her house and move time and again, her belongings in her car.

Shaye Moss said she’s afraid to leave house, fears being lynched, and that she’s received death threats repeatedly.

Sibley urged the jury to “send a messge to America that we can come together with compassion and sympathy. And I think we need that.”

Let’s just hold hands and sing Kum by ya, in other words. Shaye and Ruby can lead it off.

Giuliani’s state of mind.  We’re so tired of hearing the word “unhinged” used for him and for his leader and others in that merry band, but we don’t have hours to spend with the big dictionary at the back of the classroom to find a better one.

How did it reach this point?  How could a great man in 2001 fall so far in less than twenty years?

We have referred in a past column to Giuliani as the most pitiful person in American politics. He is likely to stand in history as a great example of the dangers of falling in thrall to a person of no morals, of no respect  for anyone else, of no goal but power. It is telling that Giuliani’s Pied Piper has never shown on his own social platform or political stages any responsibility for the actions taken by Giuliani on behalf of his leader.

It is possible to have pity on someone but have no sympathy for them.  What he and his leader have done to these women, to many others, and to the nation itself deserves stern judgement. The jury has inflicted what Sibley has called a financial “death penalty” on Giuliani. So be it.  He has never personally asked for mercy; he has, in fact,  shown no remorse for what these people have gone through because of his words and has blamed others for what he has said. He threw gasoline on his own fire during the trial when he told reporters , “Everything I said about them is true,” and he reiterated that the women “were engaged in changing votes,” remarks that the judge suggested could lead to another defamation lawsuit.

After the verdict Giuliani remained defiant—”I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said. So much for coming together with compassion and sympathy.

This is why we have jury trials.  A dozen people who struggle to achieve justice from injustice is one of the greatest parts of our democratic system. There are plaintiffs and there are defendants. And then there are the heroes of our democracy, the jurors.

The Governor and the Book

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I see that Governor Parson has written a book.  It will be released next March but some excerpts have been made available to the press.  He calls it No Turnin’ Back.

I look forward to buying one.  Maybe he’ll have a signing at Downtown Book & Toy. I’ll be near the front of the line, I hope.  Ernie and Hazel, the bookstore cats, probably will have to be locked away because the line is likely to stretch a good distance down High Street.

It’s going to be a historic book because Mike Parson has been a central figure during some major points of history.  He came into statewide office as Lt. Governor, set to fill the role as Senate President and preside over the chamber in which he had just served eight years, while Eric Greitens careened throughout the capitol as a governor who antagonized most of the people he needed to make into allies.

Then came the historic day when Greitens announced his resignation as governor, getting out of town before he could be run out of town.  Suddenly Mike Parson—who was tending to his cattle on his southwest Missouri farm that day—became THE top guy in state government.

Then Covid hit. And for stress-laden month after month, Parson had to steer the state through shortages, uncertainties, and deaths.

We haven’t asked him but we have asked several former governors about the toughest decisions they had to make.  The most frequent answer has been that it was the decision to allow an execution to go ahead.

No governor serves without making mistakes. Some are mistakes they know pretty quickly they made. Others will emerge with the passage of time that places conduct within context. We don’t have much doubt that Governor Paron will recognize what he could have done differently or done better.  But at the time, somebody had to do something, and once done there is no turning back, which is why the title is appropriate.

I wish more governors had done what he is doing. History will paint its own picture. But self-portraits have value, too.

Jim Spainhower, who was a former State Representative and later a two-term State Treasurer and a 1980 primary election challenger to Joe Teasdale, was also a minister of my denomination, the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ.  He wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.

He told me when my first book was published, “Now you can start your prayers by saying ‘Oh though who also hast written a book.’”

Mike Parson is a man of faith, as you will hear if you click on the two-parts of an interview Ashley Byrd of the Missourinet did with him.  He, too, will soon be able to begin his prayers with those words.

Maybe we’ll greet each other at the book-signing with those words.

He talks with the Missourinet’s Ashley Byrd about the book and about his life and his governorship on these links:

Gov. Parson writes autobiography, but not to prepare a run for another office (LISTEN TO INTERVIEW PT. 1) – Missourinet

Gov. Parson: This office is not about yourself, it’s a much higher calling than your last name (LISTEN – PT 2 INTERVIEW) – Missourinet

(We thank our friends at The Missourinet for the photo.)

Values 

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It’s easy to get irritated by somebody who claims their values are somehow universal and by reference also must be my values if I am to be a good American or a good Christian, or a good something that only they can judge.

This has been going on for a long time in our political system.  The most prominent promoters of this presumption today are those labeled White Christian Nationalists.  They seem to have superseded so-called Evangelicals in their oppressive assumptions that they are righteously entitled to set a moral tone for me and for my nation.  Some folks combine the two into Evangelical White Christian Nationalists.

This issue has come up in recent days with a letter that Rep. Chris Dinkins, the Majority (Republican) Caucus Chair in the Missouri House, sent to Governor Parson that begins “I am writing to bring your attention to a matter of great concern regarding the resettlement of refugees from Gaza in our state. As a dedicated representative of the people of Missouri, I believe it is crucial to take a proactive stance on this issue and safeguard the well-being and safety of our citizens.”

She wants to keep people out “whose beliefs systems are rooted in anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments.”

She continued later, “Our state has a responsibility to protect its citizens and uphold the values that define us as Americans.”

Just what values is she talking about? “We cannot afford to compromise the safety and security of Missourians by allowing the potential entry of individuals who may harbor hostility towards our nation and its allies,” she says.

Potential entry?  Individuals who may harbor hostilities?  (Actually, the correct word to use in this circumstance is “might.”  As used to teach my reporters, might is prospective; may is permissive.  You might hit me in the nose but you may not.)

The kind of rhetoric in her letter is abhorrent.  We already have a gutful of this kind of conspiracy garbage from a presidential candidate who wants us to think all of those crossing our southern border are fentanyl-carrying killers, thieves, and rapists.

The timing of her letter is atrocious, coming about the same time three Palestinian students were shot while walking down the street near the University of Vermont in Burlington.  Police say two of them are United States citizens and the third is a legal resident of the United States. They were speaking Arabic and two of them were wearing keffiyehs, a headdress worn by Palestinians.

We will learn, eventually, if their shooter thought he should take action against “individuals who may harbor hostility toward our nation.”

What are our national values today? Are they such that we should remove the Statue of Liberty and Emma Lazurus’ invitation to send us the tired and the poor, the wretched refuse of other lands, those yearning to breathe free, the homeless and the tempest-tossed?

Many of those we idealistically have said are welcome are now stereotyped by politicians who seek success by fueling distrust and hate toward people who are not that much different from our own ancestors just a few generations ago.

Rep. Dinkins has ambitions for higher political office in 2024.  Perhaps she should publish a supplement to the letter she released online that outlines in specific and detailed form what she thinks are my values as an American citizen—and what your values have to be to be a good American citizen.

Governor Parson is on the wrong side of Dinkins’ values on this issue, and so, I hope, are most Missourians and Americans.  He wasted no time in throwing her proposal in the ash can, telling reporters, “You don’t have the authority to do that to start off with. I mean, anybody’s been around a little bit, the federal government can place refugees anywhere they want to without asking your permission. First of all, there’s this big difference between Palestinian people, and the people of Hamas. Hamas are terrorist groups that attack our country and hate who we are. We don’t want them here. But I don’t think you want to take everybody that’s from Palestine to make them as bad people. I don’t know that.”

There’s another prominent figure whose recent remarks put people like Dinkins in their places. Bill Bradley, the Crystal City native whose basketball exploits in high school and college led to a ten-year career in the NBA (that was delayed by more two years while he was a Rhodes Scholar and then in the Air Force Reserve) and three-terms as a U. S. Senator from New Jersey.

Our friend, Tony Messenger, wrote in his November 23 Post-Dispatch column about remarks Bradley gave during the Musial Awards event in St. Louis a few days earlier when Bradley received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the organization that promotes humanity and sportsmanship—

“Never look down on people you don’t understand.”

Tony noted the comment came four days after the St. Charles County Council considered a resolution opposing the International Institute’s program to make the St. Louis metro area a destination for certain Hispanic immigrants. The council did not take action.

The St. Louis metro area has been a haven for many immigrants including large numbers of Germans, Italians, and Irish people in the 19th Century whose cultures still thrive in that city—te German culture spreading well into the heart of the state. More recently, St. Louis has opened its arms to those fleeing from Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Ukraine in addition to many coming from Latin America.

Kansas City also has been a magnet for immigrants. In fact, it has the Greater Kansas City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce which works in eight counties on both sides of the state line and bills itself as “the birthplace of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (in) Washington, D.C.”

The immigration story of the St. Louis area and all of Missouri started even earlier than the 19th century. When Spain controlled Missouri, it welcomed French Canadian immigrants who were central to the defeat of an invading British force that convinced Native Americans it was in their best interests to try to capture St. Louis in 1780.  French citizens in Spanish St. Louis defeated that force in what is the westernmost battle of the American Revolution.

The Spanish government in control of what is now Missouri also invited another group to migrate here.

Americans.

George Morgan, a Philadelphia merchant and entrepreneur, was invited by the Spanish Crown in 1788 to create a colony on the west bank of the Mississippi River.  A couple of years later he created the town of New Madrid.

Some of the early American immigrants who came here were illegal aliens: Protestants, practicing a faith that was once illegal in Catholic Spanish Missouri.  Protestant ministers from the Illinois country used to cross the Mississippi under cover of night and provide services in darkened Missouri homes.

Tony concluded is column, “It is heartbreaking that officials would now look down on such immigrants — the latest chapter in another generation of an American journey. Once a year, the Musial Awards help remind us that it is our shared humanity that makes us great. This year, a big man from a small town in Missouri gave us the words that should echo in our heads, as we move from one political crisis to another. The solution that escapes us is more often than not to treat those with whom we disagree with respect and understanding.”

I want to add this from Vine DeLoria who wrote the best-seller decades ago, Custer Died for Your Sins: an Indian Manifesto:

“The understanding of the racial question does not ulti­mately involve understanding by either blacks or Indians. It in­volves the white man himself. He must examine his past. He must face the problems he has created within himself and within others. The white man must no longer project his fears and in­ securities onto other groups, races, and countries. Before the white man can relate to others he must forego the pleasure of denying them. The white man must learn to stop viewing history as a plot against himself.”

We wonder what Chris Dinkins would say to Bill Bradley.

Bill Bradley was and All-American as a college basketball player.  His example as an All-American in deed as well as in word is the value worth having. It is those who follow the Dinkins/MAGA ideal who are the aliens to the American spirit.

 

Sixty Years

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I still find it awkward to tell people, “Fifty years ago…..” and then tell them what I remember from that time.

Sixty years ago today, I had been the producer of the noon news at KOMU-TV.  I was in graduate school at the University of Missouri and working as a graduate assistant instructor in the radio newscasting class which also involved being the assistant news director at KFRU Radio, anchoring some of the student-wrtiten newscasts on that station (this was before the Journalism School created KBIA where some students get their first taste of broadcast newswritig and anchoring), so I couldn’t anchor at Channel 8.  So I produced the noon newscast that reported President Kennedy had gone to Texas to assure Texans that he was not going to dump Lydon Johnson as his running mate in 1964.

We left the station at 12:30, about the time shots rang out at Dealy Plaza in Dallas.

When I walked through the front door of the rooming house at 508 S. Ninth Street (now one of at least three houses in which I lived that are now gone), one of the guys upstairs shouted down, “Is that Priddy?”

“Yeah.”

“You getter get up here! The President’s been shot!”

The people upstairs had been listening to KFRU and had heard ABC’s Don Gardiner break in with the first word of the shooting.   Most commemorations of the event today focus on Walter Cronkite and CBS-TV.  But it was Don Gardiner, normally the morning news voice on WABC in New York, who interrupting a middle of the road music show from WABC that was fed down the network between network news programs.

(105) JFK’S ASSASSINATION (ABC RADIO NETWORK) (NOVEMBER 22, 1963) – YouTube

Gardiner’s first bulletin about 12:33 p.m. CST came from United Press International correspondent Merriman Smith who was in the fifth car behind the presidential limousine as it moved from Dallas’ Love Field toward the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was to deliver a luncheon speech.

Nick George, who is announced early in the broadcast as the New York Editor for ABC, later became a teacher at the journalism school and was an influential figure in the development of some early Missourinet reporters.

As you will hear, events unfolded quickly and the reporters—mainly Smith and AP’s Jack Bell .

In 1963, reporting from remote sites was, to say the least by today’s standards, extremely primitive.

The White House press pool reporter’s car had a radiotelephone in it, the only mobile phone available to the 58 reporters in the pool. Pool reporters rotated from the back seat to the front and it ws Smith’s day in front.  Smith grabbed the radiotelephone and dictated a FLASH (the highest priority item to go out on the wire service) to Dallas UPI Bureau rookie Wilborn Hampton, who typed it into the distribution teletype machine, showed it to his editor, Jack Fallon, who shouted, “Send it!”

UPI sent it out at 12:34:

“DALLAS, NOV. 22 (UPI) – THREE SHOTS FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS.”

As the word went out and Gardiner started his broadcast, Smith was crouched in the front seat of the car while the AP’s bell was beating on his back and demanding, “Give me the goddamn phone!”  But Smith wouldn’t give it up and continued to give information to the bureau.  “On a story of this magnitude,” Smith later said, “I was not about to let it go until I new the office had it all.”

It took six minutes to get to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Smith gave the phone to Bell who called the Dallas AP burau—and couldn’t get through.  Smith ran up to the presidential limousine where he saw Texas Governor John Connally wounded. “I could not see the president’s wound. But I could see blood spattered around the interior of the rear seat and a dark stain spreading down the right side of the president’s dark gray suit.”

Smith turned to Clint Hill, the Secret Service officer who was in the followup far and ran to the presidential limousine, jumped on the back and shielded Mrs. Kennedy with his body as the car sped to thehospital, and asked, “How bad was he hit, Clint.”

“He’s dead, Smitty,” said Hill.  Smith dashed into the hospital, took a telephone from a room clerk and started dictating the information you will hear Gardiner pass along to listeners that day. Most of what you hear Gardiner reporting is based on Smith’s coverage.

UPI ran another FLASH at 1:35 that Kennedy had been declared dead.  AP was two minutes behind.

The event was an important one for radio and particularly for television.  For the first hours, the story belonged to radio.  Newspapers already had gone to press for their afternoon editions. Several put out bulleting editions.  But in the early going, the story belonged to radio.

We had no satellites to relay the story as it unfolded.  There were telephones and wire services and that was all there was. Television relied on film that had to be shot and developed, mostly black and white (because color television was just beginning) and often not even processed as positive images.  We would shoot silent negative film and the television control room could electronically reverse the polarity of the film and the viewers saw black and white pictures.

KFRU’s newsroom was in the Columbia Tribune building at 7th and Cherry Streets (it’s partly a candy store and partly a restaurant now) because the station was half-owned by the Waters family that also owned the Tribune.

The main studios were out on the eastern business loop.  In Studio A, the main studio, a slver pipe rose up behind the control board and curved toward the announcer’s position.  The pipe contained wiring that was hooked to a small red light.  That was the network bulletin light.  If the network wanted to break in on programming, that light would come on and the board operator was immediately to flip a switch that put the network on the air. When that light came on, the board operator that day, perhaps Bill Younger who worked the afternoon shift threw that switch.

I quickly walked the four or five blocks to the KFRU newsroom to huddle with Eric Engberg, the news director and fellow graduate student—-Eric later had a long career as a CBS correspondent—and we started planning local reaction stories to run when the network broke away from its coverage for its local stations to report.

I was sent out toget reaction from Senator George Parker and Representative Larry Woods.

ABC did not break until Monday morning before coming back to broadcst the funeral.

I got to know, to a lesser degree in most cases but in a greater degree in one case, some of thosewho brought us the news that day.  Nick George, for example, became an acquaintance.

The one I knew best is the one who broke the news of Kennedy’s death on national television.  Eddie Barker was the news director of KRLD-TV and radio in Dallas that day and was at the Trade Mart preparing a broadcast of the Predident’s speech.  Word already had reached him that something had happened in the motorcade and moments late the motorcade roared past the mart.  He went on the air, broadcasting what he could learn.  One of his friends who was at the mart was a doctor at Parkland who went to a telephone and called the hospital emergency room where an acquaintance told him the president was dead.

Eddie’s friend saw he was “struggling to maintain a coherent broadcast with the limited information availability,” walked over and whispered into his ear, “Eddie, he’s dead.”

“The words sent a cold chill running down my spine. I didn’t want to believe them, but the source was too good.  I then made a decision that has caused a lot of comment in the years since that strangely brilliant Friday afternoon.  I told an audience that included the whole CBS network that a reliable source had confirmed to me that President Kennedy was dead.  What I didn’t know was tht my shocking report caused a lot of anxiety at cBS News Headquarters in New York,” he recalled in his autobiography, Eddie Barker’s Notebook several years later,  Shortly after that, Walter Cronkite told viewers, “We just had a report from our correspondent, Dan Rther, in Dallas that he has confirmed tht President Kennedy is dead.”   There still had been no official confirmation.

At 1:37, our time, CBS news editor Ed Bliss—and other of those I came to know well—gave Cronkite the AP bulletin that Cronkite is often seen reading to his audience when the story is recounted on TV today.

Dan Rather is often credited with passing along the first word of Kennedy’s death. Rather, who was the new chief of the CBS New Orleans bureau, had been on the other side of the railroad overpass west of Dealy Plaza, closer to the Trade Mart, when the motorcade flew past  He ran to the Dallas CBS bureau and started working the phones to Parkland Hospital. The doctors all were busy but an operator told him two priests were in a hallway nearby.  One of them told Rather, “The President has been shot and he is dead.”  Rather, his The Camera Never Blinks, said he asked, “Are you certain of that” and the priest, who was there to perform the last rites, respoded, “Yes, unfortunately, I am.”

Rather called Barker and told him what he had.  Eddie had just talked to the doctor.  They did not know that three people at CBS, New York were listening on the broadcast loop that had been set up for Barker’s broadcast of the speech. Before Rather could tell those listening, Barker, in his broadcast that he thought was only local in Dallas, announced a source from Parkland had told him the president is dead. Rather chimed in, “Yes, yes, that’s what I hear, too.  That he’s dead.”

It wasn’t official.  But CBS radio and television went with it.

It was only a short time later, as you will hear if you listen to the ABC account, that it was reported a Dallas policeman, later identified as J.D. Tippett, had been shot and killed.  And within a few minutes, a suspect named Lee H. Oswald had been picked up.

The night police reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had slept late that day but rushed to the office when he heard of the shooting.  The newspaper started printing special editions that were snapped up by the public as soon as they hit the streets. “Inside the city room it was bedlam,” recalled then-CBS correspondent Bob Shieffer in his book, This Just In.  When word came that Oswald was going to be held in the Fort Worth jail, Schiefer dashed there and was present when Oswald was brought in.

“Early in my police reporting days, I learned a truck from the cops. People will sometimes blurt out the truth if they are surprised by the question, so I jumped in front of the handcuffed suspect, who was between two detectives, and shouted, ‘You song of a bitch, why did you do it?’”

‘”Well, I didn’t,’ he said as the cops hustled him into the lockup.”

Schiefer was just settling in back at his newsroom desk when the phone rang. A woman asked him if someone could give her a ride to Dallas.  Schiefer responded heatedly, “Lady, this is not a taxi, and besides, the president has been shot.”

“I know.  They think my son is the one who shot him.”

“Where do you live?” Schieffer. “I’ll be right over to get you.”

On the way to Dallas, said Schieffer, she seemed more concerned about herself than about the death of a president. “She railed about how Oswald’s Russian-born wife would get sympathy while no one would ‘remember the mother.’”

When Oswald’s wife and mother heard the news, they had the presence of mind to get a lawyer, John Thorne. Police placed the family in protective custody.  Several weeks later, Eddie Barker called Thorne and expressed an interest in interviewing the Marina, how a widow. Thorne, who Barker did not know, surprised him by saying, “She watches you every evening nd I’ll be glad to ask her.”  The interview was arranged during which time she told him in her Russian-accented English, “I think Lee shoot Kenedy.”

Don Gardiner died in 1977.  Bob Schieffer, 86, is a podcaster— “Bob Schieffer’s ‘About the News’ with H. Andrew Schwartz.”—retired as the host of Face the Nation in 2015 and embarked on a singing career.  Eddie Barker died in 2012.

Dan Rather is 92 and still likes to stir the stuff.  He was fired from CBS in 2006 after some reports using unauthenticated documents to report on President George W. Bush’s Vietnam War-era service. After working on the cable channel now known as AXSTV for several years. Rather joined the Youngturks YouTube channel and five years ago began writing a news letter called “Steady,” on Substack.

All of those you hear in the ABC coverage are gone now.

Merriman Smith committed suicide in 1970.  Some say he was despondent about the death of his son in Vienam and perhaps suffered from PTSD from witnessing the Kennedy murder. Jack Bell died in 1975. Clint Hill is 91 and is the last surviving person to be in the presidential limousine that day.

At Jefferson City radio station KLIK that day, news director Jerry Bryan checked the UPI wire just after climbing the stairs to the third-floor newsroom in a pre-Civil War building on Capitol Avneue and checked the UPI machine before going home to lunch.

He picked up the telephone and called the on-air studio down on the second floor and started telling listeners what Merriman Smith was sending him. He continued to report via telephone until station engineer Ed Scarr put together enough cable to run a microphone from the studio up two flights of stairs and down the hall to the newsroom so Jerry had a microphone. The station operated only during daylight hours in those days and did not have a national network.  Bryan was the Don Gardiner of Jefferson City that day until the station signed off at 5:30. A reel-to-reel recorder in the newsroom was set up to turn on automatically during the “Missouri Party Line Show” when a phone call came in from a listener. Bryan’s call to the studio triggered the recorder, which had a large reel of tape on it.  His early coverage that day was recorded, by accident, and still exists.  Jerry resigned in 1967 and became the press secretary to Governor Hearnes and now lives in St. Louis.

His assistant news director, who had come to Jefferson City from KFRU at the start of 1967 replaced him.  His memories, which have been shared at length with you in this entry, remain vivid–as do the memories of many.

Walter Cronkite, who died in 2009, was a native of St. Joseph, Missouri. He attended the unveiling in 1999 of  bronze bust in the Hall of Famous Missourians. There were two speakers at that ceremony that evening—Governor Carnahan and me.

The next day, he was introduced in the House and in the Senate and made brief remarks.  The press corps in the senate was seated at a table on the floor to the right of the dais and when Walter walked in, we made him sit at the press table with us.

For the next fifteen years that I covered the Senate from that table, I always made sure that when a new reporter joined us at the table, I made sure that person knew that was Walter’s chair they were sitting in and they were expected to do him honor with their reporting.

Before Walter Cronkite became the icon he became at the CBS Evening News desk, he had a program on Sunday afternoons called You Are There, during which historical events were portrayed.  He always finished the broadcast by proclaiming,

“What sort of a day was it?  A day like all days, filled with those events that altered and illuminate our time. And you were there.”

November 22nd started “like all days.”  But it was filled with events that altered and illuminate our time.

And I was “there.”

A Slightly Warped Sense of Humor

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If reporters didn’t have a warped sense of humor, we probably couldn’t do what we do.  Humor, even dark humor, helps us deal with the often tragic, often weird, often absurd things and people we have to cover.

Perhaps that’s why I used to have a series of offbeat posters that I changed monthly at my desk in the Missourinet newsroom.

These posters, from a company called Despair, Inc., are the opposite of the supposedly inspirational posters found in many workplaces.  Beautiful pictures with some saccharine sentiment beneath them.

The folks at Despair turn that concept on its head.

I suppose this could be seen as a blatant plug for this company’s products.  Actually, it’s more of a paen to the creative folks who tell us that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.

We badly need those who try to tell us that.  We wonder if a sense of humor can be found in our today’s politics. Everybody is so blasted serious—-and for those of us who abhor all of the divisiveness in our system today—-Good Lord, we have reached the point of physical confrontations in the hallways of the House of Representatives in Washington to an instigated near-brawl in the Senate committee hearing—there is no shortage of seriousness. One of my reporters once told me, “They have it all backwards. They take themselves seriously, not their jobs.”

We need a Will Rogers IN the government, the guy who remarked:

“The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.”

“This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer.”

“The more you read and observe about this politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.”

“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

“On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.”

“If all politicians fished instead of speaking publicly, we would have peace in the world.”

Or Mark Russell, who used to entertain us at the piano, on PBS from 1975 into 2004, whose death last March 30th escaped our notice.  He was 90.   He was introduced once by someone who noted, “Before there ws a John Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, there was Mark Russell.”

That was 2018, when Russell told the audience, “I’m not going to do any new political humor. Why?  Because there’s no material.”

He once asked about the Adopt A Highway program, “If a gay couple adopts a highway, will the highway grow up straight?”

The difference between Republicans and Democrats: “A Republican says,’We’re in a recovery.’  A Democrat says, ‘You shouldn’t enjoy it.’”

“A fool and his money is a lobbyist.”

Here’s a compilation of some of his performances:

Bing Videos

The story is told of the day in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln called a special meeting of his War Cabinet.  When the members filed into the room, they found Lincoln reading a humor book. He laughed as he shared a story from the book. When nobody else laughed, Lincoln read another story. Again, no response. Lincoln looked at his cabinet and asked, “Gentlemen, why don’t you laugh?  With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

And after that, he showed the cabinet the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

And so we need people like those at Despair who turn our contemporary cares on their heads with their demotivational posters.

There’s one I wish was available in my working days.  It shows a stack of papers and the poster is entitled “Media.”  The text reads, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”

I think I’ll buy that one for the good folks in today’s Missourinet newsroom

Take the 25th 

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Something to ponder.

If Donald Trump becomes an imprisoned felon after winning election, can he become President?

Yes, even if he is inaugurated in his cell. Then we have to wonder if he will pardon himself before beginning his inaugural address to the smallest audience in inauguration history.

Ah, but there could be mischief afoot.

Let’s see if we can start a conspiracy theory.  We are not attributing it to anyone famous.  We’ll leave that to others because a conspiracy theory won’t work unless somebody famous is leading an organization behind it.

We are going to try to stage this so that anyone trying to pin it on the Left will have to acknowledge that there are quislings* also involved on the Right.

The only qualifications to become President of the United States are in the U. S. Constitution—that the person be at least 35, a natural-born citizen and a resident hee for at least fourteen years .  There is no morals clause in the document.

Congress could pass a Constitutional Amendment banning a convicted felon but that will take a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Congress  and ratification by three-fourths of the states, a tall order to get done before inauguration day, 2025.

The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits anyone who has engaged in rebellion or insurrection against the United States from holding any office. But none of the 91 charges against our former president specifically accuse him of “engaging in rebellion or insurrection.’ Whether a case for insurrection-by-association can be built is being tested in some courts now.

We’ve never had a president who has a felony conviction. They’ve done all kinds of other things (fought in wars, impregnated mistresses, hanged someone, etc.,) and suspected of others, but they’ve never been convicted of a felony.

Convicted felons can serve in Congress. State laws might keep them from voting for themselves back home or from having guns, but the Constitution has no ban on them serving, either.

And that brings to the 25th Amendment.

Suppose Trump is convicted. And suppose he is elected.

The New Congress will have convened a couple of weeks before inauguration day. Let’s assume the D’s have regained control.  Here is what the 25th Amendment says about a president’s inability to serve:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Now we get to the conspiracy theory:

The Vice-President is sworn in before the President is.  Always.  This person is the key to the entire drama. This person is in cahoots with those who want the former president to keep putting a golf ball into a plastic cup on the other end of his cell.

Look at the first section of the amendment which says that the VP and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments (the cabinet) or of such other body as Congress by law may provide transmit to the leaders of the Senate and the House a written declaration that the President can’t do his job…..

Immediately upon the imprisoned President finishing his oath, a committee created by a Congress controlled by the other party submits a declaration against the President before he can sign his own pardon. The VP takes over and the inaugurated president remains in his cell.

Now, the next section comes to the fore.  The imprisoned President immediately files a letter that declares “no inability exists” and, therefore, he shall resume the duties of the office UNLESS the VP and a majority of the cabinet OR that special committee that wrote the original declaration maintains the President still cannot perform his duties from a prison cell. The Congress by a two-thirds vote can declare the president, indeed, still can’t perform his duties and the Veep will remain in charge and the replaced president remains in his cell.

This is, of course, only a layman’s reading of the amendment and it is likely there are first-year law students who could demolish this idea.

But look, this IS the age of conspiracy theories.  I smell a television mini-series opportunity here.

The weakness in this idea is that Trump will pick a running mate who would throw him under the bus as he threw Mike Pence under the bus, and that voters will turn both houses of the Congress decidedly blue and the D’s will successfully connive with the R Veep to pull this off.

So it might not be practical in the real world.

But I still maintain it might make a riveting TV miniseries.  There would have to be a role for Kevin Kline and another for Kiefer Sutherland and one for Martin Sheen  and others for Tea Leone. Michael Douglas, and Anette Benning.

And what would we call it?

Go back to the top of this column.

*From time to time we try to throw in a word or phrase that we can use to teach a little lesson in language and in history.  Vidkun Quisling, a World War II leader of Norway who was a Nazi collaborator and who tried unsuccessfully to take over the government and end resistance to the invading Nazi Army. He formed a second, puppet government supported by the Nazis, and was involved in the shipment of Norwegian Jews to concentration camps in occupied Poland.  He later was convicted of high treason, among other crimes, and was executed by firing squad in October, 1945.

His name is considered a synonym for “traitor.”

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The Year Ahead 

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Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the music for the great Broadway hit, Fiddler on the Roof¸ wrote a song earlier (1955) that seems fitting today.

They’re rioting in Africa,
They’re starving in Spain.
There are hurricanes in Florida.
And Texas needs rain.

The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans,
Italians hate Yugoslavs,
South Africans hate the Dutch,
And I don’t like anyone very much.

He called it “The Merry Minuet,” and it became a big hit in ’56 for the Kingston Trio.

It seems to fit our times, almost 70 years later, with a few nationality changes.  Palestinians, Jews, Russians, Ukranians, Republicans, Democrats.   And so forth.

While the world seethes with 2023 Merry Minuets, we’re are reminded that we are only a year away from The Big Political Dance of ’24—The Election.

The pundits made sure last week that we know it.

Biden wants to shuffle onto the podium in January 2025 and be sworn in again.  Trump wants to rant his way to the podium to begin his revenge tour in earnest.

Will the zoo animals in the Capitol have passed a budget by then?

A year away from the national election and you and I are in a runaway stage coach driven by headless horsemen.

Donald, who promised to drain the swamp in 2016 is now living proof of the old adage that, “If you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s too late to drain the swamp.”

Joe, who has presided over a pretty strong economic recovery can’t find enough ears who can hear abot it over the cacophony of today’s politics when he tells us how good we have it.

A year away, and—-what?

A year is a long time in politics.  Nothing is a given a year out in politics.

Kelly Gordon and Dean Kay put it this way in a song popularizd by Frank Sinatra;

You’re riding high in April, shot down in May.

A political career can become political careening in a matter of days or hours.  We’ve seen it happen time and again in Missouri politics as well as nationally.

Joe is growing older and vows to run for re-election. Trump is growing older, too, and is running from coviction.

What is the backup plan for both parties if decisions are made by others for both of these guys’ goals?  And a key issue, not often on the front page despite its great importance a year away, is who will be their running mate—because, at their ages and the different uncertainties about their abilities to serve second terms, our parties might wind up nominating someone who either won’t make it to inauguration day or, if inaugurated, might not last the next four years?

Both parties do have rules allowing replacement of candidats on the national ticket. Older Missourians will remember when Tom Eagleton resigned as George McGovern’s running mate in 1972 after information was leaked that Eagleton had undergone shock therapy for depression and exhaustion three times in the early to mid-60s. He was replaced by Sargent Shriver, a brother-in-law of President Kennedy and founder of the Peace Corps.

Ballotpedia lists these folks as potential VP candidates in 2024:

For the Democrats:

Incumbent Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Congressman Lauren Underwood of Illinois, U. S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgie, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

On the Republican side: U. S. Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee,             Congressman Byron Donalds of Florida, Congresswoman marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, 2022 failed governor candidate Kari Lake of Arizona, Congresswoman Nancy Made of South Carolina, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, New York Congresswoman Elise Stevanik.

They have a year to show that they not only are Vice-Presidential material, but would be logical people to pick up the torch if either of the old men lay it down or are forced to lay it down.

If, within the next year, Joe winds up in a home and Donald winds up in the big house, who becomes the most viable person to take their places on the ticket?  Are there others who will emerge in the months ahead?  Any number of circumstances could lead to the most chaotic but interesting and significant conventions in decades, events that could lead to a lot of negotiations in vape-filled rooms if the two people most determined to fight for the job suddenly drop out of the picture after the primaries and before the conventions or are determined by the conventioneers to be bad choices after all.

Although the two leading figures in both parties don’t want us to think about it, there is no sure thing about politics in 2024.

You’re riding high in April, shot down in MayBut I know I’m gonna change that tuneWhen I’m back on top, back on top in June

…I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet
A pawn and a king
I’ve been up and down and over and out
And I know one thing
Each time I find myself
Flat on my face
I pick myself up and get
Back in the race

That’s life (that’s life)
I tell you, I can’t deny it
I thought of quitting, baby
But my heart just ain’t gonna buy it

We only hope our heart can stand it.

We’re a year away.  A long time.

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A Missouri Precedent

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Missourians have seen this before.  But not recently.

Thirty-one Democratic members of the U. S. House joined Republicans a few days ago in voting down a resolution to expel New York Congressman George Santos.  Some of those 31 have taken to social media to explain why they did that.

It’s a matter of due process for them.  Santos has not been convicted of any of the 23 felony crimes he’s charged with committing.  Beyond that, though, is the way the House deals with due process.  It’s called the House Ethics Committee.

The committee is considering action against Santos after reviewing more than 170-thousand pages of documents, authorizing 37 subpoenas, and interviewing about 40 witnesses. The committee says it will announce its next action by November 17.

The committee is acting under Article I, section 5 of the U. S. Constitution’s provision that, “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.”

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, a former professor of constitutional law, explains, “If and when Santos is convicted of these serious criminal offenses or ethics charges, I will certainly vote to expel. Until then, it is a very risky road to go down and we have to stick by due process and the rule of law, as obvious as the eventual results may seem.”

Innocent until proven guilty. It’s the way we dispense justice in this country. It’s the presumption that protects you and me. It’s a trial by peers, whether it is a jury or an ethics committee, that determines guilt. We have a word for inflicting punishment based on obvious but unproven guilt.  It is called lynching.

But the Ethics Committee has a problem, too.  Santos has not been convicted of any of the charges against him.  He remains innocent until proven guilty, at least on those counts. But Santos remains vulnerable on political issues connected with his candidacy, his claims of qualification during his campaign and afterwards, including during his time in office, and other actions and statements for which he is responsible as a member or potential member of the House.

Throughout its history, Congress has only expelled five members of the House, the most recent being the colorful Ohio Congressman James Traficant, in 2002, after he was convicted of racketeering and obstruction of justice.  The last Congressman before him was Michael Myers of Pennsylvania, who was convicted of bribery in the 1980 ABSCAM scandal.

Two Missourians in the House and two more in the Senate are key figures in the history of congressional expulsions.  House members John B. Clark and John W. Reid were Missourians.  The third expulsion was given to Kentucky Congressman Henry Burnett.

John Clark Sr., left his House seat to join the secessionist military forces organized under former governor Sterling Price at the start of the Civil War.  He led his division against Franz Sigel’s Union forces at Carthage on July 5, 1861, a minor battle but a decisive one because is was a sound retreat for Sigel and his men.  Eight days later the House voted 94-45 to expel him. He resigned his military commission after he was wounded at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri’s Confederate government appointed him a delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress and then was appointed to the Confederate States Senate. He was not appointed to a second term because of allegations that he was a drunk, a liar, and a womanizer.  Clark was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives and at the end of the war fled to Texas to avoid prosecution.  When that turned out to be a bad idea, he came back to this country, and found his way back to Missouri in 1870, where he practiced law.

Missouri Congressman John W. Reid was a pro-slavery member of the Missouri House for two years in the 1850s. Reid was an active participant in the Missouri-Kansas Border War during which Missourians tried to get Kansas into the Union as a slave state. On August 30, 1856 he was one of the leaders of a 200-man force of pro-slavery raiders that sacked Osawatomie Kansas, the home of abolitionist John Brown.  When his men failed to dislodge forces led by Brown’s son from their rock fortification, they chased the abolitionists back to Osawatomie where they killed Frederick Brown and burned almost all of the buildings in town.

The Kansas Historical Society says this attack led John Brown to begin to see himself as a national leader in, and potentially a martyr to, the abolitionist cause. “ God sees it. I have only a short time to live—only one death to die, and I will die fighting for his cause,” he said. “There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them somethine else to do that extend slave territory. I will carry this war into Africa.” The KHS says that’s when he started thinking of a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, to seize the weapons to organize a slave revolt in the South.”

Reid was elected to Congress in 1861. He withdrew on August 3 that year and soon after was expelled on a charge of disloyalty to the Union. He became a volunteer aide to General Price. After the war he was a lawyer, banker, and real-estate owner in Kansas City. He was one of the founders of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

On the Senate side, Senators Waldo P. Johnson and Trusten Polk were expelled on the same day.  They were among fourteen senators expelled early in the Civil War because they had gone to the Confederacy.

Trusten Polk served 51 days as governor in 1857, the shortest term of any Missouri governor, before becoming a U. S. Senator.  Early in 1861 he called for constitutional amendments protecting slavery and argued they should contain wording that prevented them from being appealed.  He, and Johnson, did not return to Washington for the 1862 meeting of the Congress.  On January 10, 1862, the Senate voted 35-0 to expel him for disloyalty, a day after receiving a committee report recommending expulsion..  He was part of General Price’s Arkansas command until Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him presiding judge of he Trans-Mississippi Department.  He was captured in 1863 and imprisoned at Johnon’s Island prison camp in Ohio. When his health turned bad, he was given parole.  He returned to Arkansas and was part of Price’s final raid into Missouri in 1863. When the defeated Price fled back to Arkansas, Polk went with him, fleeing to Mexico for a sort time at war’s end before coming back to St. Louis and resuming his law career.

Waldo Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1860. He served about ten months before he was expelled on the same day Polk was kicked out. The Senate voted 36-0 to get rid of him, also a day after getting a committee report recommending expulsion. Same reason as Polk: disloyalty. During the war, he recruited a battalion that fought in the Battle of Pea Ridge, near  Bentonville, Arkansas, a Confederate defeat. In 1863 he was appointed to the Confederate Senate. He fled to Canada after the war and eventually got a presidential pardon and returned to his home in Osceola to resume his legal practice.  He presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1875.

Clark, Reid, Polk, and Johnson paved the way for the possible expulsion of George Santos. They were kicked out for political disloyalty.  So, too, he might be.  Disloyalty to common morality, to his constituents, to the law.

Is there guilt enough?

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The Team Player

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Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.

In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary.  In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.

Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.

The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him.  She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”

Talk about a turnaround!

She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.

In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.

More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington.  We have tribes.  At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.

Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-eixtent*, got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.

Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.

But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas.  And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.

We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties.  She just happened to use the phrase.

Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.

It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.

As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.

Who IS the team?

Look in your mirrors.

Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player?  The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.

WE are the team.

Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.

Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team?  No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time).  And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.

So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.

*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry,  “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.

Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”

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The Team Player 

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Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.

In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary.  In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.

Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.

The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him.  She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”

Talk about a turnaround!

She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.

In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.

More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington.  We have tribes.  At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.

Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-existent,* got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.

Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.

But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas.  And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.

We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties.  She just happened to use the phrase.

Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.

It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.

As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.

Who IS the team?

Look in your mirrors.

Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player?  The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.

WE are the team.

Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.

Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team?  No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time).  And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.

So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.

*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry,  “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.

Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”