If you really want to take a hike back to yesterday where conservatives were thundering “that government governs best which governs least” and wrapping themselves around Washington’s Farewell Address warning against “entangling alliances,” the days of the celluloid high collars, William E. Borah, high button shoes and Henry Clay’s high protective tariff, read The American Conservative magazine which, unfortunately, is put out by a good man gone so far right he’s dropping off the edge of his flat world, Pat Buchanan. To read it is to get a whiff of the 19th century. They’re still fighting our entry into World War II, still threatening to saw off the east coast and let it float out to sea. The most rabid of the lot isn’t Pat who dances close to the edge but returns to home base occasionally—it’s none other than Paul Craig Roberts, the once sound supply side economist who used to write editorials for The Wall Street Journal but now crusades fervently to return us to Fortress America. Pat can at least write and is entertaining with inflammatory doggerel. To think that Roberts was once a major domo in Jack Kemp’s presidential campaign—and now he’s come to this.
Roberts and Howard Dean are ideological soul-mates with Roberts writing favorably about Mahathir Mohamad the former prime minister of Maslaysia who spoke at a rump Human Rights Conference asking “who are the terrorists—the Iraqis or the Americans?” Believe it or not Roberts summarizes his column with “the whole world is asking this question.” One shouldn’t get too upset about these Full Mooners, however, since it proves that conservatives now are so numerous they can afford to have their own brand of nuts. In the mid-1950s when the paleo right were dangerous with the John Birch Society tinted with anti-Semitism which threatened to engulf the entire movement, Bill Buckley helped excommunicate them from conservatism. The paleos don’t warrant being hounded out of the right now because they are so far outnumbered.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Judy, Judy, Choody: How Does The New York Times Run? A Better Mystery Than V. Plame.
If you’re wondering what the furor is about concerning Judith Miller and the news story she didn’t write leading to her 85-day imprisonment because she didn’t get a clearance from Scooter Libby to talk to the grand jury about who outed Valerie Plame, when, it turns out, she can’t remember who told her, join the club. And for those of you who have thought correctly that The Times is an unremittingly liberal newspaper that blasts George W. Bush, Dame Judy was one reporter who swallowed the WMD story whole and influenced a lot of folks that the Iraq invasion was justified because of her (as it turns out) inaccurate reporting. (I, for one, believe invading Iraq was right regardless of no WMD and, as the elections prove, its democratization is going to work wonders for peace in the Middle East. But that doesn’t answer the question as to why Judy is still around).
Here’s a lady who writes a string of stories that are incorrect, is told by her boss that she mustn’t cover the Middle East any more but goes ahead and does it anyhow with her boss evidently powerless to stop her. She causes The Times to spend millions in her defense with a gaggle of in-house lawyers plus a high-powered First Amendment lawyer, followed by her hiring her own counsel, Bob Bennett, and they all work for her defense. After being freed, she’s celebrated as the heroine of the First Amendment. Whereupon she announces she’s interested in writing a book and goes public about shopping around for a publisher. In the newsroom she calls herself “Miss Runamok” and when her boss asks “what does that mean, Judy?” she says that it means she can do anything she wants.
There’s a lot we don’t know about this case. If she were sleeping with the publisher that would be one explanation. If she were sleeping with Scooter Libby that’d be another. I almost think the latter explanation would be nearer to the truth basis his gushy note to her “you are missed” and referring to the plants in the garden with interconnecting roots ala Peter Sellers as Chauncy Gardner. All that’s missing is Scooter’s ending the note with a number of xxx’s. Except being touchy-feely with Scooter doesn’t explain why she had the total run of the newsroom in violation of protocol. Maybe she’s been romantic with a lot of powerful guys but then she’s not a looker: I don’t know. All of this seems to ignore Karl Rove. I think when it’s all over, we’ll find that she is just a ditzy neo-con dame who’s played a lot of Times liberals for suckers, sleeps only with her 78 year old husband--somebody with first page access who Scooter has sold a bill of goods for the benefit of his vice president. If you have trouble deciphering this how would you like to be our Chicago-based U.S. attorney? I wouldn’t blame him if after work he sits down and spends considerable time with an aged bottle of Old Fitzgerald.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Grover Norquist on Bob Kjellander: Interesting.
kjellander at convention
Tax reductionist Grover Norquist spoke the other day at Jack Roeser’s (no relation) luncheon in behalf of Renew Illinois, the group that seeks to bring reform to state government. First, Jack spoke at some length about corruption and, as is his habit, attacked Bob Kjellander (and here for the benefit of new readers of this blog who are out-of-state, Kjellander is the Republican National Committeeman who got a hefty retainer for arranging a bond sale for the Blagojevich administration, which Jack and Republican gubernatorial candidates Jim Oberweis and State Sen. Steve Rauschenberger believes is a conflict of interest. On the surface there’s nothing wrong with the fee Kjellander received if, in fact, he did serious work to get it. Norquist is, as you know, one of the prime godfathers of the right with enormous influence in the Bush administration on economic policy (not social policy). Oberweis asked Norquist to comment on Kjellander. Believe it or not, Washington-bound Norquist said, “who?” When reminded that Kjellander is the national committeeman, Norquist said, “oh.” When further reminded that Kjellander, a close friend of Karl Rove, recently was promoted to treasurer of the national party, Norquist said: “Huh? He’s not national treasurer, is he? Isn’t er, ah I can’t think of who I mean but isn’t someone else treasurer?” When assured someone else was not treasurer but Kjellander was, Norquist smiled and said this (in paraphrase):
No big deal.
It was sort of a put-down for those who are chasing Kjellander with all the fury of Captain Ahab and the white whale. I have felt for a long time that this furor about Kjellander is much sound and fury signifying nothing, or at least very little. If he’s done wrong, a very good gentleman known to all of us, Patrick Fitzgerald, will uncover it. The idea that Kjellander can’t be trusted because he is a secret operative of Rod Blagojevich is paranoid. If Kjellander were secretly working for Blago he would not have been busting his buttons trying to get Jim Edgar into the race since it is common currency that Edgar would give Blago a tough race.
For saying these heretical things I imagine I’ll be scourged by those to whom the Kjellander issue tops everything. My suggestion: take a Valium and calm down.
Tax reductionist Grover Norquist spoke the other day at Jack Roeser’s (no relation) luncheon in behalf of Renew Illinois, the group that seeks to bring reform to state government. First, Jack spoke at some length about corruption and, as is his habit, attacked Bob Kjellander (and here for the benefit of new readers of this blog who are out-of-state, Kjellander is the Republican National Committeeman who got a hefty retainer for arranging a bond sale for the Blagojevich administration, which Jack and Republican gubernatorial candidates Jim Oberweis and State Sen. Steve Rauschenberger believes is a conflict of interest. On the surface there’s nothing wrong with the fee Kjellander received if, in fact, he did serious work to get it. Norquist is, as you know, one of the prime godfathers of the right with enormous influence in the Bush administration on economic policy (not social policy). Oberweis asked Norquist to comment on Kjellander. Believe it or not, Washington-bound Norquist said, “who?” When reminded that Kjellander is the national committeeman, Norquist said, “oh.” When further reminded that Kjellander, a close friend of Karl Rove, recently was promoted to treasurer of the national party, Norquist said: “Huh? He’s not national treasurer, is he? Isn’t er, ah I can’t think of who I mean but isn’t someone else treasurer?” When assured someone else was not treasurer but Kjellander was, Norquist smiled and said this (in paraphrase):
“When you have someone whom you can’t work with the favored route is to work around him. That’s what I would do. Everybody has somebody in politics who they at times have difficulty working with. The task is to work around him, that’s all.”
No big deal.
It was sort of a put-down for those who are chasing Kjellander with all the fury of Captain Ahab and the white whale. I have felt for a long time that this furor about Kjellander is much sound and fury signifying nothing, or at least very little. If he’s done wrong, a very good gentleman known to all of us, Patrick Fitzgerald, will uncover it. The idea that Kjellander can’t be trusted because he is a secret operative of Rod Blagojevich is paranoid. If Kjellander were secretly working for Blago he would not have been busting his buttons trying to get Jim Edgar into the race since it is common currency that Edgar would give Blago a tough race.
For saying these heretical things I imagine I’ll be scourged by those to whom the Kjellander issue tops everything. My suggestion: take a Valium and calm down.
Harriet Miers: Both Right and Left Confused
I get the following from sources on House Judiciary (which are not involved in confirmation, of course, but which are keenly attentive). Both political right and left are now completely confused on the Harriet Miers debacle. Initially more secular sources on the right tended to oppose the Miers confirmation because of her obvious lack of legal scholarship, fearing that she is ripe for conversion by more persuasive elements on the court with high legalese IQs like Breyer and Stevens and that she would resist being seen as pawns of conservatives with high octane ala Scalia and Thomas (yes, Thomas: don’t fool for the canard that he’s a slow-wit; his jurisprudence is more originalist than Scalia). At the same time, while the left began its séance with Miers thinking it might approve her since the right is under-enthused, now believes she is a dangerous secret weapon who could vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.The problem is the conference call peopled by a number of Evangelicals and two judges which reportedly certified that she is a born-again anti-Roe vote. Some circles on the right are repentant for having nixed her while there is a stronger than expected fear on the left that the little lady may in fact be carrying a bomb to detonate Roe in her purse. But that represents only the evangelical right. The neo-conservative right represented by Bill Kristol are still holding that she was picked by liberal Massachusetts Republican Andy Card, the president’s chief of staff during a time when Karl Rove was busy, with his own possible indictment and a bout with kidney stones. Thus the right is fractured. The left is fractured, too, with some Democrats feeling she is not too bad and the remainder worrying that the evangelical conference call may be correct. The battle may be bloodier than at first thought when Harry Reid opined that she is ducky. My own view is that whether or not she would vote to overturn Roe or not, the appointment is perilous because all we have to go on is rumor rather than intellectual insight.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Speaking of Supreme Court Appointments: One Will Live in My Memory
The hubbub over the latest Bush Supreme Court appointment prompts me to recall when a Nixon nominee played a serious role in my life—a man I never met, Clement Haynesworth. It started like this. I had been working at The Quaker Oats Company since 1964, having started what I thought was an innovative program to encourage Quaker employees to get involved in urban affairs in Chicago. One feature of the program—which involved tutoring of disadvantaged kids, a nutrition education program and involvement on Chicago’s South and West Sides—had to do with entrepreneurship. We were literally one of the first companies to provide training to poor people in how to run food stores, with not only training sessions but people who could give them advice on how to raise capital to start their own business. Immediately it became a hot item. It was the dawn of the so-called Black Capitalism craze and Quaker got a good deal of press coverage for it.
We started the program in 1966; that same year Richard Nixon had started what many believed was a quixotic enterprise, trying to convince people that he, after having lost the presidency by an eyelash in 1960, and the governorship of California by a substantial number of votes in 1962, was not a re-tread for the Republican nomination in 1968. I had always been hanging around people with political ideas and one of them was a fellow who was on Chuck Percy’s staff, John McLaughrey. McLaughrey was one of the very few geniuses I have ever met, a young, rawboned guy with blond hair who strode around the office in jeans (when jeans were not very fashionable, called “overalls” by the naifs of the time). McLaughrey was an anomaly: he was passionately interested in minorities but believed just as strongly in free enterprise. He put the two concepts together and sold Percy on the idea of a “Community Self-Determination Act” which touted blacks, Hispanics and Indians taking control of their own lives and pooling resources with private sector entities (along with some government tax credits) to revolutionize the ghettoes and barrios. He was a powerful speaker and Percy bought the idea—up to a point.
I bought it, too. I thought I saw our supermarket training program fitting into the whole and John and I would talk about it occasionally. A disciple of John’s, one Bill Geimer, was powerfully interested in the idea. Anyhow, after having told the press that it didn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, Nixon decided to give the media another opportunity and announced his candidacy in 1967. His opponent for the nomin/ation was Nelson Rockefeller. The next thing I heard was that John McClaughrey was working for Nixon. How influential he was I don’t know but in the midst of the campaign—with Bobby Kennedy talking ghetto revolution and Rockefeller pressing for more compassion toward minorities—Richard Nixon of all people captured the imagination of the minority community by disavowing government programs for minorities which he pointed out hadn’t worked…and announced a program of “Black Capitalism” in concert with a few black leaders including Roy Innis of CORE. The Nixon proposal was not fleshed out but it evoked strong support from black leaders and Hispanics. When Nixon was elected in 1968, he promptly forgot about the program until someone reminded him that he had to do something about his pledge. Indeed. Howard Samuels, who was LBJ’s head of the Small Business Administration, had pioneered special loans and other programs for minorities. Nixon had to do something. But what?
While Nixon was pondering what to do, his secretary of commerce, Maurice Stans felt he had an idea. Stans had been budget director under Eisenhower and was an early Nixon fund-raiser, had tried in vain to be secretary of the treasury but Nixon always snubbed him. He felt Stans was a loyal, not too bright functionary. He named him to the then lowest cabinet post, Commerce, and on the night he announced his cabinet picks on live television, he forgot Stans’ name. That hurt Stans greatly but he determined that under his aegis Commerce would have something sexier than the patent bureau, the weather bureau, the census, the bureau of standards and the national oceanic administration.
Stans reasoned: why don’t I lobby to start an agency of the federal government to fulfill Nixon’s pledge? To people who said the SBA was ideally equipped, Stans rebuffed the idea. It was no good; no good, it was clear, because he didn’t control the SBA. He had inherited, in fact, one agency that was ideally suited to fund business: the Economic Development Administration, a hangover from LBJ. Stans took the very little clout that he had with Nixon and argued that yet another agency should be set up to handle minority enterprise—the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in Commerce. It was one of his more cynical ideas: create a new agency with the hope that being new, it could get some press attention. Thus Stans, a so-called conservative, one who had often called for more efficiency and an end of duplication in government, was now duplicating the Small Business Administration and his own EDA by starting y/et another one in Commerce.
To get around the conservatives in the administration, Stans had to agree that OMBE would have no granting power of its own and would merely coordinate the 116 federal programs that funded business enterprise. The most important thing was to develop a strategy for minority business and allow the SBA and other agencies—as well a//s the private sector—to join in a concerted push. Somewhere John McClaughrey had been pushing the idea: to Stans, to a distinctly unsympathetic John Ehrlichman, to a hostile Bob Haldemann until he finally found a taker: Leonard Garment, Nixon’s old law partner who had just been named Nixon’s general counsel (the same general job that Harriet Miers has today).
The Nixon administration was rocketing along early in 1969, with Nixon trying to end the war in Vietnam and bolstering the economy when out of the blue I get a phone call at Quaker Oats from a guy named Gleason who asked if I would be interested in going to work for Nixon. Not really but I said I’d talk to him the next time I go to Washington. By the time I sat down with Gleason, I had decided that if, indeed, I would go to work for him, I’d like to take the post of Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare for Legislation. The job would be, I thought, duck soup for me: lobbying the Congress for programs that had some meaning. And I was a lobbyist, after all. “No, no, no,” said Gleason. “What we have in mind for you is Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce for Minority Enterprise. Aren’t you familiar with Black Capitalism?”
I said yes, I had some familiarity with some programs I was running in Chicago. Then Gleason told one of the biggest whoppers that he calculated would be sure to snare the unwary. The president himself, he said, is aware of you—do you know that? To my credit, I scoffed. Gleason dropped the act and then said, “It’s, you know, a kind of pioneering job. You know we Republicans have missed the boat on civil rights. But we don’t have to miss the boat on ownership. As business-centered Republicans, we’re suited to the task. And while I can now confess that I stretched it a bit to say Nixon had heard of you, I can say that if you take this job, you’d be laying the groundwork for minority economic development so that future generations yet unborn will bless the name Nixon and your own name as well.”
You must remember that I was a wee broth of a lad then—well, 41, married and the father of three—soon to be four. And I should have known better than to give up a perfectly good job at Quaker Oats for what turned out to be a maelstrom between those in the administration who wanted to pursue a southern strategy where civil rights and black ownership are downgraded and those idealists who wanted to build a new wing of the Republican party centered on age-old conservative principles of ownership.
There were four guys who were vying for the job and in interviews I beat all of them out. I convinced Stans I was the guy but on the way home to Chicago I was torn: he hadn’t convinced me he was sincere about the program aside from building an empire so that he could be boosted to secretary of the treasury in the second term. I left Quaker with grim forboding: feeling that if I chickened out and didn’t take it I’d always regret the chance I had, and sure at the bottom of my heart that Stans was the coldest fish I ever saw, a wall-eyed pike who could easily step over the bodies of those he had slain in bureaucratic wars to advance himself. And I felt I could easily become one of those bodies.
I was sworn in as Assistant Secretary on April 1, 1969—April Fool’s Day which told me something. From the very day I started, I knew it had been a mistake. Stans was totally uninterested in any new ideas. There was no contact with the President whatsoever. Every time I went to the White House to talk to staffers, I was viewed coldly by them as the guy who could easily torpedo the plan that had elected Nixon in the first place—the southern strategy. “Do you think Strom Thurmond is going to look favorably on you trying to start businesses for blacks in South Carolina?” one said. “Strom put his name on the line for Nixon and his constituency isn’t exactly yours, Roeser.” At the same time, my memos and ideas were finding a repository in Stans’ wastebasket. I got the then Big 3 auto makers to sign up 25 dealership opportunities for qualifying minorities—a total of 100 in one fell swoop—only to find that Stans was outraged because putting even the slightest pressure on them would jeopardize his relations with the company CEOs for 1972 campaign donations. The office I headed was a sham, a charade and I had hired people who left their own jobs to join me for what had proved to be a miserable fraud.
I started to put pressure on Stans in the Commerce Department to fulfill my mandate only to be told that this was not the way to play ball. At the same time, trying to coordinate all the federal programs that give assistance t to industry and bargain for minorities was getting me in hot water with every agency head in town, as well as snotty calls from Ehrlichman at the White House.
What to do? The only thing that was left to me was a mandate contained in Executive Order 11458 which set up by office by presidential fiat. It said that my job was to prepare a strategy for the president the United States—a strategy for minority business enterprise. I decided to do that well and get the best minds I could find from the private sector as well as government and try to get the strategy paper to the president—following which he would either buy it and with it me, or veto it and with it me. In any event, I had no choice. So with about 15 people we started discussing a national strategy for minority enterprise for the United States of America. It became so fascinating that I plumb tended to forget my woes in government. All the while I was having to testify before hostile committees of the Congress, a Congress controlled by the Democrats.
The Congress came in two sections where I was concerned. First were the Democrats who were mad that Nixon had stolen what they believed was an idea for minorities belonging to them. Second were the Republicans, mostly apathetic because they weren’t nuts about minorities anyhow and felt anything I would do could jeopardize the white votes of t he south. My only friends were liberal Republicans—Jacob Javits and Chuck Percy. I wasn’t their cup of tea ideologically but I was very glad to see them in any committee hearing. All the while I was testifying, I was fighting with the White House Republicans and the Democrats in Congress. The only peace I had was when we were tooling up the Strategy. Then, you guessed it, more trouble loomed.
A very good friend of mine in the bureaucracy—a careerist—came in to see me and told me the bad news. “Stans is preparing to fire you because you’re not what he expected—someone who would do what he’s told and nothing more.” I asked how he knew. “Easy,” he said. “I’ve been a bureaucrat here for 30 years. When the Secretary prepares to fire a political appointee, he has to fill out some papers. I saw t hem. The paper starts up on the 5th floor where he signs it, stating that he’s not firing you because of race, color creed or anything like that. Then the paper makes it way through a labyrinth to the office of the Commerce general counsel.. It stays there on the average of a week or so, maybe two. Then it—but why go into it? You’re a dead one. I’ve never seen anybody where the firing process has begun who has survived.”
Like a man who was given a death sentence, I asked: How much time do I have? He said, “oh, I’d say you’ve got three weeks, maybe four weeks at the most.” I said that this would not be enough time to finish our strategy paper to give to the president. He said, “Are you nuts? You’re a dead man! Here you are, thinking of getting a strategy paper to the president when you’re getting canned! I’m doing you a favor, my friend by telling you this. You now have four weeks to find another job!”
But I wanted to finish the strategy paper. We were running figures and statistics on early, slowed down Commerce computers, were busily getting information from Census. At the most I needed three months. So I pondered. And while I pondered I kept on going to the Secretary’s staff meetings where I was getting glowered at by His Eminence himself. One morning as I sat doodling on a notepad at the Secretary’s meeting, he said something that caused me to listen carefully.
Stans said slowly with great emphasis: Let me tell you that there is going to be a great deal of controversy for all of us in the administration. The President”—and here he seemingly raised his eyes to heaven—“the President has named an outstanding jurist to the Supreme Court, a man by the name of Clement Haynesworth of South Carolina. The Democrats in the Senate will try to say that he is a racist because he belonged to a restricted country club or other. Civil rights groups and labor will be lobbying against him. The reason I am telling you is this: All of you have blacks working for you in your agencies. They will feel the pressure put on them by the civil rights groups and labor. When that occurs, some of your black employees may criticize the president. This is to tell you not to worsen any public relations problems by letting them agitate you to censure them, or censor them or in any way offend them. Worse of all would be if you would attempt to fire them—if they are political appointees—for insubordination. That would play into the hands of the Washington Post and the other media organs.
That was in Spring. I checked with my sources on Capitol Hill and learned that the entire Senate confirmation process would have to take a matter of months, with long Judiciary committee hearings and fireworks every day. At the same time, my bureaucrat friend was telling me that my termination papers were being rushed. So I had to act. I wangled a speaking date at the National Business League, an organization of so-so value which featured black businessmen who since the days of Calvin Coolidge had been trying to lobby for programs such as I was developing. I told a pal at the Associated Press that I was going to make a speech at the NBL. “So?” he said, bored. I said that in the speech I’d ask respectfully for the President to pull the name of Clement Haynesworth. I wouldn’t have a press release but I would say it. And he had exclusively. “For a sub-cabinet guy to say that,” he said, “even a lowly sub-cabinet guy like you would mean you’d be fired!” I wanted to tell him the truth: it would be just the opposite. By saying that Haynesworth should be pulled, I’d be adding to my longevity until I got the strategy paper done. “O.k.,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’m going to have our Memphis correspondent there. But damn you if you chicken out and don’t say it!” I told him I wouldn’t chicken out but would he be sure that this story gets to the Washington Post which subscribes to AP? He agreed. “After you say it , I’ll call it in to the night desk over there myself.”
So at a very long, boring convention in Memphis, I got up and without much fanfare talked about minority enterprise and dropped my three sentences into the pot. No one was listening but one guy: the Memphis AP reporter. I stayed over in Memphis that night and slept the sleep of the just. When I returned to Washington the next morning, I bought the Post and saw to my pleasure that a Nixon sub-cabinet guy was asking, respectfully, that Haynesworth be pulled. Then I joyfully took a cab to the Commerce Department. When I got to my office my secretary’s eyes were like saucers. The secretary has been on the phone since early morning, she said, and he must see you. Also, the entire Washington media market is calling for you.
Before I went to see him, I poured a cup of coffee in a mug and carried it jauntily to his mammoth office. As soon as I approached everybody on his staff rushed out all the doors, their hair standing on end. I sauntered in as he was on the phone (I presumed it was with Halderman). As I sat and drank the coffee he said, “yes—yes—yes—no—no—no, of course I won’t. Goodbye.” He hung up and I almost felt sorry for him.. Almost.
What in the name of God possessed you, he said as he fiddled with his pill box and gulped one, downing it with a handy glass of water. I told him that civil rights mean very much to me and that I can understand his consternation. Therefore if he wished my resignation, he would have it. I said I couldn’t stay with him long as there were a flood of calls I would have to return.
Wait, he said. Wait. He got up and walked to the window. T hen he turned and said, I have always felt a man should have the right to express himself—he said it slowly as if they were the last words he wished to utter. Just promise me this: before you make another speech, would you mind telling me what you’re going to say? Fair enough, I said. We shook hands. I noticed his was rather damp. Then I left.
When I returned to my office my bureaucrat friend called. This is the damndest thing, he said. Your papers had been winging to your office to notify you that you were terminated. Now those papers have been recalled and placed on indefinite suspension. Since this department’s founding by Herbert Hoover, this is the first time this has happened.
I took my time preparing the strategy paper, sent it to the Secretary and saw that it got to the president. Clement Haynesworth failed of confirmation on November 21,1969 by vote of 55 to 45. And when his nomination failed I was on my way out of office—to the Peace Corps as director of public affairs. The Nixon group, stunned by my insubordination, decided not to impede my federal career…although I was planning to say goodbye forever and return to Quaker and the private sector.
So you see, with a blog I can write it up the way I want to. Thanks for listening.
We started the program in 1966; that same year Richard Nixon had started what many believed was a quixotic enterprise, trying to convince people that he, after having lost the presidency by an eyelash in 1960, and the governorship of California by a substantial number of votes in 1962, was not a re-tread for the Republican nomination in 1968. I had always been hanging around people with political ideas and one of them was a fellow who was on Chuck Percy’s staff, John McLaughrey. McLaughrey was one of the very few geniuses I have ever met, a young, rawboned guy with blond hair who strode around the office in jeans (when jeans were not very fashionable, called “overalls” by the naifs of the time). McLaughrey was an anomaly: he was passionately interested in minorities but believed just as strongly in free enterprise. He put the two concepts together and sold Percy on the idea of a “Community Self-Determination Act” which touted blacks, Hispanics and Indians taking control of their own lives and pooling resources with private sector entities (along with some government tax credits) to revolutionize the ghettoes and barrios. He was a powerful speaker and Percy bought the idea—up to a point.
I bought it, too. I thought I saw our supermarket training program fitting into the whole and John and I would talk about it occasionally. A disciple of John’s, one Bill Geimer, was powerfully interested in the idea. Anyhow, after having told the press that it didn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, Nixon decided to give the media another opportunity and announced his candidacy in 1967. His opponent for the nomin/ation was Nelson Rockefeller. The next thing I heard was that John McClaughrey was working for Nixon. How influential he was I don’t know but in the midst of the campaign—with Bobby Kennedy talking ghetto revolution and Rockefeller pressing for more compassion toward minorities—Richard Nixon of all people captured the imagination of the minority community by disavowing government programs for minorities which he pointed out hadn’t worked…and announced a program of “Black Capitalism” in concert with a few black leaders including Roy Innis of CORE. The Nixon proposal was not fleshed out but it evoked strong support from black leaders and Hispanics. When Nixon was elected in 1968, he promptly forgot about the program until someone reminded him that he had to do something about his pledge. Indeed. Howard Samuels, who was LBJ’s head of the Small Business Administration, had pioneered special loans and other programs for minorities. Nixon had to do something. But what?
While Nixon was pondering what to do, his secretary of commerce, Maurice Stans felt he had an idea. Stans had been budget director under Eisenhower and was an early Nixon fund-raiser, had tried in vain to be secretary of the treasury but Nixon always snubbed him. He felt Stans was a loyal, not too bright functionary. He named him to the then lowest cabinet post, Commerce, and on the night he announced his cabinet picks on live television, he forgot Stans’ name. That hurt Stans greatly but he determined that under his aegis Commerce would have something sexier than the patent bureau, the weather bureau, the census, the bureau of standards and the national oceanic administration.
Stans reasoned: why don’t I lobby to start an agency of the federal government to fulfill Nixon’s pledge? To people who said the SBA was ideally equipped, Stans rebuffed the idea. It was no good; no good, it was clear, because he didn’t control the SBA. He had inherited, in fact, one agency that was ideally suited to fund business: the Economic Development Administration, a hangover from LBJ. Stans took the very little clout that he had with Nixon and argued that yet another agency should be set up to handle minority enterprise—the Office of Minority Business Enterprise in Commerce. It was one of his more cynical ideas: create a new agency with the hope that being new, it could get some press attention. Thus Stans, a so-called conservative, one who had often called for more efficiency and an end of duplication in government, was now duplicating the Small Business Administration and his own EDA by starting y/et another one in Commerce.
To get around the conservatives in the administration, Stans had to agree that OMBE would have no granting power of its own and would merely coordinate the 116 federal programs that funded business enterprise. The most important thing was to develop a strategy for minority business and allow the SBA and other agencies—as well a//s the private sector—to join in a concerted push. Somewhere John McClaughrey had been pushing the idea: to Stans, to a distinctly unsympathetic John Ehrlichman, to a hostile Bob Haldemann until he finally found a taker: Leonard Garment, Nixon’s old law partner who had just been named Nixon’s general counsel (the same general job that Harriet Miers has today).
The Nixon administration was rocketing along early in 1969, with Nixon trying to end the war in Vietnam and bolstering the economy when out of the blue I get a phone call at Quaker Oats from a guy named Gleason who asked if I would be interested in going to work for Nixon. Not really but I said I’d talk to him the next time I go to Washington. By the time I sat down with Gleason, I had decided that if, indeed, I would go to work for him, I’d like to take the post of Assistant Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare for Legislation. The job would be, I thought, duck soup for me: lobbying the Congress for programs that had some meaning. And I was a lobbyist, after all. “No, no, no,” said Gleason. “What we have in mind for you is Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce for Minority Enterprise. Aren’t you familiar with Black Capitalism?”
I said yes, I had some familiarity with some programs I was running in Chicago. Then Gleason told one of the biggest whoppers that he calculated would be sure to snare the unwary. The president himself, he said, is aware of you—do you know that? To my credit, I scoffed. Gleason dropped the act and then said, “It’s, you know, a kind of pioneering job. You know we Republicans have missed the boat on civil rights. But we don’t have to miss the boat on ownership. As business-centered Republicans, we’re suited to the task. And while I can now confess that I stretched it a bit to say Nixon had heard of you, I can say that if you take this job, you’d be laying the groundwork for minority economic development so that future generations yet unborn will bless the name Nixon and your own name as well.”
You must remember that I was a wee broth of a lad then—well, 41, married and the father of three—soon to be four. And I should have known better than to give up a perfectly good job at Quaker Oats for what turned out to be a maelstrom between those in the administration who wanted to pursue a southern strategy where civil rights and black ownership are downgraded and those idealists who wanted to build a new wing of the Republican party centered on age-old conservative principles of ownership.
There were four guys who were vying for the job and in interviews I beat all of them out. I convinced Stans I was the guy but on the way home to Chicago I was torn: he hadn’t convinced me he was sincere about the program aside from building an empire so that he could be boosted to secretary of the treasury in the second term. I left Quaker with grim forboding: feeling that if I chickened out and didn’t take it I’d always regret the chance I had, and sure at the bottom of my heart that Stans was the coldest fish I ever saw, a wall-eyed pike who could easily step over the bodies of those he had slain in bureaucratic wars to advance himself. And I felt I could easily become one of those bodies.
I was sworn in as Assistant Secretary on April 1, 1969—April Fool’s Day which told me something. From the very day I started, I knew it had been a mistake. Stans was totally uninterested in any new ideas. There was no contact with the President whatsoever. Every time I went to the White House to talk to staffers, I was viewed coldly by them as the guy who could easily torpedo the plan that had elected Nixon in the first place—the southern strategy. “Do you think Strom Thurmond is going to look favorably on you trying to start businesses for blacks in South Carolina?” one said. “Strom put his name on the line for Nixon and his constituency isn’t exactly yours, Roeser.” At the same time, my memos and ideas were finding a repository in Stans’ wastebasket. I got the then Big 3 auto makers to sign up 25 dealership opportunities for qualifying minorities—a total of 100 in one fell swoop—only to find that Stans was outraged because putting even the slightest pressure on them would jeopardize his relations with the company CEOs for 1972 campaign donations. The office I headed was a sham, a charade and I had hired people who left their own jobs to join me for what had proved to be a miserable fraud.
I started to put pressure on Stans in the Commerce Department to fulfill my mandate only to be told that this was not the way to play ball. At the same time, trying to coordinate all the federal programs that give assistance t to industry and bargain for minorities was getting me in hot water with every agency head in town, as well as snotty calls from Ehrlichman at the White House.
What to do? The only thing that was left to me was a mandate contained in Executive Order 11458 which set up by office by presidential fiat. It said that my job was to prepare a strategy for the president the United States—a strategy for minority business enterprise. I decided to do that well and get the best minds I could find from the private sector as well as government and try to get the strategy paper to the president—following which he would either buy it and with it me, or veto it and with it me. In any event, I had no choice. So with about 15 people we started discussing a national strategy for minority enterprise for the United States of America. It became so fascinating that I plumb tended to forget my woes in government. All the while I was having to testify before hostile committees of the Congress, a Congress controlled by the Democrats.
The Congress came in two sections where I was concerned. First were the Democrats who were mad that Nixon had stolen what they believed was an idea for minorities belonging to them. Second were the Republicans, mostly apathetic because they weren’t nuts about minorities anyhow and felt anything I would do could jeopardize the white votes of t he south. My only friends were liberal Republicans—Jacob Javits and Chuck Percy. I wasn’t their cup of tea ideologically but I was very glad to see them in any committee hearing. All the while I was testifying, I was fighting with the White House Republicans and the Democrats in Congress. The only peace I had was when we were tooling up the Strategy. Then, you guessed it, more trouble loomed.
A very good friend of mine in the bureaucracy—a careerist—came in to see me and told me the bad news. “Stans is preparing to fire you because you’re not what he expected—someone who would do what he’s told and nothing more.” I asked how he knew. “Easy,” he said. “I’ve been a bureaucrat here for 30 years. When the Secretary prepares to fire a political appointee, he has to fill out some papers. I saw t hem. The paper starts up on the 5th floor where he signs it, stating that he’s not firing you because of race, color creed or anything like that. Then the paper makes it way through a labyrinth to the office of the Commerce general counsel.. It stays there on the average of a week or so, maybe two. Then it—but why go into it? You’re a dead one. I’ve never seen anybody where the firing process has begun who has survived.”
Like a man who was given a death sentence, I asked: How much time do I have? He said, “oh, I’d say you’ve got three weeks, maybe four weeks at the most.” I said that this would not be enough time to finish our strategy paper to give to the president. He said, “Are you nuts? You’re a dead man! Here you are, thinking of getting a strategy paper to the president when you’re getting canned! I’m doing you a favor, my friend by telling you this. You now have four weeks to find another job!”
But I wanted to finish the strategy paper. We were running figures and statistics on early, slowed down Commerce computers, were busily getting information from Census. At the most I needed three months. So I pondered. And while I pondered I kept on going to the Secretary’s staff meetings where I was getting glowered at by His Eminence himself. One morning as I sat doodling on a notepad at the Secretary’s meeting, he said something that caused me to listen carefully.
Stans said slowly with great emphasis: Let me tell you that there is going to be a great deal of controversy for all of us in the administration. The President”—and here he seemingly raised his eyes to heaven—“the President has named an outstanding jurist to the Supreme Court, a man by the name of Clement Haynesworth of South Carolina. The Democrats in the Senate will try to say that he is a racist because he belonged to a restricted country club or other. Civil rights groups and labor will be lobbying against him. The reason I am telling you is this: All of you have blacks working for you in your agencies. They will feel the pressure put on them by the civil rights groups and labor. When that occurs, some of your black employees may criticize the president. This is to tell you not to worsen any public relations problems by letting them agitate you to censure them, or censor them or in any way offend them. Worse of all would be if you would attempt to fire them—if they are political appointees—for insubordination. That would play into the hands of the Washington Post and the other media organs.
That was in Spring. I checked with my sources on Capitol Hill and learned that the entire Senate confirmation process would have to take a matter of months, with long Judiciary committee hearings and fireworks every day. At the same time, my bureaucrat friend was telling me that my termination papers were being rushed. So I had to act. I wangled a speaking date at the National Business League, an organization of so-so value which featured black businessmen who since the days of Calvin Coolidge had been trying to lobby for programs such as I was developing. I told a pal at the Associated Press that I was going to make a speech at the NBL. “So?” he said, bored. I said that in the speech I’d ask respectfully for the President to pull the name of Clement Haynesworth. I wouldn’t have a press release but I would say it. And he had exclusively. “For a sub-cabinet guy to say that,” he said, “even a lowly sub-cabinet guy like you would mean you’d be fired!” I wanted to tell him the truth: it would be just the opposite. By saying that Haynesworth should be pulled, I’d be adding to my longevity until I got the strategy paper done. “O.k.,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’m going to have our Memphis correspondent there. But damn you if you chicken out and don’t say it!” I told him I wouldn’t chicken out but would he be sure that this story gets to the Washington Post which subscribes to AP? He agreed. “After you say it , I’ll call it in to the night desk over there myself.”
So at a very long, boring convention in Memphis, I got up and without much fanfare talked about minority enterprise and dropped my three sentences into the pot. No one was listening but one guy: the Memphis AP reporter. I stayed over in Memphis that night and slept the sleep of the just. When I returned to Washington the next morning, I bought the Post and saw to my pleasure that a Nixon sub-cabinet guy was asking, respectfully, that Haynesworth be pulled. Then I joyfully took a cab to the Commerce Department. When I got to my office my secretary’s eyes were like saucers. The secretary has been on the phone since early morning, she said, and he must see you. Also, the entire Washington media market is calling for you.
Before I went to see him, I poured a cup of coffee in a mug and carried it jauntily to his mammoth office. As soon as I approached everybody on his staff rushed out all the doors, their hair standing on end. I sauntered in as he was on the phone (I presumed it was with Halderman). As I sat and drank the coffee he said, “yes—yes—yes—no—no—no, of course I won’t. Goodbye.” He hung up and I almost felt sorry for him.. Almost.
What in the name of God possessed you, he said as he fiddled with his pill box and gulped one, downing it with a handy glass of water. I told him that civil rights mean very much to me and that I can understand his consternation. Therefore if he wished my resignation, he would have it. I said I couldn’t stay with him long as there were a flood of calls I would have to return.
Wait, he said. Wait. He got up and walked to the window. T hen he turned and said, I have always felt a man should have the right to express himself—he said it slowly as if they were the last words he wished to utter. Just promise me this: before you make another speech, would you mind telling me what you’re going to say? Fair enough, I said. We shook hands. I noticed his was rather damp. Then I left.
When I returned to my office my bureaucrat friend called. This is the damndest thing, he said. Your papers had been winging to your office to notify you that you were terminated. Now those papers have been recalled and placed on indefinite suspension. Since this department’s founding by Herbert Hoover, this is the first time this has happened.
I took my time preparing the strategy paper, sent it to the Secretary and saw that it got to the president. Clement Haynesworth failed of confirmation on November 21,1969 by vote of 55 to 45. And when his nomination failed I was on my way out of office—to the Peace Corps as director of public affairs. The Nixon group, stunned by my insubordination, decided not to impede my federal career…although I was planning to say goodbye forever and return to Quaker and the private sector.
So you see, with a blog I can write it up the way I want to. Thanks for listening.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Movement Conservatives are Joining the Stop Harriet Miers Effort
I was asked earlier today to do an interview about the Harriet Miers prospects for CNN with Bill Schneider on the satellite from Washington. I told him frankly that I have no doubt that she is a wonderful woman, a good Christian and exemplary White House general counsel—but.
The but is amply illustrated by today’s New York Times column in which David Brooks reproduces her writing. The only thing we have to go on are the essays she wrote as president of the Texas Bar to her members. Believe me, they are vapid in the extreme and devoid of any reasoning power. They show a very diligent woman who would be painfully out of her depth on the Court. Read the book “Scalia Dissents” and notice the exquisitely graceful way Scalia parses this thoughts on Constitutional law. Listen to Breyer make a case (not a very good one but eloquent nevertheless) for scholars to probe international law and then contrast it with Scalia’s rejoinder. These are two men whose intellects burnish the Court. One cannot possibly believe that Harriet Miers can keep up with them. The idea that she wouldn’t have to keep up, that she can be used only for one vote, is not practical. Someone bereft of philosophical underpinning would be, after Bush leaves Washington, a nifty vote for anyone with intellectual firepower.
The weakness of this nominee can be seen by the way in which her advocates argue in her behalf. The President said she is a good woman who worked selflessly in behalf of Meals on Wheels. The Attorney General said she is a good friend of his. Sen. Lindsay Graham said bluntly that conservatives should “shut up”. Fred Barnes, who ordinarily is very reasonable, takes up the argument that she will be a good vote. If that is the best that can be said for her, it is insufficient.
I told CNN that it is my belief more grassroots conservatives believe the nomination should be pulled than not—and this is significant in that she has not yet testified. It’s my hope that a good number of conservative Senators will join the liberals to oppose her and that once this happens the White House nose-counters will advise that her name be pulled. At least I hope that’s the case.
The but is amply illustrated by today’s New York Times column in which David Brooks reproduces her writing. The only thing we have to go on are the essays she wrote as president of the Texas Bar to her members. Believe me, they are vapid in the extreme and devoid of any reasoning power. They show a very diligent woman who would be painfully out of her depth on the Court. Read the book “Scalia Dissents” and notice the exquisitely graceful way Scalia parses this thoughts on Constitutional law. Listen to Breyer make a case (not a very good one but eloquent nevertheless) for scholars to probe international law and then contrast it with Scalia’s rejoinder. These are two men whose intellects burnish the Court. One cannot possibly believe that Harriet Miers can keep up with them. The idea that she wouldn’t have to keep up, that she can be used only for one vote, is not practical. Someone bereft of philosophical underpinning would be, after Bush leaves Washington, a nifty vote for anyone with intellectual firepower.
The weakness of this nominee can be seen by the way in which her advocates argue in her behalf. The President said she is a good woman who worked selflessly in behalf of Meals on Wheels. The Attorney General said she is a good friend of his. Sen. Lindsay Graham said bluntly that conservatives should “shut up”. Fred Barnes, who ordinarily is very reasonable, takes up the argument that she will be a good vote. If that is the best that can be said for her, it is insufficient.
I told CNN that it is my belief more grassroots conservatives believe the nomination should be pulled than not—and this is significant in that she has not yet testified. It’s my hope that a good number of conservative Senators will join the liberals to oppose her and that once this happens the White House nose-counters will advise that her name be pulled. At least I hope that’s the case.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Who’s My Favorite Justice? Ah, er Warren…er, ah Burger.
Today’s Washington Post has a story that, contrary to an earlier dispatch, when Harriet Miers was asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) who her favorite Justice was, she responded “Warren”—by which she didn’t mean Earl Warren (as earlier reported) but Warren Burger; evidently she was having trouble distinguishing between the two. Which tells you something right there. But neither man was an ideal Chief Justice. Earl Warren was a political pragmatist in search of a philosophy who was taken into camp swiftly by the Court’s senior liberals and Warren Burger who had insisted he favored strict construction became a Seeker of Truth as well, voting for Roe v. Wade in order to give one whom he mis-read as a fellow conservative, Harry Blackmun, the opportunity to write a restrictive decision (which Blackmun took and wrote boldly). All of which shows that Miers fits the description of a pragmatist herself. I worked with lawyers—and brilliant ones, corporate ones and ones from blue-chip law firms—for 27 straight years. I played a little game with them. Not a single one—nary one—could tell me who Hans Kelsen was*
This intellectual vacuity will spell great problems for conservatives if Miers is confirmed. President Bush tells us she won’t change over the years although she did change up to now in many respects: changing from a Catholic to an evangelical, changing from a Democrat to a Republican, changing from a liberal to a conservative, going to a strongly pro-life church while at the same time contributing to pro-abort Al Gore. But never fear, she won’t change from now on. Odds are she will change and the change from conservative to liberal will be a gift that keeps on giving for the Democrats. Conceivably she might vote the way Bush would like her to vote so long as he’s president—but after that if she drifts, it will be a steady reminder of the fact that the 43rd president bull-headedly stuck to the choice of his personal attorney despite all criticism. That will lead to a cynicism in the base to the point that conservatives themselves will forget about politics out of the sense of futility.
The Big Business global futurist named Friedman, whose views I critiqued the other day, made a major mistake in opining that social conservatives have no place to go except the Republican Party. Social conservatives have a great many things to do that can take the place of voting, if they are politically turned off. They belong to and are active in churches, in faith-based charities that can absorb their time. It’s secular liberals who more generally have no place to go but politics. That’s why the Harriet Miers appointment can be the worst thing to happen to social conservatism. Bush can easily go down in history as a copy of his father who said “read my lips: no new taxes” and then violated his precept. In most things, the stubbornness, the mulish obstinacy of George W. Bush is an asset. But when he makes a mistake, it’s a disaster. The only recourse is to defeat her in the Senate.
Does Her Accordion Have One More Squeeze?
The rumor mill was swirling today, carrying hints that State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka will not run for the Republican nominee for governor. If she doesn’t, it will serve notice that the bad gamble she made years ago has finally turned up snake-eyes. Contagiously comedic, an expert at quick repartee, a quick study on budget issues, irrepressibly adroit with superb contacts in the media due to her feminist connections (a former reporter herself) normally she would be considered to be a comer—even nationally—through force of personality. She’s the GOP’s best ethnic politician, a Czech in a state that has rewarded Czechs before: Anton Cermak for mayor, Otto Kerner for governor. And she crosses over. Not for nothing does Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) declare that he helped pull her through her last tough campaign against Tom Dart by pitching black votes for her. He’s right and he did.The one-time pro-lifer has bet the ranch on the fact that she could reach into the liberal constituencies and bring them home while holding her conservative base by playing exclusively to the economic side (talking spending cuts, even tax cuts) while playing her accordion for the pro-aborts and pro-gay rights lobby, two major elements of the Democratic base. Every time you look at Judy you see someone who single-handedly kept the Republicans from winning an Illinois congressional seat. Some years ago, conservative Jim Nalepa ran for Congress against a severely weakened incumbent Democrat Bill Lipinski who was the recipient of a new district. Nalepa was within an ace of winning until the Riverside GOP committeeman distributed sample ballots marked for Lipinski. The margin of victory was determined by that decision. The committeeman: Judy Baar Topinka.
The whisper today was that Judy talked to Jim Edgar who wished she would get in the race but that, on the other hand, she has been disappointed by lack of money. One of her major contributors, Ron Gidwitz, is in the race for governor and as a scion of great wealth is determined to make himself known by TV commercials to make up for all those years in the backroom when others took the bows. His TV commercials ought to get an award for honesty of presentation. They show a grim, humorless, balding guy with the warmth of a new arrival at Graceland Cemetery.
If Judy doesn’t get in the race, the liberals’ only hope is former Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood. She’s got money of her own and isn’t bad on TV.
Political Shootout Sunday
Guests will be Sen. Dan Rutherford (R-Pontiac), who is running for secretary of state, and journalist Russ Stewart, political analyst for the Nadig Newspapers. Why is Rutherford running against a supposed sure-winner, incumbent Jesse White? He’ll tell us but the betting is lightning could always strike and since he’s mid-term the campaign would enable him to show the flag and be available in the future. Ask him yourself on WLS-AM 890 at 591-8900 (good for all area codes).
Monday, October 10, 2005
Broadcast from Hell
The title of my Sunday broadcast “Political Shootout” lived up to its name last night with the possible modification to “Political Shoutout.” If you listened to my WLS-AM program last night you heard a distinctly historic broadcast wherein a critic of Jim Oberweis, Frank Avila, and Oberweis tangled about immigration for an hour. What you didn’t hear—and in this you were fortunate—was the screaming of high decibel sweet reason during the commercial breaks where James Leahy, the Oberweis grass-roots coordinator was remonstrating at Avila. Remonstrating at Avila is the right phrase. Frankly, I am surprised you didn’t hear it anyway because the swimmers in the adjoining Renaissance Hotel swimming pool stopped and cocked their heads to catch the words. It seems that Avila had told the Conservative summit in mid-September which endorsed Bill Brady that Hispanic votes to Oberweis would be negligible if Oberweis won the nomination which Leahy protested. Leahy’s remonstration seemed to throw Avila (usually an excellent debater) off his game and me off mine wherein the night ended with me in my bed seeking calm, ears ringing and teeth clenched in nervous spasm. For his part, Leahy does not need a microphone: he need only throw open a window and let go with his views to the world.
While Leahy’s commercial break shouting unnerved both me and Avila, the broadcast did accomplish much in addition to the exercise of Leahy’s vocal chords. In answer to the question where Avila gets off as a Democrat forecasting Hispanic votes for a Republican, it is ascertained that Avila has long been active in Latino affairs and his father has been elected repeatedly as commissioner of what used to be known as the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Cook County. It developed that a good number of Hispanics called in support for Oberweis. We learned that at the Summit, Avila voted for Democrat Glenn Poshard for governor notwithstanding that Poshard is not running (and that I had voted for him rather than George Ryan in 1998).
I asked Jim Oberweis this: If another conservative Republican candidate rates higher in a statewide poll than you and it looks likely that by staying in the conservatives would be divided causing them to lose the nomination to, let us say, Judy Baar Topinka, would you stay in or pull out? His answer was that he is now leading in the polls so the question had best be put to his primary opponents. This I will do individually at the appropriate future time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)