Personal Asides: What is This? “The Vatican” to Monitor the Pope? …Liberal Relativist Neil Steinberg Instructs Us on Religion.

The Vatican.

Correction: When in Matthew XVI: 15-16, Jesus Christ said to Peter, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” He meant, of course, pending on the acquiescence of the Vatican’s p. r. office which shall have the right to bowdlerize Peter so as to not make waves or disturb the comfortable. That is what Saturday’s New York “Times” implies now that Benedict XVI has gotten into trouble with Muslims because of his remarks attesting to a conversation on the truths of Christianity between 14th century Byzantine emperor Manuel Paleologus II and a Persian scholar. Benedict, one of the most renowned biblical scholars and theologians of the West, quoted the Emperor as saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” The pope now says he regrets the episode. Even that clarification was a mistake. The Muslims didn’t accept it. They burned churches and shot a nun. He has followed up with a profound apology. He shouldn’t have.

Benedict cited the quotation, saying that the doctrine of holy war and violence in the name of religion is contrary to God’s nature and to reason. A not very stunning conclusion. But since this truth has kicked up serious complaints in the peaceful religion of Islam “The Times” and some Italian newspapers, Vatican sources will have to be more vigilant about letting statements like Benedict’s go uncorrected…it being more important to pacify our hot-eyed bearded turbaned mullahs than to speak the truth. I am sure our own Catholic Senator Dick Turban—er, Durbin, would agree about his Pope.

The savviest commentator on Rome is John Allen of the “National Catholic Reporter.” He’s been an extreme theological liberal in his past due to the liberal newspaper he’s worked for, wrote a savage book on then Cardinal Ratzinger but then trimmed his sails and wrote another in favor of him when Ratzinger became Benedict XVI. Why? Some say it’s because Allen has moderated; others because as a good journalist he wants to ingratiate himself with his news sources.

Allen has just written that “any PR consultant would have told the pope that if he wanted to make a point about relationship between faith and reason he shouldn’t open up with a comparison between Islam and Christianity that would be widely understood as a criticism of Islam, suggesting that it’s irrational and prone to violence.” Heavens no. We don’t want that misconception to get out now that Islam has responded by burning down only a few churches and shooting only a few nuns in Palestine. That violence erupted after Benedict’s talk proves that Benedict should not have issued a regret. Some day some time we’re going to have to confront these guys and it could have been now. Only the day of confrontation has been delayed because of the Vatican PR office.

The fact is that Islam teaches that Muslims must wage war on non-Muslim states, that today’s jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as Muslims who fought the Crusaders, that the Crusades were defensive forays and Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centuries and still goes on. It is also clear that Muhammad did not teach peace and tolerance but led armies and ordered the assassination of his enemies…that the Qur’an commands Muslims to make war on Jews and Christians…that what we know as the “Islamic world” was created through a series of brutal conquests of non-Muslim lands…that the jihad continues today with the outlook that unless curbed Europe could be Islamic by the end of this century…and that ex-Muslims live in fear even in the United States. And Benedict apologized—for what?



Steinberg.

Neil Steinberg, the best feature columnist in the “Sun-Times” fills the marketing niche of the sophisticated and worldly wise upwardly mobile young urban male. His writing skill makes his column an interesting read. The other day it occurred to him that those who want prayer in the schools prefer only Judeo-Christian prayers not the prayers or worship phrasings of exotic religions. To him this insight seemed an inspiration. To most, it is commonplace.

He wrote his relativism the other day under the heading “Believers think there’s no god but their God.” Of course: that’s why they’re Judeo-Christian believers! So did the founders and those following them who endorsed voluntary prayer in public schools. He continues: “Those who support prayer in school, for instance. They don’t really want prayer in school. They don’t really want little Kiki burning incense and little Haji offering bread-fruit to the great god Gamesh.” Is this what he suggests the Declaration meant? Deist Thomas Jefferson wrote that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…”

Jefferson’s use of the word Creator stamps him as one who supports the tradition view of Creator as First Cause. Along came the Warren Court, which, influenced by Hugo Black who wrote that even secular humanism is a religion, not withstanding that it does not believe in God. That was a flat contradiction to the first charter of our liberties. If he were better-schooled, Steinberg would tell us in his column that Black’s nihilistic view is to be preferred over Jefferson’s in the Declaration. Black’s view is highly unorthodox for his time and ours. But were he to do this, Steinberg would be different from his heavy-weight colleagues: Debra Pickett, Stella Foster and Richard Roeper.

But the fight to return to the old verity goes on. Those who believe in the God Jefferson described have the right to insist that voluntary prayer—not forced prayer—not be abrogated in public schools because some like Steinberg believe either in no God or that any belief is of equal stature. Not as the U. S. was originally constituted, sorry. That doesn’t mean that there’s no room for dissent but does mean that the Founders’ God can be voluntarily beseeched without harming the Constitution…and will be again when the goofy Warren court’s nihilism can be rectified. Steinberg doesn’t understand the historical significance or obviously hasn’t read Black (a former Klansman whose membership was revealed when, as Alabama senator he was up for confirmation to the Court).

But let us not be too tough on Steinberg, the best feature writer in this city’s liberal Democratic newspaper of record. He has courage, is gifted, is sometimes perspicacious and also writes good jokes.

Flashback: The Mondale Explosion and the Budget Crunch Goes On.

“Don’t Call Me Fritz!”…Don’t Call Him Fudd! Yet Another Threat of Emasculation. All This and a Special Session.

[More on fifty years of politics for my kids and grandchildren.]

The story recap. I become press secretary to a liberal Republican…albeit idealist and nice guy…Elmer Andersen who vows to tax utilities in order to pay for expanded social needs. The Legislature turns it down. The budget hole just sits there as both sides wait for the other side to crack. Meanwhile, Fritz Mondale, who is appointed attorney general and inherits a giant charities fraud case, gets national attention and a cover story in “Time” calling him a rising young Democrat of the future. It goes to his head and at my governor’s suggestion that I try to puncture his solemnity, , I write a blast of him in the name of a Republican official calling him “Crusader Rabbit”—a popular goofy cartoon figure for kids. So I’m summoned to see Mondale.]

When I approached his desk, he was writing and kept writing. As he was scribbling he said without raising his head, “Roeser, I don’t want to waste time. Obviously George Etzell your handpicked crony didn’t write the Crusader Rabbit attack on me. It was you. It has the earmarks of your style so let’s not even debate the issue. All I want to do is…” and he lay the pen down and looked up at me, “to tell you that the House Majority Leader is seriously disturbed about this and is very close to introducing a resolution to ask Elmer to fire you from the public payroll for misfeasance and malfeasance and gross misapplication of your duties which are designed to assist the taxpayer to understand his government to crass partisan politics. Now I have temporarily put a hold on this resolution thing because of our past friendship but I cannot hold back a legislative action very long.”

I said with feigned surprise: huh?

“Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent [allusion to barnyard excrement], Roeser. In this business you have a choice. If the Etzell thing which you’ve invented doesn’t stop, the resolution gets introduced and will pass the House. It’s your choice.”

He added: “Oh, I should add—Elmer will certainly let you go because he will become aware, if he isn’t already, of what it means to make fun of the office of chief law enforcement official in Minnesota. So I guess what I’m telling you now is this: you have a choice. If you want to continue this Crusader Rabbit insult you can, the resolution will be introduced, will pass by this afternoon and you’ll be on your merry way on the door on your [scatological reference to posterior]. So what I suggest you do is this: go tell Fudd [another Disney cartoon character, Elmer Fudd, noted for his agitated, stuttering habit highlighted with his excitable “aba-dabba-dabba-that’s all ffffolks!”—an allusion to the Governor’s proclivity to stammer when excited, a throwback to a childhood illness of polio from which he had recovered but which affected his speech in times of stress]. He’ll order you to stop the press release thing with Etzell and we’ll let this pass.”

I said, Fritz, is this how you administer justice? You read a story in the paper, decide without proof that I wrote it…I’m sure without talking to Etzell…and allow the House Majority Leader to introduce a resolution calling for my firing, call for the House to pass it without corroboration and then expect that the Governor will fire me--like that? Does that fit the description that “Time” gave you of the People’s Lawyer whom future Minnesotans to hail?

“Don’t call me Fritz.”

Don’t call him Fudd, then.

“I’m telling you what is likely to happen not detailing what I want to happen. As I say, Freddie Cina [the House Democratic majority leader] is very hot. So you just might want to ward this off by telling the governor that you…”

Okay, General, you get Fred Cina to introduce the resolution and make me a hero because that’s what I’ll be—a martyr to the proclivity of the Democratic-controlled House to purge dissent by a non-state employee

to fire a state employee without proof. Thank you.

And I walked out back across the hall to the governor’s office. When I got back to my desk I was summoned to see the governor.

“W-what happened?”

I told him.



“M-maybe we ought to stop it, you think?”

No. He called you Fudd.

“H-he did? Well then Etzell should have a g-go at it once again.”

So I sat down and wrote another Crusader Rabbit. In between I got two phone calls. One was from Etzell who said, “my-my, I’m quite the celebrity here for my skill at drawing the bead on the attorney general. I think I’ll write an editorial for my own paper amplifying it.”

I said, not only that but you’re going to press again here in St. Paul with the rabbit.

She second call was from Lillian. She told me we were going to be parents again, the baby to be born in December [1961]. Terrific! I finished the Crusader and called for the GOP messenger to pick it up. Then I went home early to take all three of us out to dinner to celebrate at the Lexington, not far from our apartment. Forgetting about the Etzell release.

The next morning when I picked up the St. Paul “Pioneer-Press” there it was on the front page—“the return of Crusader Rabbit” this time the bunny dressed by a cartoonist in a general’s garb with his sword dragging on the floor. The properly liberal Minneapolis “Tribune” this time carried nothing. But the St. Paul was good enough. When I got to work, everybody was working in the governor’s office with heads down waiting for an explosion; the governor had left word with his secretary that if I were to be summoned to see Fritz, he would follow across the hall after me and they’d have it out right there about Fritz’s calling him Fudd. The AG’s office across the hall seemed quiet and drowsy. Silence all around.

My first appointment at 9 a.m. was with Mrs. Rebecca Overmann, a pillar of the Evangelical Church in America (ELC) who was interested in negotiating for her pastor, Rev. Reuben Youngdahl (brother of a former governor) a dignified colloquy on morality, ethics and high-sounding topics with my boss the governor and Attorney General Mondale—both Lutherans—participating along with Sen. Eugene McCarthy, a Catholic, Val Bjornson the state treasurer, a Lutheran and a number of legislators and pious business types. The questions were mundane: to see what the governor’s schedule would allow…get recommendations as to who else should participate (the governor wanted Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a good friend and at least one black minister). We were getting down to the nitty gritty in my tiny office, an office so small (it had been a former walk-in safe with no windows) that when the door was opened, it covered and perfectly obscured the person facing me at my cluttered desk.

Mrs. Overmann, a well-stuffed church and civic leader of great dignity, was expounding on whether or not we should begin the session—since it had a Lutheran, spiritual orientation—with a prayer when my door burst open, the door covering Mrs. Overmann from view completely and Fritz Mondale burst in running to my side of the desk. I rose and he pinned me to the wall in the tiny room and cursed, “Roeser, goddammit that’s the last straw, tell Fudd to get his nut-cups on!” using a phrase popular with Hubert Humphrey. Then, he turned and saw Mrs. Overmann, the distinguished church lady whose frightened eyes were popping out of her head. He said, “Oh—oh, Becky, I’m sorry!” and retreated. He was gone and we were once again alone, the whole explosion having lasted 10 seconds.

She said, “My goodness gracious! Was that Fritzie? What in the world? What did he say about things somebody should put on? Fudd?”

I said sadly, yes, that’s what we have to put up with around here, Mrs. Overmann. Fudd was a terribly improper scatological term this young AG (he was just my age) used about the Governor and there was implicitly a threat that he would do violence to the governor to the extent of forcibly removing his genitals.

Her eyes almost popped out of her head. She was there to organize a seminar on a Christian in Politics! I added: Mrs. Overmann, that’s why this colloquy will do some good.

My friendly sources in the AG’s office said he rushed back to his office, slammed the door and stayed there for a long time. There was no further talk of a resolution or censure of me. I decided we won with the Crusader Rabbit thing and never tried again although Etzell was begging for yet another sequel. I told him, no there will not be any and don’t you try putting one out either. The governor is satisfied that the battle has been won. As Mrs. Overmann left my office, she was ushered in to the governor’s office who shook his head sadly about the intemperateness of the young Mondale and his indelicate choice of words that were chosen to indicate he would be un-manned. No one could be quite as sanctimonious as Fudd—er, Elmer.

***********

Be that as it may, the Crusader Rabbit tussle was one of the only battles we won for weeks. Andersen’s tax plan just lay there, having been treated as Dead on Arrival. I was urging him to cut services to the bone and submit a re-configured budget which placed the blame on the Democrats in the legislature to consider or amend the old plan—but no. He actively wanted new programs for mental health, traffic safety (then a big issue before many state governments), the single sanitary sewer system for the Twin Cities and the new Fort Snelling state park. He actively said that he would not tolerate a cut-back budget but wanted to be remembered as a governor who did things, built things, initiated things. Fine, I said, but when you don’t have the money what are you going to do? What do all of us do…not him since he was a multi-millionaire…when we can’t afford a new car? We cut back. Nope. I had lost. So he followed a path that all too many governors followed with many variations—before and since.

He decided to institute a withholding tax. A switch from annual payments to the withholding system would please some legislators-. They could claim that they were not enacting a new tax or raising taxes. The system allowed for the collection of next year’s tax in the current year. In other words it provided a double collection of income gax revenue in the year in which it was instituted. Prior to withholding, the tax on income made in, say 1961, was payable on April 15, 1962. No part of the tax was paid in 1961. By comparison, withholding took money out of each 1961 paycheck. Andersen realized that the public would object to the change unless some portion of the tax was forgiven in the transition year. So he argued for “forgiveness” of 75 percent of the income tax owed in 1962. That meant the state would receive a one-time 25-percent increase in income-tax revenue. That would be $35.5 million. And along with a $10 “head tax” or surtax on the income tax, and a 1.5 cent per pack increase in the cigarette tad, the budget would be balanced.

Since I lost again and had to live with it, I suggested he propose the withholding compromise at the end of the session with the idea that in the rush to adjourn, the legislature would pass it. He agreed with that late one night and I went home to go to bed at about 11:30 p.m. But even later that night, he called…woke me up…and said no, he wanted to call a special session on withholding. I said a special session on withholding will extend the debate and with one House Democratic and hostile to you and the Senate conservative Republican and hostile to you…and with Mondale and Lt. Governor Rolvaag (who whenever he was sober would craft a press release against you) why do it…sort of like cutting off a puppy’s tail a little bit every day? Nope, his mind was made up.

I talked to his wife later and asked her where he got the special session idea. “Heavens,” she said, “I don’t know! He agrees now it’s a mistake. You know who I think puts stuff in his head? I think it’s that very nice, very naïve driver of his, the state highway patrolman who has him in his limousine for hours at a time when they drive across the state. He’s one of those guys who tells Elmer he’s the brightest, most effective and articulate man in the world and when he’s tired, Elmer sheds his natural suspicion and listens to him. He’s the man, I am sure, who wanted a special session because yesterday he even talked to me about it. I said, `Land, no!’ but he’s become a very strong figure in Elmer’s mind. Especially when he’s tired and there is just the two of them riding in the car in the middle of the night.”

We were stuck with a special session. So I called for one in a news briefing since the governor rightly didn’t want to open himself up to a lot of negotiating questions. Then afterward, I popped in to see the chief of the Minnesota Highway Patrol, a Republican.

I said, chief, we have a case here where the governor’s driver and boey guard Sergeant Robert Eckstadt is usurping his role. He’s talking to the Governor him endlessly as they drive through the night with the governor exhausted. Believe it or not the idea of a special session that we just called today came from Sergeant Eckstadt. Now here’s the ticklish part. We all agree he’s a bad influence on the governor but he’s a favorite. How do we get Eckstadt to clam up without us getting ourselves in the soup with the governor?

He said, “It can be done. Believe it or not this has happened before—with Orville Freeman and even predecessor governors. Politicians believe they are hearing the voice of the common man when they hear their state highway patrolman driver talk. Especially when it’s late and they’re coming back from a meeting and the governor’s tired. I will just tell him that there’s an opening and promotion somewhere else in the state—somewhere far away. He’s a sergeant now; he’ll be made a lieutenant in charge of the small office in International Falls, right near the Canadian border. This will be disadvantageous for two reasons. First, International Falls is the worst duty we can conceive. It starts snowing up there in September and doesn’t quit until April. Second, Eikstadt gets far more money now—thanks to lots of overtime due to his driving the governor across the state—than he would even with a promotion and rank hike. I’ve checked and he gets far more money through overtime and double-time than you or anyone else on the governor’s staff. And all he does is drive.”

What if he turns it down? “He can’t. But I can cut a deal with him. I’ll say he has to devote more time to his driving and less to spouting off—that the suggestion comes from me, not anyone else. And I’ll tell him as his commanding officer that this is my personal evaluation, not to be shared with anyone else including the governor. I’ll remind him that in this business governors come and go but as state superintendent I’ve been in charge for ten years and intend to be around for ten more. He’ll get the drift.”

The sergeant quickly got the drift. The strategic advice delivered from the front seat to the occupant in the back seat stopped somewhat—but he made another pass on yet a second special session which none of us could halt. Eickstadt partially zipped his mouth because he was afraid of his direct boss—but we had to live with Sergeant Eickstadt’s two special sessions of the legislature. Rolling in dough and a good pension…easily topping our meager salaries when we had far more onerous jobs to do…Eickstadt was the governor’s favorite of all state employees. He died too early but he was the only state highway patrolman who had a former governor mourning him—and I mean mourning him, with sniffling and watery eyes. As Milt Knoll, Andersen’s top aide said: would Andersen go to our funerals if we died? We all knew the answer to that one.

Personal Asides: John Kass to Guest Lecture at My Roosevelt U Class…Am I Missing Something in David Graf’s Question?

Kass.

John Kass, the Tribune’s candid, straight-talking, straight-writing columnist, who coined the world “combine” as an illustration of the one-party hybrid that rules Illinois, will be my guest at Roosevelt University in November. In my estimation he is the finest newspaper columnist of this Chicago generation who is endowed with street smarts, integrity and the knack of not taking his profession too seriously. There is no doubt that he was the best city hall correspondent the paper has ever had. A terrific addition to the Roosevelt U lineup.

Graf.

I must say that I don’t get the full content of David Graf’s question that appeared yesterday in “Reader’s Comments.” To paraphrase he asks why, if Bob Novak is such a good Catholic, did he publish the Valerie Plame story. Huh? What does his Catholicism…whether he is an observant or non-observant Catholic…have to do with the question? The question at hand was why Joe Wilson, an acknowledged critic of the administration, was sent on this quest by the CIA. The answer seemed to be that he went at the suggestion of his wife, Valerie Plame who was working at the CIA. That’s what the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage admits he told Novak. The political context of the story was that the CIA’s bureaucracy was at war with the administration and that it listened to Wilson’s wife recommend a man who was a critic: evidence that the internecine war was going on. Novak has said, I believe, that he did not know Plame was a covert agent and that he looked up Wilson’s bio in Who’s Who and found that Plame was indeed listed as working for the CIA which would lead anybody to believe that she was not a covert agent.

There are a thousand questions about the matter and not one I can think of touches Novak’s Catholicism. The big question to me involves Patrick Fitzgerald. Why when he was informed by Armitage that he was the leaker and also told by Novak that Armitage was the leaker, did he tell Armitage to shut up about it and continue the prosecution…which goes on today…of Scooter Libby? If one must bring Catholicism into this, let it be brought up in connection with Catholic Fitzgerald. How moral is it to allow a man to twist slowly, slowly in the wind and amass millions of dollars in legal bills when Fitzgerald knew all the time that Libby was not the leaker? If the whole thing hinges on whether or not in trying to recall telephone calls Libby was inaccurate, Fitzgerald ought to stop being a martinet and get on with more important stuff. This action really damages Patrick Fitzgerald in my eyes—unless there is something remaining that we don’t know. There is a very slight chance there could be: but whatever it is, I don’t think moral theologians will center on whether Novak violated even a micro-millimeter of ethics in doing his job. Com’on, David, you can do better than that!

Mundelein Still Shows a Flaccid U. S. Hierarchy How to Bishop.

He Taught Us that the Church is No Democracy.

[Another article from The Wanderer, America’s Oldest National Catholic Weekly.]

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—More than six decades ago—so far distant that few Chicagoans have more than a glimmer of his memory—Catholicism here was truly run as a Church Militant. It was led by an archbishop known as the Builder, the Dutch Master and, behind his back, as His Prominence. He was George Cardinal Mundelein, a rotund bespectacled New York City-born German, raised on the lower east side. “Short of stature, he was ever inch a bishop,” the Chicago Daily News said of him.

As a kid of 11, I stood in line outside Holy Name cathedral with my mother for three and one-half hours on the first morning when his body went on exhibit for a wake that would last three full days—as a million people shuffled past his bier, the Chicago cops standing in the vestibule of the church, nudging us roughly to keep moving.



Mundelein was not cuddly. Nor was he a political conservative. He was a Democrat and friend of Franklin Roosevelt. The route he took to Chicago was stunning. It all started when as a young man he was considered for an appointment to the U. S. Naval Academy. George Mundelein wanted to go but he wanted to be a priest more. He went to Annapolis to check the place out and his Prussian soul thrilled to the cadets marching in orderly lines and following harsh military discipline.

When he studied for the priesthood, he followed a personal regimen akin to the military. A bright scholar but no soupy-minded intellectual, he so impressed his seminary teachers that they sent him to Rome to be ordained. In Rome they saw in him someone they felt would advance. And advance he did. Assigned to the Brooklyn diocese, he became Chancellor after only two years following ordination. Then things went even more quickly: a monsignor at 34, auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn at 37, holding a total of ten jobs in the chancery: sometimes three at a time. His military-style cadence, his Prussian efficiency set an example.

His boss the bishop of Brooklyn wisely gave his young auxiliary free rein. Mundelein reorganized the finances and planned a prep seminary. He took an unfinished Queen of All Saints cathedral, stalled for decades due to lack of funds completed it with Teutonic efficiency. Not only that, its French gothic-style embellishments, a Mundelein idea, won an architectural prize. What’s more, 14 magnificent stained-glass windows that he commissioned captured front page attention in the New York Times. And to top it off, the cathedral was finished without debt. He built it “pay as you go.”

Shortly after the cathedral was finished, J. Pierpont Morgan, the rascally old banker with the bulbous nose who felt every man had a price, came calling on Auxiliary Bishop Mundelein—not requesting Mundelein come to his mansion as he did businessmen. He came pretending to view the famous windows. But he really came to take the measure of Mundelein. Together they climbed up the steps to the massive belfry. And like another reptilian arch-materialist nineteen hundred years earlier who took another Man of Vision to a mountain-top, Morgan spread his arm out, beyond the young man, at the huge city that lay before them like a carpet. “With your sense of planning,” he told Mundelein as his arm took in the whole city in an arc, “planning as you did this building, like a military campaign, I hope you understand that someone of these talents could make millions working with…and I don’t mean for… me.” There was the offer. An offer which was just as rapidly declined. Not just declined: dismissed. Auxiliary Bishop Mundelein was not for sale. Not for rent. Thank you very much.

Morgan expected to be turned down but no harm trying. He had rightly appraised the young bishop as a magnificent leader because of his military formula. Rome did, too. At age 43 the name of Auxiliary Bishop Mundelein was pushed ahead of others. He was about to be named Bishop of Buffalo, New York. But then Rome put a hold on the appointment.

It was 1915 and Europe was engulfed in World War I. Canada, jewel of the British commonwealth, was bitterly anti-German. Hamilton, Ontario was just across the border; many Catholics from there went to church in Buffalo. But Canadian prelates said: no, not to a German. Rome agreed—but it would not hear of Mundelein’s progress being halted. Rather it boosted him higher. It made him not a bishop but archbishop. Archbishop of Chicago. The youngest archbishop in America—by far.



So that’s how George Mundelein came here. The Vatican picked him and no one else for the toughest job in America. This city’s Catholicism was a cauldron of warring pastoral egos. The city was torn with dissent against the hierarchy. Believe it or not, Irish parishes were convulsed with inter-nationality rivalry. The Irish had always been strong in Chicago but among the Irish there was internecine war. Some churches insisted on Irish-born pastors. Others wanted only pastors of Irish descent. New immigrants insisted on pastors who came over on the boat as they did. Older Irishmen who wanted to Americanize wanted American-born Irish priests…but Irish they must be: priests of other nationalities need not apply.



When Chicago archbishops did not adhere to their wishes, they threatened revolt. The same nationalities wars was occurring with other ethnic groups. German, Bohemian, Slovak, Lithuanian and Italian parishes would not accept directions from any pastors not of their nationalities. Bricks and stones were flailed between the neighborhoods. The ethnic derivative of a priest was his most important quality. Failing to bring peace, one early bishop resigned; another went insane. Archbishops Feehan and Quigley were Irish but nevertheless antagonized the rebellious pastors. One priest became a revolutionary and was excommunicated.

Not only that—but the city was boiling over because of “trusteeship.” It started as a perceived good thing. Immigrants who came to Chicago without clergy demanded priests who spoke their language. The immigrants built churches with their hard-earned savings and sometimes with their own volunteer labor. They sent back to the old countries for priests. When the pastors came, the immigrants treated them as scullery artisans, lodgers, renters, mere employees in churches the immigrants had built. The congregants ruled the roost with the pastors becoming indentured servants. Some pastors rebelled; some bishops, weaklings, threw up their hands and said they could do nothing.

To try to correct things, some U. S. bishops instituted what they called “corporation sole” which made the bishops presidents of the parishes. Chicago was technically one of those. But nobody had the guts to try it, to pull the trigger. Who could sell that idea in the hey-day of Chicago nationalist rivalry and immigration wars?

Into that cauldron walked Mundelein—not Irish, not Slavic, not Bohemian, not Lithuanian, not Italian but a German-American: right in the middle of immigrant parishes that felt they “owned” immigrant pastors.

Immediately there was an attempt on his life. It came at his very installation dinner by an anarchist. The anarchist escaped and was never apprehended. It was the first—and only—time that an attempt was made on the life of an American bishop.

The newspapers run by Hearst and McCormick had a field day. Mundelein’s picture was front-page. Who tried to kill him? While the city roiled in dispute and the Church split in near anarchy over who was responsible for the attempted murder, Mundelein—calm, Germanic, marched in military cadence up the steps of the county courthouse. There he asked to be sworn in—and was: as Corporation Sole. Then, confronting the dissident Catholic laity, he announced he had just taken over ownership of all their parishes in corporate, not personal, name. He said bluntly he now held the purse strings over all the parishes. The angry Catholics rose up.

They wanted their parishes back.

That’s when he gave them Dutch hell: an education in two lessons, in theology and Germanic firmness. He told them the Church was not set up as a democracy of warring principalities by its Founder. He said the Church is, by the will of God, structured as a hierarchy. He insisted that along with the Pope, the bishops are the only teachers constituted by divine right and their authority comes from God. Bishops are not pawns of the clergy, nor representatives, nor politicians who strive to please the clergy or the people. He warned them—in a warning that carried across the city and silenced dissenters for a time—that the authority of the bishops comes not from below where the congregants were but from above.

Then, very much the military commander issuing the Orders of the Day, he cited Matthew XVI: 15-16 in the Douay version. Christ asks “who do you say that I am?” Peter: “Thou art Christ the Son of the living God.” Then to XVI: 18-19: “And I say to thee, Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I shall give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.”

With that firmness, Mundelein seized the rebels by the scuff of their necks. If churches wanted to expand, they would have to submit their budgets to him and he would either approve or reject. Obedient priests were favored; disobedient ones were transferred. With that phenomenal display of guts, he broke the back of the strike.

It is said that Mundelein the Builder put the Chicago archdiocese on the map—and he did, becoming the first Cardinal of the West. But he did far more. As the buildings went up—Quigley preparatory seminary on the near North Side, a Catholic seminary and university in a rural location 40 miles north of the city—not only did Chicago’s priests and laity bend to their unified tasks, but Chicago’s civic and political leadership marveled. Not only was he obeyed, this New York City German with the Prussian bearing became beloved. So much so that the small Protestant country town of Area, Illinois where he built his seminary asked for permission to adopt his name as theirs—Mundelein. And Mundelein, Illinois it remains today.

Today, after misinterpretation and mistranslation of Vatican II and a world-wind of social revolution, the Church in Chicago—and elsewhere—is in disarray. Bishops have tried to flatter, then appease dissident clergy and laity. They have sought to butter them up—especially the media—by seeking to install “democratic” procedures. Greater lay participation is essential but not shared governance. As Mundelein instructed us Chicagoans in a lesson that has been sorely forgotten, this is not a democratic Church. Authority of the Church is supposed to be a work of service—first of all, service to Christ to carry out His mission…not a service to priests nor to congregants or to get good press or to be popular or to square with modern trends. That’s what Mundelein would say: and it applies to almost all other dioceses (I make exception for such ones run by Mundelein tenets--such as Lincoln, Nebraska). But this Wanderer writer longs for return of Mundelein in the town he governed so well. And extension of Mundelein-ism in dioceses across the nation. It is not too late.



I am sure George Cardinal Mundelein was not a perfect human being—but after studying his life and work intensely, I think he very nearly was. Such imperfections as he had were so microscopic that they could hardly be discerned next to weak hierarchal, wishy-washy media-centric vacillations of today. Did Mundelein so concentrate on brick and mortar to the detriment of providing spiritual leadership? Nope. Mundelein published Letters of a Bishop to his Flock, a book that is still vital and fresh today. Nine letters emphasize the need for Catholic charity; nine provide catechetical instruction for sermons by priests at Sunday Mass; ten on the First World War and the postwar period; three on the Eucharistic Congress, the first and only one, held in this city.

Because he was so successful a prelate, was he smitten by ego? Nope. Asked—indeed, begged by admirers—to write an autobiography or memoir of his work and times so he could leave lessons for future bishops, he declined, saying simply with incredible understatement: “[There are] really no outstanding events in my life”! Then he added: “and there is the ever-present danger of taking too much to ourselves the credit for what has been accomplished through us by the Holy Spirit.”

Because he was so imbued with Prussian sense of military order, was he unfeeling for social justice? Nope again. He wrote tirelessly during the Depression about the responsibilities the Church and all of us have to serve orphans in the Chicagoland area. He reinvigorated and reorganized Catholic Charities, determined to move the Church in uniquely humane ways to serve the poor. Finally, was he so imbued with administrative procedure that he neglected the human quotient? Not at all. Wrong: He knew all his priests personally by name, when there were more priests than there are now—an outstanding trait that has never been duplicated.

Therefore, it’s difficult to imagine that he would be content as a participant in the oracular cave of winds that has become the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with its cavernous headquarters in Washington, D. C. set up as a kind of UN Security Council, with padded chairs, microphones for each bishop and staffs of clerical and professional assistants. And it is certainly impossible to conceive that he would have sacrificed his power as bishop to obey priest-ordered pastoral term limits, requiring pastors to be transferred—particularly those doing a good job. Mundelein recognized that for good priests, a parish is the nearest thing to his family and stability should be maintained for the good of both congregants and priests.

If it is impossible to think he’d buy term limits—which sprang from the wishes of liberal priests who challenged authority—it would be stunning to imagine that he would accept term limits for some priests and not for chancery favorites. And certainly not the refusal of dissident priests who refuse to be transferred, such as Fr. Michael Pfleger, the blond-haired white demagogic pastor of an all-black church who, if corrected, threatens to leave the Church and start his own religion. Fr. Pfleger would be shown the door. Mundelein would know as some current chancery officials do not that Pflegerism as a religion would be as phony on its own as Scientism.

What then can be cited as an example of Mundelein’s human quality—an instance where he goofed up? There is one. It’s legend in this archdiocese. A phenomenally colorful priest in Mundelein’s time was Fr. Patrick J. Molloy, known to his priest colleagues as Muggsy. Endowed with a truly gregarious personality and infectious Irish wit, Fr. Molloy won city-wide attention for his outstanding traits as pastor of a church on the South Side and later on the North Side. Particularly, during the Depression era he ran parish benefits and Bingo games that raised money in enormous amounts. His weekly Sunday collections had baskets filled to overflowing with big money. Mundelein kept a close eye on him because Fr. Malloy was close to men with pointy-toed shoes and colorful, checkered suits as well as pasts, i.e. a group which in Chicagoese has always been known as “the Outfit.”

Not that Fr. Malloy was a participant but that he knew all the Outfit players well and at his Masses, gentlemen whose surnames often ended with vowels would unload wads of cash into the collection baskets; When he held Bingo, the Outfit would see that their minions flooded to the church basements to play—often donating big bucks before and after the games.

Once when he was visiting the chancery, Fr. Malloy was told by the Chancellor that a car was stolen from the parking lot—a car belonging to the Vicar General. Fr. Malloy asked what kind of car it was and was told it was a Packard (then top-of-the-line in automobiles). He followed up by asking the color, the make and year. Finally he asked for the license plate. These things he was given. Whereupon he excused himself and went to a pay phone where he was engaged in a whispered conversation for a long time. When the Vicar General came to work the next morning, the Packard was sitting in the lot—washed and waxed. When asked, Fr. Malloy expressed gratitude that the thief evidently had suffered a pang of conscience. But Mundelein pondered the case long and hard.

In early 1923, one Dion O’Banion, a former altar-boy turned prominent Outfit mobster, took a job in a florist shop across from Holy Name cathedral, at 738 North State Street, to add a touch of legitimacy to his work, the florist shop becoming a command center for the North Side mob. Someone from the Capone wing of the mob took umbrage at O’Banion and riddled his body with slugs the following November (a few bullets chipping the façade of the Cathedral).

Outraged at the gang, Cardinal Mundelein ordered that O’Banion not be buried with the spiritual consolation of the Church since his life had been a public scandal. The O’Banion mob was disconsolate since religious burials meant very much to its members. O’Banion’s body was waked, then mysteriously disappeared, then reappeared at an out-of-the-way church in the suburbs where Fr. Malloy offered requiem Mass, supposedly in secret.

But the Cardinal found out.

In that era, a Prince of the Church could banish a priest to any part of the world where another prelate would willingly receive him. Mundelein decided to banish Fr. Malloy for his disobedience to do penance in the nation of Panama, to a tiny church near the Canal. Ten years later, the Cardinal’s sisters came to dinner with their brother at the archbishop’s residence. They had just returned from a vacation trip to several countries in central America. They told their brother, the Cardinal, that before going through the Panama Canal, they went to Mass at an out-of-the-way church and found there a very ingratiating and charming Irish priest who told them he was affiliated with the archdiocese of Chicago.

The Cardinal clapped his hand to his forehead and said, “My God! Muggsy Malloy! I forgot all about him!” He ordered Fr. Malloy brought back. He told the priest that the penance was concluded but that the Cardinal would watch him closely. Cardinal Mundelein died in 1939; Patrick J. Molloy, none the worse for wear and brimming with fresh stories from central America, was made a monsignor on his 40th anniversary as a priest by Mundelein’s successor, Francis Cardinal Stritch. It is fair to surmise that Mundelein would not have approved.

The lapse in memory about Fr. Malloy was the only failing this Wanderer reporter could turn up concerning George Cardinal Mundelein, the man who tamed the warring dissident priests, put Chicago in the Church’s big leagues and flourished without arrogance the miter of rule as he walked with Prussian authority down the aisle of Holy Name cathedral.

God love and keep him. He typified by example that the Chicago Church, by the will of God, is not a democracy but is hierarchically structured as its Founder intended. May it return to that state again—here in Chicago and across America.

Amen.

Personal Asides: Former Governor Jim Edgar Will Guest Lecture at My Roosevelt University Class…Bob Novak Pops in on Chicago and Talks About His Conversion to Catholicism…Speaking of Conversion--.

edgar



Edgar.

Jim Edgar, the 38th governor of Illinois, will guest lecture at my Roosevelt University class after all. After a scheduling delay, I was called by his stunningly effective personal aide Sue to say that the former governor will indeed make a presentation and respond to questions the night of September 28 beginning at 6 p.m. (The man he named as chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission, Dan Miller, will talk about business regulation, the media and business beginning at 7 p.m. on the same night. Miller is exceedingly qualified to talk of all three as business editor of the “Sun-Times.”

Novak.



Bob Novak, at age 75 the acknowledged dean of political columnists in the nation, popped into town yesterday for a luncheon address to the newly-formed Leadership Forum at the Union League Club…and I was lucky enough to be in attendance. Bob, whom I’ve known since I was a Nixon administration underling in 1969, talked about his remarkable conversion to the Roman Catholic church at age 68. In powerfully simple terms, he said that he had made a speech at the University of Syracuse when a young woman student came up to him and happened to bring up the subject of eternity…asking if he had made preparations for the after-life. When he said no, she underscored the importance of thinking seriously about it. Shortly after that he visited with Fr. C. J. McCloskey of the Washington Information Center, a priest of Opus Dei. Fr. McCloskey, an outstanding thinker and homilist, followed through with the conversion and led Novak and his wife into the Church. It is a remarkably simple but effective story.

When Dan Cheely who was at our table asked why Novak picked the Catholic Church when Evangelical churches ask the same question of one’s final destination, Novak responded with an answer that is very un-journalistic, not fact-filled and not speculative. He lays it to the power of the Holy Spirit. He said he had read a history of the Catholic Church—“Triumph” by H. H. Crocker…and commented that the Church had lasted for 2,000 years, sometimes under terrible leadership of awful men: corrupt Popes, Popes who were indentured to emperors, venal and despicable people down through the centuries—sprinkled with a few saints—and concluded that if an organization can survive under leadership like that against all the odds, that Church truly must be divine.

Speaking of Conversion.

You’re familiar with the freeing last week of the Fox news correspondent and his cameraman. They were forced to say they were converted to the Muslim faith…which they readily acknowledged in order to save their necks (literally).

But the question has been raised by Mark Steyn that despite whether we would have the strength to measure up to an order to “convert,” the Fox crew’s acquiescence was used to prove the weakness and lack of certitude of Westerners by the Muslims. I for one would hope that I would have to guts and fortitude to say, “go ahead and kill me but I’m not converting”—don’t you? My view is that it is not a black and white thing that one should automatically take the view that anything should be done to save one’s life including denying one’s faith. Would you at least agree with me when I say that I would pray to have the spiritual strength to embrace martyrdom in that case? Your views solicited.

Personal Asides

Personal Asides: Terry Brunner Joins My Off-the-Record Roosevelt U Class Faculty This Thursday Night with Becky Carroll, Gov. Blagojevich’s Top Aide for 2nd …Todd Stroger and Maureen Murphy on WLS Sunday Night…Wha? Topinka Only Has 48% of the GOP Vote...Who is George W. Bush’s Candidate in 2008?

Terry Brunner: Reformers as an Interest Group.

Former BGA director Terry Brunner will be guest lecturer at my Roosevelt U class Thursday, September 14 for the first hour, at 6 p.m., outlining how an originally staid 501(c)(3) civic group became a model for political reform. Brunner is a former top federal prosecutor and key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force. He was a state prosecutor in Wisconsin before joining the Justice Department. As director of the BGA for many years (where I served as a long-time board member) he brought the venerable organization to full prominence as a grassroots movement for political reform in Chicago, which still goes on. Under Brunner, BGA became one of the leading pressure groups for reform in the nation…starting as a prod to the late Richard J. Daley (where the BGA actually ran a decoy bar and grill which was frequented by inspectors on the take).

Democrat Brunner is one of the most effective reform leaders in the state. He was first to target the secretary of state’s office under George Ryan and is a forthright critic of the bipartisan political “Combine” of Daley Democrats and Thompson-Edgar-Ryan Republicans who swing heavy with lobbying no matter what governor is in po//wer. Brunner will speak and answer questions in the first hour. Brunner now heads the Airport Integrity Project which is examining the contracts and pressuring the Daley administration is making to expand O’Hare.

There will be no overlap or joint appearances in presentations…Brunner talking about reform interest groups to be followed by…

Becky Carroll: The Role of Governor in Illinois.

The second hour will be devoted to Becky Carroll, the bright young expert on budget and policy for Governor Rod Blagojevich who was identified by the Chicago “Sun-Times” as being one of the city’s 30 under 30: thirty leaders under age 30. Becky’s job is communications on the budget and state priorities but as a featured panelist on my radio program she has stopped veteran Republican lawmakers in their tracks with superb arguments, brilliant forensic talents and bright reposts.

A north sider, she went to public schools and is a graduate of Loyola. and earned her spurs working in aldermanic campaigns before becoming a key operative for Mayor Richard M. Daley. She is a campaign veteran, having served in the Gore-for-President, Tom Tunney for Alderman, John Schmidt for Governor, the Dawn Clark Netsch for Governor, the congressional campaign of Rod Blagojevich and as one of Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s leading strategists. But she is far more than a political operative: she is compassionate about issues, is a passionate Democrat, knows state governmental policy from start to finish and is exceedingly astute.

Becky is known to feel that much of the media is slamming Rod Blagojevich for things that they have winked at and continue to wink at when done by others—a view I partially share, frankly. For example, when Pat Quinn ran against George Ryan for secretary of state, the media were unconcerned about Ryan’s fund-raising because he was front-and-center on issues such as traffic safety and DUI in which the media was supportive. All I know is you don’t sell Becky Carroll short because she knows her stuff and the issues…as a number of wounded Republican lawmakers who attempted to debate her can testify.

Both presentations together with questions and answers are off-the-record and are protected by the sacrosanct academia Code of Silence.

Todd Stroger and Maureen Murphy.

My WLS-AM radio show will feature Alderman Todd Stroger, Democratic nominee for president of the Cook county Board and Republican Maureen Murphy, member of the Cook county Board of Appeals. Todd Stroger is a former state Rep and son of John Stroger who was chosen by the Democratic Central Committee after the serious stroke suffered by his father forced the elder Stroger to vacate the ticket.

Maureen Murphy is a former state Representative, was chairman of the important state Revenue Committee and served as chair of the Cook county Republican party.

Topinka Has Only 48% of GOP Vote.

The “Tribune”-WGN poll of gubernatorial candidates, Republican Judy Baar Topinka only has 48% GOP approval which would put her in the Alan Keyes category (Keyes with 52% GOP approval) as one of the worst Republican candidates to run for state office in Illinois history. Two things must be stated: approval is not the same as a vote for…and the “Tribune” poll is famous for overshooting Republican votes, the tally shaded just a tad to please the polls sponsors. The most egregious overshoot was in August, 1998 in behalf of George Ryan where the count had Ryan leading Democrat Glenn Poshard 52 to 34 with an abnormally heavy number of black voters backing Ryan (which didn’t happen). The Ryan-Poshard contest was very close. Green Party candidate Rich Whitney gets 6%, “other” 1%...the “Tribune’s” lofty way of non-recognizing Constitutional Party write-in Randy Stufflebeam…and undecided 15%.

Who the Bush People Want in `08.

A highly-placed Washington, D. C. source told me yesterday that the George W. Bush people do have a personal, under-the-table favorite in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes. It is Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney who is making waves and raising much money wherever he goes. Romney is a good “hold” position for those Bush-people who want to back Gov. Jeb Bush for the nomination in 2012. You think the Mormon religion is a bummer from the standpoint of polygamy? After all, his great-grandfather had five wives; and two great-great-grandfathers had ten each. But the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (to which Romney belongs) disavowed polygamy in 1890. Now consider this: of the likely Republican candidates running, here is the wife total: John McCain (2); Rudy Giuliani (3); Newt Gingrich (3) and George Allen (2). Only Romney has had the same wife.

No, Mother, Chicago’s Catholic Character Hasn’t Changed. The Characters, From the Private Enterprise Boys of Yesterday to the Pols of Today, Are Still Cafeteria Types

Capone’s Tombstone Epitaph “My Jesus Mercy!” Still Applies.

[Another column for the nation’s oldest Catholic national weekly, The Wanderer.]


By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—When I was young, my Irish Democratic mother who was untainted by racism would continually say about the 1940s black migration from the South to this town: “I hope Chicago doesn’t lose its Catholic character.”

It was true that there was a lot of Catholic character here when I was a kid. Much was involved in private enterprise. The characters are still listed in the city police dossier in alphabetical order. With one exception: a heavily underlined name in the front of the book. He was named Alphonse but called by his parents Albert Capone. Born in New York city he was a twig bent in Brooklyn. His name is still magic here. Tourists visit his tombstone in Mount Carmel cemetery and photograph its inscription: My Jesus Mercy!. His fame is so imperishable that whenever a Chicagoan goes overseas, citizens of Paris, London, Venice or Tokyo grin and yell “Chicago? Capone! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat!”

It was easy for a Catholic kid in the 1940s to identify fellow laymen in Chicago. They were from popular Catholic ethnic derivatives and the funerals were ornate and well-publicized: In alphabetical order: Tony Accardo; Jimmy Adduci, Louie (Two Gun) Alterie; Samuel (“Samoots”) Ammatuna; Tony Barosso; Louis (“Little Old New York”) Campagna; Anthony (“Tough Tony”) Capezio; Ralph (“Bottles”) Capone, fond brother of Alfonse; James (“Big Jim”) Colisimo; Joseph (“Caesar”) DiVarco; Tony D’Andrea; Willie (“No Nose”) D’Andrea, fond brother of Tony; Sam (“Mad Sam”) DeStefano, Vincent (“The Schemer”) Fischetti; Michael Genovese; Sam (“Momo”) Giancana; Joe (“Machine Gun”) Kelly, Edward (“Big Red”); George Kelly; Pasqualino (“Patsy”) Lolordo; Joey (“The Clown”) Lombardo. We are only down to the L’s for these laity so I will pause for breath.

John (“Machine Gun Jack”) McGurn;; George (“Bugs”) Moran; Frank (“The Enforcer”) Nitti; Dion O’Banion; Al Prignano; James Ragan; Fred Roti; Paul (“The Waiter”) Ricca; Vincent Soldano; James (“The Turk”) Torello; Johnny Torrio; Roger (“The Terrible”) Touhy; John Viche (gunned down prematurely in life in my suburb of Park Ridge). Since the list was compiled I will add John (“Quarters”) Boyle who got off from jail early after hijacking $20,000 in quarters from the Illinois Tollway before he erred once again as a participant in Mayor Daley’s Hired Truck scandal whose brother was a well-known suburban fireman who moonlighted when not in the firehouse by creatively making work for himself and his fellows—by setting houses afire in the dead of night.

All the while in my youth there were notable Catholic laymen involved in the public sector. Such as Mayor Edward J. Kelly (service: 1933-47) who boasted, “I tell a million people what to think and they listen to me” but who, when he tolerated defalcations in the public schools, excesses of organized crime, a corrupt police department, haphazard garbage collection and street cleanings along with high taxes and no apparent return in city services, was deposed by the very Democratic machine he ruled, his subaltern, a Jew, Jake Arvey telling him which was later leaked to the press: “Ed, we’re still solid with the Jews, better than even with the Negroes but everywhere else—the Poles, the Irish even, the Germans—we’re in trouble. When I asked if they’d vote for you they said, `Him? Are you kidding? We’d sooner vote for a Chinaman.’” Arvey didn’t worry that this ethnic slur would hurt since they had very little clout in this city then.

But Kelly was in my mother’s eyes—and viewed by many other mothers—as “good clean, Irish Catholic fellow.” As was Thomas (“Blind Tom”) O’Brien who left a permanent berth as member of the U. S. Congress’ Ways and Means committee from Chicago—a lifetime career—to serve an obligatory one term as Cook county sheriff. Sheriff was limited to one-term in those days because, as he told me in the House cafeteria on his last day in Congress, “four years as sheriff and I will be all set financially after that.” He later earned the nickname Blind Tom because when he visited the Illinois Athletic Club on Michigan avenue where 14 illegal slot machines were running full-tilt on the main floor, he told the media: “I was just there but I didn’t see nothing..”

Other lay Catholic public notables were the late Mayor Richard J. Daley who once in agony cried out, “my enemies are crucifying me. They are even criticizing me!” adding that charges against him were merely irresponsible allegations, damning those who made “allegations here and allegations there”--commanding the his aides to “get me to go face-to-face with the alligators”, a freshly invented word that just missed entry into the Oxford English dictionary. In the city council sat four-feet-eleven-inch Fred Roti a distinguished scion of a prominent private enterprise-baronial family whose unofficial campaign slogan was “Reelect Roti and Nobody Gets Hurt.”

Old man Daley grievously wounded the English language but at least he took his Catholicism as straight as he took his whiskey, without dilution or pick-and-choose nonsense. His son, Richard M., has done more violence to English than any newly arrived immigrant. He took the bar exam three times before passing it narrowly on the fourth. It is wrongly imputed that the city’s four-star flag that flutters from City Hall represents his attempts.

Richard M. believes in abortion and gay rights including gay marriage. He’s counting on his and his wife’s conspicuous Irish-ness and well-publicized attendance at Old St. Patrick’s, the mother-church of liberal Democrats, to get him through reelection next year with the middle class Catholic vote. Daley has the adulatory support of his pastor, Fr. Jack Wall, along with the white oft-demonstrating pastor of a black parish, Fr. Michael Pfleger. Both have been kindly absolved by a benevolent archdiocese from observing the term limits that other pastors, particularly conservative ones, must obey).

But Daley does get the twitches from another Catholic, Patrick Fitzgerald, the New York-born United States Attorney who is unsympathetic with age-old hiring and contractual traditions. Daley sees his once great and good friend, the Orangeman former Republican governor George Ryan, preparing to spend the remainder of his life in stir for doing things not singularly different than Richard M. Daley.

My mother has been gone 34 years now but she would be pleased that Chicago’s Catholic identity has remained with her town. Blacks have moved here aplenty and have been elected to Democratic posts, yes but a surprising number of them are Catholic. One is Emil Jones who is the Democratic President of the Illinois State Senate, a fiercely proclaimed Catholic although he supports abortion on demand and gay rights. But that’s no different than most of the white Democratic Catholics who have resolved to allow their theology to change with current mores. Such as the white Lisa Madigan, the Speaker’s step-daughter, who is state attorney general. And the white Dan Hynes, whose father Tom was pro-life state Senate Democratic president when abortion was not so cutting-edge in politics so that he could slip by while being true to his faith. One can’t do that anymore in the current Democratic party as Catholic Sen. Dick Durbin, a former pro-lifer who changed overnight when he ran for the Senate attests.

And bipartisan Catholic identity continues with Republican gubernatorial nominee Judy Baar Topinka who glories in her Czech Catholic heritage but who felt it necessary to conform with the times, ditch her pro-life beliefs out of concern for being reelected, and play her accordion at gay-rights rallies. But now black Catholic politics has turned special.

The central figures in black Catholic politics here are involved in the Cook county board presidency contest. Catholic John Stroger has been a pillar of the Chicago Roman Catholic church—one who has received numerous awards as a Catholic layman from Loyola University. He has been honored at an annual “Red Mass” celebrated to signify the blood that some lawyers—notably St. Thomas More—have shed for the Church. Fortunately for him, Stroger examined the issues affecting law and the Church and has concluded it is not necessary that he shed any blood so he endorses abortion on demand and gay rights. But that was all right with Loyola University whose board is filled with overstuffed Democratic ultra-pragmatist money-raisers (including the mother of the attorney general) who have not cracked a book collectively in many years, giving new meaning to the word Jesuitical.

Stroger has had one constant all along—and it is not theology. Well, in a way it’s kind of. It’s belief in the omnipresent Daley family. He began as a foot-soldier for the late Daley senior and continues a loyal servant to. Daley junior, running the county government for them, superintended by Richard’s kid brother John who is chairman of the board’s finance committee. Stroger’s tie to the Daley family transcends race. When the first black mayor of this city was elected, Stroger kept his allegiance firm to the Daleys, despite the heat from civil rights sources. He bided his time until the Restoration of Richard II and was rewarded with the presidency of the board.

But as it must to all men, illness and eventual death comes to Daley Catholics. This Spring, John Stroger suffered a stroke—which was first called slight, then very light, then moderately light, then moderately severe and finally, when the media grappled Stroger’s spokesman by the throat, serious.

But not serious enough to warrant old man Stroger’s retirement from the primary campaign, the spokesman. For proof he displayed a statement from the hospital bed signed with a firm hand: “John Stroger.” Stroger handily won renomination but the victor was nowhere to be seen. The news conveyed was eerily like that of the old Kremlin when Leonid Brezhev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko first fell ill. They were reported tanned and rested until one morning the world was told they died. We heard that John Stroger misses all of us and that he desperately yearns to return to his desk.

. We heard that—lo!—he was taken from his hospital room to his apartment albeit while the media weren’t watching. But after he won the Democratic renomination, soberer news came from his spokesman. Now the pretense could be dropped—because the Daley cabal could restructure the result with their own handpicked successor rather than relying on the fickle vote of the electorate. It appeared that John Stroger had decided that it wouldn’t be fair to give the county an extension of his service when there were days he wasn’t feeling completely up to it. There would be a successor as nominee.

The successor was pulled by his ears out of the hat by the Democratic committee and it was the spindly, bespectacled form of John Stroger’s son, Todd. Todd, immediately nicknamed by the press “The Toddler” has a very slight resume and not because he is modest but that he has much to be modest about (as Churchill said of Clement Attlee). He was a nonentity state Rep and is a nonentity back-bench alderman. He was immediately taken into tow by a fellow black alderman close to the Daleys —a former cop with a basso profundo voice that would nobly equip him to sing “Old Man River,” exceeding even Paul Robson’s impressive gravity. William Beavers is this reporter’s favorite alderman: delightfully non-pompous or strait-laced. He believes in the Chicago Trinity: jobs, contracts and elective power. To this reporter he held up three massive, well-ringed expensively manicured fingers and said, “That’s the key, Roeser. The Trinity.”

Beavers has taken The Toddler into tow lovingly as one would a young child. For those who wondered how the county was doing its business with a mortally ill president, a letter transmitting business was produced for the press signed by Stroger. Well, perhaps it was: the scrawl was indecipherable—just a few strokes that would take a lot of imagining said “John Stroger.” There was an uproar. People wondered if in fact Stroger had chosen his son as his successor.

To answer that nagging question, another letter was produced anointing The Toddler asJohn Stroger’s choice. The signature was affixed with a flourish as of old: “John Stroger.” The difference in signatures worried the press. Media asked Beavers how Stroger could write his name so legibly now but so imperfectly the previous week.

“He practiced,” said Beavers. The tame Chicago press was mollified.

The Toddler, as pro-abort and pro-gay rights a Catholic as his father, is now taking his first baby steps in the campaign, his hand held tightly by his guardian, Alderman Beavers. But strangely enough, the Republican president nominee, has resolved not to be an also-ran and is capitalizing on the disarray in the Democratic ranks. Tony Peraica, also a Catholic who immigrated here from Croatia at the age of 13 without knowing a word of English, is a lawyer, pro-life and not enamored of gay rights. There is some stirring in Democratic ranks that once Alderman Beavers’ hand releases The Toddler, he will not be able to walk on his own—much less be able to debate Peraica. This worries the Daleys since there has not been a Republican county board president for forty years. But for now, two Catholics are seeking the county’s biggest job.

Thus those who shared my mother’s concern that Chicago might lose its Catholic character, please note it has not.

Definitely not.

Personal Asides:

Alderman Bernie Stone Signs Up to Tell Us What Makes the City Council Tick…The Name’s Stufflebeam--S-t-u-f-f-l-e-b-e-a-m…Two Bright Stars Brighten the “Sun-Times”: Huntley and Steinberg…Jim Edgar, Having Once Accepted, is Now Not Available I Guess (We’ll Struggle Through)…The “Sun-Times” Game Dork.

Alderman Bernie Stone.

One of my favorite all time aldermen, Bernie Stone, has just signed up as a guest lecturer at my Roosevelt University class. He’s the most knowledgeable city lawmaker who does not stand back and survey his own greatness, but with wit and insight deftly describes the council situation. A big plus and welcome aboard, Bernie!

S-t-u-f-f-l-e-b-e-a-m.

For those of us who have felt they have no recourse for governor in this election but leaving the slot blank, I submit the write-in candidate Randy Stufflebeam, the former Marine from Belleville who represents the Constitutional Party. I have had serious reservations about the Constitutional Party’s national leadership under Howard Phillips who embraces the idea of a theocratic state…but once Randy gained the chairmanship of the party in Illinois he made a firm line of demarcation from the national ground and got rid of some local nuts. His getting rid of them reminds me of how Hubert Humphrey kicked out the radical left cum Communists from the party before he unified it as Democratic-Farmer-Labor. Randy brings with him the brisk attitude of authentic downstate rural unaffectedness which is refreshing. Watching Randy now, I’m convinced that he is satisfactorily doing three very important things:

First, he has begun to build a sound, mainstream party for conservatives that can stand on its own as the New York Conservative Party did in its early formation. Second, he is building a political home for those who have been fed up with the state leadership of the Republican party which has drifted into nihilism and the relativist chase of the lobbyist dollar—both with donations and contracts—that has been the undoing of the party of Lincoln since Ogilvie. Third, at age 46, he is a bright and infectiously witty and adroit spokesman as witness his superlative appearance on my radio show Sunday. His family is a great asset. Suffice it to say they’re not country-club Republicans. I for one would greatly enjoy seeing his wife Lisa as Illinois’ First Lady and their daughter Crista who accompanied them to the radio studio the state’s First Teen-Ager. Just dreaming.

Randy’s thumbnail biography: Born in Chicago 46 years ago…grew up in the small town of Canton, Illinois…attended public schools but got his diploma from a Christian school…reared in the Church of the Nazarene…his father a long distance trucker…attended Olivet Nazarene College before joining the Marines in 1980…trained as an anti-tank assault man…later trained by the Marines as a computer expert…He and his wife Lisa (they were childhood sweethearts in Canton) married, lived in California for ten years while he was in the Marines…then moved to Atlanta Georgia where he was assigned as a Marine…worked part-time as a disc jockey there on a country-western station…then moved with his family to Okinawa where he spent four years…retired from the Marines in 2003 after 23 years and moved to Belleville

More: elected Republican precinct committeeman there…got inspired by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the state capitol…noted that Moore was backed by the Constitution Party…set up the Illinois franchise of the party…became its chairman…purged theocratic nuts from the party…with his wife has three daughters, once pof whom is married to a deputy sheriff in Florida…one in college studying to be a special education teacher for the handicapped…the youngest, 15, in Belleville high school.

He’s plain-talking and well-informed. Pro-life…supporter of all amendments but especially the 1st and 2nd…opposes NAFTA/CAFTA…supports the Dick Armey plan to eradicate the federal income tax…opposition to legalized gambling…just the kind to build a future conservative grassroots movement.

Me? I’m staying a Republican—but feel a third party…or more correctly, a second… is required. The March primary proved to me that a safe harbor is greatly needed. The need is so great for a refuge for us conservatives that I want to be known as an ally in the up-building of the Constitution Party. If from this twig it expands it roots and sprouts leafy boughs, it will serve as a viable third party option in the same way the Conservative Party did for some years in New York. At the least it will keep the Republican party honest by serving as an alternative bargaining chip…at most it will supply a fertile field for training of young conservatives.

The Blagojevich operation wanted to supply paid operatives to get Randy Stufflebeam on the ballot. The offer was turned down. For now, even if it is a write-in option, it is important for those of us who have simply had it with Thompson-ism cum Ryan-ism. The lachrymose behavior of Mayor Daley and Jim Thompson…shedding tears along with a “Sun-Times” Op Ed writer Monday over their good friend Ryan’s conviction…convinces me that only a Constitution Party as it is presently directed by Randy can give Illinois voters a whiff of fresh air. I will be glad to do what I can to further Randy’s cause and, more importantly, the building of what is to be hoped as a vital third force in Illinois politics. Shortly he will be required to choose a Lieutenant Governor candidate which is required for state parties fielding candidates under state law. Go to his website: www.runrandyrun.

I have invited both Republican and Democratic nominees for governor to come on my program but nothing has happened. My next step is to get the independent candidates to debate—the Green party’s candidate for governor who will be on the ballot, Rich Whitney, and Randy Stufflebeam of the Constitution Party.

Huntley and Steinberg.

Three cheers for Steve Huntley, the editorial page editor of the “Sun-Times” for writing well reasoned, sober adult treatises on foreign policy which should make that paper proud. His pieces are thoughtful, non-demagogic and well-written presentments that would have been appropriate in the paper of the past when its editorial policy was guided by Emmett Dedmon. That’s about the best praise I can give Huntley and anyone else in mainstream media who undertakes to analyze public policy.

And a second salvo for a man who is, in my mind at least, the most literate, subtle and creative of the paper’s feature columnists, Neil Steinberg. His columns while not of a timeless quality serve the needs of the moment with grace and felicity.

Edgar.

When I called his office two weeks ago and talked to his charming assistant named Sue, I was told that the former governor would consider speaking at my Roosevelt University class. Sure enough, she returned the call and said that he would indeed speak and that she would call back with a date. The days lengthened into a week and no answer. When I called her I all I got was a voice-mail. After five successive calls, I asked to be transferred to the main desk where the woman said Sue was indeed in the office and “I’ve seen her walk past this desk all day: I can’t understand why she doesn’t return your call.” But slowly, even a dull-wit like me, it occurred that there would be a change and the decision to speak was being shoved into a dead-letter box. When I did contact her, she said what has been very familiar in all governmental offices: don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Why the change? Undoubtedly it has to do with my failure to endorse Judy Baar Topinka. So much for the dispassionate separation within academia of study and political preference.

Man Who Makes Brittany Spears Look Good.

Is the author of “The Game Dork” for real, or not? While I’ve praised the “Sun-Times” unity of subjectivity which makes it the Democratic Party’s Newspaper of Record, the rules favoring lefty bias of national issues should stop at the water’s edge with drama, film and TV reviews. Not so with Rodney Dangerfield look-alike Doug Elfman, the “Sun-Times” misplaced TV critic who drops all pretense to hone his axe on Republicans. Aptly he also writes a syndicated column trademarked “The Game Dork.” His Wikipedia bio sounds like it came from a p. r. boiler-room but lavishes so much praise on his work that it must have been written by him. Must have been because it has the dork trademark.

Elfman, noted by his flare for illiteracy (Britany Spears “didn’t just suck, she suckity-suck sucked”) came to the “Sun-Times” appropriately enough from the Las Vegas “Review-Journal.” Not only did lefty bias overtake his judgment last week when he reviewed “The Path to 9/11”—but his irrational Bush hatred first manifested itself last May when he condemned his media fellows as being too pro-Bush. Angered that they didn’t give much attention to Stephen Colbert’s slimy speech at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, Elfman wrote “It was perhaps the first time in Bush’s tenure that the president was forced to sit and listen to any American cite the litany of criminal and corruption allegations that have piled up against his administration.” Criminal: right, like Scooter Libby never having leaked Valerie Plame now that Richard Armitage admitted it. Talk about sucking. At least Spears is honest about her trade.

There is a good case to be made against all docu-dramas. All of them impute a subjectivity into history that can distort and “9/11” is no different. But saying the ABC special is a “bomb” is like writing off John Milton: it tells more about the critic than the subject. Given his Las Vegas orientation, perhaps he’s limited by not reviewing a show that doesn’t follow the emcee rasping “turn on the purple lights, boys, here comes Queenie!”

Personal Aside: Want to Be Big-Hearted? Wish the ACLU Merry Christmas!

ACLU.

This is what I said on my Sunday WLS-AM show. Let’s all be Christian and wish the American Civil Liberties Union a Merry Christmas by sending it a Christmas card. Here is the address: ACLU…125 Broad Street…18th Floor…New York, New York 10004.

Send a card that expressly wishes Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays or anything neuter like that. After all, the ACLU is working hard to drive all vestiges of Christmas from the public square and by spending 39 cents you can brighten up its sad, dark little world. No crudity now. It’s Christmas, you know?

If this thing can catch on across the country, two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they won’t know if the envelopes were regular mail carrying checks. Before you seal the Christmas card tell them to leave Christmas alone. Tell them there is no such thing as a “Holiday Tree.” It’s a Christmas Tree. What better way to spend 39 cents? Recommend those on your e-mail lists do it, too. And tell the ACLU Tommy sends his best wishes along.

Right Away I Learned I Was Working for a Liberal Governor—and I Mean a Liberal; He Rejects Plan to Have Legislature Fill a Deficit Gap.

[From fifty years in politics, a memoir for my kids and grandchildren].

Understand, I took the job as press secretary to newly-elected Republican governor Elmer L. Andersen knowing full-well that, while he was an man of exemplary integrity and statesmanship, he was a governmental liberal of the 1960s stripe. But, eager to get out of Washington, D. C. with my wife and baby, I said to myself: okay, maybe I’ve got something to learn here. I’ve been a conservative all my life. Here’s a chance to work for and virtually live with a Republican liberal, maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I’ll learn something.

Well, I did. The first day I started, before he was sworn in, we went to see Senator Donald Wright, a sagacious old conservative curmudgeon, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee—one of two or three players who would mold the next budget. We knew and were told by him that there’d be a deficit. This is what Wright said: “Cut some of the extraneous services to the bone. Submit a balanced budget on paper. We’ll cover the deficit if it’s reasonable in the legislature and you won’t get hurt. Do it that way, please.”

Not my liberal idealist. He thanked Wright for his suggestion but as we were going out the front door he rejected it to me. He wanted to expand services and he wanted to take responsibility for paying them to the tune of submitting a balanced budget—a budget balanced not with a hiked income tax or imposition of an unpopular sales tax. It would call for a new tax on utility bills. “I think that would be fair,” he said, “because people who had a low utility bill would pay very little while people with elaborate homes and big utility bills would pay more. I want to suggest a uniform tax on both telephone and power bills.” He didn’t say so but he was banking on what he saw as Minnesota’s populism: that grassroots support would come from people who have always sided with the DFL on socking the utilities.

I said, “Elmer, you’re not looking at the partisanship angle of this. The DFL will attack this and will side with the utilities and will endeavor to become the champion of the utilities.” He said, what? The DFL the champion of the utilities—impossible! You don’t know the history of the DFL championing the little guy. I do know the history, said I. But the DFL can not only risk joining with the utilities but will show the people that they are not the anti-industry people Ed Viehman has always maintained they are. The DFL and Walter Mondale want more than anything else to defeat you next year. They’ll accept any coalition partner to do it. The utilities will contribute to the DFL to spare themselves the tax. Don’t you get it?

“No, I don’t,” he said. “You’re from Illinois. You haven’t lived here long enough to understand that the DFL, enemy of the utilities, will logically back me to pass the tax and to get the expanded goodies I am offering.” Only in a perfect world, Governor, I said. Only in a perfect world. I remember what he told me which underscored his entire philosophy. “I waited many years to be governor and I am determined to do things the way they really ought to be done.” I said he was losing his Republican base and because of DFL partisanship would not only be deprived of liberal support but was actually propelling the DFL into a coalition with the utilities. He shook his head no. But he was governor, not me.

So right out of the chute he came out with an inaugural message that I had a hand in writing (that’s what you do in this business: you fight for the right but you have a job to do after you lose). The Andersen plan called for no new income tax hike, no imposition of a sales tax—the good parts. But it called for $39 million in new revenue, expansion of mental health programs, initiation of a really big highway safety program, a single sanitary sewer system for the Twin Cities metropolitan area, a new state park at Fort Snelling (an historic site of a Civil War training camp, a gorgeous old battlement overlooking the Mississippi) and expanded natural resource conservation. He also called for a Taconite Amendment to the state constitution to require what was a manufacturing process to extract ore out of what used to be slag be taxed at a manufacturing rate, not by the old iron ore rate. You watch, he said. The Republicans will oppose the utility taxes but will support the Taconite Amendment; the liberal Democrats will support the expanded services and we’ll get it through.

I watched, all right. The Democrats hooked up with the utilities, the conservatives joined them in support of the utilities; Donald Wright was offended and there we were…a governor with a plan but no one in support of him. We had what he thought was an honorable plan with some needed program improvements but the liberals weren’t buying nor were the conservatives. Nor the editorial boards. All because he didn’t understand politics; he knew the issues but not the politics. The DFL was dying to get right with industry; Hubert Humphrey’s goal was to buddy up with industry and while industry winked at his expensive programs got some goodies out of it for themselves. It is clear in retrospect that what Andersen should have done is what Ronald Reagan did in California: stick to his base, cut spending to the bone insofar as possible, present a budget that may have been put together with bailing wire and scotch tape and allow the conservatives in the Senate to take the heat for raising such revenue as was needed to balance. That and push the Taconite Amendment.

So with that first failed effort, he got the reputation of Elmer the do-gooder who couldn’t muster enough influence to get a dog out of a pound—with Republicans enraged, industry enraged, the Democrats gloating and nobody supporting the grand plans he had envisioned. How could one who meant so well and served so long in the legislature not have understood that—and how could a punk from Chicago, a transplant to Minnesota, understand it? So he said: what do I do now?

I said: let the plan you’ve submitted die (which it will anyhow). Then go back to Don Wright with your hat in hand and say, “Don, I’ve got a lot to learn. I wish I had followed your advice.” Then see if you can craft another budget, slashing expenditures (blaming the DFL for the slashes because they wouldn’t support your original budget) and shove the mess into the legislature and see if Wright can’t compromise with the DFL and get it passed. Nope, said the Governor. I don’t want to act that way. That, Mr. Roeser, is the kind of partisanship that may work well in Chicago but not here. Wrongo. That’s the kind of partisanship that everybody plays and Humphrey was a master of.

He did go to Wright without me and Wright, miffed, told him to go to hell. The Republicans who controlled the Senate were furious at him. The liberal DFL which controlled the House was gloating in his discomfiture. He came back empty handed, his poll ratings down, being accused of a lack of leadership by the editorials, the DFL and Walter Mondale who was preening himself for a run in 1962 along with Lt. Governor Rolvaag who in his sober moments was also planning a run for governor. Right then Ed Viehman died. I went to the funeral. Neither Andersen nor Quie were there, Andersen too busy as governor, Quie too important a member of Congress who was tied up in Washington. I was rather depressed as they buried my friend at the age of 39—a man who built the Republican party only to have it come to this.

I came back from the funeral, handled a press briefing, defending Andersen all the while biting my lip because I had been right and at 4 p.m. went down to the Capitol cafeteria for a slice of cold pie and the dungeon’s awful coffee. I carried my tray into the seating area and there was His Prominence himself, the almighty attorney general having coffee with a group of sycophants…a group of young male three-button suiters from his office.

“Well,” he said, “here is the Governor’s political brain! Join us!”

I did.

“And tell us what new plans for taxing the poor does the Governor have?”

I said—okay, Fritz, tell me why you don’t want expanded mental health, a new state park and a unified metropolitan sewer for the Twin Cities. What do you have against a better highway safety program, Fritz? Or is it because your new close buddies in the utilities will be offended and won’t fulfill the plans you have for them in your party…the so-called party of the people? Incidentally, you call yourself The People’s Lawyer, Fritz.. What people? Northern Natural Gas? Northwestern Bell? What people, Fritz? Tell us, Fritz!”

I had heard Humphrey demagogue enough so that I could do a pretty good imitation.

One of the Suits, all of 24, interrupted: “You shouldn’t be talking to the Attorney General like that.” Mondale raised a hand of benignity: let him talk, he’s had a hard day. After all his good buddy Viehman, the friend of the poor was taken from us.

I sipped the coffee and allowed an idle thought to center about emptying my cup in his lap. Instead, I turned to the Suit and asked politely: “How should I address Mr. Mondale?”

Before the AG could intercede the callow youth, trying to ingratiate himself with his boss said, “we call him General.”

Mondale grimaced. Too late. Oh, said I, General is it? And who is following this General on the battlefield…Northern Natural Gas? Northwestern Bell? The tourist industries who want to commercialize the parks…the Weyerhaeuser’s who have done such a good job with our natural resources up to now—which just came out against our natural resources plan? You feel good about your new buddies, Fritz…I’m sorry: General?

“Listen,” he said. “If you’re not going to be able to take a little ribbing, I feel sorry for you.”

He was right, of course. He had just got the cover of “Time” magazine as the young leader of the future and I was jealous because my guy was wounded. I went back upstairs to my office and took a call from George Etzell, the Republican National Committeeman, a small town newspaper editor in the central part of the state…a man few knew but whom I liked as a friend.

Etzell said, “Hey, I know the Governor’s taking it on the chin—especially from Mondale. Let me just suggest something to you. If you ever want to slam back and don’t want to have Elmer do it himself…and I recognize he’s not a fighter anyhow…just write a press release in my name. You don’t have to check it with me. I trust you. Just fire it out through the GOP and have me say all the tough things you want to say.”

I said: But I ought to check it with you, George, before I write anything.

“No. Frankly, that’d be a waste of your time and mine. Just fire it out through the GOP. I’ll hear it on WCCO or see it in the newspaper and I’ll play along.”

Later that day when I was in with the Governor, he said—in his cautious, feminine, indirect way: “You know, Fritz is getting all that good press with Time magazine and all. I would consider it personally advantageous if someone started a kind of campaign to laugh at his pomposity. Know what I mean?”

I did. Our little baby, Tom, who was seventeen months old, would slop his oatmeal happily at breakfast with joy because on Saturday morning he would watch a goofy animal named “Crusader Rabbit.” He wasn’t Bugs Bunny who was a crafty, wise-aleck type, but a floppy-eared do-gooder who was always goofing up, like helping old ladies cross the street who didn’t want to cross the street. Mondale had just scored big press with another consumer proposal and was the darling of the Lutheran Church as he extolled social responsibility, declaring that idealism must return to the public service now that Elmer Andersen had forsaken idealism—things that made me furious.

So I sat down and wrote a news release for “George Etzell, the Republican National Committeeman” saying that the more Etzell looked at TV on Saturday mornings, the more Fritz Mondale reminded him of Crusader Rabbit. I added a few nonsensical things Mondale had said. The more I thought about it the more ideas I got. I wrote the thing and called the state GOP to pick it up and send it out on a pr. Newswire.

That was Friday night. Nothing happened. The press release just lay there on the desks. But on Sunday morning I got a call at home from Fred Neumeier, the ancient political editor of the St. Paul “Pioneer Press.” Neumeier was a bachelor and he was working at his desk when he came across the press release. “You know,” he said, “Monday’s going to be a dull news day. So I asked the art department to ding up a cartoon of Crusader Rabbit and Mondale. It’s a honey! Do you know about Etzell’s release?”

No, Fred.

“I don’t believe you. It sounds just like you. But if you say so, Etzell wrote it and he’ll get the credit.”

Ten minutes later the Minneapolis “Tribune’s” John McDonald called.

“Hey,” he said, “what gives? The city desk called me and said there’s a honey of an attack on Mondale about him and a rabbit. You know about it?”

No I don’t.

“Well, they’re dressing Mondale up as a bunny rabbit—slow news day tomorrow. I hate things like this, don’t you?”

I have no views on it, of course, since I haven’t seen it.

On Monday morning both papers came out with almost identical stories—Mondale the goof, next to Crusader Rabbit. The AM radio picked it up. I got a call at home from the governor.

“Well,” he said, “what a joy—a magnificent joy—to pick up both morning papers.. Congratulations on a brilliant job!”

When I got to the office, a Suit was standing by my desk.

“Attorney General Mondale wants to see you immediately.”

Of course, I said, I’ll be delighted to see him. Tell me, what’s on his mind?