Personal Aside: Smart Guy Political Consultants: Often Wrong but Never in Doubt. Often Wrong.

When I started in politics in Minnesota in the `50s, there were no political consultants as such. Candidates decided to run, recruited a campaign manager who in turn hired a speech-writer who was usually the publicist (which is what I did). A business type formed a committee of donors and the candidate in concert with the campaign manager usually recruited an ad agency. Four people told the ad guy how they wanted the campaign to be structured: the candidate, the campaign manager, the finance chair and the publicist. The candidate, of course, was first among equals with the right to override the others and veto the consensus of others. The ad guy did what he was told; if he was exceptionally good, he was allowed to come up with ideas but that was seldom the case: the ad guy was usually good at selling products, not candidates or ideas.

I date the change from 1960 with the Democrats and 1968 with the Republicans. With us, Roger Ailes was the first political consultant; he cut his eyeteeth with Nixon. Before that, do you realize that there was not a media consultant associated as such with the presidential campaigns of Dwight Eisenhower or Adlai Stevenson? There were speech-writers and specialists on political organization but no one who ruled arbitrarily on how the candidate should look, what he should say, what he should not say.

I don’t know how Ailes worked it, never having worked with him…but he was touted as a TV guru, having produced the “Mike Douglas” show on afternoon TV…not an expert on issues or demographics. He came about because Nixon looked so awful on TV in the 1960 debates: and the reason he looked awful was that he was god-awful: beetle-browed with a blue jaw, an artificiality which extended so many layers down, like an onion that one never really understood the real Nixon. Ailes appealed to H. R. Haldeman, the campaign manager, who had been in charge of the Los Angeles office of J. Walter Thompson.

From that time on, the Republican nest has been infested with political consultants. I suppose that’s okay since there is a technique of media that has drastically changed since we partisan working stiffs bought media ourselves out of the campaign treasury (with no commission) and concocted the messages ourselves…but to me the ineffable mystery of political consultants with their noses up in the air who know oh so far more than anyone else including the candidate is a lot of hogwash.

The arrogance of Republican political consultants didn’t start with Ailes but centered somewhat after his time among the media. I think the crest came with Doug Bailey of Bailey-Deardorff in Washington. They handled so-called “liberal” Republicans—Rockefeller, Percy, Ed Brooke, people like that. All political consultants nurture the myth of infallibility. All the rest of us would say, “well, I think”…or “maybe this will work.” Not them. Usually they would demand a straight pipeline to the candidate, ignoring the rest of us as serfs and then the candidate would be ingested with their ideas, coming to us for implementation.

All political consultants…all of them ever since Bailey-Deardorff…speak authoritatively as the voice of God: often proved wrong after election but never in doubt. The worst case of this I ever saw was a guy named Arthur Finkelstein…who allowed his sycophants to call him “Arthur,” who came from New York and touted himself as the guy who elected Al D’Amato. D’Amato, a real schlock if there ever was one—a man with no burden whatsoever of principle—saw that Finkelstein got the choicest accounts when D’Amato became chair of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Finkelstein was the moody genius; one who could throw tantrums, hang up on people and spend hours gazing out the window in a kind of creative meditation with the god of the persuasive arts. He it was who was given the account for Judy Koehler, a conservative state Rep from downstate who on her own happened to upset liberal and moderate candidates for the U. S. Senate nomination against Alan Dixon. How Judy got the nomination was clear. She was a Phyllis Schlafly devotee running against a wide range of mushy moderates including one Dick Carver, the mayor of Peoria, who was regarded as a potential president of the United States but who was a terrible bore, stuffy and filled with bureaucratitis. Judy got nominated the old fashioned way, with no consultant, just a wise selection of conservative activists: pro-lifers, pro-gun rights, economic libertarians, anti-ERA people. But after she got the nomination to oppose Dixon, big Al Schlock D’Amato flew in from New York and declared that if his buddy Finkelstein didn’t get the job and commission, he—D’Amato—would put the kibosh on any D. C. money coming to help Koehler.

As one who was a volunteer in the successful Koehler pre-primary campaign, I was ordered to attend a breakfast at which the moody genius Finkelstein, who had never been downstate in his life, would outline the strategy on a chalk board. He began by saying that he—not Koehler—would paint Dixon as an extreme liberal, near-Communist who in the Senate was a vital danger to the liberty and security of the United States. I started laughing. When he asked me why I was so convulsed, I said that I happened to know Alan Dixon quite well and that he was far from such a danger…moreover were he to be painted in such crimson tones, Dixon might write a check personally to Finkelstein to encourage him more in his follies. Finkelstein looked at me as if I were deranged and then said, “next question.”

But Judy was entranced, her face burning with excitement. That was the last time I ever saw her except for a glimpse on TV when she conceded what was probably the most inept campaign in the state—up to the time Topinka ran for governor, that is. But on the afternoon of the election, Finkelstein took the first plane out of town complaining that his instructions had not been followed to the letter because the stupid Republican party was not able to raise sufficient funds with which to further fatten his commissions.

One thing that did not cling to Arthur Finkelstein was sanctimoniousness. He was regarded as one who would do anything and everything to win an election. The people with the high-class, patrician attitude were Bailey-Deardorff in Washington who had worked for Chuck Percy, Jim Thompson, Olympia Snowe and a host of other squishes from the eastern seaboard. Bailey was reported to be so brilliant that the average mortal could not fully comprehend the brilliance with which his light shone—rather like having to wear sunglasses so as to protect your eyes because each insight was to be savored as filled with sublime intelligence. Of course he was hired to advise that neophyte of politics Gerald Ford who was then president and seeking to overcome a challenge from Ronald Reagan. Bailey couldn’t understand the nature of the Reagan appeal in 1976 but whatever he said was gospel and Ford’s people dutifully took notes as the Great Man—Bailey—strode around the conference room, his hand to his eyes so as to ward off a headache from dealing with aberrant mortals, dictating his strategy. A strategy which when applied against Jimmy Carter failed dismally. Still after that election, Ford was perceived as the dunce and Bailey still resident genius.

If there was anyone regarded in liberal Republican lore as more brilliant than Bailey it was his partner Deardorff. Deardorff, however, was regarded as even more liberal than Bailey and hence was used only in extreme cases when liberal voters absolutely had to be enticed to vote Republican. So it was when Bernard Epton won the primary to run for mayor and the Democratic candidate was Harold Washington. Deardorff stalked in to the meeting and laid out a strategy that was an opaque as it was nihilistic. No one could understand it. Then the next thing I heard, even Deardorff acknowledged that something else had to be done—something non-opaque and vibrant. I had dropped out of even caring by then but what was the strategy that Deardorff devised?

What was the strategy? Epton had been one of the most liberal Republicans in the House, elected from Hyde Park in that weird triangular Illinois ballot that required three state Reps from each district…he emerging as the Republican from Hyde Park…a Republican so lefty that he was indistinguishable from the usual Democratic lefty—a lefty not unlike the most subversive, radical Republican I ever knew, State Rep. Susan Catania who was also from the south side. Anyhow the TV ads were produced and they caused a sensation—a sensation that very nearly got Epton elected as the first Republican mayor of Chicago since 1932. The slogan, as devised to face the first black man to run for mayor in Chicago history was this:

EPTON…BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!

My God, any blue-collar circa 1960s barroom racist could come up with it, pandering to the worst instincts of human racism. And just like Finkelstein, Deardorff the genius, was out of Chicago before the mayoral election. The slogan was immoral in the extreme, playing to the worst of racist politics…this from the patrician liberal Deardorff who would lull himself into a rhapsody by playing old JFK tapes. In a case where the message became in fact the candidate, the message so narrowed the contest and so inflamed the whites with racist anger, prompting a rejoinder of black fury which triggered even more white animosity that Epton perceived he could really win this thing, the angry slogan itself converted this placid tolerant guy into a reincarnation of Lester Maddox who was excited when white audiences with clenched fists arose to cheer when he entered their halls. In fact it is an article of faith that those in charge of the Epton campaign, seeing the anger in the streets engendered by this slogan which inflamed their candidate, subtly sat on their hands in the crucial last days in order to spare the city an ordeal by fire.

But the campaign was a success for the liberal—and as we discovered ultra-pragmatic--John Deardorff: he collected his commissions. Have you had any experience with professional political consultants—good or bad? Tell me.

Flashback: 1966: The Civil Rights Revolution Hits Chicago with Jesse Louis Jackson on the Rise with his New Creation, “Operation Breadbasket.”

[Memories from more than 50 years in politics for my kids and grandchildren.]

The photo run here is how I looked forty-one years ago—involved in Illinois politics and at the same time trying to protect my company, Quaker Oats, from a demagoguery that could ruin it.

In the summer of 1966, while Father was in the hospital from which he would never emerge alive, Martin Luther King, fresh from winning a Nobel prize and capturing the conscience of the socially conscious of the nation, came to Chicago to dramatize it as the nation’s most segregated city. Until he came to this city, it was fashionable for us to cluck our tongues at the red-necks of the South who allowed a simple matter of skin pigmentation to bother them…not recognizing this simple fact: that if every vestige of discrimination against blacks were to be removed overnight—in the North as in the South—the debilitating effect of a combined total of 400 years of slavery and segregation would remain for years to come. That stain and the ill-conceived welfare policies of the Great Society pounded the black family with the result that families headed by single women are more likely to suffer from poverty than any other. This is still not fully appreciated by many African Americans and white liberals.

From that year on, I became involved under the aegis of my boss, Bob Thurston, in launching modest works of social progress for Quaker: a tutoring program for public housing kids participated in by Quaker employees, a nutrition education program for disadvantaged women with no company product overtone, a supermarket training program which encouraged some to think about getting involved in businesses of their own, a reform of the company’s philanthropy and support by the company’s lobbying arm for measures to relieve poverty. Until we hired a qualified African American who specialized in knowledge of that community, I made it my practice to attend minority meetings in the city including one of the earliest sessions of what was then known as “Operation Breadbasket,” run by a powerfully motivated orator who was an uniquely gifted phrase-maker, the phrases usually rhyming which would start black audiences, raised in Baptist church genre, applauding and shouting “amen.”

One signal effort I saw first-hand was backstage at “Breadbasket” when, led there by a black friend, I saw Jackson visiting with his circle of admirers. There is a misconception that those who played major roles in the civil rights movement were the black poor. They were not. The black poor were immobilized and powerless. Those who played big roles were members of the black middle-class—and not as many of them as were supposed. In particular, it must be said that the Breadbasket sessions on Saturday mornings were emotional, composed of the middle class with about a third of the seats empty in the auditorium. Women were prevalent because at that time, the Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson was a strikingly good-looking man, with strong athletic build (he had declined an athletic scholarship to the University of Illinois) and the young men he had around him were also handsome including his volunteer body-guards, called “the Fruit of Islam,” powerfully built young men, immaculately well-dressed from the black Muslim organization.

I remember very well one of the earliest times I went backstage. A group of middle class men—but mostly women--were scoffing at the then new-nature of conservative protest…against school busing which was undertaken to integrate the educational system and which had generated a powerful backlash among middle-class whites. I had had some experience watching another phrase-maker, a decade earlier, Hubert Humphrey and was wondering if this young minister could possibly measure up to the task of picturing a crisis in Humphrey-style shorthand. While I watched, it seemed clear that Jackson had decided to harangue the crowd against the conservative whites who opposed busing. He was talking to the crowd while attractive young black women were giving him the eye, showing great deference, trying to capture his favor—all the while he was ignoring them, trying to come to a conclusion in his own mind as to how to tackle the issue for the audience.

There was no doubt that opposition to sending kids far away from home in school buses was unpopular—as it would be. The entire consensus of urban education was that of the neighborhood school. Now federal courts were violating the neighborhood school concept and ordering buses to be taken for long trips, from one side of Chicago to the other, for the sole purpose of racial integration. There was some opposition within black families as well, sending African American kids to, say, white neighborhoods in my own Northwest Side and not hauling them back home until it was nearly dark in Chicago’s long winters.

As I watched Jackson, I was fascinated with how he listened to a group of his black devotees discussing the issue…he asking some questions and studying their responses very much like Humphrey used to do when he was turning over in his mind a problem to see how it would have most appeal to an audience. The conversation went on until one young lady nailed it perfectly as an issue. She had come from the South and reminded Jackson that, after all, in rural areas, white families weren’t bothered unduly with kids being bused. Jackson himself had come from a rural area in South Carolina and he readily agreed. Actually, I recognized instantly that busing to schools had been in process for many years…in rural Illinois…rural Minnesota…and just now it was causing a ruckus with whites. Even today in my suburb, buses leave for long trips to Chicago carrying white kids to Ignatius, Loyola academy and other schools. The woman kept hammering at him that white fear of busing was atypical. Suddenly he hit on his theme.

He snapped to a conclusion and he tried the phrase out in that little circle of us. He said slowly, “It ain’t the bus—it’s us.” Then he repeated it: It Ain’t the Bus—It’s Us! The group thrilled to it because he had captured the essence of the white protest in a way that made it hotly unpopular and racist. At that moment, he was tapped on the shoulder by an aide and prepared to go on stage in the auditorium. The auditorium was half-full…it never was more than half-full on Saturday mornings…but the TV cameras were so stationed that it looked like an immense congregation jammed into the Mormon Tabernacle. The band…composed of hired musicians…started the theme for his entrance.

The song that filled the hall was certainly one of the greatest ever composed for black optimism, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” written by a black minister, James Weldon Johnson, from the South, a distinguished and gifted educator who died in 1948. I defy anyone hearing that song…black or white… not to become emotionally committed by its very powerful religious strain enough to go out and tackle the Mississippi deputy sheriffs single-handed.

As he stood backstage, snapping his fingers to the strains, Jackson looked at his watch and allowed the band to hit its stride…refusing to enter until the tension of the crowd fairly demanded him: “Where is he?” It’s important to note that this show-biz style was also used by King when he came to “Breadbasket”—but not with the long-drawn effect. King was so superlative a speaker that he used to come up without much orchestral fan-fare and have us weeping within fifteen minutes with a sad, sonorous recital in superb English…no deep South drawl ala Jackson. But I digress.

As Jackson would wait patiently backstage, the band and choir would strike up certainly the most powerful song ever to animate an emotional crowd—a mixture of religious faith, a refusal to continue docility, a spiritual reaffirmation. The band and a volunteer church choir sang with the audience joining in at full-throated cry: Lift ev’ry voice and sing/ Till earth and heaven ring/ Ring with the harmonies of liberty/ Let our rejoicing rise/ High as the list’ning skies. Let it resound loud as to rolling sea./ Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us/ Sing a songfull of the hope that the present has brought us/ Facing the rising sun of our new day begun/ Let us march on till victory is won!

His band of worshipers backstage watched him reverently as he snapped his fingers, catching up with the rhythm…then, when he decided the crowd was at the right pitch…he would stroll onstage—just stroll onstage which produced a screaming mass frenzy from the third of the people in the hall while the TV cameramen and reporters obediently determined not to disgrace the sanctimonious of the moment by showing empty seats. He would stand there, almost sullen, pouting but with a soft smile beginning to play on his lips, waiting for the crowd to finish their hysterical serenade of him. One time I saw him raise his wrist to look at his watch—a signal for the singing to stop. But they wouldn’t and would begin again: Lift ev’ry voice and sing! Then he would smile and hold his wrist with the wrist-watch on it to his ear to find out if it was ticking…which started a scream of laughter as the chorus rolled on.

When the crowd calmed down after 12 minutes of steady cheering by my own watch with the band playing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” over and over Jackson began in a low tone that caused people to cup their ears to hear him, asking themselves “what is he saying?” and getting response from their neighbors, “he’s talking about the busing!” Then skillfully he raised his voice…clear, not loud…raised it keeping the inflection of the South, the deliberately mispronounced words of southern idiom—the word “folla” for “follow”…culminating with the gesture of slapping the flat of his hand to his forehead as if he had just thought of it. “It ain’t the bus…” he would yell…”it’s US!” The timbers would rock with laughter, derisive anti-white scorn, hysterical shrieking of understanding…and as he led them they would repeat: IT AIN’T THE BUS…IT’S US!

After that day I knew I was in the presence of a master. And while today Jackson has lost much of his youth, has been somewhat demeaned by his own excesses, there probably has never been a more dramatic African American delivery of a message except by the great man himself, Martin Luther King.

I would thrill to the cacophony and show-biz of those Saturday mornings but all the same I’d come home with the realization that as a company that marketed Aunt Jemima products…pancakes, syrup, waffles…we were in a desperately serious position with this guy if…and it seemed inevitable…he determined to shut the brand down because of some spurious insult to black womanhood. He could lead a national boycott that would kill us for no reason other than he felt he could enlarge his constituency nationally and rival even Dr. King. It was something indeed to worry about. How the crisis came about and was resolved next time.

Personal Asides: Sir, the Correct Name for You is Maggot…Mother at 19 and the Eastland Disaster…Trivia Answers…More Trivia: Nonsense Pop Songs from the `40s and `50s.

Maggot.

Let’s say the correct name for a man who intrudes into a website…appropriates another’s—particularly a woman’s name and anatomy with insulting language and directs salacious epithets to a web-site host is maggot. Anybody know an exorcist?

Mother at 19 and the Eastland.

I didn’t come through with the picture of Mother at age 19 but here it is, the young lady Father fell in love with. The hat is really outlandish. And here is the Eastland disaster in which 800 excursionists lost their lives in July, 1915.


Trivia Answers.

1. Oxydol’s Own Ma Perkins.
2. Our Gal Sunday.
3. Helen Trent . (Her lover was Gil Whitney).
4. Mary Noble, Backstage Wife. (She was married to the nation’s heartthrob Larry Noble who spurned actresses to remain true to Mary.)
5. Stella Dallas.
6. Mary Marlin. She was a U. S. Senator, party unknown.
7. One Man’s Family.
8. Just Plain Bill.
9. I Love a Mystery!
10. Mr. Keane, Tracer of Lost Persons.
11. Easy Aces.
12. Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories. (Her announcer to whom she told her stories was Danny Seymour, later to become the CEO of J. Walter Thompson in New York.)
13. Life Can Be Beautiful.
14. The Goldbergs.
15. Front Page Farrell.
16. Big Town.
17. The Shadow.
18. The Green Hornet.
19. Grand Central Station.
20. Mr. First Nighter.

Frank Nofsinger and WPD vied for honors here. Frank got four
right out of 20, WPD had two. But Frank had help from his wife Lillian and WPD has no wife. Well, it’s a wash but nice try. It was tough and I acknowledge this.

Nonsense Pop Songs.

Fill in the jazzed up words to these two songs from the `40s and `50s and translate them into understandable English.

1. Mairzy Doats and dozey doats and little lambs de-divey, diddlede ivy too, wouldn’t you?

2. Hut sut rawlston on the rillerah and a brawla-brawla-suit; hut sut rawlstoh on the rillerrah and a brawla suet. Now the rawlston is the what? the rillerah is the what? The brawla is the what? To hut-sut is their what?

Now explain the plot on these:

3. “Swim!” said the Mama, “swim if you can!” And what happened?
Who was she talking to?

4. Chickery chick, chalah-cghalah, cheraloromi, inna bananaka
Pollawaka bollika-wallika can’t you see? Chickery chick is who?

5.“Nyaa! Nyaa! Nyaa!” said the little what? “Nyaa, nyaa you can’t
catch me!”

6. “The birds do it, the bees do it, even the educated—what—do it?””
Who? Do what? No scatological suggestions, please.

7. Here’s a song originally popular in the `20s and recycled in the `40s by Debbie Reynolds. “Aba-daba-daba-daba-daba-daba-daba said the monkey to the chimp. Aba-daba-daba-daba-daba-daba-daba said the Chimpy to the monk.” What were they chattering about? What did this conversation lead to? What time of day and with whom as witness?

WHAT ARE THE PRESIDENTIAL CHOICES FOR CONSERVATIVES NOW? A Review of all the Possibles and some Long-Shots for 2008.

By Thomas F. Roeser

[First in a series of articles on presidential candidates for 2008 for The Wanderer, the oldest national Catholic weekly in the nation. This article updated since first publication.]

CHICAGO—Who will conservatives favor for president next year when the Republicans gather for their national convention in my old political stamping ground, the Twin Cities of Minnesota? Given that the Democratic party is overwhelmingly liberal, pro-abort and pro-gay rights, the menu seems to be restricted to the Republican party this time—and for the indefinite future.

Who conservatives support depends on what kind of conservatives you ask. Intellectuals categorize eighteen distinctive types: anarchist, classical-liberal, secular, religious, populist, aristocratic, Straussian, Voegelinian, Reaganite, anti-interventionist, interventionist, modernist, anti-modernist, fusionist, agrarian, industrialist, southern and northern. But political analysts group them in four major types: social-conservative, libertarian, neo-conservative and traditionalist. Often I find myself falling between the cracks or supporting a hybrid: so might you. At any rate, let’s try the big four and see what comes out. In this piece, I’ll be strictly neutral so don’t try to fathom who I support by the descriptions I give since I list pros and cons.

Social conservatives are those who most emphasize reforming the culture. They generally believe there is a transcendent moral order to which their leaders should apply the ways of society. Given that most—not all—Republican candidates give lip-service to this goal—who’s placing the most stress on these issues? Thus far, the candidate who talks most about social conservatism is Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Brownback, 51, an attorney, was born on a farm some 50 miles from Kansas City and grew up in Osawatomie, the center of evangelical abolitionism pre-Civil War where furious fighting against slavery gave the state the title of “Bleeding Kansas.” He has an interesting pedigree: a former Protestant evangelical who was converted to Catholicism by Rev. C. J. McCloskey, the Opus Dei priest who converted such luminaries as Robert Novak, economist Larry Kudlow and more others than you can count. Married and the father of two, Brownback is a former radio broadcaster reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, with the same kind of shy, deferential quality that ingratiated the 40th president to voters.

Of all the candidates, Brownback puts most stress on the social issues: pro-life, retaining the traditional concept of marriage and he’s blunt-spoken about them. But he has other interests. When he ran for the Senate from his House seat to succeed the resigned Bob Dole, in 1996, his slogan was “reduce, reform and return: reduce the size and scope of government; reform the Congress; return to the basic values that built this country—work and family and recognition of a higher moral authority.” That sounded like vintage Reaganism. But he went Reagan one better. When running for the Senate, he endorsed a two-term limit for himself (Reagan did nothing of the kind when he ran for governor of California). He won his two terms carrying almost all Kansas’ counties each time. His second term will end in 2010.

His social issues agenda is very impressive but not always successful. He has worked hard but with little success in banning human cloning and the cloning of embryos for use in research. He worked to restrict broadcasters from resorting to violence and pornography in rock music and films, tried vainly to increase the fine on broadcasters of indecency to $500,000.

On other matters, he favors a flat tax, free trade (all candidates who appeal to rural America are), has supported the Bush administration on Iraq. One major defection from standard conservative orthodoxy where he resembles President Bush: he is very big on what he calls “compassion,” including immigration, where he prefers the doctrine of guest-workers and assimilation. One tough Catholic traditional conservative I know (who supports “fair” not “free trade,” and wants a further crack-down on illegal immigration, says Brownback is sucker-bait for idealistically liberal Catholic bishops “because he’s so new a Catholic, he buys everything they say.”

Maybe so. But being on the side of the bishops has gotten him Catholic billionaire, Legatus founder Domino Pizza philanthropist Tom Monaghan, as his finance chair. Like almost every other self-made tycoon, Monaghan can be a fearsomely loose cannon, is known to steam forward then reverse backward on a dime which can be disastrous for a presidential campaign. Also he is restricted to contribute just a thousand or two bucks to his candidate under John McCain’s flaky finance laws—but he can solicit many donations from big business friends.

Brownback’s idiosyncratic political compassion side came out not long ago when he voluntarily spent a night in jail to get a “feel” for prison reform. I thought it was a little much—a bit too showy. And if he thinks this will get a better reception for his genuinely heartfelt social conservatism, he’s worse than wrong but seriously naïve: ask George W. Bush whose gushing pro- immigration policies hasn’t softened up the mainstream media. But all the same, nobody—not Reagan or Bush or anyone else—had a better feel for deeply-felt Catholic social issues than Brownback.



He has the disadvantage of being a U.S. Senator which the electorate rarely chooses in preference to a governor—the last Senator elected president being John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the one before that Warren Harding in 1920. A great many others fell by the wayside in the intervening years.

I met with Brownback when he was in Chicago recently to scout for supporters. Behind his Reagan-imitation “aw-shucks” attitude is cunning political savvy. He’s barely a blip on the national radar but realizes all can change if he does well in the Iowa caucuses where he’ll drag his boots into the dirt with that state’s farm folk. As a resident of Topeka he’s only a few hours car ride from Iowa where the big game begins with the caucuses. Iowa will come first in 2008 with more middle-of-the-road New Hampshire a week later and heavily conservative South Carolina shortly after that.

If Brownback wins the hayseeds of Iowa, he figures he could be an instant celebrity with enough momentum to at least place second in New Hampshire to McCain. His social conservative speech should help him do very well (he thinks) in South Carolina. After that comes Super Tuesday when GOP voters gang up in a ten states vote. Brownback feels all depends first on Iowa. It was there where peanut farmer Jimmy Carter wrote history in the Democratic caucuses. If elected, street-talk is the Brownback will be the first Catholic president. Because, unlike cradle Catholic John Kennedy, its my surmise that Brownback, as an enthusiastic convert who left the evangelicals because he loves the sacraments, really believes this Catholic stuff.

A claimant to the neo-conservative label—and social conservative as well, except for very recent coinage--is the brilliantly charismatic, dark-haired, luxuriously dark browed governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, 59. He’s a Morman, was a missionary for 30 months in France and has hotly responded to criticism that his religion is cultish and non-Christian. “The name of my religion is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!” he expostulates. He’s right: the idea that the church is non-Christian or anti-Christian cannot be defended. The vision of its founder, Joseph Smith, Jr., came, Mormans claim, to restore and renew Christianity and it accepts the general thesis of Christianity in most particulars.

But supposedly belonging to a cult, unproven as it is, isn’t his worst problem. When he ran for governor he gave off a squishy social policy veneer: “personally opposed” to abortion but who wouldn’t change the law; supportive of civil unions but not same-sex marriage. The Massachusetts “Log Cabin Republicans,” a group of gay rights advocates who generally shrink away from conservative social issues, endorsed Romney because of his civil unions approach.

Social conservatives are giving Romney fits right now because of his abrupt changes but political history is replete with such instances where back-and-forth converts once rooted held firm: Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush from pro-abort to pro-life; Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Rev. Jesse Jackson from pro-life to pro-abort; Eugene McCarthy who voted for the Vietnam war and spoke in its behalf and who doubled back and a whole phalanx of anti-civil rights Democrats who joined the equality fold. But if you’re looking for the nation’s most outstandingly successful governor, look no farther: he’s it as almost everybody acknowledges. Wobbly he may have been on social issues in the past, he has been on gubernatorial accomplishment, by general agreement, one of the most successful public managers and U. S. governors in modern times.

His real first name is Willard which he’d like to lose. Willard: after J. Willard Marriott, the Morman hotel magnate who was a big benefactor of old man Romney, the governor of Michigan. The name Mitt comes from a slang version of Milton applied to an uncle who played football for the Chicago Bears. The political blood in Romney’s veins comes from both Mom and Pop. George, the former president of American Motors, became governor of Michigan and ran briefly for the Republican nomination in 1968. His mother, Lenore, ran later for the U. S. Senate from Michigan. Having watched both run, I always thought Lenore was by far the better campaigner, even though she didn’t win. Mitt seems to take after Lenore more than George.

Which is good. George Romney, though a good man, was not the sharpest pencil in the school-box. He withdrew after he blurted out on radio that Pentagon generals gave him a “brain-washing” on Vietnam. Voters decided they didn’t want somebody who could be conned by generals. And the word “brain-washing” led Gene McCarthy to say that in Romney’s case a light rinse would have done the job.

Mitt Romney is married and father of five sons; his wife, Ann, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998. After an MBA and law degree from Harvard, he started his own Boston-based management firm, then rescued floundering Bain Capital by restructuring its employee stock-ownership plan, real-estate business and bank loans and adding fiscal transparency. Within one year he turned Bain around and returned to his original business where he became a mega-multi-millionaire.

In 2002 he took another floundering enterprise—this time a public-private one, the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. He cut budgets, boosted fundraising, heightened safety and led the Games to a $100 million profit, unheard of in modern times. He contributed $1 million to the Olympics and donated his $825,000 salary to charity. Next stop: politics. He took on a hopeless case, running against Ted Kennedy for the U. S. Senate. For the first and only time in Teddy’s windy, lugubrious career he became panicked that he’d lose since Romney actually led Kennedy in the polls. It was pleasurable watching the Hyannisport clan try to get their tubby Camelot cameo to reform by restricting his Happy Hours. In the end, Kennedy won through the slavish adulation of the media but he wound up with the smallest winning margin of his career.

Savoring the political experience, Romney next ran for governor in that heavily Democratic state, giving his campaign $6 million of his own money (unheard of in state history) and won in 2002 with 50% over Democrat Shannon O’Brien. She got the entire Massachusetts Democratic establishment behind her—all the Kennedys, John Kerry and the remainder of the renegade Catholic pro-aborts with Irish names (Congressmen Dick Neal, Jim McGovern, Marty Meehan, John Tierney, Ed Markey, Stephen Lynch and Bill Dalahunt) plus the lace-hanky followers of Barney Frank-- but she got only 45%. But if Massachusetts Dems thought Romney was a overnight bloomer with no staying power, they were wrong.

Rapidly, Romney reformed health care, working with such conservative organizations as the Heritage Foundation and developed a plan stressing personal responsibility in paying for coverage, the plan giving coverage to all state residents. He retooled state education in 2004, setting up a scholarship program to reward the top 25% of the state’s high school students with a four-year, tuition-free scholarship to the state’s public universities or colleges. Not only that, he came to office facing a $3 billion deficit, cut spending, eschewed a tax hike, reorganized state government and enabled Massachusetts to finish 2004 with a $700 million surplus and 2005 with a $500 million surplus. He favors educational vouchers, home schooling and abolishing the U. S. Department of Education.

Romney’s foray into social conservatism began after the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s rulings in 2003 and 2004 mandating same-sex marriage. Since then he decided not to run for a second term but for president, changing his social emphasis quite a bit. His old pledge that he would not disturb the abortion laws when he ran in 2002 was kept but is being used against him now, with some conservatives wondering if he can be believed. Still, Romney gained national attention by opposing embryonic stem cell research from a pro-life standpoint.

Is there cynicism here with this quick turnaround? Of course. In 2005, his top strategist, Michael Murphy, said that Romney “had been a pro-life Morman faking it as pro-choice friendly.” Murphy tried to correct his words but they are burningly accurate. But George H. W. Bush campaigned for president in 1980 as a pro-abort and changed overnight to support pro-life when he ran as Reagan’s pro-life vice president (doing somewhat better in the judge-appointment category than Reagan, naming the hands-down best pro-life Justice, Clarence Thomas, a far better choice than Reagan’s Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy and even more un-malleable than Reagan’s Antonin Scalia).

Romney is supportive of the Iraq war, capital punishment and free trade. He vetoed a bill allowing illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition rates. Romney, usually running number three in the GOP presidential polls, is clearly the establishment candidate and the George W. Bush preference for president. That’s not all to the good—but he has a skill with an argument that can defang the opposition.

Example: His Morman church once sponsored polygamy in the early 19th century which caused a national ruckus. The multiple marriage policy was discontinued by the church in 1890 but it was difficult to stamp out. It was condemned again in 1904 and a Supreme Court ruling eventually disallowed it. Recently, at an Iowa town meeting, he was asked by a heckler how many wives his great-grandfather had. Romney said four. The guy asked how many his great-great grandfather had. Romney said seven. He added: “Now ask me how many wives I had. I’ve had only one. Ever wonder how many my Republican opponents have had? Gingrich has had three; McCain two; George Allen two; Giuliani three. Which is more important: what my church believed more than a hundred years ago or how many wives my opponents have had collectively? Does that answer your question?”

He got rousing applause.

Romney might be the guy you’d hire for president; whether he can win the support of the socially conservative Republican base is something else again. Social conservatives are notoriously finicky over ideological purism but have also been known to make exceptions, as with Reagan.

The big kuhuna neo-conservative in the Republican party who places either first or second in the polls is the Episcopalian Sen. John McCain, 70. A feisty little white-haired guy with a knot on his cheek from an arrested skin cancer, he has the advantage of being the only war-hero candidate but the object of scathing attacks for opportunism and a flagrant past as a special interest hustler. President Bush prefers Romney because he and McCain have a history of personal bitterness stemming from the 2000 primaries. Still, it is McCain who more nearly supports the Bush strategy in Iraq and has proposed exerting all possible leverage to win the war in Iraq including sending 50,000 more troops and eschews a mere exit strategy prior to victory: a proposal that has dimmed his luster with the media.

If elected next year, he will be the oldest president to take the oath--72 (Reagan was 70). McCain’s story is unalloyed bona-fide heroism, exceeding by far the legend of Teddy Roosevelt (which was mostly a Hearst-inspired yarn): in fact the true story is unrivaled by any other presidential candidate in U.S. history. The son and grandson of medal-bedecked Navy admirals, himself a decorated Navy pilot, shot down over Vietnam and who spent five years of pain and torture in POW camps. The stunning part: He refused to be freed ahead of those who were in prison longer when the offer came to let him go because of his father’s high rank.

I’ve seen John McCain often--at a distance and up close. He is a show-boat-opportunist who loves the limelight, not unlike a Teddy Roosevelt, his idol. McCain has used the hero status to ward off all kinds of disadvantages including his being linked as one of the notorious “Keating Five,” five Senators who were investigated for meeting with regulators on behalf of Charles Keating’s Arizona savings and loan. McCain survived that potentially lethal dose of lemon cyanide which he converted brilliantly into lemonade by sponsoring the McCain-Feingold bill, a wide-ranging, spectacularly radical so-called “campaign finance reform bill” which made him Destiny’s Tot with The New York Times s but won boos from many 1st amendment fans. Grassroots movements like pro-life are barred from expressing their views in the last hours of a presidential campaign because of this cynical rape of advocacy freedom which allows mainstream media to dominate the public forum. Besides which, McCain is an inveterate liberal-wanna be—going as far as the conservative leash will allow. Now he’s co-authored a bill with Ted Kennedy to fight “global warming”—just in time to get some ripe headlines. Ugh: if the idea has any merit at all, it’s 442nd down the list from real problems.

For all this, McCain has a good pro-life voting record but is far from a pro-life crusader. Coolness from 1st amendment purists and traditional Republicans who follow the credo laid down much earlier by Robert Taft and later by Patrick Buchanan can hardly be expected to warm up to him unless they feel a President Hillary or Barack Obama requires drastic measures, like supporting McCain. One other problem lies in the weeds and is likely to surface if McCain moves up closer to the nomination. Known for his candor, McCain made an admission some years ago that adultery caused the end of his first marriage. But that’s not the whole story.

Ken Bode, writing in the Indianapolis Star last week, surfaced a story that McCainiacs thought had long been put out to pasture by adroit p. r. In 2000, when asked what he would do if his daughter had a unwanted pregnancy, he said he would leave the decision to have the baby or get an abortion to her. Which sounds very like espousal of a woman’s right to choose. Another is a rumor that unless corrected is bound to lose him female votes exceeding even the adultery tale. While McCain was held prisoner, his wife back home was involved in a hideous automobile accident which altered her stature and ruined her good looks. After she remained faithful to him and worked for his release, when he got home the rumor says…somewhat referred to in The Nightingale’s Song by Robert Timberg, that he looked at her and decided he didn’t love her any more. If there’s anything…anything …that can kill a candidate with women voters—even in addition to adultery—it’s that. But it hasn’t received much of a play yet. But wait. It’s time will come.

And there’s another disadvantage about McCain that hasn’t as yet seen the full light of day but is making the rounds of media circles. That is that in the minds of some he’s nuts. He has a short-term, volcanic blow-torch temper—not unlike that of other presidents, notably Dwight Eisenhower (whose sycophants kept his tantrums quiet) but the screamers are something that developed after his long solitary imprisonment. One ex-POW whom I interviewed a few years ago, a general who, like McCain was tortured with five years of solitary confinement and regular beatings at the Hanoi Hilton told me this:

“All of us who were locked up and abused are a bit nuts: no—I really mean it! We’re subject to sudden impulses that aren’t good. I know I am.”

If he were the only one, I’d not record it. But a fellow journalist friend of mine from Illinois who started off a McCain supporter and covered the Senator during his “Straight Talk” day-in, day-out bus trip through the primary states during the presidential campaign of 2000 came back to Chicago with a sharply revised attitude of the charismatic hero candidate.

“He’s nuts. Really is. Eccentric when you watch him close up,” he said. “Lightening-fast decisions, just as fast revisions, hot expletives makes for a lot of colorful coverage but—I don’t know.”

But, hey, it isn’t like we haven’t had odd-balls in the White House before. Jimmy Carter once said he personally saw a flying saucer and then shut up about it (giving some the idea he may have ridden in it for all they know). He also maintained that one Saturday during his presidency, while in a canoe on a lake near Plains, Georgia, he was accosted by a maddened rabbit who swam out in an attempt to maim the 39th president, leading him to Carter to strike off the ferocious animal with his paddle. Yep, an enraged rabbit maybe like the one that followed Elwood P. Dowd in the play “Harvey.” No Secret Service man saw the episode but who are they to question a president?

Then there was the president I worked for—Richard Nixon—who had to resign and who spent his last few hours saying farewell to portraits on the wall: “Bye-bye Jimmy Polk! Nice to have known you, Grover Cleveland!” Earlier than that, the best educated president—who had a Ph.D—refused to resign after he had a major stroke, refused to compromise even a little bit on the Versailles Treaty, causing it to go down the chute, staying in his bed humming slightly naughty music-hall songs to himself while his wife, with a sixth grade education, dealt with the affairs of state, telling Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. who came to her saying the prayers of the Senate were with her husband: “They’re praying, are they? Which way?”

One thing is sure: the election of 2008 will not be an easy one for Republicans. Two candidates see-saw for the lead in popularity polls and often top Hillary Clinton are McCain with the next in line an unrepentant former pro-lifer turned pro-abort and pro-gay rights advocate who also wore a dress, lipstick and high-heels at a New York press slapstick party, Rudy Giuliani. But cheer up there are others.



More about other presidential challengers—including a newly-

announced conservative traditionalist of the Pat Buchanan-stripe next week.

Personal Asides: Frank Nofsinger—Winner of Both 16 Tons and Skylark…The Maggot Infiltrates…Soap Opera Trivia.

Frank Nofsinger.

Frank Nofsinger is a double winner of the trivia musical contest—correctly naming the words to “Sixteen Tons” and first to identify the composer of the melody to “Skylark” was Hoagy Carmichael to which Johnny Mercer wrote the words. Congratulations, Frank!

The Maggot.

Maggot is a trade term for someone who intrudes on a web-site, uses inappropriate language, oft-times mis-uses someone’s name and is a juvenile emotionally if not actually. As all of you who contribute to Reader’s Comments know, we have a maggot who signs his name scatalogically and uses disparagingly a part of anatomy signed with a real woman’s name. He has been invited, then directed to vamoose but will not. Frank Nofsinger read him out rightfully so the other day. But he will not go and usually contents himself with derogatory comments about how boring my writing is. Good—if it’s boring, he should tune out. But he won’t. My advice is just ignore him…work around him…and he’ll leave. Either on his own volition or when the men in white coats with butterfly nets capture him.

Soap Opera Trivia.

This may be too tough for some of you without use of a search engine but I hope you will still follow the honor system and not use it. If you’re anywhere near as old as I, when your mother kept you home from school in the `30s and `40s with a cold, fever or worse, you had to stay in bed with a portable radio by your bed-stand and listen to soap operas all day which ran from 9 a.m. through late afternoon. They were called soap operas because major soap and grocery manufacturers sponsored them, in 15-minute segments. They were mostly love stories for the housewives—tame things that had an addictive quality to them. In this contest, I’m going to describe themes of some of the major network soaps…many of which originated from Chicago but were aired throughout the country…and ask you to name them. Most are not kid stories but some are. I’m not sure even Frank Nofsinger is old enough to play but we’ll see. I don’t know how I remember these things but I do. The only man I know who can identify these answers is Jack Whalen who is one year younger than I but who listened to the same radio shows.

1. The title: “Oxydol’s Own _________. Two words: the name of the leading character.

2. This story is of “a girl from a little mining town in the West, Silver Creek, Colorado who grew up to marry England’s richest, most handsome Lord, Lord Henry Brinthrop.” They called her “Our Gal_________ which was her first name. What was it?

3. The heroine of this soap was a woman who “seeks to prove, as so many women long to prove, that love can exist at thirty-five and after.” The title of the soap was her name. What was it? For bragging rights, the name of her lover who was a man of mystery, always traveling somewhere on secret missions but who wanted desperately to return and marry her.

4. This heroine was also named in the title of the soap as was her occupation labeled “Backstage Wife.” What was her name? For bragging rights, why was she called Backstage Wife?

5. The heroine of this soap was a woman who scrubbed floors to raise her daughter who got married to a rich guy and whom her poor old mother didn’t want to embarrass her by letting her know how poor and humble her mother was. The mother’s name and title of the soap was: ____________ (two words).

6. The heroine of this one became a woman U. S. Senator and a famous one at a time when there were no women Senators. Her full name was the title of this soap which was _______________(two words).

7. This drama was not a soap but an enormously popular adult radio serial which went longer than 15 minutes. In fact it ran one hour on Sunday afternoons when the whole family followed the exploits of a rich family which lived in a mansion near a sea-wall in San Francisco. There was the patriarchal retired banker father and sedate matron mother, an older son named Paul, a wounded veteran of World War I, a widower, who was a kind of philosopher; his young daughter named “Teddy,” a sister named Claudia Lacey who married an RAF flyer, a sister Hazel, who was a common-sense type whose husband was shell-shocked and an amnesiac from World War I and a kid brother named Jack who was breaking up with his beautiful but emotionally insecure wife Anne. Three words describe the title with “Family” one of them. It was ________ ____ Family and was sponsored by Tenderleaf Tea. There, I’ve almost given it away.

8. This was a soap which like the others ran five days a week with the leading character a barber in a town called Hartville. Three words in the title.

9. Not a soap opera but a thriller which aired on a weeknight which featured characters named Reggie, Doc and Jack who were engaged in solving murders.

10. This was a story about a guy whose business was to track down lost persons. Six words in the title. The theme song was “Somewhere I’ll Find You!”

11. This was a funny serial about a man and woman which was written by a leading comedy writer named Goodman Ace who would always cry out in exasperation at his dumb wife, “Isn’t that awful!” It was not George Burns and Gracie Allen.

12. This was a soap that featured an older lady telling stories to a young radio announcer named “Danny.” The first name of the title was “Aunt”—no not Jemina.

13. This was a maudlin one about a wise Jewish patriarch named Papa
David and a young gentile girl named “Chee-Chee” whom he would instruct by quoting the Talmud. It had a serial title that defied the entire tenor of the show. Four words in the title.

14. An uproariously funny serial written and acted by the comedienne Gertrude Berg about a Jewish family, a story so successful she moved the show to television in the early days…a TV show which always began the same way with the heroine, played by Berg, shouting through an open apartment window to her neighbor: “Yoo-hoo! Mrs. Bloom!” Two words.

15. This was a story about a fast-living newspaperman whose stories always appeared on the front page. Three words.

16. And this was a story set in a major big city (unnamed) where the hero was a crusading newspaper editor named Steve Wilson of the Illustrated Press whose girl friend was Lorilei. The name of the serial in two words.

17. A kid mystery about a guy who solves crime by rendering himself invisible through a trick of intellect that clouded others’ minds so they couldn’t see him while he would intone these words:“The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay!” Two words in the title.

18. A kid mystery about a costumed mystery man who solved big city crime speeding around town with a supercharged car driven by a servant named Kato…who started out being a Japanese but who, when World War II came along, was converted into a Filipino. The theme was “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” Three words.

19. A Saturday morning combination kid and youngish adult story which centered around a New York city train station “the crossroads of a million private lives.” Three words.

20. An evening drama for adults which began with the host taking a cab to a “little theatre off Times Square” where he enters royally and is greeted by an usher who says, “Good evening…I’ll show you to your box. The play is just about ready to begin.” The name of the drama in three words.

Flashback: After Father’s Death, What to do About Mother?

[Reminiscences of more than fifty years in politics for my kids and grandchildren].

After forty-three years of marriage, Father’s death removed from Mother the heavy responsibilities she had to keep him well, fairly optimistic and occupied with diversified interests. She had done extraordinarily well. Born Frances Catherine Cleary on the North Side to an Irish Catholic Democratic family, she was religious but not scrupulous in literal observance as was Father; endowed with a sense of Irish fatalism, she had decided long ago that most finger-pointing solemn theologians—except divinely inspired ones—were just like everyone else including weather prognosticators: often wrong but never in doubt. They were daily Mass-goers in addition to attendees of the Mother of Sorrows novenas conducted seemingly everywhere but which originated at Our Lady of Sorrows church on the West Side that was so popular during times of trouble—like the Depression and World War II. In addition, his self-prescribed regimen of prayers would have been fitting for a Trappist breviary); she prayed daily, mornings and at night, enjoyed a Martini on occasion (he never drank), loved to dance (her one disappointment was that Father didn’t and wouldn’t learn), loved to watch Ed Sullivan on TV winding up with “What’s My Line?” and had a suspicion that all politics was essential hogwash.

Like Father, she had a limited education—no college. But hers was skimpy even for the times. He finished DePaul Academy which was a very good prep school where he took typing and Gregg shorthand (the latter equipping him to keep up with a speaker as fast as he could go, producing an accurate transcript of his words); she did not finish public high school (Robert Waller H. S.) before she decided that she was more interested in going to work. She was probably the most practical person I’ve ever known. Father would come home with these terrible dilemmas—everything but the FBI whose operations he kept strictly to himself: if I do such-and-such at work this will likely happen; yet, if I fail to do such-and-such, this could possibly happen. Yet if I do nothing, who knows what will happen? The choice she once picked was to do nothing because since he didn’t know would what would happen, it may well be of less danger than what he was sure would occur with the other two alternatives—ergo the prudent thing would be to see what would happen: maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Her relentless logic appealed to me but never to Father. She was a compulsive doer; he a compulsive thinker and ruminator, then doer with some trepidation he would be wrong.

Her marble-layer father, Thomas Francis Cleary, born here, was as a young man involved in the Democratic party in what is now the 47th ward. As a young man he heard William Jennings Bryan make the “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic national convention held at the old Coliseum and was passionately moved by it. He became a precinct captain at the time when Republicans were in the ascendancy and slowly turned his precinct around. He was the one who enlisted an Irishman in politics generations ago by the name of Joe Gill.

Some long forgotten controversy led him to run for Democratic ward committeeman unsuccessfully and Gill sided with the establishment against grandfather. Gill later became rich in the party…combing real estate and insurance kickbacks which were winked at in his day…and served as Cook county Democratic chairman until he retired, being replaced by a young ambitious county clerk named Richard J. Daley. When my grandfather died, full of years, in 1939 the wake was held, as many were, in the family home (and was, indeed, a “wake” with my mother and her sisters staying up all night to pray and sit with the corpse).

On the second night of the wake, when most celebrities come…when the best stories were told in the kitchen pantry where bereaved family members went for a drop of the grape…I was then eleven and participated with my parents in the front parlor with recitation of the rosary over the body when suddenly the crowds parted like the Red Sea. In came a man who caused a hush and a lull in the rosary, who knelt down, nodded and signified that the prayers should not be interrupted. It was Joe Gill, one of the real powers of the Democratic party and a pal of Mayor Edward J. Kelly. “Ah,” whispered Mother, “Joe Gill is moved by guilt to pay tribute to the man who started his career.” That said it all. Like the city luminary he was, Gill moved up through the crowd to the casket, knelt down and said the obligatory prayer. Then, standing, he reached down, touched the hands of the corpse which (as all our hands inevitably will) held a rosary between its stiff fingers.

Gill said in a soft voice but reverently audible: “I’m sorry, Tom. Goodbye.”

My Mother said to me just as softly, “Sorry indeed.”

Inside, however, she was a good enough pragmatist to know that Gill had originally made the right decision of sticking with the Democratic regulars rather than siding with “the Bolshevik” (which is what challengers of the Old Order were called then) Tom Cleary. Pragmatism she knew. If there was anything that turned her completely off, it was involved theoretical philosophical speculation. I would come home from college at Christmas, Easter and for the summer and bring things up at the dinner table--things I had read or heard in lectures on campus.

Like—questions which bothered Aquinas.

She’d say, “He was bothered, was he? What questions bothered him?”

Oh, the fact that God’s power and divine omnipotence raises questions about the possible and impossible.

She’d say, “God can do everything—that’s all, that’s it.”

Father would object: “Just a minute; let the kid talk. What bothered Aquinas?”

This question: Is it like Mother says—is nothing impossible for God or are there things which not even God can do, like reverse the order of time or create a world as infinite and perfect as God Himself?

“Nothing’s impossible for God,” said Mother. “That’s what you learned in the Baltimore catechism. No questions needed. That’s all, that’s it.”



“But turn time backward?” asked Father. “What does Aquinas say?”

He says, the impossible does not come under the heading of divine omnipotence—not because there is any defect in the power of God but because it has not the nature of a feasible or possible thing. So he says it is better to say that such things cannot be done rather than God cannot do them.”

“Interesting,” said Father.

“Not interesting. Nuts,” said Mother. “He means God can’t do it. This guy—Aquinas?--mustn’t have had enough things to do wherever he worked.”

In a monastery.

“It proves that when you think too much you get goofy,” said Mother and wanted a change of subject.

Father mildly disagreed. “No,” he said, cutting his steak. “These questions should be studied.”

All it is, I said, is probing the mystery of God.

“Wait,” she said. “The mystery of God, you say? What’s the mystery? This world was started by Him just like what happens when I go bowling with my league. The kid who spots the pins sends the ball rolling down the gutter of the alley to the return and when it rolls up it hits the other bowling balls and they rap each other, one-after-another. You have to get your fingers out of the way because they’ll get pinched. But that’s what God is and does. He starts things moving. What’s the mystery? My God, we’re sending this kid to school to get a good education but all that happens is he comes back with these goofy questions about the mystery of God. “

“Well,” Father said diplomatically, “maybe it’s okay to think about it for a little while. But then think about something else.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s of any practical use,” she said, “so if it isn’t why worry about it? My philosophy, if you want to call it that, is this: If you can do something about it, why worry? If you can’t do something about it, why worry? Why is that school we’re sending you to worrying about something it doesn’t know more about than we do—and can’t do anything about. Far better to study math and how to express yourself when you look for a job.”

“Well,” Father said, “but college tackles those questions. That’s what college is supposed to be.”

. “How can you put stuff like that to any good use? You and I survived the Depression and now we’re just out of World War II. How would it be if we had gone to school to think about this stuff? Would you have gotten a job at the North German Lloyd or me at J. Walter? Not if he thought about this all day. My advice to you is not to bother yourself with it: God can do whatever He wants. End of statement.”

I continued: Aquinas said the inability to do the undoable constitutes no violation of infinite power…

“Interesting,” said Father.

“Look,” she said, “this is also my table and I don’t have time to hear that stuff. Moreover, I don’t want to hear it because there’s no use in talking about the airy stuff. I want to know what you’re learning out there in Minnesota that will enable you to get a good job.”

That was a canny, practical—very practical—woman. She left high school on her own volition because, as one of six in her family, they had to divvy up and help support her parents who would be going through a period of economic difficulty whenever grandfather’s job as a marble layer hit a lag period due to recurring recessions. Sometimes he’d have a lot of work, such as laying marble in the Palmer House and working to install a new floor in the barber shop that was paved—believe it or not—with silver dollars. At other times there’d be a lag, such as before the first World War for a time. It was at one of those lag times that she decided she wanted to go to work and help pay rent to her parents who had three smaller children to support. Also she was fed up with school.

She also wanted better clothes and independence—not having to ask her own Mother for money to buy nice things. And for that she needed a good job and she didn’t want to fool around with school after she learned—to a great degree—the rudiments of practical affairs: math, English writing and pronunciation, Munson shorthand, typing and the ability to get along in polite conversation. The year was 1913 when she was 17 (she was born in `96, almost three full years before my Father) and she was eager to get out in the world, get a job and earn a good salary so she could have the things her older sister and brother were having. Any hard-headed practicality I have, any cynicism about politics and doubt about the efficacy of idealism (and I suspect I have more of the philosophical from Father than the practical from Mother), I received from her; any sentimentality and faith in the boundless good within human nature I have from him.

In the genre of the time, she was a fun-loving but abstemiously moral in tune with the tone of the times for Irish Catholics…but with a tolerant for most human frailties except sexual promiscuity which she abhorred. She was a pre-flapper. She was observantly, obligatorily religious but loved to dance, loved to go to stage shows, including the very best to be seen: Jolson at his peak (she didn’t think much of him, actively disliking his masquerading as a black man, preferring Eddie Foy), the Ziegfeld Follies (which she adored) and Fred and his dancing partner sister Adele Astaire whom she repeatedly saw over and again in the same show. All of these luxuries was paid for because she was quick and witty and had landed a job immediately as a beginning worker in the steno pool at J. Walter Thompson the big ad agency downtown on Michigan avenue.

There is no doubt that for a girl of her youth and lack of education, she hit it what would be called “big” by the time she was 18…being promoted quickly from the steno pool up to assistant office manager position…eventually earning more than her father, her big brother, earning more than my father when they met: enough to have left the family and taken her own apartment if she chose…but she did not choose since in those times it was not acceptable—and her contribution to the family income through “board” would be sorely missed and cause hardship.

She paid her “board” to her parents—weekly coverage of rent and food and laundry which was de rigeur for the time, saved some money and bought nice clothes and went to the big shows with the remainder. In my room is a photo of her at age 17 when she was on the upward ascent even at that age at J. Walter, leaving the steno pool for an assistant manager’s job. I enclose the photo her: she’s in a large hat, very frivolous, a kind of hat one wouldn’t buy unless you had a kind of overage of money from a good job. She’s not smiling; she was dark-haired, serious with the Irish eyes that later totally captivated Father, and posed with a thoughtful gaze as though she had just decided the serious mission of her life.

Probably at that time it was the decision to ditch one Alexander McQueen, the dilettante college boy son of the Chicago head of the agency, who occasionally dated her, hanging around her desk and making a love-sick fool of himself. McQueen later went on to become a fixture on WGN radio with a program of sharp-toned quips and sassy, smart-talk sayings. Alexander McQueen was, to her, superficial and boring; when she broke it off he was heartbroken but it didn’t affect her job with his father who promoted her and told her she was smart to dump his kid. I heard McQueen much later on the radio and she did the right thing.

The big “fun” thing she did after a hard week of work at J. Walter was this: With her two sisters she would go every Saturday night on an excursion boat on Lake Michigan which would go to Milwaukee and back, with dinner served while a band played and young men in their Saturday best would ask them to dance. The boat would return at about 11 p.m. and the young men would ask to take the girls home on the street-cars. They would travel in a group—the three Cleary girls, Frances (my Mother, then from 17 to 20), Marie (a year older) and Alice (a year or so younger)—and earnest young men would volunteer to take them home on the street car. Some of the young men wanted to take them home alone on a street car without the others along so as to talk personally. After they were dropped off at home, if the young men were interested further, they would ask for a date with their favorite. If not—or if the girls didn’t like them--the Clearys would snap their fingers and meet other young men the following Saturday. A beatific life and so it went.

One hot afternoon, on July 14, 1915, she and her sisters were getting dressed in their finery preparatory to going downtown to catch the excursion boat when their father—my grandfather, fifty-three-year-old Thomas Francis Cleary (after whom I’m named)—asked them to join him in the parlor. When the girls trounced in, in their finery, he said: “You might as well change back to your regular duds because you’re not going. Not going ever again on an excursion boat. I’ve never liked that excursion boat idea and it’ll end now.” He had just hit a stretch of employment where the wages were very good with little or no stretches of unemployment apparent and he and my grandmother were thinking of buying a two-flat: renting one out and they living on the first floor—the culmination of success in their Irish neighborhood. He was, in fact, laying down the law and recovering his domination over his working daughters.

Two of the three Cleary girls seemed to accept the dictum.

My mother said, “Well, I want to go.”

“Listen,” said Grandfather Cleary. “You’re not twenty-one yet and you’ll listen to me. There’s just been a tragedy downtown with an excursion boat which was tied up at the dock—full of young people like you who worked for Western Electric. They were all set to go to a Western Electric picnic at Michigan City, Indiana and the boat was pulling out from the pier. They all ran over to one side to wave goodbye and the combined weight caused the damn thing to tip over and hundreds of them are lost—hundreds, drowned. What do you think of that?”

“So?” Mother said. “How often has that happened? That can happen but not very often. I don’t know about them…” nodding to her two sisters, “…but I’m going.”

Just then the oldest Cleary progeny came bursting in the door—Maurice, 21 years old, a fully-grown adult, a draftsman at Emerson Electric in St. Louis, who was in the city getting acquainted with Emerson’s regional office and going with a girl who would become his wife.

“Pa, I passed by the Tribune building on the way to catch the streetcar downtown and they were posting a big sign about all the news of the day with headlines and all and a big crowd was gathered. Do you know how many were drowned today when the boat capsized? Eight hundred! Then I went to the south bank of the Chicago river between LaSalle and Clark and saw them fishing bodies—dead bodies—out of the drink. They’re still doing it! That’s enough for me. Well, I’ll tell you, Lucy and I will never go on one of those excursion boats again.”

“Well, you and Lucy can do what you please,” said my Mother, “but I will. Marie and Alice can do what they please.”

“Well damnit, we’ll see who runs this place!” Grandfather said. “When I say you’re not going you’re not going!”

Grandmother, Ann Kenny Cleary, looked fearful because of all of them, my Mother was doing the best financially—by far.

“Well,” my Mother said, “I’m working and paying board here and with the greatest of respect, I think I’m of age to decide that. I’m nineteen. ”

“Not as long as your under my roof!” grandfather shouted.

The other two sisters were undecided.

“Listen,” their mother, my grandmother who was a peacemaker, said: “Why doesn’t Father take you all down on the street car to downtown right now and show you—all of you—where the boat is. And then make your mind up.”

“Right,” said Maurice. “I’ll go with you. It’s called the `Eastland’ and is supposed to be one of the biggest disasters in Chicago history after the Fire. I guarantee when you see them fish up the bodies out of the river, you won’t want to go.”

They all agreed to see the wreck. They took the streetcar down and there on the river was the boat, lying on its side on the river. It was night but things shone as bright as if it were day with the rigged lights. There were police, the mayor and the politicians: Lieutenant Governor Barratt O’Hara who was put in charge of the effort by Governor Edward F. Dunne, the only governor to have been mayor of Chicago

. They walked up to the river’s edge and watched the grappling hooks hauling up the bodies.

“Now, what do you think?” asked grandfather.

Maurice said, “Isn’t it awful? Eight hundred dead.”

My mother said: “I’m going.”



My grandfather flew into a rage.

“All right,” he said in his brogue, inherited from his neighbors although he was born in this country. “But I’ll tell you this, Frances! You die and drown or whatever and I’ll not shed a tear nor will I ever mention you again nor will we mourn—nor will there be a funeral mass or prayers because you were a stubborn girl--but you go do what you want!”

There was silence.

Then Marie and Alice said, “Pa, we’re going too!”

He exploded “goddamit! You all drown and go to hell and I won’t care! In fact, I’ll whoop and holler because I won’t have such disrespectful girls to mock me!” and stormed down the pier with his son Maurice to the streetcar. .

They all went. Nobody drowned. After the excursion boat ride to Milwaukee and back, they came back home on the streetcar. When they rang the front bell their brother let them in; Grandfather stayed in his bed, sulking.

More about Mother, how she met Father and how she fared after he died.

Personal Asides: Lynn Sweet Says All Women are Stronger Now with Pelosi as Speaker…Ralph Martire, the Johnny One-Note of Tax Hikes…The Tribune: What’s In It for You? (Good Question).

How Sweet it is!

George Tagge, my favorite political editor…of the long-ago Chicago Tribune which knew fully what it believed until April 1, 1955 when Colonel McCormick died…was both journalist and political player who occupied one of the highest stations in Illinois—strategizing for the GOP on an equal basis with Everett Dirksen, Billy the Kid Stratton, shaping policy and trumpeting Republican success, stopping when needed to really cover the news from his own solid, unimpeachable sources. I have frequently compared Lynn Sweet, the Washington editor of the Sun-Times who doubles as Chicago political reporter to him. She’s has an equal hunger for partisanship, is hugely enthusiastic about electing her favorites but even when there’s a good story to cover that may redound against Democrats will do it because she is in love with the game (as was George).

But once in a while George would let his infectious pro-Republican enthusiasm get away from him. So enamored was he was Robert A. Taft that he once lost it and allowed himself to report that the Ohioan was exciting, charismatic, vibrant. Everybody who knew him well called him and said, “Com’on George! Were you drinking when you wrote that? You know that isn’t true! You’ve just let your enthusiasm get away from you.” He didn’t get away with it and even McCormick joshed him for it.

Nor should Ms. Sweet be allowed to get away with the notion that the election of Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker has “given all women strength.” Gushed Sweet: “Pelosi becoming speaker helps every woman with any ambition, no matter her politics or ideology.” Gee, we never saw Ms. Sweet tremble with excitement like that when Condelezza Rice became the first black woman to become (a) national security adviser and (b) secretary of state. That’s because Ms. Sweet is a Democrat before she is even a feminist, a pro-abort or liberal—who interchangeably writes commentary as well as supposed “straight” news…reaching over to the editorial page and then hop-scotching back to the news desk.

She is obviously deputized to direct the newspaper’s publicity barrage for President-to-be Obama here in concert with David Axelrod then fly back to Washington to confer with Rahm Emanuel, both her good friends and prime sources. She’s got it over Tagge, however, because the Trib would never allow George on the editorial page but kept him to the front of the paper…whereas Lynn is truly Ms. Runamok with no restraining arm on her from either editor or publisher.

Ralph Martire: Same Old…Same Old.

But at least Lynn pursues variety. One day she thrills about Pelosi, another day she blisters Republicans, yet another she writes lefty social policy following it up with lefty international affairs. You can a balanced diet on the left from her. But Ralph Martire, a regular Op Ed columnist with the Sun-Times has one pervading theme—a drumbeat for higher taxes which he writes every single week…leading me to believe that somehow the fix is in with Steve Huntley or the bosses above him with this guy. Com’on, what is it that Martire has not said before?

Why is this hack allowed to spew his propaganda at the paper drawing $150 a column which says essentially the same thing each and every week when he already earns money for pushing tax hikes with his liberal spending-bund office? Is it not outrageous that a paid lobbyist for higher taxes gets paid double for his work—once by his big labor, big education sponsors and once again by the Sun-Times? It would be like, in the old days, I’d send in stories extolling the benefits of oatmeal which the paper would print and send me my $150 while at the same time I was drawing pay from Quaker Oats. No difference. Only the team of Cruickshank and Huntley would be able to give the reason and they’re not talking. Nor is any other so-called “media” critic in this town.

The Blah Tribune Editorials.

Dry goods was usually contained in packing crates stored in the back of warehouses where employees could rustle them up whenever a customer asked. Dry goods in this town today is the exclusive property of the Tribune editorial board which churns out boring, two-sided, on-one-hand-then-the-other treatises which make one’s eyelids grow heavy before the third graph. They give a nod to the left and a nod to the right. To the left: Keith Ellison got sworn in as a Congressman by using Thomas Jefferson’s Koran which means his faith is not any less American than anyone else’s. Uh-huh.

To the unintelligible center: There is a baby boomer countdown in that their coming retirements will cause some financial difficulties. People have ignored it in the past. “Happy New Year. The countdown is on.” Wow! That’s a hard-hitting expression of views, isn’t it?

Also to the unintelligible center: Gov. Blagojevich collected $234,000 in contributions from people doing business with the state; Judy Baar Topinka took in $79,000. There’s a bill, H. B. 1 which would set a $25,000 limit after which those who contributed more could not be retained by their recipients of their generosity. The hard-hitting conclusion: “Will House Bill 1 ever be called for a vote? Millions of us will be watching.” Wow—such passion, such verve, such feeling.

Finally a conclusion that evokes no strong feeling because it’s a clichéd truism. Bush is talking about increasing our troop level in Iraq. Conclusion: “If Bush is to sell his mission, it must be guided by one fact: Only the Iraqis can put an end to the violence.” That conclusion makes your hair stand on end, doesn’t it?

The typical Trib editorial says (a) such-and-such may well happen; (b) on the other hand, it may not; (c) if it does happen, this could well be the result; (d) if it doesn’t happen, the opposite could easily occur…thus (e) it will be interesting to see what does happen because no matter what (f) we are certainly living in interesting times.

All this from a newspaper whose latest slogan is “The Chicago Tribune: What’s in it for You?” If I were the paper’s management, I wouldn’t keep asking readers this question. Readers are steadily giving their answer without having to be reminded of editorial sophistry by an expensive marketing program.

Flashback: Charlie Baar and the former Governor Disagree on Everything Concerning the Illinois Republican Party.

[A memoir of more than 50 years in politics for my kids and grandchildren. Note: The photo shows a young TFR in the 1960s when Charlie Barr, Billy the Kid and I were having lunches].

It was no mean feat to get Charlie Barr and Billy the Kid to meet at any time not to mention lunch: but it happened in a strange way. I forgot that I had invited Charlie on the regular day that Billy and I ate: so all three of us met in the anteroom and there was nothing to do for the two old opponents but to grin and make the best of it. The reason for their contention was historic. In 1960, Stratton was running for his second term as a progressive—but not unduly liberal—governor and Charlie ran the conservative Cook county GOP chairman and a state senator, Hayes Robertson—a close friend of Charlie’s—against him. Robertson lost but not by all that much.

The charge Robertson made was that Bill Stratton was too liberal for the Republican party, and beyond that didn’t give a damn about the Republican party or in recruiting new leaders but concentrated solely on himself. True, but Billy wasn’t much different than any other governor in that regard. Robertson also used the Orville Hodge scandal as a reflection on Stratton--but that was unjust….in the same way Blagojevich said Topinka was George Ryan’s state treasurer. Hodge was a freely elected state auditor who turned crooked, was a rival of Stratton’s and his turning crooked was his own doing, not Bill’s. Hodge and Stratton were adversaries.

The lunch was memorable but both of them later called me and said, “You planned this, didn’t you?” I didn’t but things couldn’t have worked out better: two opponents actually went toe-to-toe while I, the real kid in the group, age 38, compared to an ex-governor of 52 and a oil executive about 56, listened attentively. And I took mental notes which I transcribed later in my files from whence this reconstructed dialogue.

Actually, both later admitted they enjoyed the lunch more than they had let on. For one thing, both had a lot of time on their hands with relatively little to do and it was fun to rehash the past, putting their own spins on it: for me it was glorious because I had the benefit of both sides. They had lots of time in which to debate because, by the end of 1966, Bill Stratton’s political career was over even though he was at a prime political age; but he wouldn’t acknowledge it…former two-time congressman-at-large, two-time state treasurer, two term governor. And Charlie’s was winding down as he kept losing favor with his senior bosses at Standard Oil (Ind.)

Billy the Kid was the older and more relaxed about his fading eminence; Charlie was at the point where his long service to the Republican party should be paying off and it wasn’t. Their bosses…either at Canteen or Standard Oil…weren’t exactly calling them up to ask for advice so they whaled into each other heartily. Stratton was used as a former governor trophy to give his views to the Canteen chairman when asked; Barr was a used-up conservative now on the shelf because Big Oil was more interested in Lyndon Johnson’s wheeler-dealer style rather than in conservative philosophy.

Charlie stated by saying, “Well, perhaps you and I can agree on one thing, Governor”—use of Stratton’s former title was meant to placate Billy, “and that is that we hope the rumor that Dick Ogilvie will run for the governorship in `68 after he just got elected president of the Cook board, is wrong.”

“No, Charlie,” said Billy. “I can’t criticize him because that’s what I did in my own career. I lost a wife because of it but in this business as a Republican you can hurt yourself by staying too long—especially in Cook which has a heavy Democratic base in Chicago. No, I think that if Dick’s planning to run for governor from the Cook county presidency, he’s smart. Not that I think he’s going to be unchallenged in the primary of `68.” By which he meant privately that he, Stratton, was thinking about making another run for what would be, were he to be elected, a third term.

“Well, if I may say so, you never gave much of a damn about the Republican party either,” said Charlie, “which is what we’re finding out about Dick Ogilvie. It’s a shame because when we started Draft Goldwater, he was our most valuable ally.”

“Charlie,” said Bill. “I’ve been dying to say this to you for years. What is the Republican party? Specify it, Charlie. Tell me: what is the Republican party?”

“Easy. The Republican party is an association of like-minded individuals who agree on the broad dimensions of a philosophy who want to see these principles implemented in government.”

“Fine. Now how does the party’s philosophy as you call it get on the ballot, raise money, pay for television and radio commercials, organize the precincts, go door-to-door in some localities, debate opponents—how does it do all these things and more? How does the philosophy do that, Charlie?”

“Well--.”

“Don’t stumble around. Tell me. How does the party’s philosophy do that, Charlie? While you’re stumbling around for the answer, I’ll tell you—since you’ve never run for anything in your life…not one thing…and I’ve ran statewide and won for Congress twice, state treasurer twice, governor twice--.”

“And lost twice—for secretary of state and governor.”

“You’re right. But how many times have you run, Charlie? Anyhow, I’ll tell you—now don’t interrupt me now, goddamnit. You’ve never run. Now I’ll answer my own question since you’re having trouble responding, Charlie. The answer is, Philosophy in which you show such a vital interest, doesn’t get on a ballot, doesn’t raise money, doesn’t go door-to-door in some localities, doesn’t debate opponents. Candidates do. Candidates who imbue a particular philosophy some of whom align with your very purist one and some of whom don’t.

“And candidates are flesh and blood, Charlie. They have to face challenges that aren’t covered by Russell Kirk in his book The Conservative Mind. The first time I ran my opponent started to clobber me good and my father’s memory good, saying I was a renegade and not a team player. And I looked up Russell Kirk and he didn’t have a damn thing to say about what to do in that situation, Charlie—because Russell Kirk, like you, never ran for office.

“So I out-manuevered him with my wits; out-worked him, out-debated him about how bad the so-called vaunted Republicans who wanted team play really were and that I was a reformer. And the voters listened to me when I wasn’t even twenty-five years old, which is where I got the name Billy the Kid. You can talk about philosophy all you want, Charlie, but political philosophy is concocted out of experience, not in cool university seminars. As a matter of fact…”

“Is this going to be a filibuster?”

“No, I’m waiting for my soup to cool. As a matter of fact, political philosophy follows…follows, Charlie…the experience of men who have run and won and run and lost. So don’t give me this stuff about who’s not consonant with philosophy. The first philosopher was a guy freezing his nuts off who happened to strike flint on a rock and saw a spark which caught on some wild grass and started a blaze and the guy decided wow, that’s how I can keep warm. And so he taught his kids that and what he taught was philosophy and what he learned was by accident, experience or what have you. The Republican party was formed by a lot of different people—mostly aligned against slavery but men who formed it for various reasons. Lincoln had been a moderately anti-slavery Whig. Seward had been very anti-slavery. Others had been not so anti-slavery formally as against it expanding into the territories: which was Lincoln’s original position. If you insist on your specified brand of philosophical purity, Charlie, as you did with Goldwater, the result is going to be just what happened to Goldwater—disaster.”

“I’ll be happy to respond while you sip your soup. I agree with how philosophy was born—following experience. But after a certain time, men determined that it was prudent to enact rules: not starting a fire with flint and a rock where the wind is blowing toward the cave so the prairie fire might threaten the encampment. Not running off with the other guy’s mate unless you want to be knocked on the head by a rock. This buildup through the ages culminated in a social philosophy. We Goldwaterites may have lost in 1964, Bill, but we’re on the way to a new alignment—with the South and elements of the blue-collar class moving into our camp. They know what their philosophy is and it’s bound to resonate sooner or later. That’s why when you look at the Democrats you see men of certain shared values. Until 1964, the Republican party was a hodge-podge: Rockefeller people just like Democrats, people like you not unlike Democrats, Bill. Actually, while we lost in 1964 it’s people like you and Dick Ogilvie who are on the outs. You--.”

“I resent that.”

“You can resent it all you like, Bill”—notice it’s Bill now, no more Governor—“but when you ran for governor you ran on a conservative set of principles. Once in, you turned out to be Big Bill the Builder just like forty years ago Chicago had a Republican Big Bill the Builder.”

This was a reference to William Hale Thompson, the last Republican mayor.

“Unfair, Charlie. Big Bill was a buddy of Capone and I defy you to point to a single instance in my administration where the mob was tolerated.”

“True. I’ll grant it was unfair. But one comparison is fair, Bill. Nobody could print money fast enough for you to spend. That wasn’t and isn’t the Republican philosophy, Bill. Now it happens that of all the governors…of all of them…you know more about state government than anybody else. You were and are a technician of government and I respect that. There isn’t a thing that went sour during your time that had anything to do with you.”

“It would have been nice if you had told Hayes Robertson that.”

“You don’t know what I told Hayes but now that you asked, I called him on the carpet and said he was unfair in that particular. But changing overnight, seizing opportunities to be all things to all men, acting as a liberal Democrat, causing government to grow, close to Daley in the early years—with these actions, Bill, you showed that the party and its philosophy means not a damn to you but you just hijack the party name to accomplish your own ends. Now you may talk.”

No, I said, let me talk. Charlie, let’s get back to Ogilvie. What do you want him to do now that he’s the county board president?

“I would like him to craft policies for the county that are reasonably free-market oriented, to cut the bloated size of government, to restore merit hiring instead of flagrant patronage--.”

“And to lose the time reelection comes around,” snapped Bill. “And then after that noble experiment, the Democrats come back and instill a government of waste, bigger patronage than ever and stay a thousand years.”

Okay, once again, let me talk. Bill, granted that what you say may well be right, what would you want Ogilvie to do?

“I believe a public official should run on as nearly perfect a conservative philosophy as it’s realistically possible. What we’re into here in politics is to elect good men. Our good men should apply the standards of honesty and integrity to their task. Not unlike Lincoln who may well have been a total abolitionist in his approach but who knew he would not get elected with that end in view so he spoke in a guarded, measured way until he got in and had the power to do what he probably had set out to do in the first place.”

“That was the old politics, the way it was crafted in the 19th century,” said Charlie, “because in those days you went from one part of the state to another and could freely contradict. Lincoln got in as a minority president because of his ability to obfuscate: he was a brilliant lawyer. These days with instant communication, you have to shoot straight and tell the truth. In a very real sense, Bill, your highly-regarded pragmatism misses the boat because it fails its first test—pragmatism doesn’t work. As Mr. Ogilvie will find out.”

Stratton snapped: “But Goldwater gave out some hard unpalatable truths, Charlie. And what happened to him?”

“He lost and lost heavily because the time wasn’t right. But the time is coming when it will be right. Maybe on the next go-round.”

But I was captivated by what Charlie had said earlier about Ogilvie. He said: pragmatism doesn’t work—“as Mr. Ogilvie will find out.”

What do you mean, Charlie?

“I mean that liberal Democrats are saying that the state cannot run, with its heavy social policy components, without an eventual income tax increase. And that while nobody talks about it, the man who will deliver it will be Mr. Ogilvie if he becomes governor.”

“He won’t if he listens to my advice—which odds on he won’t because he won’t ask for it and he and I are not close,” said Stratton. “If a tax increase is to come, it should come over his dead body and he should be in a position of having it come by means of terrible deadlock and threat to the continuance of government, with it either coming by veto override or with the governor signing with such reservation that his opposition would help him in his reelection.”

“That’s interesting, Bill,” said Charlie. “I threw that out for the first time to anybody because nobody—and I mean nobody—knows state finances better than you. And your response is very interesting. A tax increase is needed and the thing to do is to have the Democrats force it on the governor. Which is what you would do in his circumstances, wouldn’t you?”

“From the standpoint of us three at this table, Charlie, yes. The social component is such that in a few years it will be suicide to cut back on the poor. You can only cut back so much: nobody knows that better than I. If wise men decide a tax increase is necessary, wise men should apportion the blame. A Republican governor should not have the burden of selling a tax increase alone: but a Republican governor should be allowed to fight it until the cows come home and unwillingly be coerced by a strong majority to either signage or repass over a veto. Democrats can get by with a tax hike; their constituency will allow it. Not Republicans.

“If I were governor, I’d look at the fresh numbers, meet privately with the Democratic leadership and say, `Gentlemen, you say you want a tax increase. If so, you’ve got to pay for it. And I mean pay a political price. I will see that in the last analysis you’ll get it, and I mean to campaign against you for delivering it from Shawneetown to Waukegan. It is up to you to determine—and your recipient constituency. My constituency doesn’t want it so I’ll get along without it. Oh yes, and when your constituency comes to me complaining about starved services, I’ll blame you also. That’s the game. Now if you want improved services, bear up like men and be prepared to take it the abuse I’m going to dish out.’”

We parted on that note and Charlie said: “I’ll say this, Bill. You’re candid and a brilliant operator. I just don’t think Ogilvie is that smart.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Stratton. “We’ll find out like everybody else will—by reading the papers because he isn’t going to ask me for advice and he’s damn sight not going to ask you.”

“You’re right there,” said Charlie, tipping us a wave and off he went.

EDITOR’S NOTE: An anonymous reader commented that Barr was never a big deal in the Goldwater campaign with F. Clifton White but was only kept around because Barr could raise money. . He should refer to one of the best books written on the subject, The Agony of the GOP by Robert Novak who correctly lists Barr as a key player in the strategy. Barr’s ability to raise money was formidable but he was also one of the Goldwater kingmakers. TR.

Personal Asides: The Trivial Answer…Musical Trivia

Answer.

The answer to the question who was the last African-American to seek a major party nomination for President is the Rev. Al Sharpton who announced for the Democratic nomination in 2004. Bob in P. F. got it right. Incidentally, Bob says he can’t post serious stuff but when he answers trivia, it registers. I have no answer for that. But I will say that when people are frustrated they go to my e-mail and express themselves—as Bob occasionally does. About Sharpton: He didn’t stay a candidate long and withdrew without a single delegate—but he was the last announced candidate. Alan Keyes sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and he was the choice of a number of respondents to the question.

Musical Trivia.

One of the most beautiful songs of the `40s is “Skylark” which took Johnny Mercer a long time to produce the lyrics. The reason is that the melody he said, is so inexpressibly beautiful and complex that it really taxed his ingenuity. Now without the benefit of a search engine, who wrote the melody to “Skylark” for which Johnny composed the lyrics?