Personal Asides: Lovie’s Leather Wins Terry’s Trivia…Mike Noonan and Paul Caprio to be on “Shootout”—and Maybe, Just Maybe, Brad Cole…Once Again: Calls for Popularly Elected State Central Committeemen.

Lovie’s Leather.

Lovie’s Leather, one of the more perceptive contributors to this website, wins Terry’s Trivia. The question: With the Democrats holding their 2008 convention in Denver, who was the only Democratic candidate Colorado supported for president since LBJ? Answer: Bill Clinton. Congratulations, Lovie!

Noonan-Caprio.

Mike Noonan, the General George Patton of Democratic politics, the strategist and grassroots genius whom the Democrats turn to when the going is rough…assuredly the brightest young manager and warrior in his party…will be on “Political Shootout” with Paul Caprio, director, Family-PAC. Noonan pulled the victory for Bernie Stone out of the hat when many experts said that it was over for the old man. Naisy Dolar, the defeated opponent, recognized Noonan’s strategic pricelessness by attacking him last Sunday, a dumb thing to do. There is a possibility…just that…that another guest will be Brad Cole, newly reelected mayor of Carbondale (there, I’ve got the town right!) over Sheila Simon who, we are told by the Associated Press, didn’t want her prestigious family name to interfere with her winning on her own.

Well, it didn’t and she didn’t. There is a dearth of commentary on her loss in the left-leaning “mainstream media,” have you noticed? Can you imagine what it would have been like had she won? She’d be all over the front pages in Chicago as the logical choice to run for state AG when Lisa Madigan runs for governor. Channels 2, 5, 7 and 9 would be winging to Carbondale for interviews. But the fact that she lost…dashing so many liberal hopes…means that it just isn’t much of a news story, is it? Nary a peep out of Lynn Sweet, Carol Marin, Jennifer Hunter, Mark Brown…the usual suspects who could be expected to chortle if Simon had won…the start of a brilliant career etc.

Paul Caprio’s take on the elections will be revelatory. And if we’re lucky enough to get Brad Cole, the reelected Carbondale mayor, it’d be perfect. It’ll be a good show anyhow: WLS-AM (890) at 8 p.m. this Sunday.

Popularly Elected.

Now that we’ve just made up, I run the risk of once more alienating Doug Ibenthal…a shame because I was just on the cusp of calling him for lunch—but I must comment as an old Republican geezer on one of his sacred causes, the need to have popular elections of Republican State Central Committeemen. When I returned to Illinois from Minnesota, the State Central Committeemen were all popularly elected—and what a dynamic, responsive, alert, vigorous, intellectually acute team it was…headed by Victor Smith, the chairman, a Robinson, Ill. weekly newspaper editor and including such notables as State Senator Pete Granata from the West Side bloc who carried a holstered pistol with him—bulky under his $2,000 suit jacket—ready to defend his life from gang insurgents at all times. I attended all the meetings as a monitor for the National Committeeman, Bob Stuart and kept notes on all the sessions from 1964 to 1969…and even thereafter when I returned from Washington until Stuart resigned his post in 1973. So that was a pretty long time—1964 to 1973 during which time all the Committeemen were elected by, ahem, popular will of the electorate.

I had moved from a state where the state committee was far more effective and none were elected on the primary ballot—Minnesota where the SCC consisted of all the county chairmen (elected by caucuses consisting of precinct people, representatives of legislative leaders in state House and Senate, state representative district people, town and village people), all the congressional district chairmen (in turn elected by caucuses) and appointees from various constituencies: congressmen appointees, Senate appointees, gubernatorial or gubernatorial candidate’s appointees, and a representative of the state finance committee. The total was something like 250 and none were on the popular ballot.

When they met, several times a year in the Twin Cities, it was a de facto convention in fact and in theory: they had the power to elect whomever they wished as state chairman, chairwoman…and to reach across the state to pick whomever they chose not withstanding whether or not they were SCC members…elect national committee members, pass resolutions, censure or approve legislative and congressional policies. At that time, Minnesota also had precinct caucuses identical to Iowa caucuses—the presidential primary being scotched because the DFL was mad that its favorite son Hubert Humphrey who was running the Adlai Stevenson candidacy got licked by insurgents favoring Estes Kefauver.

I can tell you which form was vastly superior—the Minnesota version. That was the group that entreated Walter Judd to run for Congress against a failed GOP incumbent; the group that fought to a standstill over Ike and Taft; the group that provided the muscle behind election of two Republican mayors of Democratic St. Paul. There never was a machine in Minnesota’s GOP but it couldn’t gain traction with a SCC of that diversity. The SCC was widely representative but was so diverse ideologically …ranging from right to left and in-between…balanced… that it was not in the pocket of any single group…either the fat-cat financiers, or the Republican governor (I know because as an aide to the GOP governor I had to deal with them) or the congressional delegation (I know that, too, because as an aide to two congressmen I had to deal with them). But then next to a couple of youngsters in Illinois who feel otherwise, what do I know, right? That’s why the watchword in this state for many so-called “professionals” is: seldom right but never in doubt.

That State Central committee had great policy-making influence. With several congressmen opposed to the Eisenhower farm policy and in favor of high price supports—agreeing with Humphrey—they were smacked down by stinging resolutions from the State CC. The SCC had the power and right to endorse candidates—although the primary system existed and occasionally disagreed with the SCC’s endorsees. The party was governed very effectively—a microcosm of the party’s electorate. In fact, as I’ve stayed in touch with my adopted state, I think it can be said that Minnesota’s emergence from deep blue to on the verge of going red can be attributed in part to the large SCC membership which truly reflect the burgeoning influence of movements such as right-to-life, the gun people, anti-tax people, etc.

If these were the provisions of SB 600 I would be enthusiastically in favor. Just so, I am very tepid about it because having seen the old system fail, I am not sanguine that it can work again just because a particular conservative group with which I agree on some things is behind it. Moreover the charge that it is being held up by State Representative Tom Cross, a social liberal, is a canard as it is a Senate bill which has not even been passed out of the Senate committee thus it is impossible for the House to take it up. Moreover, those who want to change the makeup of the SCC can easily do so by running and supporting Republican precinct committeemen who would support different people to the SCC. I like Tom Cross with whom I can disagree civilly because he has developed a great farm team—Aaron Schock and others and succeeded in reelecting Brad Cole as mayor of Carbondale. I go to Springfield not un-occasionally and believe the House GOP is run far better under social liberal Cross than it was under his predecessor, social conservative Lee Daniels.

Now the fact that at age 78 I have had the experience of seeing and being active in the GOP of two states with widely different SCCs will, of course, cut no ice or have any effect at all on ideologues who are not interested in comparisons but determined to blast ahead on their way or the highway…among whom I count my friend Senator Chris Lauzen who used to send me letters with sad faces drawn and tears running because I was not sufficiently conservative i.e. disagree with him. Unlike any other Republican legislative leader with whom I have dealt going back to 1953, I have never yet…in twenty years of our association…been able to convince Chris of anything that he had not previously decided. But we are friends and I still want him to run for Congress. I am not sanguine enough to imagine I have convinced anyone in the hard pro-SB-600 category…for the simple reason that on this as with all other except the most incidental matters, they are constitutionally unable to compromise. They view all compromise as they do almost all change—as betrayal and renunciation of principle.

Now, I’ll sit back and wait for the rejoinders.

Flashback: The “Aunt Jemima Question” Comes Down to a Parley with the Amen Corner of Operation PUSH.

[More than 50 years of politics written for my kids and grandchildren].

At the appointed day I was to appear before Reverend Jesse Jackson and a selected group of ministers who would usually voiceless except when they murmured “amen!” as they listened to the swaggering Sultan of Pout, I arranged for a car to drive me out there and to wait, with the motor running, because I determined to make a dramatic exit. I decided not to bother the Company and got instead a black weekly newspaper editor to sit out there with the engine purring.

When I got inside the building, I was told that there would be a catered lunch for us—Jackson, me, and about forty men of the cloth. The only woman I could see other than the culinary ones who worked in the kitchen and were setting the tables was Reverend Willie Barrow, then as now a tiny woman with a great demeanor and fierce loyalty to Jackson. I noted that my friend Reverend George Edwin Riddick was particularly quiet, his eyes on his plate as befitting one in the presence of his employers.

As we ate, the conversation devolved around several things. When at last the women cleared the tables…Reverend Barrow assisting in those duties…Reverend Jackson delivered a Fidel Castro-like monologue pitched to the amen corner about the white business Pharaohs…our name not specifically mentioned…being brought finally to accountability as the amens began softly and rose in volume…all the while I insouciantly picked my teeth unimpressedly with a toothpick to show some disdain.



The monologue did not deal with what Reverend Riddick and I had thought we had accomplished but on the signal disparity of the white “haves” with their feet on the helpless necks of the black “have-nots”—culminating on the outrageous, horror insult to all black womanhood…the womanhood which nurtured and brought into the world against great odds and oppression this generation of blacks…the insult of being relegated to look like a southern Mammy or a servile “Sapphire” who was the menial secretary to the Amos `n Andy character George “Kingfish” Stevens…amen corner: yes, Lord!...that Mammy being fat! Yes, Lord! That Mammy being a rag head with a bandana on her head! Yes, Lord! While white women are shown as young and sleek and suburban our women,—our much exploited, earlier raped and defiled—used on too many occasions, I tell you as receptacles for white mens’ lust…our black women are represented as playthings of men! YES, LORD!

When finally it ended with the culminating: AMEN! I was asked to respond. I did so by distributing marketing statistics that showed an interesting thing…that the black face on the package…which was ahistorical, which was not related to any black woman live or dead…was at the very top of the heap of brand images identified with culinary excellence. Then I reviewed the slow fall-out of black faces that used to be on packages which were now sloughed off due to misbegotten “civil rights” pressure: the black face on Cream of Wheat which had been identified with culinary excellence, now rejected in favor of a plain box…the black face on Uncle Ben’s Rice, first ben-day’d out and now a plain box. I surveyed all the other nationalities…the Hispanic woman on the Sunsweet raisin box—proudly standing for her heritage…visuals of smiling Asians on packages of ethnic foods.

Then I showed a scenario of how Aunt Jemima could and would be transformed…from the inherited obese smiler of the early part of the century…to the thinner version…how the bandana of yore has been gradually transformed to a suburban-style headband. They were unimpressed as was the scowling Sultan of Pout.

Then for the peroration, I said there were some who wished the face would be erased altogether along with the name…transmigrating smoothly with each month showing a bigger “A”and a bigger “J” as the picture grew smaller, winding up with “AJ”—AJ pancake mix. And I asked if that would be cognizant with the drive for black identity…the very drive they had pioneered to get more black faces in ads so as not to portray America as a nation of single Caucasian nature. Then the Amen corner sounded diffuse. Some said quietly, with one eye on Jackson: “no.”

I said so far as the cream of black womanhood was concerned, I noticed that there was only one woman of 40 at the table…and even she helped with serving the food, pouring the coffee. I asked whether or not in their hearts they felt that the cream of black womanhood was usurped by the arrogant and Pharaoh-like Buddha expectations from the cream of black manhood. There was silence and some shifting of chairs.

Finally from my valise I produced a huge cardboard painting of General Mills’ Betty Crocker, a blindingly white, ultra-sunny housewife…smiling triumphantly…and asked why the move for increased black identity did not compel them to petition General Mills to make her black! I concluded by wondering if the battle to kill Aunt Jemima was not a residue of original black hatred transferred unwittingly to them.

With that I said, “this discussion is ended so far as I am concerned. So long as your hearts are so hardened, it cannot be resolved—nor can other things Reverend Riddick and I had agreed on. Good day” and walked out, walked downstairs and hopped into the getaway car.

For a few days I heard nothing—nothing from Riddick, nothing from anybody. Then the next week I got a call from a high official of General Mills whom I knew when I lived in Minnesota. He was not friendly. There was a group in his anteroom which was complaining about the singular lack of black faces in their merchandising and citing Betty Crocker…pointing out that in contrast, although there should be some adjustments, Aunt Jemima reflected black heritage.

He was far from happy—but I was.

The next week I had a call from Reverend Riddick and our conversations resumed—resumed for some weeks with little said on either side about Aunt Jemima. Finally he pronounced that PUSH was satisfied and that in place of a covenant there would be a general luncheon in our honor at PUSH. I told Bob Stuart that they had invited us to a luncheon at our convenience at PUSH headquarters. He agreed to be on hand for a testimonial to Quaker. We went together in the company car with driver—a gesture I wished to make rather than to grovel around in artificial humility by arriving in a cheaper car. What happened before the meeting…when Jesse Jackson, the child of the South met Robert D. Stuart, a patrician blue-blood, next time.

Personal Aside: What a Good Election it Was!

Good Election.

If you were like me, you figured that with Lisa Madigan and all the liberal rainmakers going to Carbondale to pump up the campaign of Sheila Simon, the late sanctimonious Paul’s daughter, she would defeat the Republican incumbent and start a march to initiate yet another Democratic dynasty, she—a Southern Illinois U law professor to probably run for state AG the year Lisa runs for governor. Fate. Kismet.

But no—she lost to Brad Cole like a ton of bricks. Huzza!

And the endorsements we made here all made it but one. In the 2nd Bob Fioretti…in the 3rd Pat Dowell over The Hat…in the 32nd Scott Waguespach over Matlock. In the 35th Rey Colon over Vilma Colom. And the big one—in the 50th—Bernie Stone over Naisy Dolar. The only one we lost was the 49th and that by inches…but then we didn’t really lose because Joe Moore is an outstanding guest on the radio. And perhaps his fractionalized micro-millimeter win may cool off his Third World radicalism and worries about the poor geese and ducks while he shrugs off the taking of unborn human life.

Flashback: Discussing and Debating in the PUSH Negotiations.

[More than 50 years of politics remembered for my kids and grandchildren].

Reverend George Edwin Riddick (who died a number of years ago, sadly), was a real, honest-to-God man of the cloth, totally unlike his chest-beating, strutting boss, the Sultan of Pout, the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. A humble, self-effacing tall, heavy man who presided at PUSH before the boss-man would come on stage, like a warm-up…where he was misused since his theology was stratospheric compared to Jackson’s…whenever we convened in our negotiations over lunch…one time downtown in my neighborhood where I bought…one time on the South Side in his neighborhood, where he bought…he would always say grace before meals with such a quiet whisper that no one knew we prayed: such was his wish for low profile.

We got along amazingly well because there were no drums to beat or postures to affect. We reviewed Quaker’s philanthropy and agreed it could voluntarily…by itself…support more diversified causes. We looked at Quaker’s employment and found that the company had made amazing progress in a few years—with a lot more to go in the upper echelons assuredly but that progress was progress. I found in him a saintly man of great realism. He knew that the African American community was disadvantaged and as result, often hires for top echelon positions could be unrealistic. Instead, we talked about training programs and programs instituted especially among the young to make them more familiar with the demands of white collar and clerical opportunities—such as punctuality, proper use of English, good social manners, cleanliness, good attitudes. It was a joy to work with him. We didn’t have one disagreement in the year that we worked together.

He knew what my restrictions were…on Aunt Jemima and the lack of a formal covenant…and endeavored to take that back to his leadership. I knew what his restrictions were…that there had to be a meeting with Jesse Jackson and the ministerial alliance present to certify good faith. We went back often to our leadership and conferred almost daily on the phone. We got to know each other well—our families, our worries, our concerns. I found in him a man roughly comparable to Jim Farmer whom I knew well from Washington…the same Farmer who had antedated Martin Luther King and who worked with King…roughly comparable, as well, to Andrew Young whom I was to know much better later.

I remember there was only one slight pressure—and then it was so gentlemanly that while I turned it down, I worried that it might cause problems for him. It worked this way.

One lunch he mentioned that he had heard that we were in the business of funding and even financing some public television programs. I said yes, our president, Ken Mason…who was greatly interested in encouraging more quality television and fighting the kind of no-brain TV that debased the public taste…had us finance a PBS special.that dealt with the need to curtail unwarranted hunting excursions in Africa and the polar region which needlessly killed near-extinct wildlife. It was called “Say Goodbye”…say goodbye to some species of wildlife that would be gone forever due to carelessness of big game hunting enthusiasts.

He asked delicately: “Are you interested, possibly, in funding a program featuring, let us say, a black artist—say a black singer or musician?”

I said that certainly could be a possibility although that was not my job.

As he prodded his food with his fork while looking down at his plate:

“Is it within the realm of possibility that you could make a recommendation even though it is understood that this would not be in your province?”

I dawdled over the answer. This approach was rather direct and not usually in keeping with his reserve and punctilious courtesy.

It certainly could do not harm although such a decision would naturally have to involve certain artistic standards which should be weighed against other alternatives of nonprofit funding.

“Would you be adverse to…let us say…”

I waited for a very long sentence to unwind itself…

“…balancing good taste with artistic excellence which would be mandatory of course…”

Yes-yes.

“…would it be within the province of--.”

Reverend Ed, do me a favor and get to the question, would you please?

“Yes. Fund a television program featuring the soloist Nancy Wilson?”

In the early 1970s, Nancy Wilson, then in her middle `30s, was at the height of her career. A beauteous woman, with a silky voice, she was regularly at the top of the charts—first with Cannonball Adderley with whom she scored her first big hit, “Save Your Love for Me” after which she became, by the mid-1960s, Capitol records’ best selling artists, second only to the Beatles. Clearly, she was not an artist who needed any push from us. In 1964 she won a Grammy for “How Glad I Am” and an Emmy for her 1967-68 NBC-TV series “The Nancy Wilson Show,” plus guest appearances with Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett and Dean Martin.

I see no reason except that perhaps…and I don’t know this until I check…it may not be our thing to do singers. More likely, documentaries—but then I would certainly find out. It does seem to me that Nancy Wilson is such an established singer that--.

“I understand—or let me put it this way—I understand she is, er, between engagements. You know how that goes.”

Of course.

“And,” he resumed toying with his food, “there are some who are interested in the possibility of her returning to the format where she has a regular program.”

I see.

He looked me squarely in my eyes: “Only if you see a value in it.”

I understand.

The subject never came up again—by either one of us.

We agreed on fundamental things. Quaker certainly should have a more diversified board of directors—although he made no recommendations and resisted suggestions. All sorts of minor suggestions as we dilly-dallied around the big issue.

Finally, about one year into the negotiations, we met at “Army & Lou’s” on the South Side and he said, “you know—I think we have gone as far as we can go and have solidified many agreements. There is only one remaining. One which I do not believe is as important as do others. But it is one which you will have to face. That is `Aunt Jemima.’”

I said: I understand.

When we met the following week, I said: On the “Aunt Jemima” issue. How do you believe we should proceed?

“Frankly, I am not as concerned about it as are others”—not stipulating who the others were. “But I have visited with them and they still believe that without a doubt it is of major importance. I suggest—and I suggested to them—that you make the representation of your case directly to them, to Reverend Jackson to his board of ministers who are interested in this issue—far more than I am.”

Fine.

“With your permission, I’ll arrange a meeting for you and Reverend Jackson and them at the headquarters. Is that all right?”

Absolutely, Reverend Ed.

“Very well, then. I want you to know I think we have made great progress. I always believe in this kind of negotiation not the…” he reached for a word...

“Let us say dramatic kind.”

I understand. And let me say that it has been a pleasure and a privilege to have known you and having been able to work so effectively with you to achieve change.

We embraced as brothers and the next day he called me with the date. It struck me that with the mandate I had on Jemima—not sacrificing it—and the hard-shell yen of Jesse Jackson to make us cave, this might be every bit as exciting as those now fast-fading days in Commerce…or when the radicals took over the Peace Corps building.

What happened at the fateful meeting—next.

Personal Asides: Terry’s Trivia Question…and Huh? Colonel McCormick an Anti-Semite? I Don’t Think So!

Terry’s Trivia.

Terry Przybylski’s trivia question on the presidency—and remember, no search engines goes like this: While the Republicans will hold their 2008 convention in St. Paul which hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1972, the Democrats will hold their convention in Denver, Colorado. Colorado has voted for a Democratic president only once since the LBJ landslide of 1964. Who was it?

Colonel McCormick an Anti-Semite?

I have great respect for Michael Miner, the conductor of the “Hot Type” column in “The Reader”…and enjoy a good feature story as well as the next man but the “Roll Over, Colonel” story is contrived. Miner enjoys thinking that Colonel Robert R. McCormick would be incensed because his paper is now owned and run by Sam Zell. In order to make the story fun, he portrays McCormick as an anti-Semite. Well this is, I think, based on an overstrained, politically correct but fallacious theory that if one opposes a certain foreign policy stand that does not square with modern fashion you stand condemned as a race baiter. In other words, because Germany was persecuting Jews, anyone who opposed our going to war without provocation to the U. S. was an anti-Semite. It’s a favorite theory of some writers Miner cites but it is just as wrong to say anti-Semitism guided the 1930s peace movement as it is to call today’s anti-Iraq movement anti-Semitic. There are anti-Semites on the Left as there were on the Right but I think Miner takes too easy a tack by spraying tar on McCormick.

A great many people in the late 1930s and early `40s opposed our joining World War II without provocation; among them was McCormick and his Tribune as well as the “America First Committee” headed by an old boss of mine, Bob Stuart and composed of such people as the young John F. Kennedy, Sargent Shriver, Gore Vidal (no less), Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Amos Pinchot, Gerald Ford, Kingman Brewster, Charles A. Beard, Eddie Rickenbacker, Oswald Garrison, Robert Maynard Hutchins and Gerald Ford.

Apart from their quality, there are two reasons why I don’t believe McCormick was anti-Semitic. The main one: he sold the “Washington Times-Herald,” a D. C. clone of the “Tribune” to Eugene Meyer, the father of Katherine Graham. Meyer owned the Washington “Post,” was a prominent Jew and a supporter of World War II intervention. When conservatives questioned the sale to a political opponent, McCormick said that Meyer was an excellent newspaperman and he wished the “Times Herald” to be run prudently by a man of great stature. His chief editorial writer was George Morgenstern, an observant Jew as was the chief publicist for the Committee incidentally was Sydney Hertzberg, father of Hendrik Hertzberg, former editor of “The New Republic” and now political editor of “The New Yorker.”

Look, while Charles A. Lindbergh declared correctly that Jews were in the forefront of the drive to get us into war and may have been impolitic or immature enough to not adequately defend himself against charges of anti-Semitism, Miner doesn’t prove that McCormick was--except to recycle some stories that he was by quoting Joseph Aaron, editor of the “Chicago Jewish News” and a few others. But it centers around the same question I have always had about some arguments defending the Iraq War. I support the war but I have always resented those who say we were right to go to war because Saddam Hussein was a tyrant. Sorry but the only reason to go to war is to protect the peace and liberty of the American people. There are ample reasons to show that by invading Iraq, Bush did exactly that no matter whether WMDs were there or not. But for anyone to say that our obligation is to go to war to save the Iraq people is, I think fallacious.

It was for that same reason that I once told Grace Kaminkowitz that we had no business going to World War II if the only reason was to spare the Jews, no matter how horrific the persecution was…and that was certainly not in any of the arguments FDR or Churchill used. They argued we should go to war to save the West. Polls showed that Americans disagreed with them until Pearl Harbor occurred. So, respectfully, Michael Miner, I disagree with your assessment of Colonel McCormick and will until and unless you produce quotations and editorials that verify your position. For starters—did either he or his editorials remotely say New York is Hymie-town which Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson said—disparagement of whom, incidentally, I fail to find in “The Reader”?

Flashback: Quaker Starts Negotiations with Jesse Jackson’s PUSH.

[Fifty years of politics written as a memoir for my kids and grandchildren].

Not long after I returned to Quaker Oats in late 1970, indications were rife that one day—indeed as they were current during the 1960s-- the company would be targeted…as would many others in the food and beverage line, particularly… by Reverend Jesse L. Jackson either through Operation Breadbasket, an arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or from his newly-founded organization, Operation PUSH. which stood for what was called grandiosely either “People United to Save Humanity” or “People United to Serve Humanity.” I would go to Breadbasket meetings since 1965 and met Jackson at that time, immediately after his disappointment at not being picked by the New York Giants.

As a young ministry student at the Chicago Theological Union, he had badgered Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King’s deputy, a slow-moving, drawling, indistinct, typical old style southern black minister of good heart and modest mien for a staff job at the SCLC in Chicago. Abernathy assented but had to check it out with Martin Luther King. King strongly opposed hiring Jackson because when King had come to Chicago with Andrew Young, Floyd McKissick and James Farmer, Jackson was constantly insinuating himself into the councils where Abernathy, Reverend C.T. Vivian and Al Raby made decisions. King had a sixth-sense that Jackson was in it for himself solely and insisted on him being kept out. Especially as Jackson seemed to have the role of press secretary cut out for himself.

But Abernathy was dazzled as many later were by Jackson’s charisma and phrase-making ability in dealing with the press (which Abernathy was not good at). Not dazzled was Andrew Young nor Raby. Raby, with whom I was most impressed second only to Young, a former Chicago school teacher, was an organizing genius. Raby faulted Jackson in a brief aside to me because Jackson’s masterly inattention to detail in favor of events that would promote himself, was legendary. But as King became involved in national doings, Abernathy’s weakness as a variant spokesman was clear and Jackson elbowed his way further upfront. He was famous for telling the others not talk to the press, that he would do it. Then he quickly dropped out of the Chicago seminary. Later he was ordained by two ministers in quickie fashion, Reverends C. L. Franklin and Clay Evans. Let’s say he learned his theology on the streets.

To call Jackson a street hustler is entirely correct which is what Hosea Williams called him to face and later to me in confidence when we were standing outside the Democratic National convention. In 1965 when I had just come to Quaker from Minnesota, I had had an abiding respect for the variant of hustler Hubert Humphrey was—especially where he energetically supporting us joining World War II in 1941 and just as energetically strove to keep himself from being drafted. That took some chutzpah but he had it. He was a transplanted South Dakota drug store populist liberal hustler—an endearing sort who could and did laugh about those years. You don’t see Jesse Jackson, Sr. laugh about his early years. Uh-uh. That’s why Humphrey was a hustler at the beginning but not at the end and Jesse was at the beginning, at the middle and up to right now.

Hustler was my impression of Jackson from the first, when I was cursorily introduced to him by Raby in 1965. Young, with a great athletic build, then short-cropped hair and a mouth that never stopped flapping, reminded me then as a caricature of several Amos `n Andy characters—George (Kingfish) Stevens but especially Algonquin J. Calhoun, the purported lawyer who was not actually a lawyer but had adopted the phrases somewhat. Jackson was a ministerial drop-out who could razzle-dazzle but while Abernathy was impressed, he was at bottom, a hustler—similar to the type which would stop you on the street on the black South Side, pull up his overcoat sleeve and display an armload of wrist-watches he said fell out of the back of a truck. Women adored him; many men did as well. He was a media magician and with words could transform a handful of marchers into a verbal army on the way to combat the Pharaoh. The difference between hustler Humphrey and hustler Jackson is that with seniority in the Senate and with his serious role as vice president, Hubert Humphrey matured into a fine public servant. Jesse Jackson never moved beyond charismatic phrasemaker. He had an ideal chance.

After the conviction of Marion Berry, the mayor of Washington, D. C., the city needed someone who could step in—and by stepping in serve two functions: first, install order in a city that had chaotic finances and second, by being mayor of the nation’s capital city become a national spokesman for enlightened public policies. But Jackson had no stomach for work that the mayoralty would entail. Humphrey who was a first-rate mayor would have leapt at the chance; not Jackson who basically does not like administrative heavy lifting nor a government job that interferes with a very prosperous private sector livelihood that begs for investigation. But nevertheless Jackson impressed me then and still does as one with superb communications gifts. Part of that extra turbine of energy may well come from the circumstances of his illegitimate birth.

It has always been my view that those born illegitimate as was Jackson whose birth name was Jesse Louis Burns, often have an extra-set of pituitary glands. A famous scholar, Michael Bechloss, known for his path-breaking work on LBJ, has reflected on very clear evidence that Abraham Lincoln may well have been illegitimate and has published it—but the reverence for Lincoln is so strong the theory has been discouraged in fashionable quarters. Yet not only the mysterious early history but the symptoms of later behavior are very clear with Lincoln: the fact that as his law partner William Herndon has written meaningfully that he was very skittish about his Kentucky past, that he never went to Thomas Lincoln’s funeral although he clearly could have, and that the theory is strong that the woman he calls “my angel mother” was not his birthmother but Sarah Johnston who married Tom Lincoln after Nancy Hanks’ death and gave the family some societal order. Lincoln’s emergence has been a key to the fascination all of world history has had with him—certainly Herndon’s fascination. But there was a fairly prominent figure in Hodgenville, Kentucky with the first name of Abraham whose claim needs to be explored by historians not bedeviled with political correctness. But, I do digress, don’t I?

Jackson’s biographical father, Noah Robinson was married when Jesse was born and was never involved in his life; thus Jesse took the name of his stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson. Around Chicago in the late 1960s there was a Noah Robinson, Jackson’s step-brother, who ran a shakedown enterprise associated with Breadbasket…to Jackson’s discomfiture…but who later ran into serious trouble with the law—but he is forgotten. Jackson built a spectacular Saturday morning following with the meetings held at several locations: Saturday morning was excellent because the television media in the early `60s was dying for news and especially vivid portrayals. True to Raby’s judgment, Jackson was never an organizer. I was there when the number of TV people almost outnumbered the few middle-class attendees including some rapt women intrigued with the fiery preacher’s manly bearing—but the media has loyally kept the secret by not showing the sparse audience and allowing Jackson to trumpet that veritable thousands will be marching later that day on selected business enemies.

It was no surprise that Jackson who was moving on food companies would some day focus on Quaker Oats. I think it could be said that we at Quaker delayed the event some time in the future with social and urban programs—nutrition education to the poor without commercial overtone…a minority enterprise self-training program…expanded philanthropy to black organizations…a well-publicized tutoring program by Quaker employees volunteering their own time in public housing projects…but the day of reckoning was bound to come. When it did, Jackson formally announced that our company was going to be approached along with some others and we were prepared. I was named the head of the negotiating team on Quaker’s side. Helping me was our manager of urban affairs, Charles E. Curry, an African American youth organizer hired from the “detached worker” program of the YMCA where he had served with Danny Davis, a friend of mine, an excellent leader, a Ph.D from Arkansas, a brilliant teacher and speaker who was to become an alderman, Cook county commissioner and U. S. Congressman.

Jackson named a very fine, idealistic clergyman on his staff to begin the negotiations with us, Reverend George Edwin Riddick. Thereupon probably once a week for many months we sat together and sketched out in reasonable fashion how we would arrive at an agreement. I had two mandates from the company (everything else was negotiable). One was that there would be no covenant; an agreement was fine but the spectacle of Jesse Jackson standing like Douglas MacArthur on the deck of the battleship Missouri pointing angrily and autocratically to the covenant that the defeated Japanese diplomats were to sign was not to our taste—and I applauded Bob Stuart’s view on that. The second was that the product Aunt Jemina was a $38 million brand. She was no historical figure but a fictional character much like the white patriarch on the oatmeal box. While there were rumbles from the Jackson side that she would have to go, my orders were no she would not go. Again—very good with me.

So armed with those restrictions, I sat down to meet with Reverend Riddick, a man with whom I developed warm admiration. But there was coming a wild time with confrontation and some denunciation from both black and white sources. All that next time.

Personal Asides: Bernie Stone, Naisy Dolar and Russ Stewart Make the Show Qualify as “Shootout”…How the Imus Story Got So Big.

Stone-Dolar-Stewart.

Bernie Stone, his opponent Naisy Dolar and Russ Stewart made “Political Shootout” live up to its name. After repeated requests to get Dolar on “Shootout” which went unanswered, she called up while Stone was on the air—but after taking a swipe at Mike Noonan for being Stone’s campaign manager…(like what’s wrong with tha?...and being reminded that Noonan is close to the Daleys)…she inexplicably hung up. Somebody at her elbow probably told her to do that. But it was a good old-fashioned mud fight and the only time citizens of the 50th had a chance to hear the two candidates together. Stewart’s acerbic questioning of both Stone and Dolar showed he is a tremendously gifted professional for which I thank him.

How the Imus Story Grew.

The “Wall Street Journal” the other day gave an excellent almost hour-by-hour spread sheet of how the Imus story grew from just another so-so scatological tirade by the radio talk show host to a national story with political repercussions. The idea that Imus is a conservative, of course, is a canard—unless conservatives are noted for broadcasting things like “I hate Jesus Christ!” Imus is an equal opportunity insulter and he has done enough tirades at conservatives to justify how Maureen Dowd, Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama phoned in of their own inclination.

Among other things, the story answers something I have long pondered…how do certain liberal columnists who are supposed to work during the day come up with exact quotes from those radio talk show personalities they attack? My favorite liberal columnist here in Chicago—QT’s Zay Smith—comes in with word-for-word replays of Limbaugh. How did he get it unless he listens to Limbaugh every day—highly improbable. Also my un-favorite liberal columnist, the eternal kid hired by the “Sun-Times” to write kid talk pop reviews, Richard Roeper, used to occasionally come up with rebuttals to Ann Coulter. Coulter is an acquired taste but has more erudition, humor and historical savvy in her little finger than Roeper could acquire with his meager gifts in a lifetime. How did he used to come up with her views that she expressed on TV word-for-word unless he watched her and taped her? An unlikely prospect.

The answer: there is a liberal commentary service like Clif’s Notes which tapes all the shows and gives answers which very possibly our friends crib. One Ryan Chiachiere, a 26-year-old researcher in Washington, D. C. works for the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters for America. He was assigned to monitor Imus. He clipped the video of Imus saying “nappy-headed ho’s” and began the process which took seven days before MSNBC canned Imus and another day before CBS axed him. Media Matters posts offensive things and sends email blasts to hundreds of liberal reporters. Getting rid of Imus who is a national pest is one thing but Media Matters for America is very selective, isn’t it? The fact that black rappers use the “ho” reference goes unchallenged (gee, our African American friends might be offended).

I don’t think conservatives have such a network…following Katie Couric, Charles Gibson and Brian Williams…do they?

Flashback: A Post-Fed Employment Lunch with Billy the Kid.

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

“Well,” said Billy the Kid, “we little people back in Illinois read about you in Evans & Novak. Did you come back bitter?”

No, I told, Bill Stratton, the former two-term governor, two-term state treasurer and U.S. Congressman—not bitter but bruised.

“What did you learn?”

I learned something I had forgotten a long time ago. Government is molten clay molded by political ideology which in turn is fashioned by the media which in turn is headed to a red-hot force by the liberal universities. I survived after a fashion by turning the liberal media against the conservatives—something I’m not always proud of but, in a battle of survival, you use what weapons you have.

“I don’t follow you.”

In the Commerce battle, Stans and the Nixon people were right and I wrong. When Stans sold me on going to Commerce it was as result of a letter Nixon had written to him pledging activism which was deleterious to free market no matter how thin you slice it. By the time I got there, Nixon had changed course which was to return to free market principles. There never was—and shouldn’t be—a role for minority enterprise in government any more than there should be much of a role for majority or white enterprise in government aside from certain regulatory functions that make sure we’re all on an equal footing. But I found myself in a spot. I had given up a perfectly good job and was expected to do nothing for a couple of years with zero results. But my dander got up and so I decided to fight `em. I fought `em with the only thing I know—using the liberal card: Jack Javits, the media. While I got fired, it was still a positive kind of firing. But essentially, I went there as a residual liberal, was betrayed and used liberal means to get back at them—but that doesn’t mean I was right.

“You don’t think the stuff you did on automobile dealerships was good?”

Sure I do. But that stuff was virtually all private sector with the feds cooking up political spin. The only use of the public sector was to misuse the White House switchboard to get hold of Ford, Roche, Chapin and Townsend. Everything else was done via the private sector book—getting Whitney Young to approve the Urban League as a training mechanism for black entrepreneurs…meeting with the Big 4 chairmen. The only use of federal power was the White House switchboard and my own time and travel.

“What about the set-aside?”

Bad stuff. I did it because I decided out of ego that my agency would score some points. In fact, set-aside can and will be abused by white tokens pulling the strings behind the scenes. I’m not overly proud of that.

“From what you said about your national strategy, that was mostly private sector, too.”

Yeah. A public-private corporation like Comsat. Federal loan guarantees but generally private.

“But what about the idea that the Republican party could make inroads with the blacks and other minorities if the program were to really take off?”

I think I was wrong about that. There is room for two parties with different philosophies in this country not two parties that think like one. A Republican party that prides itself on subsidizing blacks in order to keep up with the ongoing role that the Democratic party does with enlargement of the welfare rolls and other federal goodies does not serve the public purpose all that well. First of all, for those blacks who want to be subsidized, the Democrats own them and we can’t buy our way in. Second, I’ve come to believe that the Republican party should be largely a private sector-based operation. That means the ideas of Rockefeller, Ogilvie and liberal Republicans are duplicative and not valuable in the public conversation. Let there be two parties—one which promises subsidies and the other that promises deregulation, free market and tax cuts. There’ll be black and white and some grey between the parties but that’s the way the public would be served best.

“Well, I think you’re condemning our party to a lifetime of defeat. I’m on the Ogilvie, Rockefeller side.”

Governor, you see yourself on the opposite side in that formulation but looking at your administration, there were relatively clean lines of demarcation. You never asked for a state income tax; you never campaigned, so far as I remember, by saying nothing and once in, pitch for an income tax. I think you’re unfair to yourself.

“Well, maybe but I can see how Dick Ogilvie came to that conclusion. I would probably have come to that point had I won again. I can see myself doing what he did.”

I’ll say this. I’ll bet you lunch at this same place—the M&M Club—that Ogilvie loses in 1972 because of that tax. And I daresay if he had veered away from the tax, had taken the heat to cut spending and substantially reduced government he would have a good chance of being reelected. The point is he didn’t want to—nor did Russ Arrington since they’re entrepreneurial, big government Republicans. It takes a repented one like me to know one.

“Ogilvie loses in `72? We’ll see about that. I think he will get reelected just as I was the first time. How can you deny needed social services, aid to education and get reelected?”

I think you can. Everybody knows—or should—that this more money for schools stuff is a canard, about 80% of which goes to teachers’ salaries to pacify the teachers unions. Everybody knows—or should—that public welfare subsidies breed further dependency.

“Well, you sound like your old pal Charlie Barr.”

Going away to the federal government will do that to a guy.

“My bet is Ogilvie will be reelected.”

And the Republican Senate?

“Reelected too.”

Ogilvie lost and Arrington’s backing the income tax cost him his majority as well.

Personal Asides: Name That Tune!...Endorsing the Aldermanics (for Whatever It’s Worth).

Tune.

Nobody got the snatch of lyrics that belonged to a familiar tune. I was sure Frank Nofsinger would have. It’s titled “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” and was sung by The Carpenters.

Endorsements.

The time has long passed when conservatives or Republicans serve on the Chicago City Council with the exception of Brian Doherty of the fighting 41st, my old home ward. And while I don’t live in Chicago, the whole fabric of my being stretches out there and here, for what it’s worth, are endorsements for a very politically imperfect…and I say imperfect…group of people.

2nd Ward. Hands down. Bob Fioretti over Madeline Haithcock. And if Fioretti had won his bid some years ago for president of the Chicago Athletic Association, it’d still be in business rather than scheduled to die next month.

3rd Ward. It’s time to put The Hat in storage. Pat Dowell over Dorothy Tillman.

15th Ward. A tough one but secretary of state lawyer Felicia Simmons-Stovall over Toni Foulkes.

32nd Ward. In the old days ABM meant anti-ballistic missile. Now it means Anybody but Matlock. Mark for Scott Waguespack.

35th Ward. The two names are close but looking at the tactics it’s an easy comparison. Incumbent Rey Colon over ex-alderman and challenger Vilma Colom.

49th Ward. Incumbent Joe Moore is such a good guest on my show…makes at 10 lines ring at once…it’s a temptation to endorse him for that reason alone. But his economics are distinctly Third World demagogic against those poor geese and ducks suffering when he has no compassion whatsoever for unborn life. Not that his opponent is my cup of tea but Don Gordon is against Big Box (Moore’s baby). And it’d be good to see Moore’s claque—Jesse Jr., Jan Schakowsky, David Orr and Miguel del Valle go down.

50th Ward. Very easy. Bernie Stone (I refuse to write it the way he wants it, “Berny”), the epitome of a hard working alderman over Naisy Dolar.

Flashback: Getting Ready to Go Back to Chicago…but First a Few Loose Ends to Tie Up. Remembrance of Congressional Testimony Past.

[Memoirs from fifty years of politics for my kids and grandchildren].

Having been assured that I could get my old job back as director-public affairs at The Quaker Oats Company, I made plans for what cliché meisters call a “smooth transition” to my successor at the Peace Corps. One job involved picking two national spokesmen—one from the entertainment community and another from public life—to speak and do appearances gratis whenever asked for the organization. The fact that the Peace Corps intended to use a more working class image to encourage more artisans to volunteer…and fewer naïve, idealistic blond ivy league English majors from Northwestern living in Winnetka who want to spread their wings before getting a job in a stock brokerage…I helped make out a list with particular attention to the entertainer. The entertainers wanted to do it on a gratis basis for p. r. reasons and the Advertising Council had offered to do commercials both in print, audio and video. I won’t tell you who my first choice was but imagine my surprise when I strolled over to the Director’s office to meet a man dressed in black which looked like cowboy duds with a ravaged face that looked like it had seen all variants of sin and degredation. A tall athletic hombre with bob-tailed hair who said:

“Hello, Ah’m Johnny Cash!”

Absolutely first rate. My first choice.

I didn’t have a chance to talk much with him but we filled him in on what we wanted and he was very receptive. He said he hadn’t really thought his people were Peace Corps candidates but we said that’s right—but we want them to be. We want lovers of country music, gospel, rock (if it’s clean) telephone linemen, artisans of all kinds. We talked about the appearances he would make: no real sales pitch just a few words and some songs. Whereupon he went to his satchel, got out his guitar. strummed it and with that superbly recognizable, untrained but entirely pleasing voice, did “I Walk the Line.” He said that he never had a first name. His parents in Arkansas (he started picking cotton at age 10) quarreled over what to name him so they agreed on the initials J. R. and never got around to resolving what he’d be called. When he got to the Air Force they made him decide and so he called himself John R. Cash.

Although known for his prison songs, like “Folsom Prison Blues,” he was never in prison long—never longer than an overnight. But by bringing his entertainment to prisons and penitentiaries and recording the inmates’ enthusiasm, he gained national recognition. A once hard-core druggie and alcoholic, he turned to the gospel and was at the height of his popularity when he saw us at the age of 37.

The non-entertainer spokesman turned out to be none other than Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on the moon. He was less outgoing than Johnny Cash, not surprising since Cash was used to the stage—but when we had lunch, Armstrong was voluble although afflicted with terminal modesty, somewhat like another pioneer, Charles A. Lindbergh. About the landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, Armstrong’s most interesting view was that despite all the excitement the important thing was to continue to work with his co-pilot Buzz Aldrin on the official checklist of tasks, failure to execute any one of which would have been fatal. In particular he said that the way the space vehicle was built, one had to be sure that the latch on the door would remain open by pulling a switch because the thing was self-locking. “Which meant,” he said, “that if you goofed up on that particular, you and your buddy could be outside on the moon with no way to get back to the vehicle all the while the television camera was on you.”

While Johnny Cash was a smash, Armstrong because of his self-limiting modesty was less effective. His later life showed a passion for anonymity and a penchant for suing people including one poor guy who used his portrait as a come-on for a civic function. His wife divorced him because she said he spent so much time on the road she had to make a reservation to see him through his staff. A slight heart attack on a Vail ski slope slowed him down. Of all the astronauts, paradoxically, he is the least understood or well known.

After hearing his story of the imperative to flick the latch on the door, for several years, whenever I had a fever I found myself thinking that I—goof that I am—would have debarked from the space vehicle and had forgotten to trip the latch before exiting so I could get back. Which meant that I would be standing alone on the moon and sniffling tears while back on earth my wife, Lilllian, would say: “I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I told him not to forget the latch!”

**************

Before leaving Washington for Ocean City, Maryland and a vacation before resuming at Quaker, I checked with my old buddy at the Commerce Department, the “faceless professional,” David Koch. I asked about the special appropriation which was needed to run the agency. In order to get the appropriation, all of us—Secretary Stans, Abe Venable (the deputy director) and I—had to testify before the House Appropriations subcommittee on State, Commerce and Justice. The subcommittee was run by the blisteringly sarcastic chairman, a tough old bird named John Rooney, Democrat of New York. Rooney, a Brooklyn-born conservative Democrat, had announced that as subcommittee chairman he would strongly oppose the appropriation.

He was not enamored of the civil rights community, being an old-style conservative Democrat. The secretary of commerce himself was terribly nervous about testifying, despite the fact that as a former budget director, he had faced a hostile Democratic fiscal chairman or two during the Eisenhower years. Stans was afraid once again that bad press with Rooney attacking the concept of federal money for minorities would find favor in the White House with conservatives and favor with the southern strategy people in Congress and serve to interfere with his great plans to be promoted to secretary of the treasury.



So Stans had bevies of commerce aides running into and out of his office with books, statistics, graphs—all the things he would need to try to overwhelm Rooney. I offered to be of help since it was my appropriation but with lofty disdain he said he didn’t need help from me: so, okay, fine. In my office I studied Rooney’s history and found something very interesting about it.

Rooney was an old drinking buddy of J. Edgar Hoover who at that time was still running the FBI. When J. Edgar Hoover testified for his appropriation, of course, his request was sent sailing through the committee. There was even a time when Rooney felt Hoover wasn’t asking for enough and so he doubled it, Hoover shyly thanking the chairman. They were that close. In reading the legislative hearings Rooney ran, I stumbled upon a fascinating thing: an entire sheaf marked “Donold Lourie.”

. In 1953 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles took over the department with a kind of electoral mandate to ferret out all the so-called Commies that Joe McCarthy and others had alleged were nested in the place. Dulles was inclined not to do much. Looking around for an under-secretary, a good manager who would run the department when he—Dulles—would be traveling the globe in the Cold War, Dulles decided to hire one Donold B. Lourie. Donold Lourie (yes, he was the only man in the world to spell “Donold” with an “o” instead of an “a,”) was chief executive officer of The Quaker Oats Company and a solid conservative.

Lourie, had been an All-American football star at Princeton. But his was the story of a poor boy who lost his father at an early age and through the hard work of his mother and his own talents went to the ivy leagues and matriculated a smashing success. His mother had been a house mother of sorts at Princeton and as her son he worked his way through school. He was born in Decatur, Alabama in 1899; the family bounced around from state to state—California, Wisconsin, New Hampshire before his mother got the rather modest job of house mother at Princeton University where she became a surrogate mother to students, beloved by the faculty and generally very popular (she died when he was in old age at the age of 101). Don Lourie continued his education with an athletic scholarship to Phillips Exeter at Exeter, N. H. (not too shabby). Then he went to Princeton. At five-feet-eleven weighing 164 lbs. he was not exactly a brute but he became a wiry, mercurial, incredibly resourceful star quarterback for the Princeton Tigers. In his junior year he steered Princeton to a 6-0-1 record.

Quickly in those days long before professional football when college football had become the rage, Lourie was headlined throughout the country as probably the greatest quarterback in the country, tied with the Notre Dame team that featured Notre Dame halfback George Gipp. The northeast sports pages gloried with the story of how he led Princeton to a 21 to 7 victory over Swarthmore with Lourie scoring two touchdowns on 15 and 60-yard runs. In the contest with Yale he was looking around for a receiver, then scampered to a 40-yard touchdown.. One New York city newspaper chronicled the Princeton-Yale battle by the headline: Lourie 20, Yale 0. Accordingly, Lourie, quietly modest with a droll sense of humor, was named by the founder of the All American team, Walter Camp, as his All-America quarterback in 1920, calling him “the remarkable little general , disclosing every weak-point of the opposition.” (Camp had also named Gipp an All-American teammate of Lourie in 1920—three weeks before Gipp died of pneumonia, on December 14).

Lourie the Princeton hero signed up with Quaker Oats which had a great fondness for that university since the Stuart family had gone there. He rose swiftly in the sales area of the company and became president and CEO of the company in the 1940s. By 1953 at age 54 he wanted to try his hand at government and was appointed by Dulles and Eisenhower as the chief operations officer of the State Department. Dulles may have been ambivalent about pushing those whom Joe McCarthy had called the Reds and pinkos out of State, but Lourie wasn’t and Dulles was only too glad to turn the job over to him. Lourie hired a security officer named Scott McLeod from Cedar Rapids, Iowa with whom he had been familiar since Quaker had—and has—a major plant there. Lourie and McLeod started tossing out the security risks—390 separated for loyalty reasons, 6000 jobs abolished, 17,000 suspects transferred to other departments. He was cheered on and Lourie was cheered on by J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy who was a burr under the saddle for the administration. It was not long afterward that Rooney, the drinking buddy of J. Edgar, became a fan.

So while Stans was researching the statistics on how to appeal to a cantankerous Rooney, I lined up a brief session with Don Lourie who was the company’s chairman back in Chicago, sat down with him over a cup of coffee. In short order, Lourie placed a call to Washington and got Rooney on the line. I listened to his side of the conversation.

“Now, John,” he said, “you and I know that we’ve got to get good people in government to chase all those rascals out whom you and I disposed of fifteen years ago. Well, one of my friends is going to testify before you and he’s scared to death of your reputation, scared you’ll chew him out.”


TFR with Neil Armstrong


A long pause while he listened to Rooney, winking at me all the time.

“What’s his name? Now write it down! You and I are getting so old that unless we do--. Huh? His name is Roeser. R-o-e-s-e-r. He’s been working with me here at Quaker. Huh? Yeah, he’s right here today—just visiting. Here, you talk to him!”

He handed the phone over to me.

“Well,” said Rooney. “You come well recommended. Tell me, Mr. Roeser, what agency are you representing.”

I said: The Office of Minority Business Enterprise.

“Goddamn that’s the one I think is superfluous. Why hell, man, we got a Small Business Administration--.”

I said; Yessir. Well, we think we can--.

Lourie said: “He’s opposed, is he? Give me the phone.”

He said: “Now, goldang it John, don’t you give my boy any trouble down there. It’s not his fault he got picked for that stupid thing. He’s a personal friend. What can you do for him? Huh? What?”

He handed me the phone again: “He wants to talk to you.”

“Listen,” said Rooney. “I love that old guy you’re with, do you understand me? So you’re going to get a pass. Not that goddamned boss of yours, Maury Stans who’s going to testify with you. He lied to us all during Eisenhower and he’s keeping it up. Now, I’m going to give your agency a pass but go after him on the stupid idea of having a United States Travel Agency in the Commerce Department. I’m going to nail him.”

Whatever you say, Mr.Chairman.

“You wouldn’t be embarrassed if I do that, now would you?

Not in the slightest, Mr. Chairman so long as--.

“Don’t worry about it. Now give me back to your boss, Don.”

Lourie took the phone, covered the receiver with one hand and said, “I think this will be a long conversation so I’ll excuse you. Did you get the answer you wanted?”

Sir—I can’t thank you enough. God bless and keep you and Mr. Rooney, too.

As I left I heard Don Lourie say on the phone, “Did you hear that, John? God bless us! What do you think of that?|”

He waved as I left. And I flew back to Washington with a spring in my step.

*********

In the Commerce limo, going to the Hill, Stans stretched his legs out, yawned andsaid: “Now I’ve been through this a hundred times. Are you nervous?”

Nope.

“Well John Rooney can get very disagreeable at times. But no matter how he insults you, know one thing. The record will not carry as part of its official printing his comments. So he can insult you all he wants but the clerk just reports the good parts and cleans up the bad parts. Understand?”


Testifying for our budget. Left to right: Secretary Stans, TFR and Abraham Venable, deputy director of OMBE

Understood.

“See, unlike you, I’ve got to defend the whole department. All you have to do is to brief Rooney on your agency. You don’t know politics all that well. If it gets tough, I’ll help you. I don’t imagine he’ll like you much because he’s a tough old conservative even though he’s a Democrat and your reputation is as a liberal even though you are a Republican. Understand?”

Understood.

“Well, we’ll see.”

As we sat down in the hearing room, the old white haired chairman didn’t give me so much as a nod but glowered at Stans. The committee was filled with grizzled veterans, Democrats and Republicans, all of whom got along with Rooney and enjoyed his repartee which the clerk pretended to take down but which rarely made it in print.

“Let the record show that Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans who is supposed to be a conservative has come up here with a budget for Commerce that exceeds the wildest expectations of the craziest spenders who ever came down the pike. The total appropriation request is--? What the hell is it? Huh?”

The clerk called the number.

“Really! That high! Well, let the record show that we’re going to hold you accountable, Mr. Stans, for every jot and tittle—I mean every jot and tittle—of that flagrant, over-inflated request. First, who do you have with you?”

Stans introduced me and my deputy Abe Venable.

“Mr. Roeser? Are you the head of that new office of Minority Business Enterprise?”

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

“Let the record show that I think there is a duplication here between the Office of—what the hell is it—Minority Business Enterprise…and the Small Business Administration. But the chair is inclined to value your credentials, Mr. Roeser. If anyone can coordinate the programs around this town you can.”

Stans looked at me with eyes bugged.

“And that is due to the fact that you believe as did your great mentor in private life with whom I’ve been fascinated—and let the record show all decent people should be fascinated--that this government is and has been in dire danger of being eaten from within like termites do with insidious communist or pro-communist fellow-travelers…”

Stans’ eyes trained on me, expanded into goggle status if possible, he trying to fathom what communists I had spotted.

“Mr. Roeser, I suspect you renounce atheistic communism and all its works?”

Emphatically, Mr. Chairman.

“For the benefit of all you on this committee, Republicans and Democrats, Mr.Roeser is a very close personal friend of Donold B. Lourie the president—er, chairman, er president, I don’t know what the hell he is now, chairman I think—of Quaker Oats! And all of you who have been up here for any length of time know that J. Edgar Hoover and I were particularly impressed with the cleanup that Don Lourie did of that nest of horrors at the State Department and his close friend and my close friend Scott McLeod who was victimized by the low-life rascal—I say the low-life rascal—Drew Pearson. Anyone who is a friend of Donold B. Lourie is a friend of mine. I move that Mr. Roeser’s budget be approved and that he be instructed to stay close to us if he needs any more dollars to achieve a very worthy thing so long as he seeks to coordinate all of the 116 programs—too many—that have to do with the possibility of supporting minority enterprise.

“Now, unless the Secretary here wants you to hang around, I would say—and I imagine this subcommittee would agree—that Mr. Roeser can leave right now and continue working on this project. Not you, Mr. Stans. You got to stay here because I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you about other programs you and some egghead liberal may have concocted to soak up the taxpayers money. Would you agree that Mr. Roeser should be excused, Mr. Stans? Yes? Thank you. You are excused, Mr.Roeser.”

When I got back to Commerce after testifying that afternoon, David Koch, the faceless professional, popped in and said, “well, you iced that one! I talked to the clerk and he’s going to get the whole transcript—the real stuff that won’t be printed—in typescript.” Then he gave me this photo of us testifying that morning, courtesy of the Commerce photographic lab.


TFR with the Faceless Professional,David Koch of Commerce

Koch continued. “ Now do you know what happened to your buddy who’s the head of --.”

And he named a particular adversary from Commerce, an agency head who was distinctly displeased that I had been named Director since he had been pushing another candidate.

. I said no.

“Well Rooney chewed Stans out up and down and then they call up you friend, the head of -----. Stans thinks for a time that the heat is off him but then Rooney begins to say this…” and he read from a typed script. I reproduce the typescript now:

ROONEY. “By the way, Mr.___. Before we get to you and your budget, does the number (212) 457-3409 —does that telephone number mean anything to you?”

The response was vague. He didn’t think so. Couldn’t remember.

ROONEY: ‘Can’t remember, huh? Well you call it several times a day so why can’t you remember it? Does that mean you need a telephone book every time you call? You call it on the government line which means the taxpayer is paying for your call. Come on, Mr. ___, is it your wife? Is it your wife? No? Of course not! She lives with you in Maryland, doesn’t she? Is it your mother? No, she passed away some time ago I understand. Well the research people here were interested in who the number belongs to, Mr. ___ so we enlisted the FBI, which is very close to us up here, Mr. ____ which got the help of the Chesapeake & Potomac telephone company here and in no time at all…why in no time at all…we discovered that the number is listed to a Miss—a Miss let me see I got her name here, let the record show, a Miss Roberta Ann Coburn—but she goes by the name Bobbie. Now, is she a relative of yours, Mr._____ or a friend of your wife’s maybe? The FBI talked to her and she was, well, fairly evasive. She has a high regard for you, though.

“We have totaled up the cost of those phone calls to the person you couldn’t remember, Mr. ___ and the clerk has the tally here. Let me remind you that the federal statute disallows personal phone calls…long distance phone calls…unless you have the permission of the Secretary on all this. Let me ask Mr. Stans. Did you give him permission to call Miss Bobbie Coburn in New York City?”

STANS. No, I certainly did not, Mr. Chairman.

ROONEY: Do you know Miss Bobbie Coburn of New York City, Mr. Secretary?

STANS; Not in the slightest, Mr. Chairman.

ROONEY: Then let the record show goddammit Mr. Secretary that there is and has been a lamentable lack of control of personnel in your department—let the record show that. I am going to ask the committee to hold this portion of the budget in abeyance and indeed, given that Mr. ____ will pay the bill for the calls to Miss Bobbie Coburn, he will come back here with a revised budget—come back here along with you, Mr. Secretary. Right now it’s time for lunch. Recessed to be reconvened at 1:40 p.m. Then we’ll talk to Mr. Stans about other expenditures in his department including one that I am going to concentrate on—the United States Travel Agency whatever the hell that is. My advice is, Mr. Secretary, to bring along a sandwich for dinner as we’ll be here a long time. [Laughter]. Recessed.

“Ah,” said David Koch. “I’ll have the full typescript soon. Too bad it won’t be published. But use it for your memoirs. By the way the secretary has left word that he wants to be alone for the rest of the day and not to be disturbed in case you were going to disturb him.”

I wouldn’t think of it.

**************

Talking with David Koch just before I left town after resigning the foreign service, he said the budget I testified for some six months earlier was not only approved but Rooney had added several millions of contingency to it. Courtesy Don Lourie. So I went to Ocean City with some satisfaction, believing I would never see Maurice Stans again. That to make an understatement was far from the case.

On the way back to Washington from Ocean City—on the way to Chicago and Quaker—I stopped to join the group I worked with at Commerce and Peace Corps which hosted to a steak dinner for all of us. The photo here with him is the last time I saw him—until the funeral some years later. David Koch, the faceless professional, Bill Geimer the loyal aide at Commerce, Johnny Johnson the 6 foot 5 ministry student who cried all over Lynn Townsend’s suit were all there. But one fellow I wish was there wasn’t.

That would be Donold B. Lourie is my idea of not just one of the greatest quarterbacks who ever lived, a great CEO for Quaker but a 1000% great American. He died in Florida in 1989 at the age of 90.

The next week I started back at the old stand in the Merchandise Mart—with Quaker Oats.