FLOTSAM & JETSAM: Back when politicians were interesting

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Back when politicians were interesting

 Sam Smith – Watching City So Real, with its shots of Chicago politicians acting and arguing like true human beings reminded me of an idiosyncrasy in my approach to politics, namely that I have never fully integrated my taste for progressive reform with the enjoyment of early personal experiences that would horrify today’s reformers. I was introduced to politics by political characters in places like Philadelphia and Cambridge, Massachusetts, who were the exact opposite of current moral role models but to a young guy seeking relief from the excessive propriety taught by parents and school, a wonderful experience. I, in effect, came to know politics because of those who were fun, different and impressive while offering no wise course to virtue. And though I eventually found other tracks to decency, I still can’t watch a Chicago politician at play without enjoying it.

After all, when I was in high school my liberal father was interviewed by an FBI agent about a dubious Republican city council member. One of my aunts was accompanied by a GOP agent into a curtain voting booth to show her how to cast her ballot. And when one of my sisters had a pre wedding party at my parents’ house, I spotted a police car in the back loading a case of champagne. I learned early that the world wasn’t perfect.

Here are some other examples from past Progressive Review article:

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In Philadelphia, my father was helping to found Americans for Democratic Action. At the national level, he joined such people as Hubert Humphrey, Eleanor Roosevelt and Eugene McCarthy to create what would be, for many years, a loud and controversial voice of cold war liberalism… At the local level, however, ADA was at the center of one of the nation's most remarkable reform movements. Philadelphia had lived for 69 years under Republican rule and the city was known as "corrupt and contented." ADA - which brought under one tent genteel white liberals, union leaders, and Jewish and black activists - proposed to end both the corruption and the contentment about it with a new city charter and new government.

I had already entered politics having performed competently in a 6th grade debate on the 1948 presidential election. I found the liberal cause noble and exciting, but I was also fascinated by the different sort of people who hung around political offices. I had met hardly any Jews, blacks or labor union officials in Germantown and Chestnut Hill, they certainly didn't attend St. Martins in the Fields church, but most of all I didn’t know many people with the sort of tough-talking enthusiasm one found in politics. These were folks totally engaged not only with their campaigns but with life and it was this quality, rather than their ethnicity or even their political correctness, that truly attracted me.

That these were people to be reckoned with was confirmed ten years later when my parents held a fundraiser for Hubert Humphrey at their home. The  most impressive moment of that evening came when Joseph Rauh, the civil rights lawyer and liberal leader for decade after decade, actually stood on one my parents' best antique chairs to make his pitch. I looked apprehensively at my mother but she only seemed proud -- "pleased as punch" Humphrey would have said and probably did -- to be there. I stared at Rauh and realized I was looking at the face of real power.

Thirty years later, Rauh then in his 80s, still remembered the evening as well. He recalled that the crowd was quite old and he didn't know how the ebullient Humphrey was going to handle it. What Humphrey did, Rauh told me, was to start talking about what a wonderful president Woodrow Wilson had been. They loved it.

The stars of the Philadelphia ADA were Joseph Sill Clark and Richardson Dilworth. Though both were patrician in name and bearing, in Clark the quality went through to his soul. With Dilworth it stopped with his tailored suits. He was an ex-Marine with a quick temper and a towny accent, who never ducked combat or favored equivocation.

Dilworth's mayoral race remains a classic. His most notable campaign technique was the street corner rally. Using the city's only Democratic string band as a warm-up act, Dilworth would mount a sound truck and tick off the sins of the Republican administration. On one occasion he parked next to the mayor's home and told his listeners: "Over there across the street is a house of prostitution and a numbers bank. And just a few doors further down this side of the street is the district police station. . . The only reason the GOP district czars permit Bernard Samuel to stay on as mayor is that he lets them do just as they please."

At first the crowds were small. But before long he was attracting hundreds at a shot with four or five appearances a night. One evening some 12,000 people jammed the streets to catch the man who would eventually become mayor.

Dilworth on another occasion got into a fist fight with a member of his audience. His wife once knocked an aggressive heckler off the platform with her handbag and, in a later campaign, his daughter picketed the office of the GOP candidate with a sign reading, "Why won't you debate the issues with my father on TV?"

The Republicans responded with sneers, rumors and allegations about Dilworth's liberalism and, in particular, his association with ADA. The GOP city chairman, William Meade, called ADA communist-infiltrated and `inside pink' where "Philadelphia members of that radical and destructive [Democratic] party have gone underground and joined the Dilworth ranks."

Dilworth's initial reaction was to call Meade a "liar" and to challenge him to a debate. Said Dilworth: "The ADA acted and struck hard against communism while Mr. Meade and his gang created by their corruption the very conditions that breed communism."

But that wasn't enough for Dilworth. To make his point, he marched into the headquarters of the Republican City Committee and, with press in tow, brushed past the receptionist, and barged into Meade's private office where the chairman was conversing with two city officials. Dilworth challenged Meade to name one Communist in ADA. When Meade demurred, Dilworth said Meade had accused him of treason: "If you want to debate publicly, I'll go before any organization you name. I'll go before your ward leaders. I challenge you to produce evidence of a single Communist or Communist sympathizer in ADA. I say this as one who fought for his country in the Marine Corps. That's more than you did, Mr. Meade."

"Maybe I wasn't physically fit," replied Meade.

Dilworth continued the confrontation a few minutes longer and then stormed out. The red-baiting subsided and the central issue once more became corruption. Dilworth won and as I read the big black headlines, I thought it was my victory too.

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At Harvard College I was news director of the student radio station.  On a May morning, the Harvard Crimson came out with a story that Cambridge city councilor Alfred Vellucci had announced plans to introduce an order asking the city manager to "confiscate" all of the university's lands because of the Harvard administration's "lack of cooperation" in solving the city's parking problems. Vellucci was quoted as saying that "I am going to fine every Harvard student who parks his car on the public street at night unless the university makes all its property available for public parking." Down at the radio station, I assigned one of our reporters the job of calling Councilor Vellucci. He got an earful: “The citizens and taxpayers are sick and tired of supporting Harvard. The time has arrived when Cambridge should break away and let the state and federal government support the school. Our taxpayers are not able to do the job alone ... Our police department has to rush to the university every time the students start one of their foolish riots ... The fire department has to go in there on school fires. We have to put police officers on extra duty to handle the traffic situation after one of the football games ... Let the university become a state of its own like the Vatican in Rome and pay for its own fire and police departments.”

Vellucci went on like that for twenty minutes. We ran excerpts on the 11 p.m. news and student listeners began calling the station demanding to hear the full interview. It was not just the words; the Vellucci voice lent impetus to the message. It was the precise antithesis of a well-cultivated Harvard accent and even at its most irate had a buoyant quality tinged with the faintest hint of satire that in those amusement and issue-starved years of the fifties, tickled the student ear.

We ran the whole interview at midnight and calls from those who tuned in during the middle of it were so numerous that I ran it again at one a.m. The next morning, the story was page one in the Boston Globe -- culled from the WHRB interview -- with a two column headline: COUNCILOR ASKS SETUP LIKE VATICAN.. DEMANDS HARVARD SECEDE FROM CITY

The Crimson had the Vellucci story first, but in its stately way had missed the exploitation potential. It was WHRB's Vatican angle that caught the imagination of Harvard's student body. Some of us, I suspect, also subconsciously recognized in Vellucci a man who, despite his attacks on students, was really waging war on a mutual enemy, the Harvard administration. It would still be some years before students learned to stand up to their campus oppressors and Vellucci was a prophetic voice, calling for rebellion not just by the citizens of Cambridge against Harvard, but, subliminally, by the students as well.

The Cambridge citizenry kept calm but not the students. It began, as those things often did, with a peculiarly unrelated and insignificant act the very next night. During a drunken argument in the offices of the college humor magazine over the relative merits of prose and poetry, someone (by some accounts Neil Sheehan, later a famed NY Times correspondent) threw a typewriter out of a window. The riot was on. Two thousand men of Harvard gathered shouting alternatively, "Hang Vellucci," "Vellucci for Pope," and "We want Monaco." Beer cans and water-filled bags were tossed about. Eddie Sullivan, the mayor of the city, showed up in his radio and siren-equipped Chrysler Imperial and attempted to quell the disturbance. He failed to get the attention of the crowd, part of which was busy letting the air out of all four of his tires.

With what the city would come to realize was his normal tactical brilliance, Al Vellucci had succeeded in turning Harvard against itself. A few students were arrested, a few faced disciplinary action and by one a.m. it was over. Those of us in the WHRB news department went to sleep content in the knowledge that in twenty-four hours we had created a celebrity and a riot. Not a bad day's work for a few student journalists. For the rest of my time at Harvard, Crimson reporter Blaise Pastore and I faithfully covered city council meetings, relaying every juicy quote and snipe at Harvard that Vellucci and his cohorts provided. Our mentors at the press table were a trio of sardonic and knowledgeable Irishmen from Boston's dailies, who loved delivering their sotto voce lectures to a couple of Harvard students as much as we enjoyed hearing them.

The councilors were solicitous, especially Al, who recognized our symbiotic relationship. Harvard educated lawyer Joseph Deguglielmo, eschewing bifocals for two pairs of glasses stacked on his nose and forehead in the order required at any particular moment, explained the workings of a city government with great patience, once commenting that he was uncertain how to vote on a police pay increase because he had to keep in mind that each cop was probably receiving, in goods and cash, several thousand dollars more a year than his official salary.

It was literally the end of an era. While I was covering the council, James Michael Curley, the famed former mayor of adjoining Boston, passed away. I had heard the last hurrah. Mayor Sullivan bore no grudges towards me for his flat tires and was always willing to talk politics whenever I ran into him. One evening I met Eddie Sullivan after coming out of the movies. He was seated in his pale colored Chrysler Imperial listening to calls for the police radio. He waved to me and asked me to join him for a cup of coffee.

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And then there was Eugene McCarthy, the only important politician who become a friend. For a quarter century or so,  Mark Plotkin and I would have occasional lunches with McCarthy. Plotkin, later a political commentator for Washington radio station WTOP, had been McCarthy's campaign manager when he ran as an independent for president in 1976. The lunches were at such places as Duke Zeibert's - a haven for the untight powerful - and later at the de facto Progressive Review conference room at La Tomate Restaurant - AKA the table just southwest of the bar. Between lunches, Gene McCarthy would write poetry, books of essays, columns (which I happily published in this journal and, when the mood struck him, run for president. During or after lunch I would invariably find myself scribbling a few words on a napkin or in the small note pad I keep in my back pocket. Here are some the things these notes recall. . .

DURING THE 1976 CAMPAIGN, while McCarthy and Plotkin were in Florida, Bill Veeck announced that he was reactivating Minnie Minoso for eight at-bats so he could claim to have played over four decades. When Chicagoan Plotkin read the Minoso story he quickly came up with another idea for Veeck: have him reactivate former Soo Leaguer Eugene McCarthy. Gene was excited and Plotkin made the call. Veeck had just one question: "Can he hit?" Plotkin assured him that McCarthy was a strong hitter. There was a long pause and then the reply, "Nah. . . Daley would kill me."

AT ONE LUNCHEON former Indiana Senator Vance Hartke sat down with us. Hartke had been one of the first senators to come out against the Vietnam war, but after leaving the Senate he lowered his sights somewhat, lobbying for riverboat gambling and getting caught at the age of 77 violating state election laws. He was convicted and put on probation. Hartke told us of visiting Governor Roger Branigan one morning. The governor was on his second whiskey and said to Hartke, "You know, I never wanted to be governor, I just wanted to be elected governor."

SENATOR ROBRT KERR once  asked McCarthy for help freeing Oklahoma from the onerous provisions of the pending highway beautification act. Gene agreed and gave a moving speech in which he pointed out that billboards actually improved the scenery of Oklahoma.

SOMEONE ASKED what Gene would do if he were to become pope. He replied that he would cut the Ten Commandments down to four and reorder them. Gene had other novel solutions. He favored prayer in school but only on court-ordered buses. He also suggested that pregnant women be allowed to drive down the HOV-2 lane, an argument that would later end up in court.

HE LIKED PRINCIPLES YOU COULD FOLLOW: "An old Congressman - I think it was Brad Spencer - said, 'I'll tell you, young men, you may make a mistake once in a while, but vote against everything that starts with 're.'

He said, 'Vote against all reorganizations.'

'Vote against all recodifications.

'Vote against all resolutions.'

And, he said, 'Vote against all Republicans.'

ON HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY, McCarthy recalled Robert McNamara appearing before a Senate committee:  Senator Wayne Morse asked him, "How many tanks are there in Latin America?" And McNamara didn't look it up, didn't ask anybody, and he said "Nine hundred and seventy-four." Wayne said, "That's pretty precise." And then without another question McNamara added, "That's sixty percent as much as a single country, Bulgaria, has."

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In 1967 I wrote an article called  Keep the Seat, Baby, defending Adam Clayton Powell's right to remain in Congress:

“The Harlem legislator and theologian is accused of looseness with (in order of importance to the national mind) women, tongue and federal monies. He has been In contempt of civil authority, a fugitive from the law, and he refuses to show any remorse for his failings. On the contrary, he has been arrogant and flippant.

“The punishment proposed for Mr. Powell is the loss of his congressional seat. A strong case can be made against such punishment on constitutional and other legal grounds.

“In fact, should the charges lodged against the former chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee be pressed with equal vigor against all other deserving legislators in the land, it would become difficult to raise a quorum in either house of Congress or for our state legislatures to exist at all.”

The article produced a phone call from Powell's top aide, Chuck Stone, beginning a long friendship that  in itself justified the article. Stone arranged with me to meet with Powell. I walked in about 10 am one morning. His suite had the longest office bar I had ever seen. Powell opened the cabinet doors to display a generous selection of liquors. "This, Sam," the Reverend Powell said, "is what comes of serving the lord."

Meanwhile at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Lyndon Johnson, who was helping to create the Great Society with no little help from Powell, was serving the Lord in his own bizarre way. Stories abound -- from Johnson holding high level conferences while seated on one of his thrones – aka a toilet -  to an alleged Oval Office tete-a-tete with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton during which Johnson leaned over to Burton, put his hand on his knee and said, "I figure that between the three of us we've fucked just about everybody."

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In fact, LBJ and Adam Clayton Powell probably got as much good legislation as anyone in our history. At the same time, you wouldn’t want either one of them near your daughter.

Still, I miss the sort of people that used to characterize American politics, not because I admired them but because they made journalism so much more interesting and could do good despite their faults. The current crowd – driven more by soulless public relations, gutless corporate solutions and personalities not even worth a drink or two – haven’t reformed things; they’ve just made the problems duller.