“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” so goes the old saw. My political bona fides span four decades, three states, and two continents. Here are some of the public figures whose paths I’ve crossed since my Missouri childhood.
Our Catholic Archbishop for the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Archdiocese in the 70s and 80s was a Bostonian named Bernard Law. The Vatican sent a series of up-and-comers through that Ozarks posting, a hardship position and a great training ground for Bishops of potential rising through the ranks. Truly the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” Springfield boasted the world headquarters of the international Assemblies of God, sponsor of the local affiliate Evangel College. Two other fundamentalist colleges graced our fair city, Central Bible College, and Baptist Bible College (alma mater of the late Jerry Falwell.) The President of Evangel College in whose years was a man named Ashcroft, whose son graduated the Springfield public schools before heading off to Yale, and Yale Law, of whom more later.
Bishop Law’s predecessor, a kindly, bald and bespectacled fellow named Baum, bounded off to Rome from Springfield, landing a high level policy job and his Cardinal mitre with barely an intermediate stop in Kansas City. The Vatican welcomed him as “Cardinelli Boom.” Cardinal Law also launched his rocket climb up the hierarchy from his seat as Archbishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau. After Springfield, Bishop Law rose to Cardinal and Archbishop of Boston, where, sadly, he gained notoriety for his morally bankrupt, his politically inept, obstructionist rejection of allegations of priestly child abuse in his archdiocese. Law ended up in Rome, after all, put out to a pasture by a Vatican desperate to keep him out of sight and equally desperate to quell the Catholic public uproar.
My connection to Law dated back in the mid-1970s, when Law was counselling my sweetheart Mike S. (who dubbed Law “Bernie”) during Mike’s years in priesthood prep at St. Meinrad’s Seminary in rural Indiana. Bernie often reminded Mike that Bernie, originally from Boston, attended Harvard before he enrolled in his own ecclesiastical studies. Bernie spoke of those years with a wink-and-a-nudge, innuendo that was reassuring to a seminarian struggling with a future of forced celibacy. I recall Mike taking me by Law’s archdiocesean offices in downtown Springfield for an introduction and visit, and I would like to believe no wink or nudge passed between the men that day.
Incidentally, Mike’s late father, a public school educator, was a social studies teacher in his early career. One of his prized students at Study (rhymes with “Judy”) Junior High, on Springfield’s North side, was none other than the young John Ashcroft. As he lay ill with cancer, Mr. S. still referred to Ashcroft fondly as one of “his boys.” By then, Ashcroft had been elected to county, then statewide office,well on his way on the trajectory that (he credited Jesus for fueling) put him in the Attorney General’s seat in George W. Bush’s first term. I later wondered whether then-Missouri Attorney General Ashcroft ever met with then Bishop Law, in those quiet years before both burst onto the national scene. My father played pick-up basketball games with Ashcroft from time to time from the 1960s through the 1980s on the campus of what was then Southwest Missouri State College. Ashcroft avoided the draft by teaching business at SMS for a few years in the 60s; my dad was an English lit. prof. there his whole career.
My mother attended Wal-Mart shareholder’s meetings in Arkansas in the 1980s. She met Bill Clinton at one such meeting. Mom described looking up at the “best looking man she’d ever seen.” Bill Clinton taught my friend Marin’s Constitutional Law class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in the 1980s. Marin did not ask Professor Clinton for a reference at the end of the semester. Marin’s friend, who did, won a cushy job at State in 1993.
In the late 80s, my Chicago chum E. became the first chief of staff for a newly-created ABA Commission on the Status of Women in the Law, whose champion and creator was the wife of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, his Yale Law School classmate Hilary Rodham. Rodham added “Clinton” to her name, made her fortune in commodities trading, left her mark on the ABA, then returned to Arkansas to tackle the state’s education system. E.stayed at the ABA, but moved from the Commission on Women into the Torts division by the mid-1990s. By 1992, Governor Bill embarked on his presidential campaign, back in the days the primary season stretched from February to August. E. and her then-husband, an aspiring Chicago Alderman , hosted a series of small gatherings to introduce candidate Bill Clinton to the locals providing my one and only chance to meet Mrs. Clinton. I saw her up close in an event at the executive offices of the YWCA in early April of that year.
Ah, the Chicago years. Those were the days. My book group included the future wife of Rahm Emmanuel.My closest friend in Chicago–who coincidentally attended high school with Rahm–married a speechwriter for a Democratic presidential frontrunner. Our 1988 Wedding guest roster included one sitting and one future member of Congress; several Illinois legislators, one sitting and one future Chicago Aldermen; the eventual chief of Staff to mayor Daley; an eventual Evanston School Board Member; Congressional staffers; policy wonks, and various other unsavory types. I had been an attorney for the City of Chicago in the exciting days of the progressive administration of Harold Washington, the Black mayor of Chicago who unseated the political machine.The following year I went to work for the venerable Leon M. Despres, who had been the most notable and accomplished dissident Alderman to oppose the first Mayor Daley in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In 1990 my husband, who had worked for a Congressman, then an alderman, then as a lobbyist for a consumer group, was a volunteer fundraiser and supporter of the upstart U.S. Senate campaign of the late, great Paul Wellstone.
These days, my connections are remote, the politics tame. Having moved to Australia for three key years in the late 90s, then relocated to the Washington, DC area on return stateside, the Chicago glory days of political elbow-rubbing are but a distant memory. These days I even have to scrape up connections to Republicans: my mother-in-law’ friendship with Richard Armitage’s mother-in-law; my brother’s former job as pitchman for Amway products under Doug Wead, who later becaume a staffer in George W. Bush’s first term; or my college chum who served as a town council member in her Pittsburgh suburb.
The elected officials I now encounter run along the lines of our PTA executive board. In a company town where government is the industry, rubbing elbows with politicians seems like work–and triggers yawns, not thrills. Oh, I’m officially a “Friend” of an impressive freshman member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, Tom Hucker. And I finally stepped up to the plate to campaign for Donna Edwards, an exciting progressive challenger to our sclerotic incumbent Congressman. True, my oldest and dearest friend in DC is an elected official, but ours is a personal, and not political, connection. I have fun tweaking her Hill colleagues when they see us together at dinner,especially when they appear to worry that I’m “someone” they should remember.
My dear Chicago friend’s husband still writes those Presidential campaign speeches, but most of the elected officials at our wedding have left office. Chicago Mayor Harold Washington died 20 years ago November. We lost our beloved Paul and Sheila Wellstone in 2002. My husband went back to work for the Aussies last year, and I practice law just part-time, on contract, for Maryland and DC employment lawyers who support good Democrats. Politics should be essential, urgent, and vivid. But these days I’m blogging, opining, listing known associates. Taking stock alongside, no longer inside, politics.
http://www.mairakalman.com/children/heywilly.html) includes this poignant exchange between little Alexander and his sister Lulu: