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ATLANTIC HIGHLANDS HERALD |
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TEXAS IMPRINTS “I made it, Mr. Sam,” said the tall, young congressman from Texas. That congressman was Lyndon Baines Johnson. “Mr. Sam” was Sam Rayburn, legendary Speaker of the House – also from Texas. The year was 1937. LBJ had just won election to a congressional seat opened by an incumbent’s death. After service in the war, LBJ ran for the US Senate in 1948, winning the Democratic primary by just 87 votes. Of 203 ballots discovered “late” – actually cast several days after the election in Alice, Texas – 202 (filed in alphabetical order) were cast for LBJ. His opponent challenged the highly questionable margin, later shown to be fraudulent, in the courts, but the challenge was defeated with the clever aid of LBJ’s friend, Abe Fortas. “Landslide Lyndon”, as he came to be called, was on his way to a highly successful political career in the finest Texas tradition. Rising to be minority leader of the Senate (1953), then majority leader after Democrats regained control, LBJ became one of the most skillful and powerful Senate leaders in history. He also danced past shady financial dealings engineered by his chief of staff, Bobby Baker. Investigations into those matters, extending beyond his tenure in the Senate, came to nothing. LBJ was chosen as vice presidential candidate in 1960 to deliver Texas for the Kennedy ticket. This worked out as hoped, but no one imagined the grim finale of JFK’s presidency. On a political fence-mending trip to Texas in November 1963 – under circumstances still not fully understood – John Kennedy was assassinated while riding in an open car through downtown Dallas. In the echo of those fateful shots at Dealey Plaza, LBJ reached the pinnacle of his political career. Texas had made another indelible imprint upon the life and history of the United States. Texas continues to put its stamp on the political life of the nation. Last week, Ronnie Earle – attorney general for Travis County, Texas – indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of conspiracy to violate campaign-finance laws. Under House rules, Mr. DeLay must relinquish his leadership post while the indictment stands. Thus, a zealously Democratic local prosecutor has brought down Republicans’ highly effective leader in the House. Comments on the DeLay indictment run the gamut from accusatory to ambivalent to scornful of the action’s partisan flavor: Another example of “Republicans’ culture of corruption,” said House Democrat Nancy Peloski. “Maybe he’s guilty, maybe not,” said a talk-show host. “It’s too soon to tell.” “Just a partisan witch-hunt,” said more than one Republican. (“It’s Texas. They play dirty down there,” say I.) A waggish observer once calculated the duration of the public’s collective memory at six months. The DeLay indictment vindicates that estimate. As I read and listened to young journalists report on the “crusading” Mr. Earle’s prosecution of Tom DeLay, I wondered if I am the only person in the country who remembers that this is not Mr. Earle’s first foray into the national spotlight. In 1994 Ronnie Earle filed charges against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson for allegedly misusing state telephones and assaulting a member of her staff while she was Texas State Treasurer. After the presiding judge questioned the admissibility of the prosecution’s evidence at the pre-trial hearing, Mr. Earle tried to drop the charges. The judge would not allow it, instructing the jury to return a "not guilty" verdict so the charge could not be brought against Miss Hutchinson again. The case was a national sensation because Mr. Earle had pressed it at the very time when Miss Hutchinson was running for a full term in the Senate. Following her acquittal, Senator Hutchinson said, “Ronnie Earle's record is spotted with controversy, allegations of misuse of power, and corruption. This should not be tolerated in a prosecutor with such awesome responsibility.” Mr. Earle’s supporters see him as a strict law-and-order prosecutor who dares to challenge the powerful. Critics think he is a self-promoting, vindictive partisan operator who holds grudges. Some suggest he is mentally unstable. Terry Keel, Texas State Attorney and former employee of Mr. Earle, said, “I disagree …with the way he’s handled these cases. I can’t see how any crime has been committed. Republicans are really angry... They see an unscrupulous DA abusing his office to pick on Republicans. This is going to end up just like the Hutchison debacle.” Said Dick DeGuerin (high-profile Houston attorney for both DeLay and Hutchison), “I represented Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison 12 years ago. It's deja vu all over again. That was a political prosecution. This is a political prosecution.” Mr. DeLay – not exactly a choir boy (they call him “The Hammer” in the House) – is not a stranger to charges of ethical corner-cutting. He is the subject of an ethics complaint brought last year by Democratic congressman Chris Bell of Texas. Rep. Bell charged that Mr. DeLay had: solicited campaign contributions in return for legislative favors; laundered illegal campaign contributions through a Texas political action committee; and improperly involved a federal agency in a Texas partisan matter. (The money-laundering charge is also a charge being pressed by Mr. Earle in Travis County.) The ethics charges mark the end of a seven-year, unwritten truce between the two parties. They threaten to re-ignite the political warfare in the House that unseated two speakers. Mr. DeLay denies any wrongdoing. He says the ethics complaint was Mr. Bell’s retribution for having lost his reelection bid in the Texas primary after a 2003 redistricting (backed by Mr. DeLay) modified his district. The House Ethics committee remains deadlocked through 2004 on the Bell charges. Finally, another Texan has made big news in recent days. She is Harriet Miers, former counsel to President Bush. On October 3rd Mr. Bush named her to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the resignation of Sandra Day O’Connor. Miss Miers’s nomination is somewhat controversial because she has had no experience as a judge. This is not as remarkable as it might seem, as 33 of 61 Supreme Court justices since 1900 were not federal judges. However, the political climate today is more demanding than when those earlier justices were confirmed. Having never been a judge, Miss Miers has no judicial record Democrats can comb through to find “aha” items they can use to fight her confirmation. Before becoming the president’s counsel (November 2004), Miss Miers was Co-Managing Partner at Locke, Liddell & Sapp, LLP. Before that, she was president of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell. In 1992, Miss Miers became the first woman president of the Texas State Bar, following her 1985 selection as the first woman president of the Dallas Bar Association. Mr. Bush called her “a pit bull in size 6 shoes”. She is part of the inner circle of Mr. Bush’s most trusted advisors. The nomination is possibly more controversial among Republicans than Democrats. Many conservatives are disappointed that the president did not nominate one of the federal judges filibustered by Senate Democrats earlier in his administration. They apparently relished the fight that would have resulted over any of these. I admit to having savored the prospect of making Democrats accept one of those earlier victims of their stalling tactics. A Janice Rogers Brown or Patricia Owen nomination would have been high political theater. On reflection, however, I believe Mr. Bush has made the smart move – the statesman-like move. A canny and experienced politician who has not reached the pinnacle of American politics by being a Dummkopf (notwithstanding what his critics think), Mr. Bush understands that the presidency is not really about duking it out with the Democrats. Nor is it about providing good theater for political junkies and slavering reporters. The presidency is about governing. It is about doing wise things to help the nation achieve its full potential. It is about giving the people confidence that its institutions will help them live orderly, productive, successful lives. Mr. Bush is our point man for keeping the nation’s affairs in order. Mr. Bush is a tough customer who can throw a political punch when he has to, but he is not into “all Friday night fights, all the time”. Clearly, he and his advisors thought it would be better for the country if he chose a Supreme Court nominee who could be confirmed without a huge rumble in the Senate that might polarize the country for months. Nevertheless, Mr. Bush has shown a willingness to “dance with the one that brung him” – namely, with conservatives who elected him in the expectation that he would bring the Supreme Court under control by appointing conservative justices. Only time will tell if Miss Miers will honor those expectations, but I believe Mr. Bush is trustworthy about the Court. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, says he trusts Mr. Bush on this. I do, too. Texans like to say everything in their state is big (really big). They have a point. Not too many states were their own country before they joined the Union, as Texas was. Perhaps that gives Texans a special brashness – as if they naturally expect to lead the affairs of the nation. At any rate, this is another Texas moment. The nation’s eyes are on Texas as never before. Before he was governor of Texas, then president, George W. Bush was an oil man, not really a prairie politician in Lincoln’s mold. Actually, Mr. Lincoln wasn’t really a prairie politician, either. He was a successful attorney before he won the presidency. But in at least one respect Mr. Bush does evoke Lincoln. An observer in Lincoln’s time said “…he always managed, in a tooth-sucking kind of way, to show that he was sharper than you.” Long after “W” has left the scene, historians might be writing similar things about him. He is, after all, a Texas guy.
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