Mr. Speaker, I rise to submit the humble, humorous and insightful remarks of my dear friend and Dean of the Wisconsin Congressional Delegation, the Honorable Dave Obey. The gentleman was the honored guest recently at the University of…
Mr. Speaker, I rise to submit the humble, humorous and insightful remarks of my dear friend and Dean of the Wisconsin Congressional Delegation, the Honorable Dave Obey. The gentleman was the honored guest recently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Political Science as it celebrated its Centennial. I was given a copy of his remarks and was captivated. Written with his characteristic no nonsense Wisconsin affect, this wonderful speech is a treasure to be shared. To that end, I submit it for the Congressional Record.
I came to Madison in 1958--after two years at the UW-
Marathon County Center in Wausau--to get a poly-sci degree.
Arthur Henderson, my high school history teacher, who had
worked with the great William Hesseltine, told me that I
should seek out Ralph Huitt as my faculty advisor and take as
many courses from him as possible if I wanted to understand
how government and politics really worked. That's exactly
what I did.
I had many other fabulous professors: Leon Epstein, Bernie
Cohen, Fred von der Mehden, David Fellman, John Armstrong,
Henry Hart, to name a few.
And in the history and econ departments, people like: Selig
Perlman, Michael Petrovich, George Mosse, David Granick.
It's amazing to me how much of what they taught me has had
direct relevance in my later life. I treasure what I learned
here--in and out of class--and I treasure the memories.
I attended here at the same time as Bill Steiger, who later
was my Republican opposite image in Congress and one of the
finest politicians I have ever known. Bill was elected to the
State Assembly in 1960; I followed him in 1962. He was
elected to Congress in 1966; I followed 27 months later. But
in the late 1950s, we were both still here and had two
classes together.
One was Constitutional law with Dave Fellman. For those of
you who do not know Fellman, his style was much like the law
professor played by John Housman in the TV series ``Paper
Chase''--dry and acerbic.
Steiger was ``Big Man on Campus.'' His father, Carl
Steiger, was President of the Board of Regents, and Bill was
well known and active in everything. On the first day of
class, Steiger walked into Fellman's class about 5 minutes
late. Chagrined, he walked gingerly to his seat. Fellman
paused, peered at Steiger over his glasses, and said icily,
``Please pardon me, Mr. Steiger. Ordinarily we would have an
usher escort you to your seat. Unfortunately, our carnations
have not yet arrived.'' Bill turned blood red. No one in that
class was late after that.
I remember in 1960 the first time I met Jack Kennedy.
Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey were running against each other
in the Wisconsin presidential primary. I was running
Humphrey's campaign on campus.
One evening I was chairing a meeting in the student union.
We knew Jackie Kennedy was upstairs at a fashion show, but we
didn't know that Jack was with her. Halfway through our
meeting, the door to our room opened and Kennedy poked his
head in. ``I understand this is a meeting of the Young
Democrats he said.'' ``Not quite,'' I responded, ``this is a
meeting of the Humphrey for President club.'' ``Well, do you
mind if I come in and say hello?'' he asked. ``Of course
not,'' I responded. Kennedy came in, shook hands around the
table, wished us luck but not too much, and moved on.
That same year I met Jackie Robinson and wound up wanting
to strangle him. Gaylord Nelson, the new Governor, called me
one afternoon. Nelson was officially neutral, but personally
favored Humphrey over Kennedy. When he called me, he said,
``Dave, Jackie Robinson is coming to town to endorse Hubert.
Get a room at the union, build a crowd, and you can introduce
us.''
We had a huge crowd for him. I emceed the meeting and
introduced Gaylord, who introduced Robinson. Robinson gave a
ringing endorsement of Humphrey and then opened up to
questions. The first question from the press was, ``Mr.
Robinson, you have endorsed Senator Humphrey, but what if he
loses to Senator Kennedy in the primary?'' Robinson said,
``Why then I'll endorse Nixon.'' The crowd gasped and the
press ran for the phones to call their papers. What was
supposed to be a good day for Humphrey turned into an even
better one for Nixon.
As you know, Kennedy did win the nomination and squared off
against Nixon. The last week of the election it was announced
that Nixon's plane would touch down for an early Saturday
morning rally at Truax field on the way to California. Bill
Whitford, Tom Eckerle, and I decided we wanted to crash the
rally. We went down to GOP headquarters and wheedled a bunch
of Nixon Lodge signs (Nixon's running mate that year was
Henry Cabot Lodge). We cut Lodge's name off the bottom of the
sign, moved it to the top, added the letters ``D-1-S'' in
front of Lodge's name so the signs read ``Dislodge Nixon''
and sounded a small dissent at the rally the next morning.
After the election we needed the help of the faculty to get
one of our friends out of trouble. In 1961 the Republican
Leadership in the Legislature called upon Governor Nelson to
fire his Secretary, Esther Kaplan, after she had circulated a
petition calling for the abolition of the House Un-American
Activities Committee. The Republican Leadership introduced a
resolution praising HUAC and held a Nelson bashing hearing on
it in the State Assembly Chambers. My friend, Dave Sheridan,
was so angered by the resolution that he put on his ROTC
uniform, walked down to the Capitol, and testified against
the resolution.
``I know that you are claiming that anyone opposed to HUAC
is either a traitor or a communist dupe,'' Sheridan said.
``I'm wearing this uniform to demonstrate that while I may be
a dupe, I'm certainly no traitor.'' The Republican Leadership
was enraged and moved to have Sheridan thrown out of the ROTC
program because he had worn his uniform to testify--in
violation of Army rules.
A number of Dave's friends on the faculty went to Ralph
Huitt and several others to get some advice on how to save
Sheridan's hide. Huitt (or someone else on the faculty)
called Carlisle Runge a UW law professor who had been named a
high Pentagon post by Kennedy, and got Sheridan off with a
reprimand. Years later it was to be my great pleasure to cast
a vote that disbanded HUAC.
And there were some other pleasures. In his course on
legislation, Huitt scheduled a Mock Senate, role playing
exercise one weekend in the State Assembly Chambers at the
Capitol. Each student was assigned to play an individual,
real life U.S. Senator. Fittingly, Bill Steiger was assigned
to play Everett Dirksen, the Republican Floor Leader. I was
assigned to play Senator William Fullbright. It was my task
to try to push a foreign aid bill through the Senate. I had
no idea that 25 years later I would Chair the Foreign
Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, which had the
responsibility to handle all foreign aid appropriations.
And there were so many other links in the chain.
A large part of that Foreign Operations Committee
responsibility would be to shape development aid to the Third
World, the region that was the focus of Fred von der Mehden's
and Henry Hart's courses on Third World politics.
Another strong focus for the committee was the Middle East.
Next to the Soviet Union, my main regional interest in
Congress has been the Middle East. That interest was first
triggered by series of debates that two faculty members at
the UW-Marathon County Center, Dr. Sam Weiner and Dr. Bob
Najem, had conducted after the 1956 Mid-East war.
Of course, I knew nothing of those future linkages then.
Certainly, in graduate school under John Armstrong where I
focused on Russian area studies and expected to wind up
teaching Russian government somewhere, I had no idea that 30
years later I would be partnering with Indiana Congressman
Lee Hamilton to shepherd through Congress aid packages for
Russia and Eastern Europe after Gorbachev allowed the Soviet
block to crumble, virtually without a shot.
I'm grateful for all those memories and for the substantive
grounding the University gave me to prepare me for my
congressional responsibilities. But the grounding I received
from the University was not just because of the courses I
took. It was also because of the spirit, the philosophy, the
progressive mind-set that defined the University and set it
off as something special in the American experience.
You simply cannot live in Wisconsin and go to the
University of Wisconsin without recognizing the centrality of
the La Follette progressive tradition that is at the heart of
Wisconsin history, and the linkage the University has with
that tradition.
The greatest public servant Wisconsin ever produced was
Robert La Follette. Before La Follette led his Progressive
revolution, Wisconsin's politics was owned lock, stock, and
barrel by the railroads, the mining companies, and the timber
interests. Government was geared to promote the welfare of
those engaged in the production of wealth. The interest of
the working class was an after thought. La Follette changed
all that--aided and abetted by the University. La Follette
changed the focus of Wisconsin government from enriching the
few at the expense of the many to enriching the few by
enriching the many. In short, he was Hubert Humphrey before
Hubert Humphrey.
The original Wisconsin practitioner of the art of
``Percolate Up'' rather than ``Trickle Down'' economics, La
Follette's mission and passion was to keep the big boys
honest in order to include everybody in the circle of
prosperity and progress. He was the Andrew Jackson of his
time and place.
He understood that America is a capitalist economy, but it
is also more than just an economy; it is democracy. And as a
democracy, it is supposed to stand for the greatest good for
the greatest number, even as it respects the rights of the
individual.
He understood that capitalism works through market forces
that cannot be repealed, but that democracy is not just ``Of,
By, and For the Markets.'' It is designed to be ``Of, By and
For the People!'' He believed that Darwin's law of the
survival of the fittest might be good enough for the animal
world, but not good enough for the world of man. He wanted
balanced capitalism, not a new feudalism in disguise. And he
intended to use the tools of government to achieve it. And he
used the resources of the University to help him in his task.
Helped by scholars, such as Frederick Jackson Turner,
Richard Ely, and John R. Commons, he began the process by
writing legislation to loosen the stranglehold of the
railroads on Wisconsin's farmers and economy. What La
Follette began, before he moved to the U.S. Senate, reached
its zenith under Governor Francis McGovern.
The legendary Charles McCarthy, a University product,
created Wisconsin's pioneering Legislative Reference Bureau.
He and more than 40 other University figures were at the
center of pioneering progressive achievements--
Achievements like: The nation's first workers' compensation
program, workers' safety legislation, a State Industrial
Commission, limits on the hours of work for women and
children, forest protection legislation, the nation's first
progressive income tax, and so many others.
In his autobiography La Follette explained his passion for
economic justice and the role the University played in
nurturing and furthering it. In that autobiography, a
Follette wrote the following. ``I shall never forget the
speech I heard the old Chief Justice of Wisconsin, Edward G.
Ryan, make to the graduating class at Madison in June of 1883
just before I entered the University,'' La Follette said:
``There is looming up a new and dark power . . . the
enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate
combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching not for
economic conquest only, but for political power. For the
first time really in our politics money is taking the field
as an organized power . . . The question will arise in
your day . . . which shall rule--wealth or man; which shall
lead--money or intellect; who shall fill public stations--
education and patriotic free men or the feudal serfs of
corporate capital?''
La Follette then goes on to say that that speech kindled in
him the spirit he carried throughout his public service. As
La Follette described it, ``It grew out of the intellectual
awakening . . . the very center and inspiration point of
which in Wisconsin was then, and has been ever since, the
University at Madison. It is difficult indeed to overestimate
the part which the University has played in the Wisconsin
revolution,'' La Follette said. ``For myself,'' he said, ``I
owe what I am and what I have done largely to the inspiration
I received while there. It was not so much the actual courses
of study which I pursued; it was rather the spirit of the
institution--a high spirit of earnest endeavor, a spirit of
fresh interest in new things, and beyond all else, a sense
that somehow the state and the University were intimately
related and that they should be of mutual service.''
La Follette's attachment to the University was
understandable and fitting. He was the first graduate of the
University to become Governor. The legendary Charles Van Hise
was a member of that same graduating class--the first person
to obtain a PhD from the University, he was later effectively
appointed University President by La Follette.
And I must say that it was that same sense of the spirit of
the institution, so intimately connected to Wisconsin's
progressive traditions, which sparked my passion for public
service.
What I learned here that inspired me is that while La
Follette and other Progressive Reformers like George Norris
and Theodore Roosevelt were regarded as secular men, they
really were at the moral core of a movement that had deep
roots in the Jewish Prophetic Tradition and the Christian
Social Gospel, which implied that there were certain norms of
decency that must be the objectives of political choices in a
democracy.
That tradition was rooted in the belief that politics must
be more than merely transactional. It must be more principled
than ``who gets what.'' That it could and should be, as Bill
Moyers has said, transformational--that it must try to ``even
the starting gate so that people who are equal in humanity
but not in resources have a reasonable opportunity to pursue
a full and decent life.''
The Wisconsin tradition dictates that political leadership
must challenge people to see beyond their own self-interests
and prerogatives. That is why whenever anyone comes into my
office asking me to do something, I first ask them to read
aloud a sign hanging on the wall which asks, ``What do you
want me to do for someone besides yourself that is more
important than whatever it is you want me to do for you?'' If
you cannot answer that question you are failing the ultimate
test of good citizenship in a democracy.
For the past 40 years, in the Legislature and the Congress,
I have tried to pursue that special Wisconsin vision of the
role of government in shaping a more just society. Wisconsin
has so often in its history been informed by a special sense
of commonwealth--of using our common wealth to invest in
efforts to spread the blessings of society more broadly.
I wish I could say that we are still following that special
calling today, but we have drifted away in so many ways. Over
much of the last three decades we have seen the country
retreat from those ideals. Anna Quindlen has written that
``America is a country that now sits atop the precarious
latticework of myth. It is the myth that work provides
sufficient rewards, that working people can support their
families. It's a myth that has become so divorced from
reality that it might as well begin with the words ``Once
upon a time.'' Why does Quindlen say that? Because one out of
every four American workers makes less than $8.70 an hour--
poverty level for a family of four.
La Follette and the past greats of the University would be
stunned to see that in one generation America has gone from
being the industrial society with the smallest gap between
rich and poor to the one with the largest.
They would be astounded to see that the safety net, which
they fought so hard to construct, has not been nearly strong
enough for large portions of our population.
They would be appalled that the number of Americans without
health insurance has grown by 4 million people in less than a
decade.
They would see shame in the fact that the most well off 1
percent of America's families enjoy control over 33 percent
of the nation's wealth while the bottom 50 percent struggle
to maintain 2.8 percent of the nation's wealth.
They would be dismayed to see how little heed has been paid
to the warning of Adam Smith, the founding high priest of
capitalism, that without fair rules of the game to keep
markets honest that capitalism could be misaligned into a
system that provided insufficient protection for the
legitimate interests of workers and consumers alike.
They would find it unbelievable that the percentage of
American workers who belong to unions has contracted rather
than expanded over the last half century.
They would be outraged that the ownership of news outlets
is much more heavily concentrated today than it was in their
era.
They would not be surprised, but they would be repelled by
a tax system that provides greater rewards for accumulated
wealth than it does for work.
And most of all, La Follette himself would be disheartened
by the growing financial barriers to opportunity that are
encountered by the children of so many working families who
seek to attend this very University.
La Follette himself is Wisconsin's most distinguished
example of how crucial it can be to eliminate financial
barriers to higher education. In his autobiography, La
Follette made the following observation:
``My single term at the University law school had been
rendered possible only through the consideration of the
faculty in making an extraordinary exception in my case and
permitting me to enter without paying the usual matriculation
fee. I had no money . . .''
How little we have learned, despite all the blather uttered
by both political parties about how much we have expanded
opportunity for higher education. UW Chancellor John Wiley
observed in a speech last November that the median family
income in Wisconsin is a little over $45,000, but the median
family income for this year's new freshman at Madison is
$90,000.'' Think about that for a moment. As Wiley pointed
out, ``The distribution of brains, talent, ambition, and
creativity is independent of family income. We will ignore
that fact and freeze out the children of average and low
income families at our peril.''
Now tie that to another fact. Pell Grants, the principal
student aid program for low income students, now pay for only
one-half of the cost of instruction that they paid for in
1976. I feel acutely about this because I'm the Ranking
Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and the Subcommittee
that funds all education programs. Next, add in another fact.
More than half of all college graduates graduate with debts
above $15,000.
If La Follette were planning to go to law school today, he
couldn't afford it. How many La Follettes or Gaylord Nelsons
or Bill Steigers are we today passing over?
What would he and the University greats of old say about a
government which, when struggling with a $500 billion
deficit, a huge Social Security deficit, record long-term
unemployment, and 44 million people without health insurance,
decides that the number one priority in the budget next year
is to provide a $155,000 tax cut to someone making a million
dollars while we short fund elementary and secondary
education by $9 billion and continue to tolerate a two-tier
system for access to higher education or quality health care.
We all love this country. In spite of all its short
comings, this is a great country. But shame on us for
allowing such an outcome. We must do better.
I thank the University--and you should, too--for its
tradition of producing graduates and citizens who are never
satisfied, for it's tradition of saying ``We can do better!''
For the sake of the kind of country we want America to be,
let's all do our part to live up to that tradition.
Now, I'm sure that some of you may strongly disagree with
the thrust of what I have said today. That's o.k. As Will
Rogers observed, ``If two people agree on everything, one of
them is unnecessary.'' That difference would probably be
rooted in the fact that we follow different philosophers.
Some of you may follow Plato or Aristotle or even Ayn Rand,
God Forbid. But my favorite philosopher is Arch the
Cockroach.
Archy was a character invented by a writer by the name of
Don Marquis in the 1920s. He was supposedly a poet who had
died and had come back to life in a body of a cockroach. He
lived in a newspaperman's office and every night would crawl
out of the woodwork, climb onto the typewriter, dive head
first on the keys, and leave little messages which would
appear in the newspaper the next day. He had a thought for
every occasion. One of the things he said was this:
``did you ever
notice that when
a politician
does get an idea
he usually
gets it all wrong''
But my favorite was this:
``im too small
to feel great pride
and as the pompous world
goes by
i see things from
the under side''
Like Archy, I try to see life from the underside. I make no
apology. I learned it here!