Out of My Mind (28 page)

Herbert Hoover beat Al Smith in 1928. Smith was governor of New York, very capable and a real character. He probably would have been a better president than Hoover but he was Catholic and that mattered more then than it does now. Thirty-plus years later, John F. Kennedy's Catholicism wasn't much of an issue.

When I was in college, a lot of my friends were trying to get Wendell Willkie elected. Willkie may have been the most capable of all the losers in modern history but he never had a prayer running against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940.

FDR, our only four-term president, beat Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Willkie and Tom Dewey. Roosevelt is the kind of legend who gets his picture on our dimes. Dewey, governor of New York, was humorless but would have made a good president, too. He never got his picture on a penny.

Adlai Stevenson might have been a great president. He lost to an American hero, Dwight Eisenhower. In one of the great moments in television history, Stevenson appeared on TV to concede and quoted Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of his loss of his seat in Congress:

“I'm too old to cry,” Stevenson said, “and yet it hurts too much to laugh.”

It's fun for me to consider that I can drop the names of five presidents I've actually met. As a reporter for the
Stars and Stripes
, I met FDR in 1945. I wouldn't say we were close friends, but I shook hands with both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Reagan was more fun to shake hands with than Nixon. I met Ike a dozen times, and several months ago I was eating in a New York restaurant when Bill Clinton came in. He saw me sitting there and slid into the banquette next to me and chatted for twenty-five minutes. He was hard to hate.

The loser I knew best was Barry Goldwater and I didn't vote for him. I did a one-hour documentary called “Barry Goldwater's Arizona” and got to like Barry better than I liked his politics. He was a good guy but not a president. At Barry's retirement party, his unlikely friend, Teddy Kennedy, got a big laugh when he said Barry's motto was, “Ready! Shoot! Aim!”

Strom Thurmund ran for president in 1948 and was, fortunately, a big loser. We've had other potentially bad presidents but no one that bad.

It's surprising, when you think of all the people who want to be president that we've had two sons of presidents who became president themselves. John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, was the son of John Adams, our second president. George W. Bush, of course, is George Bush's son. When it comes to being president, it doesn't hurt if Daddy gives you a head start.

One of the difficult things to determine in life is how much authority to give to someone who is smart about one thing, in an area about which he or she has no experience.

If I had my choice, I'd take the smartest person over the most experienced anytime. Once you've learned something, “experience” isn't anything but repetition. It has amused me over my years, because so many of my friends are in the news business, to note how quickly someone smart can get to know almost everything about someone else's business. A good reporter can do some research and then interview his subject and in a few days get to know 90 percent of everything he needs to know about his subject and his life's work. If a good reporter can do that, there's no reason why a good lawyer, businessman or doctor can't get to know a lot about government in a few weeks. As far as having enough experience to be president, it's a foolish idea. There is no experience a person could have that would familiarize him with being president of the United States.

When Howard Dean ran for governor of Vermont, opponents asked what a doctor knew about running a state government. Dean was elected and then re-elected four times. It obviously didn't take him long to get the hang of switching from medicine and healing to politics and government. (It seems like a step down to me, but that's another matter.)

You often read about some huge corporation appointing a new president. If the corporation makes widgets, the new executive is hardly ever an expert on widgets. He's an expert on running a corporation no matter what it makes.

Albert Einstein had one of the great brains ever born to man, and he used it to the tangible advantage of civilization. It was Einstein who told President Roosevelt in 1939 of the possibility of our making an atomic bomb with the research he had done cracking atoms in the laboratory. He spent his life working on the relativity and quantum theories, which are too complex for any but a handful of us to understand. He also produced a delightful little book of essays about life that are direct and simple enough for anyone who can read to understand. We humans have amazing breadth. We can be stupid and brilliant. We can be good. We can be bad—angels one minute, devils the next.

What often occurs to me about our elections is that we get too many experienced politicians and not enough people like Einstein, who are brilliant in some other form of endeavor. We ought to find some way of embarrassing more of our capable, even brilliant, non-political citizens to get into politics and run for office. We should not exclude our scientists, and they should not exclude themselves.

Einstein, although ineligible because of being born in Germany, would have made a great American president. If he had run, someone surely would have said, “He doesn't have enough political experience.” What I want for my president is the smartest person in America. Forget whether that person is experienced in politics.

It's good fun to criticize our politicians and we all do a lot of that. It's hard not to, but I often feel sorry for them. Most people who are successful in any field have one special talent for doing something well. They aren't successful because of their overall ability. A politician can't
specialize like that. He or she (see footnote) has to know a lot about everything.

Believing that you're smart enough to take a public job that involves making decisions that will influence thousands or even millions of lives takes more chutzpah than most of us have. Imagine really thinking that you're smart enough to be President of the United States. Or even a congressman. Such jobs take men and women with self-confidence and I'm glad we have so many of them to lead wimps like us.

Of course, we're always being disappointed by our politicians, even the ones we voted for or plan to vote for. Sooner or later, our favorite says something we hate. The trouble is, politicians have to do and say some terrible things to get elected. They have to say things they don't believe and do things they don't like doing. They even have to pretend they like some things. Shaking hands with 2,000 enthusiastic jerks every day must be a pain. We practically force them to lie to us, or at least force them to be evasive and then accuse them of not being honest.

Plain dealing is impossible for a politician. How do you come out clearly and unequivocally for or against abortion, tax cuts, the war in Iraq or school prayer without alienating about half of the people who were inclined to vote for you? The politician has to find a way to avoid saying what he really thinks as often as possible. John Kerry, for instance, is burdened now with the fact that he voted in favor of the war on Iraq. He has to find a way to squirm out of it every time it comes up. I'd hate to be a politician and have to announce publicly every opinion I've had about Iraq. I'd get run out of the country. Most of us are puzzled and unsure about major issues. We can be persuaded in one direction or the other. A politician doesn't have the luxury of rethinking something, hedging or changing his mind. Voters, on the other hand, can usually avoid taking any firm position. We aren't dead sure what we think.

The philosophy of democracy assumes that the people of a country know what they want and make intelligent decisions about whom they vote for to get it. The trouble is that we're too evenly divided and if one group gets what it wants in the next election, it's certain that almost half
of us will be dissatisfied. It won't be “the will of the people,” but only the will of about half the people. This makes democracy seem less like a perfect system. It's just that there isn't any other as good.

 

Footnote: Every time I write I'm faced with the problem of those damn third-person pronouns “he” or “she.” We are in desperate need of a gender-neutral word that would include men and women. You used to be able to use the masculine he as if it was universal. That's no longer acceptable, but I'm not willing to write “he” or “she” every time it seems necessary.

Bragging is not an attractive thing to do so I'm reluctant to tell you this, but I can't resist because I'm bursting with pride. I've just received a personal letter from the Republican Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, telling me that I've been assigned to be “REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL REPUBLICANS” (his caps) living in my voting district.

If you wonder what the Republican Party is doing with $130 million in campaign funds, let me tell you about some of this letter.

On my letter, the “Friend” in “Dear Friend” was crossed out and “Andy” written in by hand over it. This indicates to me that Bill and I are very close. Under that, it says, “Your immediate attention is required.” Not requested, desired or wanted but “required.”

When this comes out, it's going to be some surprise to my friends and neighbors or anyone else in my voting district. My friend Quinton is going to be especially surprised. He thinks George W. Bush is too liberal and considers me as practically a communist.

I don't think any of the people I know in our little town would have expected that I'd be accorded the honor of being appointed a leader of the Republican Party there. My first duty, the letter says, is to fill out a
survey Sen. Frist sent me. “Your answers,” he says, “will represent the views and opinions of ALL Republicans living in your voting district.”

This survey, the letter says, is an “OFFICIAL REPUBLICAN PARTY DOCUMENT—REGISTERED IN YOUR NAME ONLY and MUST BE ACCOUNTED FOR upon completion of this project.” I am unclear about who has to account for it.

The first question on the survey asks, “Should we raise taxes as some liberal Democrats have suggested?” Next, it says, “I MUST find out—as soon as possible—where loyal grassroots Republicans like you stand on the most vital issues facing our nation today. So please take a few minutes NOW to complete your official Republican Majority Leader's Survey . . . And when you do, please include your most generous financial contribution . . . of $500, $250, $100, $50, or even just $25 today.”

I have never said publicly whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat because I'm sometimes one, sometimes the other, but I would have to confess that “liberal” is not a dirty word to me.

I hope Bill Frist isn't depending on me for $25 to pay for any part of this letter he sent because, Republican or Democrat, it's one of the dumbest pieces of campaign literature I have ever seen. If I had been going to vote Republican, this letter is enough to have made me change my mind.

Did Sen. Frist write this letter? I don't think so. Did he read it before it was sent out over his signature? He's smarter than that or he never would have completed medical school.

How about these sentences:

 

“Our Republican leadership are counting on your input.” Who is you

counting on, Senator”

“That is why I must have your immediate involvement today.”

Would immediate involvement day after tomorrow be soon enough?

“. . . we are counting on each and every one to provide their input.”

“Their”? With “one”? How about “his or her”?

“Your answers . . . will help me build a strong foundation of grassroots support.”

“Your answers will be used to build grassroots support . . . ”

“We must continue to build from the grassroots up . . . ”

“. . . help build a foundation of grassroots support.”

“Our success was fought for—and won—by the heroic efforts of dedicated grassroots Republicans like you.”

 

With grassroots Republicans like me, they wouldn't have to mow the lawn very often.

Whoever in the Republican Party campaign office who put out this semi-literate letter ought to pay for the stamps itself.

Everyone else has interviewed Bill Clinton about his book,
My Life
. I haven't cared much for the interviews, so I'd like to interview him myself. Here are some of the questions I'd ask:

Q: I've heard several of your book interviews and everyone asks you the same questions about Monica Lewinsky. Because we all know what your answers are now and because we're all tired of the subject, is it OK if I don't ask you about that?

As I was typing those words, my phone rang. You'll just have to trust me on this. It was 8:23 in the morning on Wednesday, June 23. I picked it up. The voice said, “Andy, this is Bill Clinton.” I assumed it was the announcer on the Imus radio show who imitates Clinton putting me on, so I said, skeptically, “Sure.”

I had been invited to a book party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art given by Bill Clinton's publisher the night before and I went but he was late, it was a mob scene and I left before Bill showed up.

“That was some party last night, wasn't it?”

“I guess so, but I left before you came,” I said.

“Yeah. Sorry I was late. Why don't you do something about my book on
60 Minutes
next Sunday?” I suppose this was the real purpose of his call.

“Bill (I called him Bill, not Mr. President), you're not going to believe this, but I am just writing about you. I'm saying everyone else has interviewed you and I'd like to. Here are some questions I'd ask.”