Birch Bayh: From a More Civil Political Time

3/18/2019

A leader of Title IX jogging at Purdue University, 1972

Birch Bayh called me at the Times about a decade ago. I was curious why a former US senator wanted to talk to a sports columnist, and of course I called him back.

Now I can’t remember the reason he called. His obituaries this week praise him as a major force on Title IX, which has enriched sports for women – for everybody – in America, but I don’t recall him presenting himself as the Title IX guy.

Whatever it was about, we schmoozed for a bit. I told him I had covered his re-election in 1970 and I determined that this son of Indiana was now living on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

As long as we were chatting, I had a question for him. It went something like: “Senator, could I ask you a question about politics? I’m looking at all this Tea Party business, and it seems that some of the new members of Congress hate government, can’t even stand being in Washington, just want to shut things down.”

He was diplomatic, did not go fire-and-brimstone on me. After all, he was known as a very moderate Democrat; he had to be, to win in Indiana. But he allowed that he had never seen anything like the antipathy between Democrats and the new Republicans, wandering around brandishing mental pitchforks. He recalled with a tinge of sadness that he always had friends across the aisle.

That made me think about legendary friendships between Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen, Dick Durbin and John McCain (once again being vilified by Donald Trump.)

On the phone, Birch Bayh sounded reflective, maybe even sad, recalling better political times, and then we said goodbye. But his brief comments fueled my sense that things were not as mean in the 1970s when I had a brief fling as a national correspondent. There were giants in those days, on both sides of the aisle.

I keep a mental list of Republicans I met, or covered, and admired, mostly from Appalachia and the border states I covered:

I covered the retirement announcement of Sen. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, a thoughtful gentleman. (One of his aides back then was a young guy named Mitch McConnell, whom I consider one of the most empty and destructive people I have ever seen in public life.)

I ran around Tennessee one glorious September afternoon in 1972, covering the re-election campaign of Sen. Howard Baker, who was accompanied by his assistant, Fred Thompson. They were good company, rational people, and Baker became a giant during the Watergate proceedings.

When I lived in Louisville, Richard Lugar was a constructive Republican mayor of Indianapolis, just to the north on I-65; later he became a highly positive Senator.

Later, I observed Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, during the baseball steroids hearings -- a thorough gentleman who later got sick of the nasty politics and retired.

In that same period, I spent an hour in the office of Sen. John McCain, during a hearing on Olympic reform, and I retain a strong impression of him as an American hero, despite Donald Trump’s blather – with no retort from Trump’s new best friend, Lindsey Graham. How far we have fallen.
* * *
Two farewells to Sen. Birch Bayh:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/obituaries/birch-bayh-dead.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/opinion/birch-bayh-constitution.html

bruce

3/19/2019 11:23:49 am

george,

you're getting zelig like with all the greats, near greats and not so greats you've met on your life's journey.

re mccain and trump's blather.

the man is absolutely shameless. talks about mccain's marks (i recall mccain mocking himself many times about the same thing) yet trump threatens schools he attended if they release his--even tho he is the smartest person who's ever slimed over the face of the earth.

as for vietnam....i don't blame trump for getting out of serving his country. the vietnam debacle is a stain on the usa. however, what he says about mccain is beyond disgusting.

breathtakingly so, yet around 40% of your countrymen/women still back him.

i often think that he can't get any lower, but he still has the ability to keep on doing it.

there is no bottom.

you say you had a brief time as a national correspondent.

why was it brief?

your career has been heavily sports oriented, but you are very engaged in the political and cultural life of your country.

bruce

Hansen Alexander

3/19/2019 05:19:41 pm

Yes,

Bruce makes the excellent observation, George, based on your apt observations, that the political climate cannot be any worse, or lower, which is what you used to say about college football, and of course it gets lower all the time.

Which I guess prompts the longer terms question. Will this McCarthy atmosphere end once Trump either resigns or is summarily dismissed from office, in part by suburban Republicans. Or will it survive in the body politics through the ranting and raving of the radical right, their voices artificially amplified beyond its numbers on social media?

As an attorney, what scares me the most is if Trump escapes indictment down the road for stonewalling his own FBI investigation. The consequences set by that precedent is alarming at every level of the United States: every president, mayor, and governor could obstruct any corruption investigation in this country, rendering law enforcement impotent to do anything about it. And if future presidents wave their pardoning power around to discourage witnesses from from giving evidence against them, that is equally scary for our rule of law and order.

Therefore, the big picture question of whether this republic, or any democracy can survive in the western world, becomes a relevant one. Is everybody tired of democracy and the compromises it requires? Are there too many old people in government who have run out of ideas? Is immigration really scaring that many people. Obviously it is a bigger issue and problem in Europe than it is in the United States.

In each interview like this one you had with Senator Bayh, the conversation skirts around, as you point out Bayh did diplomatically,
the real political terrain causing the stalemate, the Republican scorched earth policy of denying any major national program to the Democrats, set down by Speaker Gingrich in 1995, and the the fear Republicans in Congress feel from their riled up and extremist base.

My hope is that behind the scenes in Congress, Democrats and Republicans are friendlier than they are in the glare of television camera lights. I feel confident that many Congressional Republicans do understand Mr. Trump's considerable mental issues, and do worry about further damage he can do to the stability and reputation of this country; but what that leads to in substance is anybody's guess.

George Vecsey

3/20/2019 08:53:31 am

Bruce, my "brief" time as national correspondent was my call....I realized right away that moving my family from a great town on Long Island was not helpful, and I was not about to move every few years, always be a transplant. To be honest, I also realized I was not a great and diligent reporter who could work on one story for weeks, or jump on stories, leave town with one call from the office. Moving back worked out perfectly -- got great material for books & life....and was able to work for NYT from my strengths. I have huge admiration for more mobile reporters. GV

George Vecsey

3/20/2019 08:57:56 am

To answer Bruce and Hansen, my underlying feeling is that something really ugly has oozed into public life in recent decades --McCarthyism Squared. People like McConnell and Nunes and Jordan and King in the House are what is under the rock....and not total anomalies. People say the higher courts (John Roberts!!) and the military are loyal to traditional discipline and law. I hope that is true. But when I see people like Sasse and Collins fold on the side of under-the-rock, I really get concerned. Not to see the disturbed nature of President Earworm is scary. Onward. GV

george

3/20/2019 10:10:46 am

george,

ah so.

being single would've made it easier to uproot. being married would've left your family without roots.

bruce

bruce

3/20/2019 10:19:48 am

george,

american politics are so vicious compared to other western democracies that i know something about.

it's always struck me how many americans are distant or ignorant of their political system or what's going on.

but those who aren't are more fanatical than any other western country that i know of.

seems that it's important which party you belong to even if you're running for dog catcher.

spring starts at 558 this afternoon eastern time.

seems we've survived another winter.

bruce

George Vecsey

3/20/2019 12:28:18 pm

Bruce: We had just settled into a great town....I missed it, too.
Everybody's different. I didn't like what I saw of the lives of correspondents....one of my good editors (I've had many) once suggested a story on people with no home town (military, corporate, etc.) I didn't get around to it, but the subject struck home. We've been in the same house now for almost 47 years, in the old neighborhood, and my kids all have friends from town....and even a few favorite teachers very much around....plus my beloved Jamaica High friends from Queens are around...we can look proudly at our old area., Ooops., President Earworm lived right in the middle of it. Well, his older brother was a nice guy. Anyway, roots are important, at least to us. GV

george

3/20/2019 12:51:32 pm

george,

all true.

bruce

Ed Martin

3/21/2019 05:14:35 pm

In the 1965-81 era when we were in DC and I was working on special education legislation, on “The Hill” and “Downtown,” the atmosphere was very different. Republicans, particularly from the Northeast, were considered “Conservative” perhaps, “Moderate” and I always was able to find bi-partisan support, from Vermont Senators, Winston Prouty, and Bob Stanford; Mass. Senator, Ed Brooke,; New York- Jacob Javits; and the sponsors of the Education of the Education of All Handicapped Act of 1975, included them and the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, Al Quie, later governor of Minnesota. There were others, in the House and Senate. Silvio Conte, R.Mass. Roomed with Tip O’Neill. Bob Michel, R.ILL. Later Minority Leade, was a plus vote on Appropriations.

Even during the Nixon years this cooperation lasted, but the Reagan people poisoned the well, driving moderate Republicans out of the government and refusing to appoint qualified Republicans who were not Reagenauts. I knew some fine people turned away, while a woman who believed special education was ill-advised because God wanted them disabled was appointed to the Education Department, but the remaining sensible Republicans in Congress succeeded in having her transferred where she could do no harm, (hopefully.) The Reagan team also wanted to repeal the Education of Handicapped Act and abolish the Department of Education. Senators Stamford, Weicker, R.Conn, and Rep. Quie, among others fought that off.

It was the Nixon, Reagan era that also marked the racism that has influenced Republican politics since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts secured by LBJ in 1964 and 1965, turned the South red.

bruce

3/21/2019 05:30:00 pm

ed,

Saint Ronald didn't seem so saintly from the north of the border, but he got along well with lyin' brian Mulroney Canada's PM at the time.

I interviewed walter Cronkite once in the late 1980s.

he told me when he started in the TV biz that he thought it acted as an xray which could expose when politicians etc were lying.

he said he'd changed his mind; he didn't think the same way now.

he said, to my shock, that Reagan wasn't as smart as seemed and carter was smarter than he appeared.

I never thought Reagan seemed smart. just knew how to handle electronic media because of the B acting background.

bruce

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Birch Bayh: From a More Civil Political Time

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