This is about history as well as the future, and I think you'll find it fun.
I recently read the diary of Pennsylvania State Rep. Mark Cohen, a Democrat who reminisced fondly about a "Rockefeller Republican" Pennsylvania governor who died this week. I posted my own recollections of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY) and my minor involvement with his presidential campaigns when I was a teenager. Cohen sent a blast from the past which brought to mind a long-forgotten Democrat, John Raber, who ran in IN-02 in 1964, the year of the Johnson landslide after President Kennedy's assassination. Raber ran against the House Minority Leader, Charles A. Halleck, and even in a Democratic landslide, Raber had no chance, not in this district which was once all cornfields.
Catch the rapscallions after the break.
With reapportionment in 1990 and 2000, Indiana lost a Congressional seat each decade to the South and West. This "Home of Vice Presidents," including
Dan Quayle, has gone from 13 Electoral College votes to 11 and our once-prominent presidential primary is no longer relevant. Indiana's population growth is significant, but it's not kept up with faster-growing areas. The state's Congressional delegation has shrunk from 11 to 10 to 9, and what was once IN-02 in the Halleck era is now largely IN-01, a much different district represented by an urban Democrat from Merrillville,
Pete Visclosky. The new district is contiguous with Chicago and extends down to the farmlands. Visclosky is gradually distinguishing himself not only as an advocate for labor and the steel industry, which has
hemorrhaged 60,000 good jobs in Gary and East Chicago, but for returning the south shore of Lake Michigan, now lined with rusting steel mills and refineries, to greenery, public access and protection. Visclosky may be the only honest politician in notoriously corrupt Lake County, and he's the only one with a vision of what this area can become, a prosperous, industry-based playground and bedroom community for Chicago.
Halleck, who served IN-02 from 1935-1969, was a Midwestern good ol' boy--better educated, a lawyer and ex-prosecutor more sophisticated than your redneck Southern stereotype, but plain as the black Hoosier dirt. He was a rapscallion of the first order, the sort of politician America no longer produces, perhaps to our detriment. He was the quintessential pol, back-slapping, hard-drinking, fast with a quip and enormously popular. Everybody in the district knew him and most took pride in him. He used to come in to the Nu-Joy Restaurant in Kentland for a night of carousing when I worked there in the '60's as a teenager. He had the reddest nose I ever saw on a man.
But he worked harder than a sharp tack and helped save my brother's life, when he got dangerously ill serving in the U.S. Air Force and was denied proper treatment by the military. One snail-mail letter from my Grandma to Charlie Halleck was all it took; Halleck told the Pentagon in no uncertain terms to transfer my Bro to the Walter Reed medical complex outside Washington, where surgery saved him. They told him he'd be dead by 35 anyway, but this August we celebrated his 60th birthday.
Halleck was politically gifted not only here but in the House of Representatives. He became Majority Leader in 1946 when Republicans took over after World War II, then went to Minority Leader when Democrats stormed back with Harry Truman. Halleck and the GOP regained the House in 1954 under Eisenhower, then lost it again two years later. Halleck remained Minority Leader and, with Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen, put the "Ev and Charlie Show" on every Pundit-TV gabfest of the day. Halleck's bio on Wikipedia notes that he favored the Vietnam War and was a strong supporter of the nation-changing Civil Rights Act of 1964. Halleck was eventually ousted from the Republican leadership by Gerald Ford in 1967, and two years later Halleck retired from public life.
The opening he created was filled by the most gawd-awful rascal I've ever seen in politics. A truck driver out of Valparaiso, Indiana, State Sen. Earl Landgrebe ran and won in 1968. He was quite a piece of work; honest I think, but dumb as a rock. I'm talking IQ now, hooked on stupid-pills. Reactionary of course, but completely unqualified for Congress, barely a high school graduate. In Washington he got in so far over his head he never did break the surface. He managed to get re-elected a couple of times; being reactionary has never disqualified anyone in Hoosier politics, where the collective intelligence approximates that of a cornstalk.
But then a little thing called Watergate came along, and Landgrebe finally rose to prominence. He was the only member of Congress to vote against impeaching Richard Nixon.
If only YouTube had existed back then. But Hoosiers sullenly gnawed sweet corncobs and took the hint.
I'll let Wikipedia tell you (sorry, my computer is too old to set any links or make a quote box):
"On August 5, 1974, Richard Nixon released certain documents revealing his orders to aides to hinder the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. When Landgrebe was asked on August 7 about the apparently unanimous support for impeachment of Nixon among his Republican colleagues following this disclosure, Landgrebe said: 'I'm going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.'"
Sticking with his president was all Landgrebe knew to do. What would you do if you found yourself caught up in a maelstrom?
Three months later in the '74 election, the voters of IN-02 took Landgrebe out behind the barn and gently put him down like a pore suffering dog. It was a complete total mercy-killing, and not even the Pope complained. "Euthanasia is never good," the Pope furrowed his brow, "but this dude's dumber than a rock."
Floyd Fithian, a Purdue University professor, was swept in instead, part of the immortal Watergate Class of '74, some of whose members still serve in your Congress. Fithian is best remembered as a savior of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Indiana owns the southern tip of Lake Michigan, where the winds swooping down from Chicago and Canada create the most gorgeous, environmentally sensitive sand dunes you'll ever see. On a one-mile trail you can travel through three different ecosystems. Thousands of species exist there and nowhere else on earth. This area was once home to the Grand Kankakee Marsh, a swamp as big and teeming with life as the Florida Everglades. Alas, most of it is gone now, in favor of jobs and farms. Fithian helped save the little that's left, and now Visclosky has taken up the battle.)
Fithian eventually suffered defeat in what was, after all, a rural Republican district, then went on to become finance director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for two years, then chief of staff for 11 years to Illinois Sen. Paul Simon. Fithian died of Parkinson's disease in 2003, but not before leaving us this:
"In 2003, Fithian was one of 72 former Congressmen to sign a petition that urged the U.S. and British governments to seek peaceful solutions, rather than war, in Iraq."
What a hero. Thank you, Congressman; I'm still a Friend of Floyd's.
The end of my lookback is this: I got to hear the first national election report of 1974 on the radio at precisely 6 p.m. Eastern; I was driving down the highway and radio was my only option. By law Indiana's polls happen to close first in the nation, so the first national news on Election Night always focuses here. Nixon had just resigned, the entire country knew the Democrats would sweep and I was all tuned in. (Cue the Breaking News music and sound-effects of oldtime radio, as the telegraph churns and the band plays doot-do-da-doo:)
"From... CBS News Election Headquarters in New York! Polls have just closed in Indiana and CBS News now declares that Congressman Earl Landgrebe, Richard Nixon's last diehard supporter on Capitol Hill, has been defeated in a Democratic landslide. We go now to Congressman Landgrebe.
CBS: Congressman, what caused your defeat?
Landgrebe: (15 seconds of total silence and dead air)
Landgrebe: Well... uh... (15 more seconds, while I wondered if something was wrong with my radio and slapped it a time or two.) Er... uh... (No shit, 15 more seconds of dead airtime on national radio!) Uh... well...
(And CBS simply let him struggle--the best journalistic decision I've ever heard.)
Landgrebe: Uh, gee... well, uh... (finally) I dunno...
CBS (instantly): ThankyouCongressmanLandgrebe!
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I never laughed so hard in my life.
Poor Earl, the first to fall. I only hope Charlie Halleck and Floyd Fithian got to hear his 45 Seconds of Fame on national radio, because they both would have laughed their asses off--Fithian while adding tofu to his stir-fry, Halleck while tossing back another whiskey at the Nu-Joy and telling his best guaranteed hooker joke to a raucous roaring crowd.
Politics--once it was a game, baby! Sis Boom Bah!
Now it's life and death, our kids are patrolling Iraq.++