Snyder was an interesting guy—he once suggested, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that a way to help the struggling Kennedy Center was not to throw tax dollars at it, but to host wrestling matches on Friday nights—and I was his only intern. For six hours of college credit and $200 a month, I was assigned the work of reviewing hearings of the House Appropriations Committee to find areas of excessive government spending, and mailing cookbooks to ladies’ groups. The most rewarding part of the experience was being there at such an interesting time—no day more interesting than August 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
That day, I left Snyder’s office and walked outside, overcome by the sight of the crowd, which stretched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. I was too far away to hear Dr. King, but I knew I was witnessing a pivotal moment in history. Growing up in the Deep South, I had lived with segregation. At the movie theater in Athens, Alabama, there were separate entrances for blacks and whites; public water fountains were clearly marked with “For Colored Only” signs. The first time I attended school with African American students was my freshman year of high school, two years after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education.
But my parents had instilled me with a deep-seated belief in equal and civil rights, which, given their own upbringing in the Deep South, was quite extraordinary. My great-grandfather had been a Confederate soldier, enlisting in 1863 at the age of seventeen, and the only African Americans we’d known well were Texie and Archie, a married couple who worked at Big Dad and Mamie’s house. But on this issue, my parents were far ahead of their time and years beyond their peers. From an early age, they’d taught me that everyone deserved equal opportunities and the right to vote.
As my dad would write to me a few years later, in expressing his joy over the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “As you know, I sincerely wish we didn’t need such a law but we do and I’m glad it’s done. I hope and pray it will all work out with little violence. God gave a man certain dignity and rights and I wish we didn’t have to fight over it. I hope you never forget the importance of every single one of us. In my view each man has their right to stand up and be counted where he sits . . . A lot of us went to battle because some people didn’t believe in the ‘one man, one vote’ rule. As much as I hate violence I would fight over a man’s rights quicker now than I did twenty years ago.” This certainly stayed with me, greatly impacting my own thinking on civil rights. The final semester at U of L, I’d help to organize a march on the state capitol in Frankfort, in support of a state public accommodations law that would end discrimination in businesses and all other facilities open to the public.
Unfortunately, even as I stood on those steps watching the march go by, I knew that the man I worked for opposed its cause. Snyder would later go on to vote against the civil rights bill of 1964, and our opposing views on this issue quietly strained our relationship. But my experience working with him included learning at least one critical lesson. In 1966, three years after my internship, he was running for office, and I very publicly supported his primary opponent. Snyder was mad about this, and he should have been. It was a mistake. Snyder had given me an important opportunity by allowing me to come to Washington and intern for him, and for that, I owed him some degree of allegiance. My decision was one that caused me regret, and it was an important early lesson in loyalty that I would never forget.
Many years later, when Snyder’s wife asked me to deliver his eulogy, after his death in 2007, I was deeply honored, and also a little relieved. It meant that he had gotten over the insult, and for this I was equally grateful.
“The president’s been shot.” It was Friday, November 22, 1963, my last year of college. I had just finished watching an intramural football game on the quadrangle in front of the administration building. I don’t remember who said those words to me, but they are words I’ll never forget. My first thought was, I hope he will live, but it wasn’t too long after arriving at the Student Center to have lunch that we all learned Kennedy had died. I was utterly devastated. I was an ardent supporter of Richard Nixon in the 1960 race. At the time, Kentucky allowed voting at eighteen and my vote for Nixon was the first for a president that I’d cast. I was disappointed with the results of that election, but I couldn’t believe that something like this—something this violent and tragic—could happen in our country. My parents were spending the weekend visiting relatives, and I drove home to an empty house. I was happy to be alone, to sit with my grief without having to speak.
For the next few days, I remained planted on the couch watching the news, trying to grasp what had happened. Come Sunday morning, I had to remind myself to eat. I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich, and brought it back to the den. Sitting in front of the television, I watched Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, right there with the sandwich in my mouth. In today’s world of twenty-four-hour live television news—in a world where we’ve watched a space shuttle explode and terrorists fly commercial airplanes into our nation’s tallest buildings—this might not seem so extraordinary. But at the time, live news was wholly novel; so novel that it was hard to make sense of what I was seeing, to absorb the idea that untold millions of Americans were witnessing this bizarre, dreadful event at the exact same moment. It was enormously depressing. That day, watching the violence unfold, having grown up knowing only peace, I don’t think I could ever have predicted the tumultuous decade about to follow.
The following summer, after graduating from U of L, I was intent on getting an internship on Capitol Hill. I wanted to further understand the workings of the Senate beyond my studies, to learn as much as I could in the most direct way possible. By being there. I wrote a letter to Senator John Sherman Cooper asking if I might come work for him before starting law school that fall at the University of Kentucky. Cooper, a sixty-two-year-old World War II veteran, was considered a very independent Republican, and was not known for making quick decisions, especially about personnel. I’d heard the popular legend that the post office in Ashland, Kentucky, had stayed empty for the entire eight years of the Eisenhower administration because Senator Cooper could never decide who he wanted to make postmaster. I was a young man in a hurry, so when I didn’t receive a response to my letter, I decided to spend my spring break in Washington, DC, where I stopped by Cooper’s office at the Russell building on more than one occasion, reminding whoever happened to be sitting at the front desk of my name and my interest in working for Senator Cooper that summer. Whoever held the authority on hiring decisions eventually relented, and I was offered a job in the mailroom, an offer that may have been born only from a desire to make me go away.
Less than a week after graduating from U of L, I was on my way back to Washington, where I rented a room near American University and began my internship with Senator Cooper. I spent at least eight hours a day in the mailroom, reading letters and sorting the mail by subject area. I couldn’t have been happier. Unlike Snyder, who was a freshman congressman, Cooper was a major player in the Senate, a consummate statesman, and my relationship with him would change the course of my life.
John Sherman Cooper was the first truly great man I’d ever met, and the greatest influence he had on me was what he taught me about statesmanship and governing. He was a practitioner of what I think is the finest form of democracy, the type first laid out by Edmund Burke. A British parliamentarian at the time of the American Revolution, Burke envisioned that people would elect representatives who would follow their own best judgment. This was, of course, well before the day of public-opinion polls, but many elected officials still felt compelled to pander to the popular view. That’s not what Burke had in mind. In a speech delivered to the electors at Bristol, England, in 1774, Burke said, “Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” This was how Senator Cooper approached being a senator.
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While he was sensitive to his constituents’ interests, those interests did not control him. Nothing proved this more to me than his opinion on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Senate had been mostly a graveyard for civil rights bills since Reconstruction. By mid-June of 1964, one month into my internship with Cooper, the civil rights bill had been debated in the Senate for fifty-seven days. One senator filibustered against it by speaking for over fourteen hours. But not John Sherman Cooper.
Senator Cooper had advanced racial equality for every American citizen for his entire public life. In the 1930s, as county judge of Pulaski County in south-central Kentucky during the Great Depression, he was known to take money out of his own pocket to buy a meal for a starving family of any color. In the 1940s, he was one of the first Kentucky circuit-court judges to seat blacks on juries. In 1963, he had tried to pass a bill barring discrimination in public accommodations. It was filibustered, just like the others. And he was determined that the 1964 civil rights bill would not meet the same fate.
From my job in the mailroom, I saw how besieged Cooper’s office was with letters from thousands of people who opposed the bill. While I’m proud that attitudes have come a long way since then, at the time, some Kentuckians weren’t ready for this bill. But despite the considerable opposition from back home, Senator Cooper never wavered. He worked to get the votes to break the filibuster.
It was powerful to witness him stand his ground. But I also wondered how he could hold fast against such forceful opposition. One day I got the chance to ask him about his thoughts on the mail he was receiving, and how it was impacting his thinking on the matter.
“How do you take such a tough stand, and square it with the fact that a considerable number of people who elected you have the opposite view?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate a moment. “I not only represent Kentucky,” he told me. “I represent the nation, and there are times you follow, and times when you lead.”
It was a statement I’d never forget, and it helped me to see that the best kind of representative—and a true leader—is one who doesn’t take a poll on every issue, or weigh the mail to determine how to vote. There are some matters of concern where constituents are right and others where the best representative does what he or she thinks ought to be done. If a constituent doesn’t agree with you, you can hope they at least like that you have conviction. If not, they can always vote you out.
I would put that thought into practice a few months later, when I cast my own vote on Election Day of 1964. I had enrolled at the University of Kentucky College of Law that fall, and after living at home with my parents, I was ready to get out of the house and be on my own. I rented an off-campus apartment in Lexington with a few other guys and set about pursuing my political goals.
On my application to law school at the University of Kentucky, I wasn’t shy about admitting that I had very little interest in a career in the law, and a whole lot of interest in a career in politics. Law school was just my way of getting there. It would end up being a great relief that I had no designs on a future as a successful lawyer because it dawned on me pretty quickly that I was not going to be a great law student. Knowing this, I looked for other ways to excel, mainly by participating in moot court, where I won the award for the best oral advocate, and becoming the president of the Student Bar Association, thereby reaching the goal I had set to be elected leader in high school, college, and law school.
Even as I advanced toward my own goals, I was horrified by the failure of one of my political heroes. When LBJ signed the civil rights bill into law on July 2, 1964, it had the support of most members of Congress, but there were a few exceptions, Barry Goldwater among them. To say that I was extremely disappointed that Goldwater voted against the civil rights bill doesn’t nearly capture how upset I was. Not only did his vote undermine the vast majority of Republicans who supported the bill, but when Goldwater received the Republican nomination for president that year, his position came to inaccurately define the party’s strong position on civil rights—which would continue to hurt our party for decades. The party of Lincoln had remained the party of Lincoln, but at the time, all anyone could say about Republicans on this issue was that we had nominated a candidate who opposed the civil rights bill.
Goldwater’s choice to put our party on the wrong side of such an important issue—if not the most important issue of my generation—led me to seriously question if my sympathies truly lay with the more radical elements of the Republican Party. So great was my anger, in fact, that on November 3, 1964, I cast my vote for LBJ. It was a vote I would soon regret. Johnson’s second term was marked by a bloody, divisive, and unsuccessful escalation of the Vietnam War and a massive and largely ineffective expansion of government here at home. As others have noted, Johnson waged a war on poverty and poverty won.
This was an important early lesson about Washington’s overconfidence in its own ability to systematically solve complex social problems through government programs, which not only bloat government bureaucracies and centralize decision making among administrative elites, but also frequently carry significant and unexpected human costs, to say nothing of the opportunity costs associated with the economic stagnation they foster. Given what unfolded, I would come to regret this vote more than any I’d ever cast.
But my Election Day turn against Goldwater was an early marker for me nonetheless. On many issues I had found myself in agreement and sympathy with the gritty Arizonan. He spoke for many of us who believed something important was at stake in the battle against world communism. His willingness to take on labor union corruption and the reflexive embrace of big government was also refreshing. Yet Goldwater’s rigid attachment to ideology blinded him at a crucial moment, and the consequences of that decision were not insignificant. Some argue that Reagan’s presidency wouldn’t have been possible without Goldwater. Perhaps. But we also got the Great Society in the bargain. And a stigma for our party that we did not in any way deserve. A century of principled advocacy for civil rights was forgotten the moment we nominated Barry Goldwater as our party’s candidate for president. Sacrificing that proud heritage, not to mention our chances at the White House, was tragic any way you cut it.
The most memorable experience from this time was one I had in the summer of 1965, at the end of my first year of law school, when I paid witness to a significant moment in history that came as the result of courageous, admirable leaders. I had decided to go to Washington to visit friends. While there, I stopped by Senator Cooper’s office to say hello. In a stroke of blind luck, Cooper himself appeared, and motioned for me to follow him. I wondered where we were going. He’d done this one other time. On the last day of my internship a few years earlier, he’d arrived at my desk toward the end of the day.
“Come with me,” he’d said, leading me outside, to where his car was waiting. Cooper and his wife, Lorraine, were known for the parties they hosted and the crowd they hung around with; they were the Kennedys’ first dinner guests after JFK was elected president. Cooper looked the part. He wore well-tailored suits and Brooks Brothers shoes. We arrived at his home, and in the very parlor where people like Jackie Kennedy and Katharine Graham were accustomed to gather, Cooper, Lorraine, and I drank champagne and toasted the end of my internship.
But this time, we were on our way to someplace far more extraordinary. We walked together to the Capitol Rotunda, which was teeming with security. Then Senator Cooper told me what was happening.
“President Johnson is about to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Sure enough, the president of the United States emerged. Every good biography of President Johnson describes him as a larger-than-life man, with an imposing physical presence. They are correct. President Johnson towered over everyone else and had such a commanding presence, he seemed to fill the Rotunda. I was overwhelmed to witness such a moment in history, knowing that majorities in both parties voted for the bill.
For two more years, I gritted it out at law school, and at the time of my graduation, the Vietnam War was in full swing. Two days after taking the bar exam, I arrived at Fort Knox to begin basic training for my service in the army reserves. Since beating polio, I’d never been able to run for prolonged distances, and I struggled through the exercises. When I was sent to the doctor to be examined, he discovered that I had a condition called optic neuritis, and a few weeks into my military service, I was honorably discharged for this medical condition.
I moved back to Louisville, and took a job at a law firm, handling tax returns, divorces, and workers’ comp cases. It was a time of highs and lows. On the one hand, I’d just gotten married to Sherrill Redmon, my college girlfriend of many years. But I was very unhappy professionally, sitting at a desk, shuffling papers.
Having seen in John Sherman Cooper what a life lived in pursuit of greatness could yield, I knew I had a very specific and far greater ambition: to follow in his footsteps, to become a US senator. I was not afraid to admit this ambition. My parents had taught me it’s not what you acquire in life that’s important, but what you contribute. I could see no better, more significant way to contribute than serving in the US Senate, where the biggest issues—war and peace, the economy—are considered and resolved. Knowing that was the job I wanted, I also knew I would have to work like hell to get there. Having a goal is a good way of achieving it, and for me, the best chance I had at achieving it was to play a smart and well-planned long game.
The Long Game Page 4