by Ed Bethune
It was inevitable that the media would call from time to time to get a quote about some issue, but for the most part, they left me alone. I cannot say as much for the Republican Party of Arkansas. I had planned to stay out of politics for a few years, at least until I reestablished my law practice, but in 1986, as we approached the end of President Reagan’s second term in office, Republicans all across Arkansas started to worry about the upcoming 1988 presidential election.
Bill Clinton had retaken the governor’s office after his defeat by Frank White in 1980 and the state Democratic party was in a strong position.
A number of influential party leaders beseeched me to run for state party chairman on the theory that I could hold the party together as we scrambled to choose our best nominee for president in 1988. There was a legitimate concern that Arkansas Republicans might split up as we had in the primary contest between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford in 1976, a fracture that enabled Jimmy Carter to carry Arkansas on his way to the White House. Carter beat Ford by a margin of sixty-five to thirty-five percent, a drubbing that put Arkansas back in the Democrat column for the first time since 1964. I agreed to run, won the chairmanship, and served through the 1988 presidential year.
We did just fine. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was our nominee, and he easily defeated Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts. Bush won Arkansas with fifty-six percent of the vote compared to forty-two percent for Dukakis. Arkansas was back in the Republican column, and my job as party chair was over. I was not suited for the incessant need to raise money or the infighting that is a healthy dynamic for a growing party. I did not run for re-election.
At the beginning of 1987, I received an offer to take a high position with First Federal, a savings and loan association in Little Rock. My ego got the better of me. I had never worked in corporate America. The job was a new and different challenge so I decided to try it. It was a mistake. I am just too independent minded and free-spirited to be a corporate man. The misfit was soon apparent to me and to the leadership of First Federal. We decided that we should dissolve our contract by mutual agreement, so that is what we did before the end of 1987. I returned to my law practice.
In December 1988, I took another trip on the blue water, but this one was quite different from our voyages on Salute. Our son Sam was in his third year in the United States Navy and his ship, the USS Carl Vinson—a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier—was returning from a six-month tour of duty in the North Arabian Sea where it had spent eighty-two days escorting American tankers.
Sam invited me to meet the Vinson in Hawaii and join him for a Tiger Cruise, an official U.S. Navy program that allows family members to board the ship and go on a cruise so they can see their sons and daughters in action. The public relations program solidifies the tie between the Navy, sailors, and their extended families.
Many Tiger Cruises are of short duration, but our cruise was going to be a humdinger. Sam’s ship would arrive in Pearl Harbor on December 7, to celebrate the forty-seventh anniversary of the Japanese attack in 1941. Lana flew with me to Hawaii, and we were there when the Vinson steamed into the harbor. Sam was in a helicopter that was flying channel guard. When the helicopter flew close to us, Lana—with a mother’s eagle eye—spotted Sam in the open doorway. It was quite a thrill to see all that on such a special day. The next morning, I and all the other Tigers went onboard and the Vinson departed for Alameda in San Francisco Bay.
We were nine days at sea and had a chance to see a number of operations. The greatest thrill was to see my son in action. As a rescue swimmer and anti-submarine warfare specialist, he has logged thousands of hours in helicopters flying over dangerous waters. I was bursting with pride every day of the trip.
The Navy has a rule that Tigers will stay in the same quarters with their Navy relative. If your son is new to the Navy, as Sam was, then you will stay with him in a compartment populated by scores of enlisted sailors. It reminded me of my days on the troop ship when I was a lowly enlisted man in the U. S. Marine Corps. We also ate in the same mess hall and used the same heads that our Navy relatives used.
As soon as we left Hawaii, Lana flew to San Francisco to meet us. She was on a hill overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge when we passed beneath it on our way to Alameda. Sam and the other sailors were manning the rail in their whites, and the fireboats that met us shot sprays of colored water high into the sky.
When we pulled up to the dock, the Navy Band was there and they played “Anchors Aweigh” and the “Marine Corps Hymn.” I was sniveling and trying to hide it, but so were many of the other Tigers, especially those who had served in the military.
We met Lana and had a grand time in San Francisco. Since then, Sam has completed twenty-three years in the Navy, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. His chest is full of ribbons telling a story of brave service on the sea as well as a tour in Afghanistan. Yes, we are proud of him and thankful for what the Navy and other services do for us, every day of every year.
43
BACK TO WASHINGTON,
LANA SHINES
When good character adds adornment to natural
charms, whoever comes near is doubly captivated.
Meander, 290 B.C.
I met George H. W. Bush when he was vice president and I was in Congress. Lana and I were on the best of terms with him and his wife, Barbara. He campaigned for me when I ran for the Senate in 1984, and we loved to talk about the time Lana and I sailed Salute into Kennebunkport in 1983. Our relationship was close, but not as close as the one we had with Dan and Marilyn Quayle.
Dan was a colleague of mine in the House of Representatives, and a fellow member of Chowder and Marching.
Marilyn and Lana were good friends. They were together a lot when I was in the House, and one of their favorite things to do was to shop for bargains at the outlet malls in Virginia and Maryland. In January of 1989, the Quayles were about to move into the Vice President’s Residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D. C. They needed a social secretary and Marilyn asked Lana to take the job.
I did not want a job in the Bush administration, but I could tell that Lana wanted to help Marilyn and Dan get off to a good start. She was perfect for the job because she knew the protocol, the people, and the politics of high office. The job involved organizing event after event at the residence—sometimes three a day—for an endless stream of supporters and dignitaries, domestic and foreign. In the course of her year they entertained Charlton Heston, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan, and Prince Charles, just to name a few. The culinary issues—serving Arabs at breakfast, Israelis at lunch, and Englishmen at dinner—would stagger a normal person, but Lana thrives on such challenges. That, coupled with her easy manner and the ability to work with complete strangers made her a perfect social secretary for Vice President Quayle and Mrs. Quayle.
Her new role did mean that we would have to move back to Washington. I had just landed a new client, the FBI Agent’s Association. That representation would require me to be in Washington a lot, so I decided to open my own law office in D. C. I landed a few other clients and soon I was doing well. Most importantly, Lana was having a great time with her new gig, meeting one dignitary after another. She did a great job and I was happy for her, but it was a demanding job, and she had told Marilyn and Dan at the outset that she would help them get started but did not want to make a career out of it.
In early 1990, we began to think about making another blue water cruise. By the time Lana finished her work with the vice president, our boat, Salute, was back on the Chesapeake and we were spending more time than ever resurrecting the good feelings we had when we sailed to Maine and especially the feelings we had on our six-month cruise to the Bahamas. We talked about it incessantly but I had a challenging legal matter that I needed to finish before we could go anywhere.
44
LAWYERING FOR NEWT
Those men who carry about and who listen
to accusations,
should be hanged, if so it could be at my decision—the
carriers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears.
Titus Maccius Plautus
I developed a unique relationship with Newt Gingrich of Georgia from the first day we met in 1978. He had just won a seat in Congress and so had I. Our friendship would draw me into a nationally publicized struggle between Newt and the Democrats in 1989, long after I was out of Congress.
As new members of the U. S. House of Representatives, we were intellectual soul mates and our personal chemistry was good. I respected him and he respected me. I think Newt admired the fact that I had worn so many different hats before coming to Congress.
Early on, we challenged the Republican leadership in the House. I was president of the freshman class of Republican members of the House of Representatives and Newt was secretary. We led a mini-revolt by issuing a demand to the Republican party leaders in the House to come to our organizational meeting at the Marriott Hotel at Dulles International Airport to explain what they had in mind for the upcoming session of Congress. It was an audacious gambit for a bunch of rookies, but we believed the Republican leadership had developed a professional minority-member attitude.
We were determined to change things. We spoke out publicly, saying it was “Day One of the new Republican party.” John Rhodes of Arizona, the minority leader, took offense at our public contentions and confronted us on the House floor shortly after we took the oath of office. He said, “I’ve had a bellyful of you two, you better be careful. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.” It was a dumb approach to take with two strong-willed new members of the House. It was a blatant attempt to force us to get in line with the current Republican leadership. I told Rhodes, “John, you better put that damn sword away because we intend to press our agenda to change the House.” After that, I was not a favorite of John Rhodes, and he did everything he could to hold back my progress in the Republican Conference.
We then mounted an open challenge to his leadership. Soon, John Rhodes announced he was not going to run for re-election as minority leader. We had planted a seed of reform that would, fifteen years later, enable the Republicans, under Newt’s leadership, to take control of the House of Representatives.
Newt started a small caucus in 1983 called the Conservative Opportunity Society, COS for short. I, along with Newt, Dan Lungren, Henry Hyde, Bob Walker, Connie Mack, Vin Weber and a few others were charter members. We all believed that we needed to throw off the image that the Republicans were just trying to install a cheaper welfare state. We wanted people to see the Republican party as the party of growth, and opportunity. We were all disciples of Jack Kemp’s mantra that a free society and a free entrepreneurial system will create the incentives for the American people to work, save, invest, and produce. Later, virtually every Republican member of the House joined the caucus and there was no need for it anymore. We had advanced the idea and that was the main purpose of COS.
In 1988, Newt went after the speaker of the House, Jim Wright, a Democrat from Texas on ethics charges. Newt alleged that Wright had wrongfully profited from a hastily thrown together manuscript that he sold as a “book.” That led to an investigation that forced Jim Wright to resign as speaker. The Democrat members of the House were furious and began looking for ways to get their pound of flesh from Newt.
Shortly before Wright resigned, Congressman Bill Alexander of Arkansas took the lead for the Democrats. He filed a long, ten-count ethics charge against Newt Gingrich that listed over four hundred separate allegations. It reeked of partisanship, which Bill Alexander did not deny. He said, “I have become increasingly outraged by the pompous moralizing of Congressman Newt Gingrich … we have all witnessed his bizarre and outrageous condemnations of individual members of Congress.” Newt responded saying, “The charges come from enraged Democrats led by an almost irrational Bill Alexander.”
The centerpiece of Alexander’s contention was that Newt violated House rules in writing and marketing a book called Window of Opportunity. He tried to liken what Newt had done to what Jim Wright had done. In the spring of 1989, Newt asked me to represent him before the Ethics Committee and I did. It took a few months but we successfully disposed of all the allegations. Alexander got his headlines and managed to smear Newt, but his attempt at revenge was a conspicuous failure. Newt’s book was a real book, not a contrivance as had been the case with Wright’s “book.” It was the first time I served as counsel for a member charged with violating the rules of the House of Representatives, but it would not be the last.
45
THE CALL OF THE SEA, AGAIN
The restless, deep, dividing sea. That flows and
foams from shore to shore. Calls to its sunburned
chivalry, “Push out, set sail, explore.”
Henry Van Dyke
As I was winding up my representation of Newt Gingrich before the Ethics Committee, Lana and I decided to make another blue water sailing trip. Lana had completed the year that she promised the vice president and we hungered to get away on Salute to relive our Bahamian experience. Paige had a good job and Sam was in the Navy and doing well. My mother and Lana’s mother were doing well in Little Rock. We were young and healthy; why should we not give it a go? We had the seed of a new dream but there were many questions.
Where should we go? What should we do? What could we learn? How long should we stay?
People have always given us credit for being adventurous, but one political commentator took it beyond adventurous when he said, “Bethune would walk into a buzz saw.” That may be a fair description, albeit too graphic. Like my father, I have always been a dreamer. I think we all want to live a life that suits our inner needs, but often reality gets in the way. My dreaming, for some reason, includes an incessant compulsion to go beyond dreaming. I want to live out my dreams, and I have always been especially attracted to those that seem unattainable. Driven more by compulsion than bravery, I have ventured out and taken up challenges that others might pass by. It sounds extreme, even crazy, but I cannot resist the call when it comes.
Lana is a little different. She likes adventure but she can take it or leave it. She loves to see new places and explore new frontiers, but the thing that really drives her is the urge to share the rush I get from living out my dreams. Her main fear is that she will not live life to the fullest, and one who has not been to sea on a small boat has missed one of life’s great experiences.
Together, we have proven—at least to ourselves—that magical things happen when two people sharing a dream embark on a great adventure.
At first, our new dream was just a desire to sail away, but it finally took shape. We would sail Salute across the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, travel the routes of the Apostle Paul, and write a book about it.
By this time, we had compiled an extensive résumé of blue water and coastal sailing. We had sailed from the Chesapeake to Maine and back. Later we had sailed from the Chesapeake to the Bahamas where we cruised for six months in 1985. After that, we kept our boat in Fort Myers, Florida for several years and made periodic cruises through the keys and on the west coast of Florida, including trips to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. After George Herbert Walker Bush became president, we moved back to Washington, D.C. and in 1989, we sailed Salute back to the Chesapeake and berthed her in Galesville, Maryland. All along the way, we met many blue water sailors and talked to them about their adventures and we avidly read every monthly bulletin from the Seven Seas Cruising Association, a compilation of voyaging reports from sailors like us. We had a lot of sailing experience and knowledge and we were physically fit.
Preparing to cross the Atlantic in a thirty-one-foot sailboat is a lot of work, but our plan to cruise extensively after the crossing created an even longer list of things we needed to do. We had committed to go, so we started working on our list. We would do our best to get it all done, but a long list of concerns was not going to
deter us or cause us to delay our trip.
It is not easy to get away from the endless array of obligations and responsibilities in the workaday world; the inevitable strings of life that tie us down and steal our freedom. I am talking about licenses, registrations, memberships, insurance, maintaining property, debts, and things of that sort. I am not talking about the welcome obligations and responsibilities that we have to loved ones, family and friends.
I wound down my law practice and transferred a few pending matters to other lawyers. We moved out of our Arlington, Virginia rental house and stored our furniture and belongings in my old Searcy law office, which was vacant at the time. We sold our cars, arranged our finances and established a way to get our mail forwarded so that we could stay in touch with our family.
We took our sloop, Salute, to Hartge’s Yacht Yard in Galesville, Maryland for painting and repairs to critical woodwork which had begun to show some wear and tear. Then we took her to a rigger in Deale, Maryland who put up all new rigging. A sail maker put on a new roller-furling genoa, which is a large foresail than can be made smaller by rolling it around the forestay. I installed a satellite navigation system and a single-sideband radio that would allow us to receive and transmit while on the high seas, a necessity in the days before cell phones and satellite phones. By the time we were done, we had spent nearly $20,000 getting the boat ready, but we were a hundred percent confident she could make the trip.
I read everything I could find about Atlantic crossings, and after studying the pilot charts that show weather trends based on information collected from sailors for as far back as six hundred years, we decided to leave Deale at the end of May 1990. There are fewer gales in the North Atlantic in June than any other month, and we had no reason to expect otherwise.