by Ed Bethune
In the early stages of the ethics case, Newt signed a letter to the Ethics Committee that omitted a fact that should have been included. The omission was the fault of another lawyer Newt had hired to prepare the letter. Other documents proved that Newt was not personally trying to keep anything from the committee; nevertheless, he took responsibility for the lawyer’s error and agreed to accept a reprimand and reimburse the committee for the cost it incurred. That ended the matter.
Congress needs a way to deal with members who have violated laws or codes of conduct, but the current system is failing. It is too ponderous and subject to manipulation. Most of all it is hard for a member of Congress accused of an ethics violation to get a fair hearing. The incident involving Congressman Jim McDermott is an egregious example of how partisanship can infect the ethics process, but there are other reasons the system is not working.
In the real world if a person has committed a civil or criminal wrong, a trial is held in a court, and the lawyers and litigants are bound to follow rules of procedure and evidence that are designed to produce a fair trial, one that is unbiased by irrelevant, prejudicial information.
A congressional ethics proceeding, on the other hand, is wide open to bias. It can come from partisans, on both sides of the aisle, who make public comments designed to stoke hatred and prejudice. In the extreme, bias can come from the likes of Jim McDermott, a partisan willing to bias a case even though he is sitting in judgment of a colleague with an express duty to be fair and impartial. It can come from the media, who seem ever eager to write stories full of innuendo but short on facts. It can come from organized outside groups that claim to be nonpartisan, but which are led by people with long records of partisanship. All these forces, usually obvious, occasionally subtle, are at play when someone files an ethics complaint against a member of Congress.
All told, I spent twelve years representing members of Congress in matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee. While in that position, I had a rare chance, as the Republican “Go-to-Guy” for ethics issues, to view it from a unique perspective. I saw how partisans, locked in a great struggle for political power, are willing to use the ethics process to portray colleagues as criminals when they are not. More often than not, they exaggerate and distort the way politicians raise campaign funds alleging that a member of Congress has sold out to special interests. This pharisaic twist occurs even though the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that raising campaign money is—whether we like it or not—part of the American political process.
My friend and client Tom DeLay was the victim of such hypocrisy. He went through two years of Hell with the partisan Democrats doing everything they could to make him look bad. In the end, the Ethics Committee found that he had not violated a single law or House rule but doing what it does best, the committee invented a new procedure and issued a fifty-six page, carefully worded report attempting to justify its recommendation that Tom deserved admonishment. The report proved only that Tom was doing the same kind of things that many members do. In a fitting touch of irony, the Ethics Committee concluded that Chris Bell, the disgruntled member of Congress who had filed the charges against Tom, did violate a rule of the House because he knowingly made false and exaggerated allegations in his complaint.
Tom, as I write this memoir, is still the subject of a political prosecution in Texas that also concerns campaign fundraising. Texas lawyers have represented Tom in that case, and I hope it will ultimately be resolved in his favor by the Texas Appeals Court. Meanwhile, the entire episode has destroyed his career and ruined his reputation.
55
THE GOLDEN YEARS
The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy
life without the chance; the last half consists
of the chance without the capacity.
Mark Twain
Lana and I have tried to turn Mark Twain’s quote upside down. We created chances to enjoy life when we were young, and we have refused to be scared out of taking chances now that we are older. Why should we—young or old—not live life to the fullest?
On December 19, 2005, my seventieth birthday, we made another dramatic change, this time in our work. I left Bracewell & Giuliani and the law practice to devote my energy to writing and political matters. At the same time, Lana left the real estate business to focus on her emerging career as an artist (her latest work, The Snotgreen Sea, adorns the cover of this book).
Our new ventures would also give us more time to enjoy our eight granddaughters. I could always go back to the practice of law if we needed money or if an interesting case came along.
The first thing we did was no surprise to our family, our friends, or us. We took a cruise to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In a small concession to advancing age, we swapped our second sailboat, Greensleeves, for a forty-foot trawler, a slow moving motor vessel that averages about seven knots an hour.
It is a twelve hundred mile trip on the Intracoastal Waterway so—to beat the cold weather—we moved our boat from the Chesapeake to Fernandina Beach on the Georgia-Florida border in September before I left the law firm in December.
True sailors mock the transition from a sailboat to a “stink-pot” as “going over to the dark side.” In spite of that, we figured to live on board Coaster and cruise the East Coast for four months, making stops at interesting places on the trip south as well as on our return to the Chesapeake.
The Intracoastal Waterway is a national treasure, a navigable waterway that uses a few well placed manmade canals to connect natural inlets, saltwater rivers, bays, and sounds. It gives mariners an inside, protected route up and down the East Coast. The waterway allows boats to avoid many of the hazards of travel on the open sea, but that is not to say that travel on the waterway is a piece of cake.
In North Carolina, the Albemarle Sound and the Cape Fear River can turn a pleasant cruise into a nightmare in a matter of hours. The same is true for the swift tidal currents and narrow channels in South Carolina and Georgia. We have traveled these dangerous waters many times, and we long ago concluded that the reward is worth the risk.
Our travel on Coaster, was easier than our earlier waterway trips on Salute and Greensleeves. There is less work on a motor vessel and the accommodations on board are similar to those in a tiny studio apartment. We have a motorized dinghy that we use to get to and from shore when we anchor out and we carry two bicycles that get us around town when we tie up at a dock.
We left Fernandina Beach and motored slowly down the waterway to the city of Fort Pierce, Florida. Many boaters pass by Fort Pierce in a hurry to get farther south. We did not make that mistake. The old city is a beauty, remarkably well preserved. There is a Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning at the entry to the City Marina and the local preservation association has refurbished the historic Sunrise Theatre, now an attraction for theatre lovers. We arrived there in time to enjoy the extensive Christmas decorations and musical celebrations along the waterfront. We had planned to stay only a day or two, but once there we found it hard to leave.
A month later we reluctantly left Fort Pierce and headed to Fort Lauderdale and our slip at the International Swimming Hall of Fame Marina.
The beautiful Hall of Fame Marina is on the narrow spit of land that separates the ocean from the Intracoastal Waterway. Our slip put us in such a position that while sitting on our aft-deck we could see scores of megayachts—worth millions—berthed directly behind us at Bahia Mar, the fanciest marina in Florida. By looking to the right we could watch boats going up and down the waterway and to our left, we could see the ocean and the beachgoers. At night, we opened all the windows and hatches on Coaster and slept to the rhythm of surf crashing against sand. We were definitely in the high-rent district of Fort Lauderdale.
Throughout our stay at the Hall of Fame Marina we watched hundreds of people come and go to the megayachts. Most of them were renting the huge yachts for two or three days. They would live high on the hog, pampered around th
e clock by a crew of uniformed young people. It was fun to watch them, especially since we were enjoying the same fun for five percent of what they were paying.
We made daily treks to the beach and rode our bikes all over Fort Lauderdale, but occasionally we took the city transit, buses numbers 40 and 01, to Gulfstream Park where we enjoyed thoroughbred racing at its finest.
Our new approach to life gave us a good feeling, we had gone from boom to bust so many times in our life that it was odd to think that we did not plan to go back to conventional work at the end of our cruise to Florida.
Many people shift to an overly conservative lifestyle as they grow older. We believe that is a sure formula for shriveling up, mentally and physically. It is important to stay active, to run risks, to be bold, to dare. Risk and fear lie at the heart of Mark Twain’s quote. If we, as we age, still have the physical capacity to enjoy life, then the biggest obstacle to a full life is fear itself.
Lana and I are not immune to fear and ailments, we have had our share of both.
I had to deal with one such challenge in 1997, when I was sixty-two. I went in for my annual physical and the doctor told me that my PSA was too high. I asked him, “What is PSA?” I had always enjoyed good health and was surprised to learn that my laboratory results were not perfect. He sent me to the urologist, and soon I was on the operating table at Georgetown University Medical Center. I had prostate cancer and the best option was to take it out, so that is what they did.
After the operation, I was on the fast track to recovery but then I encountered one of the great ironies of my life. My body did not like the surgery and in a few months, scar tissue began to block my ability to pee. It got to the point that I could only pee by inserting a disposable catheter each time my bladder filled up. This is not a fun exercise, but I mused at the irony of getting up in the middle of the night to force myself to pee. For the first fourteen years of my life, I wet the bed every night and tried everything I could to keep from peeing. Now, at age sixty-two I could not pee at all. This went on for three months until the doctor put me back on the operating table and removed the scar tissue using a medical procedure similar to what the plumbers do when they open up a sewer line with a roto-rooter. The roto-rootering worked and so did the original surgery. The prostate cancer has been gone for fifteen years and I pee freely, but not in bed.
Such challenges lurk around as we get older, but we do not intend to let them slow us down. As long as we are physically able, we are determined to enjoy the gift of life.
Lana was worried that I would be bored without the practice of law to keep me focused, and we talked about that a lot. As it turned out I spent a good part of the next three years gathering material and writing this memoir and I spent the rest getting to know my eight granddaughters and letting them get to know me. I have seen more soccer games, swim meets, gymnastic contests, basketball games, track meets, cross-country races, tennis matches, dance recitals, ice skating shows, school graduations, plays, musicals, and piano rehearsals than I can count.
Our eight granddaughters and their parents with Lana and me in Maine. Summer, 2011.
I am busier than ever in this new phase of my life and to complete my days, I rekindled an old love, baseball. I have been a Baltimore Orioles fan since Brooks Robinson joined the team in 1955. Baseball has been the one constant in my life since childhood, and after I left the law firm, I have seen at least a dozen games each year at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore. I watch at least twenty-five Oriole games each year on television. Ask me anything about the Orioles—or say anything about them—and you will have my full attention.
Lana and I are blessed. As we neared the end of 2008, we began to give a lot of thought to how we have managed to stay married for fifty years and do as many things as we have done. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French writer and aviator, said, “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction,” and that has been a key to our success. Throughout the years, we have been open with each other, never holding back our innermost thoughts. It is perilous, we believe, for a husband or a wife to have a hidden agenda. That approach undermines the ability to plan for the future and dream great dreams.
We have had as much fun planning and dreaming as we have had in doing, and honest teamwork has kept us looking in the same direction.
Most people get the family and friends together for a Golden Anniversary celebration, but as we approached our special day, we had to face facts. Paige and Chris at that time lived in Bel Air, California and their six girls would be in school in late January. Sam and Alison lived in Virginia Beach, Virginia and their two girls were in school there. We needed a celebration plan that would work for everyone, one that would memorialize the day and be special for all the kids and us.
Lana and I decided to celebrate by flying out west to a secluded place, and we developed a plan that turned out to be a masterstroke. We landed in Montana on January 18, 2009. We had arranged to stay on a ranch near Ennis, Montana, a spread owned jointly by Chris Nassetta’s father and his uncle, Leland Phillips. It is a beautiful place, particularly in January when the Madison River freezes over and snow blankets the entire valley and continues up to the mountaintops. The sturdy cabin where we stayed has a great room with an enormous fireplace that sup-plants an entire wall. Big stacks of wood for the fireplace are easy to reach. Outside, just across from the cabin stands a small, beautiful chapel that is empty most of the time because it is for the exclusive use of those who stay on the ranch. There are horses to ride, trails to walk, and lots of scenery and wildlife to photograph.
Our plan for the anniversary was simple. We would go to the chapel alone at 10:30 a.m. on the twenty-fourth and repeat our vows. That was the exact moment of our wedding, fifty years earlier.
On the day before our ceremony, we emailed copies of our wedding vows to all our children and grandchildren and told them what we planned to do. We asked them to read the vows and think about us at the exact moment we would be in the chapel.
Next, we arranged a conference call for 11:00 a.m. so we could all talk about the vows and celebrate the occasion.
Everything went off like clockwork. At 10:25 a.m., we entered the chapel and walked to the altar that is in front of a large window with a magnificent panorama of pastureland backed by snow-covered mountains. Soon we tore ourselves away from the view and turned to each other. It was time to repeat our vows and reconcile our thoughts and feelings with those of fifty years ago. For a second it seemed clumsy since we were all alone but as I looked into Lana’s eyes, it became easy, as natural as our relationship has become over the years. The eyes and the soul are the same forever. The face around the eyes may crease and weather, and the body may age, but none of that can change all that has gone before. That is what I saw in her eyes—her tender hazel eyes that had the sparkle and freshness of yesterday.
Lana felt the same—I know she did—as we repeated the marriage vows. The words are so familiar: “In the presence of God … to live together in holy marriage … to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death … in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
We kissed to seal the special moment and turned to leave the altar. As we walked back up the aisle the stained glass window over the door, glowing from the light outside, told the story of our life together. A rainbow of many colors—arched from one side of the window to the other over a chalice and loaves—bespoke the story of God’s love, and our love for each other. Our life story has been and is a story of blessed love, not a pot of gold.
As soon as we got back to the cabin we began the conference call. All eight granddaughters got on the line along with Paige and Chris and Sam and Alison. The girls had read the vows and we talked to each of them and answered their many questions about our long marriage. We told them about our visit with Dr. Kenneth Shamb
lin, the preacher who married us in 1959, and our special pledge to be loyal to each other. We also told them how, after our first argument, we made a rule that we would never go to bed without first making up. I am convinced the girls learned more from the way we celebrated our anniversary than they would ever have learned if we had done it in the conventional way.
The next day Lana and I got up early and drove a couple of hours from Ennis to West Yellowstone, Montana where we caught a snowcoach—a big van with skis on the front and tractor-style tracks on the rear—for a trip into Yellowstone National Park.
It was a perfect day, a perfect place, and a perfect time to reminisce and think deeply about how we should live the rest of our lives.
The winter-blue sky, deep snow, and waterfalls with cones of ice set against the mountains and valleys were in sharp contrast with the evergreen trees and the endless supply of steam rising from hundreds of springs and geysers. The earth is God’s work—there can be no doubt.
The winter-critters of Yellowstone, big and small, forage for food. The slow-moving bison were in clusters, using their large heads like plows to push aside the snow so they could get to the food below. The elk herds were scattered, mainly in the valleys along the rivers, but they stood out against ground that was thick-layered with snow. There are bears, wolves, and bobcats, and hundreds of smaller creatures in the park, but they like to hide and they are hard to spot. The birdlife, in winter, is scarcer than in summer and hard to see but we saw the king of the sky, the bald eagle, nesting in a large tree close to water. The magnificence of the animal kingdom is always inspiring and it leaves no doubt: This too is God’s work.
God also made man, but he gave him the ability to think and choose how he wants to live. All too often, man forgets who is in charge and puts himself in the center.