2016 Election, Baseball, Civil Rights, Gay Marriage, Politics, Supreme Court, Television, Uruguay

History…

A great day for America with expansion of rights for same sex couples or a bleak day where the tyranny of five activist judges trump the political process creating a threat to democracy?

NBC photo
NBC photo

Take your pick: The profound political divides in the United States are to be found in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion granting Constitutional protection to those of the same sex who seek to marry and in the four dissenting opinions that blast that finding.

It’s dangerous to predict the historic importance of a single Supreme Court decision, but I’ll fearlessly hazard a guess that the decision on Obergefell v. Hodgesremember those names – will be remembered fifty or a hundred years from now along side Brown v. Board of Education, the historic decision that ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional.

One major difference in the two decisions separated by sixty-one years is that Brown was decided by a unanimous Court, while Obergefell was decided by a Court profoundly divided. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s judicial leadership helped create that earlier landmark civil rights decision in 1954. Chief Justice John Robert by contrast wrote the dissent in a decision decided 5-4.

The opinion and dissents will be picked over and analyzed for years, but at first blush I am struck by two things: the Court majority’s embrace of marriage as a fundamental right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment (in the same way the Warren Court applied the Constitution to public schools) and the minority’s fierce condemnation of the Court’s overreaching by taking a divisive social and, to some, religious issue out of the hands of elected politicians.

Justice Anthony Kennedy
Justice Anthony Kennedy

Justice Anthony Kennedy – the real Chief Justice at least on this issue – wrote in the Court’s decision: “The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right. The Nation’s courts are open to injured individuals who come to them to vindicate their own direct, personal stake in our basic charter. An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act. The idea of the Constitution [here Kennedy quotes from an earlier Court decision] “was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.”

Kennedy was truly eloquent elsewhere in his opinion in describing the institution of marriage, but the paragraph above is the heart of his argument – certain rights in our democracy and under our Constitution simply cannot be left to the “vicissitudes” of politics. Rights are rights, Kennedy says, the Constitution guarantees those rights no matter what a legislature in Idaho or an appeals court in Texas might say.

Roberts in his dissent seemed almost unable to restrain his contempt for Kennedy’s reasoning about fundamental rights. “Understand well what this dissent is about,” Roberts wrote. “It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer.”

Chief Justice John Roberts
Chief Justice John Roberts

Roberts and the Court’s other dissenters argued for leaving the decision to those Idaho legislators even at the risk of creating a vast and confusing landscape of law related to one of society’s most fundamental institutions.

[You might be excused for remembering that Roberts had no reservations about having “five lawyers” overrule the overwhelming majority of the United States Congress when the Court gutted the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Emerson’s famous line comes to mind: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines…Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”]

Roberts may have accomplished one thing with his passionate dissent – his opinion upholding Obamacare is suddenly off the front page. The staunch conservatives who criticized him yesterday for siding with the president on health care can now view Roberts as rehabilitated with his dissent on same sex marriage.

Justice Antonin Scalia, of course, went even farther in his dissent. “When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868,” Scalia wrote in his dissent, “every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases.” In other words, in Scalia’s judicial view, nothing at all has changed since Andrew Johnson sat in the White House.

And there is more that I quote at some length because, well, because Justice Scalia is a man of words and often pungent, even nasty words.

Justice Antonin Scalia
Justice Antonin Scalia

“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic”, Scalia wrote. “It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; [as many of his dissents have been accused of containing] it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. ‘The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.’ (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie.”

Whew.

Remember that it was just over a decade ago that Karl Rove engineering George W. Bush’s two elections, at least in part, by embracing a strategy of placing polarizing anti-same sex marriage issues on many state ballots and endorsing a Constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage. Since then opinion has moved so quickly on the issue that it was perhaps inevitable that the Court would follow that opinion and codify what a solid majority of Americans now embrace. Still that political evolution makes Justice Kennedy’s decision no less historic. As President Obama correctly noted after years of incremental change; change that most of the time seems so very slow to so very many, justice can come like “a thunderbolt.”

Another fearless prediction: When the history books record the importance of Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, the words “landmark” and “historic” will be attached. The decision will be remembered for expanding rights for a significant and deprived group of American citizens under their Constitution. Scalia’s dissent will be remembered, if at all, as an artifact of a different country and a different time and, of course, for its outrageous bombast.

Ask the nearest hippie.

 

2016 Election, Climate Change, Egan, Gay Marriage, Human Rights, Idaho Politics, Uruguay, World Cup

So Goes Indiana…

Indiana Religious Freedom Law OppositionSomewhere, maybe, there is a political operative for one of the Republican presidential candidates who is sitting at a desk, hunched over a computer smiling at the viral news that the Grand Old Party has taken a another hard right turn into the war zone of culture, but some how I doubt it.

The #indiana has, at least for a few more days, reshaped and shuffled the pre-primary primary season for the Republican Party and I’m betting no one from Jeb Bush to Ted Cruz was really looking to be defined by the actions of the Indiana state legislature. But, you try to go to the White House with the issues you have, as Donald Rumsfeld might say.

Indiana, home to great basketball, fast motor racing and St. Elmo’s Steakhouse (one of the greatest I’ve ever visited), has discovered the power of social media this week. When Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a “religious freedom” law into effect a few days ago he set off a national debate vastly beyond anything the Hoosier state has seen in a long, long time. The time that 30t-mushnick-300x3001former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight threw a chair hardly registers compared to the shock of Pence and Indiana Republicans touching a new third rail of American politics – discrimination couched as expressions of religious belief.

But first, let’s consider the politics. According to the Gallup polling organization, the level of acceptance of homosexuality in the country is at an all-time high – more than 60 percent – and even higher among younger Americans. Support for same sex marriage has crossed the same threshold of acceptance. According to Pew Research, opposition to same sex marriage stood at 65 percent in 1996, but by last year public opinion had shifted dramatically with 54 percent of Americans now approving of the idea.

It is not necessary to be an MIT math whiz to see that the world has changed and the pace of change is only likely to accelerate as younger Americans, vastly more accepting of all types of diversity, assert themselves in the economy and politics. The modern Republican Party is on the wrong side of this divide.

Second, in the wake of the still unfolding Indiana firestorm, Republicans find themselves in the almost always uncomfortable political position of debating the technical, legal aspects of a law. When a politician is forced, as Pence was, to say that a law he signed is not a license to discriminate against gay and lesbian Americans and then forced to explain legally how that is possible, you have the political equivalent of explaining how a watch is made when the public just wants to know what time it is.

Whether it has been completely fair or not, the Indiana legislation has been forever defined as at a minimum, opening the door to discrimination based on sexual orientation. Republican candidates have been reduced to explaining what the law doesn’t do rather than what it was reported to accomplish. So far they have mostly botched the task.

The backlash, both politically and otherwise, has been intense. One of the best Tweets I’ve seen was from the Indianapolis Motor CBcAf8RUQAEEr0q.jpg-largeSpeedway, home of the legendary 500 mile race. The Speedway’s famous sign simply spelled out: “We Welcome Everyone.”

A lengthening parade of some of the biggest business brands in the country – Nike, Walmart, Apple, Twitter, Yelp, Levi Strauss, Eli Lilly and Accenture, among others – have publicly opposed the Indiana law. The NCAA has essentially said it will not allow future big-time college athletic events in Indiana. (When the NCAA looks good in comparison, #indiana, you have a problem). All this, too, creates political fallout, as Bush will undoubtedly find when he goes calling for campaign cash in Silicon Valley this week. More importantly, business is signaling that discrimination is bad for, well, business.

So, if the politics of discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans – or even the appearance of discrimination – doesn’t make political sense, and with many of the usual business allies of the Republican Party in revolt against an Indiana-type law, why do it? [Arkansas Republican Governor Asa Hutchison apparently asked that question when presented with a similar proposal in his state. Hutchison, after first indicating he would, now says he’ll not sign the legislation.]

I think Amy Davidson, writing in The New Yorker, has the answer to the why question.

“The Indiana law is the product of a G.O.P. search for a respectable way to oppose same-sex marriage and to rally the base around it. There are two problems with this plan, however. First, not everyone in the party, even in its most conservative precincts, wants to make gay marriage an issue, even a stealth one—or opposes gay marriage to begin with. As the unhappy reaction in Indiana shows, plenty of Republicans find the anti-marriage position embarrassing, as do some business interests that are normally aligned with the party. Second, the law is not an empty rhetorical device but one that has been made strangely powerful, in ways that haven’t yet been fully tested, by the Supreme Court decision last year in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. That ruling allowed the Christian owners of a chain of craft stores to use the federal version of the RFRA (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) to ignore parts of the Affordable Care Act. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissent, argued strongly that the majority was turning that RFRA into a protean tool for all sorts of evasions.” She was correct.

In short, the efforts in Indiana and Arkansas involve crafting laws sufficiently vague and open to wide interpretation expecting that the new statutes can serve as a vehicle to get a case in front of a judge who might rule in a way that creates an eventual avenue to the Supreme Court. The Indiana law is not so much about making public policy that can be debated and clearly understood, as it is about teeing up a legal argument that leaves the dirty work of defining the line between religion and discrimination to five conservative justices. Any bets on how that comes down?

Indiana’s governor, in denying the discriminatory intent of the law in his state, said the new statute, “only provides a mechanism Penceto address claims, not a license for private parties to deny services.” Or perhaps more correctly, as Davidson writes, the Indiana law provides “a mechanism to discriminate, rather than a license. What it certainly will do is give some people more confidence to discriminate. But is that what Indiana really wants? And is that what the G.O.P.’s 2016 candidates should be looking for?”

Interestingly, in a debate that mirrors the on-going debate in Idaho (and elsewhere) over creating specific state-level prohibitions against discrimination directed toward gays and lesbians, the perfect fix for the Indiana dilemma is merely for the legislature to create such protections in law. So far that remedy, a specific statement of public policy opposed to discrimination, hasn’t been a serious part of the discussion in Indiana. Of course, Idaho continues to dance around that clear choice, as well. As this debate continues to unfold, Idaho policy makers might want to listen closely. It is not completely farfetched to think that Idaho could become Indiana.

But here is the ultimate political, indeed moral, bottom line: If you are reduced to arguing that something you have done in the name of “freedom” isn’t really designed to create an ability for some people to deny freedom – that’s what discrimination is – against some other people, while couching it all in the smoke of “restoring religion” you are likely on the wrong side of a very dubious argument, not to mention history.

 

Civil Rights, Economy, Egan, Gay Marriage, Idaho Politics, Otter, Television, Uruguay

When to Quit

One of the most difficult things to do in politics – perhaps the most difficult – is to quit. When do you cut-and-walk-away from a Marriageposition that is no longer correct, or defensible? How do you back down when time moves on and you are stuck on the wrong side of history? The wrong side of morality? The wrong side of the Constitution?

There are political calculations involved in quitting. There always are. What will constituents think who passionately continue to believe in a position that can no longer be sustained? When do you call off the lawyers, save the money and the time, and try to reconcile the age old problem of holding two conflicting ideas in your mind at the same time? How to admit that by continuing to advocate what you believe to be right, you will really be wrong?

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has now presented Idaho with this most difficult moment. The most fierce advocates for denying Ninth Circuitsame sex marriage have now been told – repeatedly – that they are behaving in a manner not permitted under our Constitution. Those fierce advocates would be, in many cases, also the greatest defenders of the Constitution, at least the one they think they know. But now a bunch of faceless, nameless judges have said the Constitution’s guarantees of equal treatment under the law really do apply to all our people, even those who want to marry someone of the same sex. And what do you do?

Governor George Wallace stood in the school house door in Alabama to defy the Constitution. Governor Orval Faubus forced an American president to send paratroopers to Little Rock when he couldn’t bring himself to quit. Governor Ross Barnett permitted a riot to break out and people to die on a college campus in Mississippi rather than cut-and-walk away. Upholding the Constitution is difficult and dangerous business, just like quitting a position is difficult and, at least, politically dangerous.

Perhaps the most wonderful thing about America – and also the most difficult – is the idea that all the provisions of the sacred Constitution apply even to those we most fervently disagree with. I don’t like your speech, or your flag burning, or your race or religion, I disagree with your life style, but it doesn’t mean – it can’t mean – that my Constitution isn’t also your Constitution.

One can appreciate how far Idaho officials charged with defending the unconstitutional have gone by reading the Ninth Circuit’s decision (or, for that matter, Idaho federal Magistrate Candy Dale’s earlier decision). The arguments used by Governor Butch Otter’s lawyers to defend Idaho’s official position are, there is no nice way to say it, utter nonsense and if the matters at hand were not so serious the arguments would be just this side of laughable.

One of those nameless, faceless judge is Judge Stephen Reinhardt. He certainly looks like a judge, doesn’t he? Writing for the Ninth Circuit, Reinhardt says at one point in his decision: “Same-sex marriage, Governor Otter asserts, is reinhardtpart of a shift towards a consent-based, personal relationship model of marriage, which is more adult-centric and less child-centric.”

The Judge, it would appear, was attempting to get to the essence of why Idaho has so strongly resisted same-sex marriage, but as he traveled the state’s road and attempted to reconcile Idaho’s claims with what the Constitution says, he found there was no there there. In a footnote, the Judge said this, really:

“[Otter, or more correctly his lawyer] also states, in conclusory fashion, that allowing same-sex marriage will lead opposite-sex couples to abuse alcohol and drugs, engage in extramarital affairs, take on demanding work schedules, and participate in time-consuming hobbies. We seriously doubt that allowing committed same-sex couples to settle down in legally recognized marriages will drive opposite-sex couples to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.”

The Constitution doesn’t say anything about being a good parent, or a good spouse. It says a lot about equality under the law and now the Ninth Circuit with its decision, and the Supreme Court with silence, has told Idaho you need to stop treating people differently, because the Constitution of the United States says so.

Moving on from a long-held position is not only difficult, it can also be constructive and help foster understanding and greater acceptance. It is a teaching moment if someone wants to teach. A leadership moment if someone wants to lead. The U.S. Constitution is the textbook.

When Governor Faubus in Arkansas couldn’t reconcile himself – and his constituents – to the fact that the fundamental law of his nation allowed black girls to go to school with white girls in Little Rock in 1957 he wrote the first sentence of how history has remembered him to this day. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says this about Orval Faubus, the longest serving Governor in the state’s history: “His record was in many ways progressive, but he is most widely remembered for his attempt to block the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957. His stand against what he called “forced integration” resulted in President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s sending federal troops to Little Rock (Pulaski County) to enforce the 1954 desegregation ruling of the Supreme Court.

Faubus“The Governor is “most widely remembered” for defying the Constitution and clinging to his old, illegal and morally indefensible position. Not the epitaph any politician imagines for himself.

Will the arguments about same-sex marriage continue in Idaho? Of course, just as they continued regarding race and equality in Little Rock in the 1950’s and beyond. Can political leaders, particularly those who have so adamantly defended what they have now been told is indefensible, help begin a more constructive conversation about fairness and equality? Of course they can. But, will they? Courage and leadership are required. Can they do it?

In the wake of the Ninth Circuit decision, Idaho has filed another appeal, but they will have to quit eventually. The Constitutional logic is too obvious. How they do it, the walking away and quitting, will be almost as telling as what they fought so strongly to prevent – equality and fairness.

 

2014 Election, Baseball, Gay Marriage, Politics, Tamarack, Uruguay

It’s Inevitable

1384466743000-AP-Gay-Marriage-HawaiiHawaii recently became the 15th state to legalize same sex marriage when Gov. Neil Abercrombie – that’s him on the left of the photo – signed legislation passed rather handily by the state legislature. On Thursday a state court judge in Hawaii upheld the new statute against an 11th hour effort to prevent it from going into effect. It is expected that the first same sex marriages in the nation’s 50th state will take place on December 2nd.

The remarkable political turn of fortune for the same sex marriage issue has been stunning, particularly when you consider that as recently as 2004 national Republicans advanced a policy agency that placed opposition to gay marriage at the center of many statewide races. Analysts differ on whether the issue helped propel George W. Bush to a close re-election victory that year, but it is not debatable that bans on gay marriage passed, and passed easily, in 11 states in 2004. It is also undeniable that less than 10 years ago Christian conservatives believed that state-level battles over same sex marriage where big time political winners. Tony Perkins, the head of the conservative Family Research Council, claimed after the 2004 election that gay marriage was “the hood ornament of the family values wagon” that delivered electoral success for Republicans.

How quickly all this has changed.

Just before the vote in Hawaii the Illinois legislature voted to move the state from recognizing same sex unions to fully legalizing gay marriage. By one count fully 35% of Americans now live in a state where gay marriage is legal. As the New York Times recently noted, “last fall, voters approved marriage measures in Maryland, Maine and Washington, and lawmakers in Delaware, Rhode Island and Minnesota passed laws this year. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey withdrew his efforts to block same-sex marriage, and weddings began in that state last month.”

Survey Says…

The movement in public opinion on the gay marriage issue has been nothing short of stunning. One recent poll – the Marquette Law School survey in Wisconsin – shows that even in an arguably swing state with a socially conservative Republican governor (and a lesbian U.S. Senator) the public tide has turned in support of same sex marriage. “Support for same-sex marriage has increased over the past 12 months in Wisconsin,” the Marquette survey reported “with 53 percent now supporting same-sex marriage, 24 percent favoring civil unions and 19 percent saying there should be no legal recognition for same-sex unions. This question was asked of 400 respondents and has a margin of error of +/-5.0 percentage points. In October 2012, 44 percent said they favored same-sex marriage, with 28 percent favoring civil unions and 23 percent opposed to any legal recognition.”

The respected Pew Research Center survey in June noted that the movement on same sex marriage “over the past decade is among the largest changes in opinion on any policy issue over this time period.”

Among the highlights in the Pew survey:

  • For the first time a majority of those surveyed – 51% – indicated support for same sex marriage.
  • These numbers seem to be driven by a simple but powerful fact. Nearly everyone in the country – 87% in the Pew survey – now acknowledge a gay or lesbian acquaintance or family member. Ten years ago only 61% said the same.
  • Support for same sex marriage is literally off the charts among young Americans. Now 66% of so called “millennials” – Americans born after 1981 – support same sex marriage. Ten years ago the support level in this group was ten percent less.

Even more striking is the view held by both supporters and opponents that gay marriage is simply inevitable. “The rising sense of inevitability is most notable among some of the groups that tend to be the least supportive of gay marriage itself,” according to a Pew survey in May. “The share of Republicans who see gay marriage as inevitable rose from 47% to 73% over the past nine years. The same pattern holds along religious lines: the share of white evangelical Protestants who see gay marriage as inevitable rose from 49% to 70%.”

A New Political Language…

Further evidence of the political shift underway is the type of rhetoric now employed by opponents of gay marriage. Gone is the mantra of pushing back against a sinister sounding “homosexual agenda” in favor of a “states’ rights” approach. “I support marriage between one man and one woman,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said recently “but I also think it’s a question for the states. Some states have made decisions one way on gay marriage; some states have made decisions the other way. And that’s the great thing about our Constitution, is different states can make decisions depending on the values of their citizens.”

Telling in terms of the national political map and how the issue might play in future national elections is the fact that the only region of the country where opposition to same sex marriage is now greater than support is in the deep south, an area some analysts contend is the only and shrinking base of the national GOP.

The states’ rights strategy driving opposition to same sex marriage, and effectively sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court, will likely remain the focus of coming political battles. Oregon, for example, is gearing up for a ballot measure in 2014, which many believe will pass.

Still the patchwork quilt of differing marriage laws seems sure to spawn a whole new level of controversy. Idaho, which has a Constitutional prohibition, is now facing a federal law suit challenging the same sex marriage ban approved by voters in 2006. The Idaho prohibition has also precipitated a dispute over how the state will treat same sex income tax filers who may be legally married in one state, but are unable in Idaho to share in the tax benefits that other married couples enjoy. These issues can only become more complicated as inevitably more states legalize same sex unions.

Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin recently seemed to suggest the handwriting of gay marriage inevitability is writ large on the political wall. Rubin quoted from a GOP strategy memo in a recent column to underscore the delicate nature of the issue for many opponents. “One poll-tested sound bite being suggested to candidates references the Golden Rule — to ‘treat others as we’d like to be treated, including gay, lesbian and transgender Americans.” The line, according to a memo from a GOP polling firm hired to guide the campaign, wins support from 89 percent of Republican voters.” Rubin added, and I agree, that it is heartening to know that the Golden Rule still polls well.

But here is the real political point for the future of the gay marriage issue in national politics. “In 2016,” Rubin writes, “we therefore can imagine that all GOP presidential candidates will have a similar position: They may be personally against gay marriage, but they will respect the decisions of states, although favor the definition be changed by popular as opposed to judicial action. There may be variation on that theme. It is one driven not necessarily by donors or pro-marriage advocates, but by political and cultural reality.” In other words the country really has changed dramatically and the change will only continue.

Perhaps the only real question left is to ponder which state(s) will hold out the longest against the trend of support for gay marriage that has been steadily moving in one direction for a decade.

 

Gay Marriage, Obits

Writer for Camelot

images-8Theodore Sorensen, 1928 – 2010

Before his health began to decline, Ted Sorensen wrote one of the great political memoirs of our time. He simply called it Counselor. Sorensen’s joked that his obituaries would say that “Theodore Sorenson, John Kennedy’s speechwriter…” had died, both misspelling his name and misstating his role as perhaps Kennedy’s most important aide.

Sorensen, who died over the weekend at age 82, was among the last of the Kennedy men and so much more than a speechwriter, although he was among the very best to ever practice the craft.

Kennedy referred to the Nebraska-born Sorensen, who joined JFK’s senate staff and later presidential campaign at age 27, as his “intellectual blood bank.” Historian Douglas Brinkley said Sorensen was the Kennedy Administration’s “indispensable man.”

Sorensen became the young president’s closest aide, second only to Robert Kennedy in enjoying – and understanding – Kennedy’s aspirations and secrets.

Anyone who appreciates the still real power of effective political speech must admire the words that Sorensen shaped and crafted in collaboration with Kennedy, perhaps one of the three or four most eloquent American presidents. For his part, Sorensen thought the letter to authored to the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, that helped defuse the Cuban missile crisis was his greatest work. Sorensen always claimed his collaboration with Kennedy – that is the right word for a speechwriter – was the product of deep trust and understanding developed over long hours spent together and, of course, a shared political philosophy.

At the very end of his very personal, very revealing memoir, Ted Sorensen wrote, “I’m still an optimist. I still believe that extraordinary leaders can be found and elected, that future dangers can be confronted and resolved, that people are essentially good and ultimately right in their judgments. I still believe that a world of law is waiting to emerge, enshrining peace and freedom throughout the world. I still believe that the mildest most obscure Americans can be rescued from oblivion by good luck, sudden changes in fortune, sudden encounters with heroes.

“I believe it,” Sorensen wrote, “because I lived it.”

Gay Marriage, Obits

Larry Osgood

OsgoodIn Praise of “a Good Bureaucrat”

I am tardy in making note of the passing of Larry Osgood, a long-time Idaho state government employee and, in the very best sense of the word, a good bureaucrat.

Larry was director of the Division of Public Works – the outfit that manages all the state’s buildings and construction – when I served as Chief of Staff to Governor Cecil D. Andrus. Osgood and I had a standing Wednesday morning meeting during those years. He would wheel himself over to the Statehouse – he’d been hurt in an auto accident some years earlier – and give me his briefing on problems and progress in his domain. He was a take charge, no nonsense guy who never sugar coated the problems and, since the state is a big land lord, there are always problems, nor did he take any credit for a project coming in under budget or ahead of schedule. That was what he expected and he’d frequently say: “we’re trying to make you look good.”

As the Idaho Legislature heads into the home stretch, it was nice to see Osgood acknowledged for his contributions. Rep. Maxine Bell made special note of Larry. Too often state employees get the rap for being less than stellar performers, sitting on their suitcases, waiting to retire. That characterization is mostly bull, but it is a perception that lingers.

I’ll never know how many millions of dollars Larry Osgood supervised during his years as a public works manager, we’ll never know what decisions, large and small, he made that saved money, created efficiencies or provided better public access. You can bet he did all that and more.

My dad used to talk about the company supply sergeant in the Army who seemed to know where everything was stored and knew where to find everything that was needed. You know the type, the person who keeps the organization running with apparent little effort and usually with little acknowledgement. Good bureaucrats do the same for government and they rarely get their due. Larry Osgood was a good bureaucrat. He made a lot of people look good.