A funny thing happened to Ray LaHood during Catholic mass in Peoria last week, something even he concedes he can’t explain.
“I went to Holy Family Church in Peoria for a 5:30 p.m. mass,” the Illinois Republican congressman said. “It’s across the street from where I live and a place where I actually taught in the late 1960s as a junior high teacher.”
“Well, the woman who was sitting behind me was the cook when I taught there,” he continued. “And during the time in the mass we are supposed to be giving the sign of peace, I turned around to wish her Merry Christmas.”
“Now, after the mass was over, I turned around to shake her hand. She’s about 80 years old. But she, in a very bitter way, said, `You Republicans are jealous of Clinton and I don’t like what you are doing to him.’ “
Consider: LaHood has been elected three consecutive times to the seat previously held by his mentor, Bob Michel. The district is so safe for him, the Democrats did not slate a candidate against him this time.
Among those who have voted for him each and every election is that 80-year-old woman. “But it was clear she felt passionately about this,” said LaHood, referring to the impeachment vote in the House.
LaHood clearly is no neophyte. He knows his district well and has a respect among colleagues in Washington that is a bit unusual for someone about to begin only his third term. It’s why he was chosen to replace Speaker Newt Gingrich, a tower of marshmallow following his decision to leave office, as presiding officer for the House debate and vote on impeachment.
But LaHood is puzzled in recent days, and not just by the octogenarian former parish cook.
“Then I was in a Fannie May store on Christmas Eve, buying a few boxes of candy, when a woman, about 40 years old, came up to me. The place was crowded and I was taking a number. The woman came right up to me and said she didn’t agree with my vote on impeachment.”
LaHood voted for all four articles after what he considered a deliberate examination. Given his role as presiding officer, he took extra time in mulling the issues. Though generally viewed as a moderate in the GOP camp and in no way a chum of Gingrich or the Gingrich acolytes he deems strident, he was ultimately among the diehards who stuck it to Clinton on all four articles of impeachment. Eventually, two of the four passed.
When LaHood returned home for the holidays, the reaction toward his able oversight of the proceedings during two long days, if not his votes, was disarming. People said they had seen him on television and that he’d done a nifty job. But when it came to his and fellow Republicans’ votes, that was another matter entirely.
It reached a sobering nadir when he and his wife headed to a ceremony marking a Salvation Army’s Tree of Lights campaign in Peoria. To cap it off, there’s the lighting of a huge tree at Northwoods Mall.
“We went out there to light the star,” he recalled. “They bring in a big fire truck and take us to the top of the tree, which symbolizes people in the community giving.”
“. . . When I got there, there was a guy with an `Impeach LaHood’ sign. Imagine, at a Salvation Army gathering! I went up to shake his hand and ask his name. That picture wound up in the Peoria Journal Star. I was wearing a Santa’s cap.”
LaHood seems to be taken aback, too, by letters to the editor found in the Journal Star, his hometown paper. He has been treated very solicitously by citizens, and thus that often revealing section of a paper–at least until now.
“There are a lot of letters against me. People seem to be distinguishing their belief in me (as their congressman) from what I did on the impeachment issue.
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“I am puzzled by the difference. Perhaps people who support my position wouldn’t write a letter to the editor. But I’ve never had bad letters to the editor in four years. So it is startling to me.”
The difference, of course, involves the still head-turning disjoint between Clinton’s approval ratings and suspicions of his character and morals. LaHood assumed that the impeachment mess would prompt large Republican gains in the midterm elections. He was wrong.
And now, he is left believing that the impeachment votes “will be a defining moment in history. We (Republicans) are willing to go against the tide of public opinion. Only time will tell, in two years (during the 2000 election), if we suffer. Clinton remains popular and we voted against him.”
Bookish thoughts
This is a huge book-buying and -giving season, so it’s time for suggestions from the person who knows books better than anyone in town, namely Brian Lamb, C-SPAN’s major domo and host of the network’s “Booknotes” program.
Perusing his office shelf last week, the native Indiana Hoosier offered this small array of politically diverse favorites from the past year:
– “Professor and the Madman” (HarperCollins) by Simon Winchester. “He’s a British writer who lives in New York and this is all about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s a lot of fun.”
– “The American Century” (Knopf) by Harold Evans. “He creates comparisons all through it, and snapshots of where we stood at different times during the century. It also includes some original photography.”
– “The Story of American Freedom” (Norton) by historian Eric Foner. “This comes at American freedom from a liberal perspective.”
– “America’s 30 Years War: Who Is Winning?” (Regnery) by Balint Vazsonyi. “This comes at the same issue from a conservative perspective. He’s a Hungarian by birth who came to this country 40 years ago. He’s a concert pianist who started a little foundation called the Center for the American Founding.”
– “Get the Picture” (Random House) by John G. Morris. “This is a sleeper. It didn’t get much publicity. It’s a history of photojournalism from a man who helped found Magnum Photos.”
– “Grand Inquests” (William Morrow) by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. “If you haven’t seen this, it might be especially fun right now,” Lamb said of a paperback version of Rehnquist’s 1992 look at the impeachment issue. Of course, he could not have had a clue that he might one day preside at a presidential impeachment.
– “A Man in Full” (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) by Tom Wolfe. “I listened to the tape and liked it a lot.”
Cokie Watch?
The Washington Post decreed the following news, or at least gossip, last week:
“James Warren is among the first to take journalists to task for accepting speaking fees, but he recently had no qualms whatsoever about accepting a singing fee in the form of an upgrade on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Dulles to London.”
Pretty ominous, eh?
It correctly detailed portions of a conversation with me in which I noted the following: On my way to England to surprise my brother for Christmas, I got to the airport to learn they were offering free upgrades to business class to anyone singing a Christmas carol at the gate. Along with about 15 or so others (that fact was omitted), I sang “Jingle Bells” and got an upgrade, bringing a wider seat but the same food as in economy.
This act was deemed hypocrisy. I told the woman who called “about my interesting plane ride” that I thought this was rather far afield from the shameless, self-promoting media buck rakers who take $10,000 or $20,000 from organizations whose doings or issues they cover (this declaration also omitted).
But I did pledge to give deep and long, even agonizing, consideration to ever editing a piece of copy related to Virgin Atlantic (declaration included).
I also informed her, and she correctly noted, that this was my second major public singing appearance. The other was a high school production of “Guys and Dolls” in which I played Harry the Horse to rave reviews.
Ah, simpler times.