Every so often someone will ask me whether, after all of my years of roasting politicians, I ever thought about running for office myself. No, I usually respond, for it is much more fun to do the roasting than to be roasted.
Still, it is for that very reason that I respect those journalists who do take the plunge over to the dark side to do something to make the world a better place instead of just writing about it. One of them died last week, but not before firing off one last thoughtful journalistic broadside about where the world is going wrong.
Paul Martin Simon, the former Illinois senator and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate, died Tuesday at age 75.
Paul Simon was known for his trademark bow tie, big-rimmed eyeglasses and deep voice that seemed to resonate from somewhere in the Grand Canyon.
He also succeeded remarkably well with politics that were decidedly and unabashedly liberal in his Downstate Illinois home base, a part of the country where the coffee shops have more canned nuts than Camus.
As longtime liberals look and wonder what it takes to succeed outside the usual liberal bastions, they would do well to observe how Simon did it. He never backed away from the fundamental liberal notion that government is there to help people. He built up a strong reputation over the years for honesty, integrity, dedication and humility. He knew what his constituents needed and tried to service those needs.
Maybe this is just journalistic pride, but I think the secrets of Simon’s success were rooted firmly in his first career.
He dropped out of college at age 19 to buy a newspaper in Troy, Ill., with the help of a local Lions Club. He then proceeded to crusade against gambling bosses whose money virtually controlled the county’s political parties.
This is not the safest of careers, particularly in a state that associates St. Valentine’s Day with a massacre.
His gambling expose led to a state police raid on two illegal casinos and to national attention. He was elected to the Illinois House in 1954, where 10 years later he would expose payoffs and conflicts of interest among his fellow legislators with an article in Harper’s magazine called “A Study in Corruption.”
Nevertheless, he built enough personal popularity to win the state lieutenant governorship in 1968 with the blessings of the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, who was not usually a big fan of “goo-goo’s,” the good-government types like Simon.
Remarkably for his line of work, no one could get any dirt on Simon. His idea of a “wild time,” one congressional colleague would later quip, is “dinner and a discussion of history.”
A discussion of history brought Simon and me together at one point. He asked me to write an introduction in 1994 for “Freedom’s Champion: Elijah Lovejoy,” one of the more than 20 books that he authored.
Lovejoy was Simon’s kind of hero. Mine, too. An abolitionist publisher, Lovejoy was lynched in 1837 by an Alton, Ill., mob that didn’t like his anti-slavery editorials. Professional journalists honor him as the nation’s first martyr to freedom of the press.
To watch Simon work his constituents was to watch a man who built one small Downstate weekly into a chain of 14 before he sold them in 1966. As he shook hands with his constituents, he listened with his big ears, picking up the mood of voters like a good newspaper publisher picks up the mood of customers.
Labels like “liberal” and “conservative” do not matter, Simon said, as long as you understand firsthand what is on people’s minds and then try to help them.
It is appropriate, then, that his final book, published earlier this year, is a long essay and critique called “Our Culture of Pandering.” In it, he decries the subversion of politics, media, religion and education into profit-oriented ventures that pander to polls and other market forces, instead of taking the time to get a feel for the concerns of real people.
Elijah Lovejoy didn’t pander. I remember how much Simon appreciated the way Lovejoy persevered after mobs destroyed his presses four times, all because he would not stop campaigning against slavery. Each time Lovejoy went back to work, telling people more of what they didn’t want to hear until they silenced him. But Lovejoy’s ideas lived after him and helped lead to the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves.
Something tells me Simon’s ideas will live after him too. He didn’t tell you what you ought to think, like a lot of best-selling authors do these days. Instead, he left us with a legacy that is worth thinking about.
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