Fools Rush In

Ted Van Dyk on political leadership, then and now.

Interview by JOE MARTIN, Contributing Writer

As chief speechwriter for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and an advisor to a half-dozen presidential candidates, Ted Van Dyk got acquainted with liberalism - and he doesn't see much of it in Seattle. Photo by Ken Dean

Van Dyk recalls the camaraderie after a long day on Capitol Hill or on the campaign trail: “I could feel in those moments ‘the spirit of public happiness’ that President John Adams described as flowing from knowledge that one was engaged in the service of the people.”

Recently, I cornered Van Dyk at Kells Irish Pub and pumped him for revelations.

What about the current political climate?
We need a fresh start. I’m pleased there is no presidential incumbent. For too long we’ve had either a Clinton or a Bush in the White House. I personally like Obama. He represents a break with the past and reaches across racial, ethnic, and ideological lines. He’s an idealist who generates trust among people who hear him. We’re tired of petty politics and mudslinging. Obama can get us back to a positive agenda.

For mudslinging, Republicans have outdone everyone.
It’s come from all sides. The old liberal credo was: “tough on issues, soft on people.” You disagreed on the basis of policy. You didn’t smear your opponent. One campaigned on the issues. It was an agenda-driven politics rather than a politics-driven agenda.

It was once understood that nothing significant is going to happen unless you mobilized 50.1 percent of the electorate, get a majority in the Senate or the House. You made policy and reached across to moderates in the other party. Now people would rather scream at each other. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “They’d rather curse the darkness than light a candle.”

Sum up the last eight years.
I witnessed how we staggered into Vietnam stupidly and unnecessarily. I saw fools - Bundy, McNamara, Rostow - drag Kennedy and Johnson into war. I see it again with Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. Arrogant fools are in both parties. A president must have sufficient knowledge to know the right questions to ask. Bush didn’t even know what an options memo is. Anybody with any sense of history would have questioned the idea that a “tidal wave of democracy” would sweep the Middle East. It was nonsense. The mistake of Iraq was a big one. Johnson at least had the Great Society to counterbalance Vietnam.

What are the big issues?
Health care, jobs, housing, and the domestic well-being of our citizenry. War and peace. Go back to the excitement around the issues of the Great Society, there’s an unfinished agenda: the right to a decent job, job training, housing: the crucial things we tend to lose sight of.

Homelessness is a scandal. People without homes, food, or clothing need care. We can’t just leave them on the streets. For his Great Society, Johnson set a specific agenda: tell the American people, press forward in Congress. Keep at it, mobilize support. You don’t put your finger in the air and see what is popular day to day.

Labor must find itself. When I came into politics the labor movement was the center of social change. Civil rights legislation, the war on poverty, the Civil Rights March, the Poor Peoples’ March – labor was at the guts of it. Where are today’s Walter Reuthers (U.S. labor union leader)? Labor needs to raise its sights and say “We are the vanguard of positive change in this country.”

The early Civil Rights Movement was a positive liberation agenda. We can recapture that, but it takes leaders to do it. Leaders have to come back to the public regularly and ask “How are we doing?” And if people understand that their self interest is involved, they will support these positive efforts.

There are centers of power in this nation that do not care about economic justice. Johnson’s War on Poverty foundered on the shores of Vietnam. Once again we’re mired in military ventures.
If you think there was a “Vietnam Syndrome,” just wait to till you see what happens in the wake of Iraq. We are going to keep getting sucked into small skirmishes and involvements with Al Qaeda and similar movements. The potential for terror is a fearsome problem. Nonetheless, the idea of a massive intervention in the wrong place should not occur again to us soon.

I saw the error of Vietnam immediately. We had no vital interests, the same as in Iraq. But Hanoi was ready to govern. If we pulled out of Iraq now there would be murder and civil war. An old rule: never open the front door without knowing where the backdoor is. It’ll be a long time before we leave Iraq.

What about universal health care?
The “Van Dyk Formula” would cover everyone immediately for catastrophic illness. Catastrophic illness is everyone’s great fear. You’d be surprised, but that doesn’t cost too much. Seventy percent of medical care is consumed by 10 percent of the people. You need modest coverage for most, and a special provision for the rest. I would gradually move toward a universal plan from the bottom up. Those who can’t afford it would be covered by Medicaid. Congress has wonderful coverage, why not give Americans that same option?

The Canadian system works if you’re not that sick. My wife died about 12 years ago of multiple myeloma [a cancer of the plasma cells]. It cost a lot of money and she lived five years with cancer. In Canada and Britain they don’t treat this illness. The patient dies. That’s the failing in the British and Canadian systems. Also, Canada does not have the huge numbers of impoverished people and other problems that we have. We need an American system. I’m for universal coverage starting with catastrophic coverage, and gradually extending coverage and melding in the private system.

How do we address our vast social disparities?
American corporate officers and CEOs make many times more than the average working stiff. The guy who works for Boeing makes a pittance compared to the guy in charge. It didn’t used to be this way. The greed exhibited by Wall Street firms is absurd: people making $20 million or $25 million per year and holiday bonuses of a couple million. We need a president willing to say this is obscene and must stop. Kennedy, at a press conference in 1961, chastised the steel companies for unfairly raising their prices. They backed off. You shed daylight in dark places and it shakes them up. Disparities could be addressed. We need massive skills training and better education. Our society is dumbing down, losing skills. More than half of the men and women between 18 and 26, because of a physical or educational deficiency, don’t qualify for the armed services. Kids graduate from high school unprepared for today’s world. We are lacking things which tangibly help people to be self sufficient. There is no emphasis on these things.

Housing will always essentially be a market-driven thing, but you have to set aside housing for those who cannot afford market rates. Seattle is a perfect example and one of the worst. Middle-class people can’t live here. You need subsidized housing nearby. In the ’30s in New York, housing was built for working class and poor families. Seattle was once a working-class city; local leaders would never live across the lake in mansions. It was bad form here to flaunt wealth. Now, the rich step over the homeless to get to restaurants and limousines.

Local politicians talk as if they were halfway between Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich, but they govern like Benito Mussolini; it’s corporatism. So-called tax preferences in the state budget — loopholes and special treatment given to companies and industries — amount to three times the state biennial budget. Yet the governor and state legislature keep coming back for new tax increases. It’s reactionary. In Seattle, I have no objection to Paul Allen developing South Lake Union. But why should the city give him between $500 million and $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies? His streetcar, at $50 million, is paid for out of the hides of working people who depend on bus service. There’s no justification. It’s a Disneyland toy for one of the richest guys in the country for no public benefit.

What about our City Council?
The highest paid in the country, but one of the weakest. I admire Peter Steinbrueck, who is leaving, and Nick Licata. Forget the others. Jan Drago held a fundraiser for Paul Allen’s Vulcan, as if Vulcan needs money! I’d like to see a slate of candidates — for mayor and City Council — all running as one. It would be a people’s slate, an honest government and sensible policy slate, not building massive light rail systems or streetcars. It would address the real needs of this city’s taxpayers.

Councilmembers should be elected by district, not at large. When everybody is elected at large, downtown money runs the city. Local media is not informative. With few exceptions, a week’s worth of local TV news doesn’t yield one substantive story. Our two major daily newspapers don’t report decently on Olympia or our City Council meetings.

Look at the Port of Seattle. It’s a scandal. We had the highest paid Port director in the United States [Mic Dinsmore] running a port that was in the red. He tries to give himself an unmerited $300,000 exit bonus with the collusion of the chairman. Nothing happened. Where were the prosecutions? In other cities there would have been a criminal investigation. [Ed.- The U. S. Attorney’s Office announced one on Jan. 7.] Here there was a whitewash. The guy who tried to clean this up, Alec Fisken, was defeated. His opponent was endorsed by both daily newspapers. Our citizenry is very complacent. People here think they’re liberal if they shout at Bush and go to Hempfest. That’s not liberalism.

Some politicians are ego-driven while others are real public servants.
When I came into politics there were three operative questions: What are the needs of the people; how do we propose to meet those needs; and how do we mobilize a majority behind those proposals? Today elected officials ask, “What can get me re-elected, and what issues should I avoid?” Real leadership is being loved, and also feared. Johnson said a leader is somebody that, if you cross him, something dreadful will happen to you. Now too many politicians fear interest groups, that someone will withhold money.

Too many city councilmembers and state legislators have safe seats, yet they live in fear of offending an interest group or a donor. We need able people concerned with the public interest. As for the country, I hope that we will have people smart and tough enough to see us through issues of global warming, of war and peace. You never know who might come forward and become great when leadership is thrust upon them.