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188
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2015
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Publié par
Date de parution
13 janvier 2015
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781631011009
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
13 janvier 2015
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781631011009
Langue
English
Fighting the Unbeatable Foe
Fighting the Unbeatable Foe
Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio The Washington Years
Tom Diemer
The Kent State University Press
KENT, OHIO
© 2008 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2008014197
ISBN 978-0-87338-914-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diemer, Tom.
Fighting the unbeatable foe : Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio : the Washington years / Tom Diemer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87338-914-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)∞
1. Metzenbaum, Howard M. 2. Legislators—United States—Biography.
3. United States. Congress. Senate—Biography. 4. United States—Politics and government—1945–1989. 5. Legislators—Ohio—Biography.
6. Ohio—Politics and government—20th century. I. Title.
E 840.8. M 48 D 54 2008
328.73092—dc22
[B]
2008014197
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated, in memoriam, to my brother Dave Diemer, a “Metz fan,” and to my former colleague Robert E. Miller, a mentor.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Early Years
1. Starting Up in Politics
2. Making Money: The Entrepreneurial Years
3. The Activist
4. Glenn Wars I: Battle Plan for an Upset
5. Glenn Wars II: The Astronaut Strikes Back
6. The Senate Years I: Howard at the Bridge
7. The Senate Years II
8. The Final Campaign: Six More Years
9. Fighting to the Finish: Advise and Dissent
10. An Unthreatened Man
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Preface
S hortly before Howard Metzenbaum retired as one of the most improbably successful senators in Ohio history, my wife’s parents met him at an event in Zanesville, Ohio, where they once lived. Bob and Pat Zimmer introduced themselves and mentioned that their son-in-law, Tom Diemer, was a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. Senator Metzenbaum’s smile disappeared and his face scrunched up. “Diemer! That SOB! Why, I …” Then he grinned. Of course he knew Diemer. “A nice fella,” he said and then engaged my in-laws in other pleasantries.
That was Metzenbaum: gruff, irreverent, sarcastic. He couldn’t really tell a joke, but he sure could act. He’d feign anger and threaten chaos to get his way in the Senate. He would practice scowls in the mirror, and then trade dirty looks with cabinet secretaries sitting across from him in a hearing room. Yet, inside the hard-boiled exterior, he had a good heart.
As his health failed and his memory faded in the months before his death at 90 in 2008, he would often tell family members, “I have a great wife. I’ve got great kids. I’m a lucky man.” 1
In my first experience covering him in his 1976 race against Senator Robert Taft Jr., I never dreamed he would one day become the scourge of Capitol Hill or that his career would amount to book material. It was a lackluster campaign, overshadowed by Jimmy Carter’s bold bid to carry Ohio in the presidential contest. Metzenbaum, a two-time loser, seemed headed for another defeat—surely his last hurrah—and a one-way ticket to obscurity as the “millionaire Cleveland businessman” in residence near Erie’s shores. Taft owned the most famous name in Ohio politics; he was a decent enough senator and had already beaten this guy six years earlier. Metzenbaum was too liberal, too rich, and too annoying. His act had grown old.
How wrong I was. Whatever his weaknesses—and he had his share—Howard Metzenbaum was also brilliant, tenacious, well-financed, and yes, lucky. He understood the media much better than the typical mid-1970s Ohio politician, and he ran a campaign against Taft that flouted the conventional wisdom of the day. He operated only a rudimentary field operation, aided by union volunteers, and put most of his money into strategic planning and television advertising. The clincher was a thirty-second spot featuring his comely wife, Shirley, assuring viewers that Metzenbaum was a warm, caring family man. “He always sees the good in people,” Shirley Metzenbaum liked to say of her husband.
He came to the United States Senate late in life, and his ways were set. He was nearing sixty when he took the oath of office for his first full term after ousting Taft. He had always played hardball in business and in politics. He wouldn’t change in Washington. In a town where “go along to get along” was considered sound advice, he declared, “I’m too old to go along for the ride.”
I don’t know if Metzenbaum understood what a polarizing figure he was in Ohio. When I first contemplated telling his story, one of his old rivals said in exasperation, “Oh geez, don’t write a book about him.” Metzenbaum’s personality just rubbed some people the wrong way. He thought being a nice guy was overrated. Many in the business community disliked him intensely and resented his unceasing efforts to take away their tax advantages, squeeze them with workplace regulations, and strengthen their adversaries in unions. Conservative activists considered him a “limousine liberal,” who played down his leftist leanings during campaigns. Right-wingers thought he was evil incarnate—quite possibly a onetime “communist.”
But to labor leaders, the consumer movement, the gun-control lobby, children’s advocates, migrant workers, and the liberal intelligentsia, he was a hero. He was their knight in shining armor, albeit one who was not always able to slay the dragon, or even tip the windmill.
Was he effective? Did all of the bluster and roar, the delaying tactics, the taste for combat, the class warfare accomplish anything?
If you fed your baby infant formula, Metzenbaum was the guy who established standards to ensure the food’s safety and healthfulness. If you wondered about the nutritional content of the products on grocery shelves, he was the one who passed a law requiring ingredient labels on soup cans and cartons of yogurt. If you worked at a plant threatened by a shutdown, he gave you some comfort when he forced manufacturers to give two months’ notice before closing a factory. He was on your side, whether you toiled for minimum wage at a fast food joint in Cleveland, picked tomatoes in northwest Ohio, tried to meet utility bills on a fixed income in Youngstown, or worried about your pension in Dayton.
One commentator called him the “last of the New Deal liberals.” But his legislative achievements did not rise to the level of a Humphrey, Kennedy, or Mitchell. In his nineteen years on Capitol Hill, he never chaired a full committee or held a top leadership position within the Democratic caucus.
Republican leader Bob Dole gave him a title. Dole called him the “Commissioner,” because all significant legislation had to cross his desk for an okay or else risk being sidetracked by a Metzenbaum maneuver on the Senate floor. His power to stop legislation reached beyond his station because he was willing to make enemies, ignore legislative courtesies, and camp out on the Senate floor when others wanted to go home. He was impatient by nature, but patient by his own discipline—he would wait you out, or walk away from the deal if he didn’t get what he wanted.
He is remembered more in Washington for what he stopped—the water projects, the timber deals, land giveaways, and tax breaks—than for what he pushed forward. He was a master filibusterer when filibustering wasn’t cool, well before Republicans threatened to change the rules to keep Democrats from blocking President George W. Bush’s nominees.
In Ohio, his name will always be linked with John Glenn, a man with whom he had little in common and ran against twice, going 1–1. Glenn, the personification of white-bread Americana, was raised in a small Ohio town, instilled with a protestant ethic, and destined for heroism. Metzenbaum, however, was marbled rye, a scrappy Jewish kid who was willing to break rules as he fought his way up from near poverty to financial and political success.
Many books have been written about Glenn, the astronaut turned senator, but this is the first book, as far as I know, about Metzenbaum, a parking lot entrepreneur who became known as “Senator No.” Glenn was honored and celebrated for his pioneering feats, and rightly so. A NASA research center in Cleveland and an institute at Ohio State University bear his name, as do a number of public schools. Metzenbaum saw little of that sort of public adulation. He never ran for president as Glenn did, or experienced the adventures of an astronaut, even if many critics would have liked to launch him into the stratosphere. Yet Metzenbaum overcame more obstacles and had a far more interesting Senate career.
So, yes, Metzenbaum is book material. I have tried to do two things here: explain how an abrasive, ultraliberal Democrat won consistently in the affable, moderate Ohio of the late-twentieth century and show how his no-holds-barred tactics made a difference in Washington. My take suggests the Metzenbaum’s years in the Senate netted out as a positive contribution for taxpayers, although I hope this books lets readers come to their own conclusions.
In this accounting, Metzenbaum’s remarkable story starts with his childhood during the Great Depression and covers his highly successful business ventures in the postwar era and his unique Senate career spanning five presidents. This book presents new information from his personal diaries, his official Senate Papers, exclusive interviews with forgotten friends and foes, and fresh reporting on his gaffes, such as the infamous $250,000 phone call that helped sell a hotel. Although I’ve not attempted to produce a cradle-to-grave biography (the emphasis is on his Senate career), Metzenbaum’s early years and his colorful business career are covered here in detail.
In the interest of full disclosure, a little about my personal relationship with him is probably in order. When I covered Capitol Hill for the
