he'll move to a UN mandate and hope that nullifies the Iraqi issue in 04.
Based on the UN history at these type of things, that would be a disaster for Iraq. I think he will stay the course and add Iraqi troops and Police. Here is a piece on how a good man went wrong.
Gephardt caught political fever while growing up in Missouri
By JONATHAN ROOS
Register Staff Writer
08/24/2003 St. Louis, Mo. - Dick Gephardt could have become a Baptist minister, as his grandmother wanted, or built a lucrative law practice in his hometown instead of campaigning almost nonstop, first for a seat on the City Council, and later, Congress.
Gephardt, 62, could now be easing into retirement instead of running a second time for the Democratic nomination for president.
But as Gephardt confided to his girlfriend, Jane, before they married in 1966 and promptly signed up as Democratic precinct workers, "I have this potential illness called politics."
Some would call it an addiction.
As an 11-year-old, Gephardt watched gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions on his aunt's black-and-white TV while his cousins played outside.
He cut class in college so he could listen to President John F. Kennedy's press conferences.
In 1971, Gephardt was so determined to win his first election as an alderman from Ward 14 on St. Louis' south side, an area crammed with rows of small brick homes, that he visited every house twice with the help of his wife and parents.
"It was door-to-door war," he recalled.
Gephardt defeated Republican incumbent Ray Summers, an electrician and union member, by just 120 votes.
Summers said it was a duel that he should have won.
"I walked one side of the street and he walked the other side of the street. There was one precinct I missed. The 6th Precinct beat me," Summers lamented.
Gephardt has never stopped pounding the pavement since that fateful municipal race. During a political career spanning more than 30 years, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives 14 times and served as a top House leader during much of that time.
Gephardt emerged victorious from the Iowa caucuses in February 1988 with tireless campaigning and tough talk on trade with countries like Japan. He spent more time in the state than any other Democratic candidate. But within two months of his Iowa victory he was knocked out of the race and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis went on to become the party's nominee.
No House member has won the White House since Republican James Garfield of Ohio 123 years ago. Gephardt is counting on his experience and tenacity to make history in 2004.
Critics charge that Gephardt bends too easily in the political winds. They say he has veered to the left on issues such as abortion and pandered to labor unions, a key support group, in order to advance his career.
"He ran as a pro-life congressman for a decade, voting for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion," said John Hancock, a political consultant and former executive director of the Republican Party in Missouri. "In "86, he changed positions on the abortion issue about the time he ran for president."
Gephardt says he has changed with the world.
"I grew up in a Baptist Church where abortion was not seen in a favorable light. Over time I came to a different view than I originally had come to - a pro-choice view I've voted in Congress for the last 15 to 16 years."
Gephardt says he has learned from years of door-to-door campaigning that "you can't make everybody happy. People get mad." At one house someone will curse him and slam the door in his face. At the next he will be invited to pose for a picture with the kids.
"Everyone's different," he said. "Even people who live next door to one another. Even people in the same family."
That goes for his own family.
One of the political figures that Gephardt most admires is fellow Missourian Harry Truman, a Democrat who became the nation's 33rd president. But Gephardt's older brother, Don, recalls that "Dad was a Republican and didn't have many kind words for Harry Truman. He didn't think Mr. Truman was doing the right thing." Later in life, "he kind of changed his tune a little bit. He thought better of the Democrats."
Gephardt doesn't mention those details in speeches about growing up in a working-class neighborhood where his mother, Loreen, a Democrat, worked as a secretary. His father, Lou, delivered milk after losing a job with an insurance company during the Depression. His dad was not only a milk truck driver but also a Teamster and grateful for his union membership, Gephardt said of his paternal bond with organized labor.
That attachment, marked by strong support for labor issues such as opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, has paid off with endorsements this summer from several unions, including the Teamsters.
"He backs us when we need it, so we back him when he needs it," said Scott Hill, a political coordinator for Teamsters Local 682 in St. Louis, whose union hall is a few blocks from Gephardt's boyhood home and neighborhood school. "He's proud that his dad was a union member."
Conservative commentators have questioned the credibility of Gephardt's claim about his father's regard for the Teamsters, seizing on comments that brother Don made in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper article four years ago. He said their father was in the Teamsters "because he had to be" to get the milk delivery job. "I don't recall him talking much about the union, about how great it was."
Don Gephardt, a Drake University graduate who is dean of the College of Fine and Performing Arts at Rowan University in New Jersey, said in a recent interview that his remarks about Lou Gephardt had been misconstrued.
"If you can picture getting up at 2 in the morning, saddling a horse, loading up with milk and ice and delivering it, he didn't really love that job. But he did have respect for the Teamsters because he saw that his wages were better because of the Teamsters," Don Gephardt said.
Dick Gephardt learned at an early age that hard work opens doors. He excelled in drama in high school, became an Eagle Scout, earned a degree in speech from Northwestern University, and studied law at the University of Michigan.
Inspired by the idealism of President Kennedy and his appeal to public service, the young lawyer plunged into St. Louis politics at the ground level. With his wife at his side, his first job as precinct captain meant getting to know each and every Democrat in the Second Precinct of Ward 14.
Gephardt remembers his marching orders from ward committeeman Phelim O'Toole, his first political mentor: " "If any of them haven't voted by 4 o'clock, leave your wife at the polling place and go out and get them." So that's what I did."
Gephardt came to know the tidy neighborhoods of south St. Louis better than any door-to-door salesman. His election as alderman in 1971 transformed him into a kind of ombudsman for people in his ward who wanted a pothole filled or a streetlight fixed.
"There's not much skulduggery done. Everybody basically takes care of their wards and they get whatever they can get for their own people. Nobody is trying to cut somebody else's throat," said Summers, the Republican who lost his re-election bid to Gephardt.
Theresa Miller, a City Hall employee and one of Gephardt's former neighbors, said he knew how to connect with working families and took citizen complaints in stride.
"He was a good alderman. Our neighborhood was very well taken care of," she said. "He made people mad, too. He made all these streets one way to keep the traffic down."
Gephardt's education in grassroots politics would later serve him well in the union halls, coffee shops and senior citizen centers of Iowa when he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988. But first he had to pass a major test in making his first bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976.
Gephardt faced Donald Gralike, a labor union official and Missouri state senator, in the Democratic congressional primary. In a reversal of roles for Gephardt, organized labor backed Gralike, and Gephardt drew a lot of support from the business community.
"I thought we were going to be blown out because he had yard signs everywhere. It was like tulips coming up," Gephardt recalled. To augment his retail style of campaigning, Gephardt started running some TV commercials to reach a larger audience. His opponent didn't.
When he first arrived in Washington, Gephardt was regarded as a newer breed of Democrat who broke ranks with liberals on social issues, such as school prayer. He was a founding member of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council in 1984.
Later, as a battle-tested congressional leader, Gephardt took on the liberal persona of the national Democratic Party. He was respected for his hard work but derided for the Democrats' failure to regain control of the House of Representatives after being cast into the minority in 1994.
When the Monica Lewinsky scandal engulfed the White House in 1998, Gephardt called President Clinton's conduct "reprehensible," but he stood up for Clinton in denouncing "the politics of smear and slash and burn" that he saw in the Republican-led impeachment effort.
One of his biggest regrets is voting for the 1981 tax cut championed by Republican President Ronald Reagan.
"I'd worked for a Democratic alternative. We failed by a few votes. Then, are you for any tax cut or no tax cut? I thought that given the economic circumstances, a tax cut was better than none. In retrospect I didn't think it was a good vote," Gephardt recalled.
"I never know if my votes are right. I do my best," he said.
This is the second in a series of profiles of Democratic presidential candidates who are competing in the Iowa caucuses, which start the presidential nominating process Jan. 19.
CAUCUS CANDIDATES
See GEPHARDT,
Dick Gephardt
CURRENT POSITION:
U.S. representative from Missouri, 1977 to present.
AGE: 62
FAMILY: Wife, Jane Ann Byrnes; son Matthew, 32, and daughters Christine, 30, and Katherine, 26.
EDUCATION: Northwestern University, bachelor's degree, 1962; University of Michigan, law degree, 1965.
RELIGION: Baptist
MILITARY SERVICE: Missouri Air National Guard, 1965-71 |
