One of the Most Decent People to Ever Serve in Congress

I’ve been a fan of Jim Leach long before I ever heard of Barack Obama. He was the Congressman for the District which Cornell College resided and he would visit fairly regularly and was humble, smart, and incredibly down to earth.  He never ducked tough questions and he treated everyone with respect.  He also called out the right wing of his party frequently.  Gorenfeld just covered another story I’d never heard before:

In 1983, Norquist and Abramoff were part of a new wave of Republicans—they called themselves “movement conservatives”—struggling for control of the GOP. The old guard, symbolized by Rep. Jim Leach and his think tank, the Ripon Society, urged caution at the new politics of God, gays, abortion and trickle-down economics. They warned that the new faction was ripping up the pre-1964 roots of the party.

“Jack Abramoff is an Orthodox Jew and I am a Christian,” Norquist shot back. “We do not take this very kindly.”

Leach was gracious to such criticism—maybe excessively. After someone in the Norquist camp called the piece “a bunch of ridiculous malarkey,” Leach courteously confessed to his audience that the work might well suffer from “less-than-perfect research, and less-than-perfect facts.” Jim! thought McKenzie in consternation.

* * *

But no one had accused the duo of being Moon Children—at least, not literally. Over six months, McKenzie and fellow investigator Ken Ruberg had painstakingly researched what they saw as a cynical symbiosis forming during Reagan’s Morning In America. Several deals had been struck between right activists who raked in more money than ever by claiming to defend American tradition, and Moon, who was hostile to it. “Our position,” McKenzie says, “was, ‘Do you want to have Republicans lined up with a group that has these values?’”

What could conservatives possibly have in common with a Korean mystic from the fringes of the counterculture? Crude fearmongering, Leach argued. Conservatives were now “[a]ppealing to the lowest instinct rather than the highest in the America psyche,” he wrote. They had “inundated the country with fundraising appeals that tear apart the ethic of tolerance which binds our society together […]ust as Moon attempts to influence the young by offering simplistic allegiance to himself, the ‘Father,’ as a pallative to the anxiety endemic to modern society…”

What was on the line, he said, was “whether the Republican Party returns to its traditions, re-establishing itself as a party of rights and pragmatism, or adopts an agenda catalyzed by Moon and Richard Viguerie, becoming instead a party of anger and socialized values.” Viguerie, the most intriguing of all of Leach’s targets, was known as the “Founding Funder” of the Reagan revolution, whose direct-mail money machine had helped sweep Reagan Republicans into office.

Leach lost in 2006 to my college advisor David Loebsack.  It was one of the most honorable races ever run for Congress with very little negativity.  David and I talked in 2004 I think, when he was thinking about getting in the race.  I said I respected Leach, but if his first vote is the the Republican leadership then I could not support him anymore.  David responded, “Exactly!”  This wasn’t a new argument at all and it was what David ran on–Jim Leach is a good guy, but he was enabling people who had none of the integrity he did.  Leach even threatened to caucus with the Democrats if the RNCC ran a gay bashing piece against David.  The election was very close with David winning just barely.  Jim Leach almost certainly lost his race for himself and I think he was just fine with that.

Leach, as Banking Chair, single-handedly stopped Phil Gramm and the Clinton administration from tearing down the walls between banking and commerce–a key structural reform after the Great Depression.  It wasn’t about party to him, it was about what was right.

Leach endorsed Obama and spoke at the convention the other night.  He’s not dynamic in that setting.  Of all people, his voice sounds like Alan Keyes without the crazy ranting or Marvin the Martian.  He also seemed like the living embodiment of Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservatism.  Burke would see movement conservatism as another form of radicalism that he detested.  While Leach might not agree with everything in the Democratic Party, his endorsement of Obama comes from a fundamentally conservative place–where societies reform, not revolt.  Societies have a duty to those before them and those after them to maintain the that society as a contract between generations and that contract keeps us from losing our moorings to what is common to us all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6981BGSPnNU[/youtube]