Just Don’t Look

(I am delighted to share this piece today, dealing with fighting a coverup of major medical decline in a sitting official, by Andrea Zinga, one of my favorite people in the world. In the tale she tells below, I was her campaign manager in both general election campaigns. Though I advised her informally in her second primary, I was not directly involved in it. The first time, it was rated a 64% Dem District. Though daunting, my specialty was come-from-behind campaigns and, as I mentioned, Andrea and her husband, Chuck McClurg (back of her, to her right, in the black shirt and blue jeans in the above photo) became dear friends. In fact, Zinga is one of two people I have ever let read my written work before it is finalized. During the campaigns, we developed a system where either of us could initiate a public document, the other would revise it, and then the originator would make final revisions. It was a delight, because the final product was both elegantly simple and precisely (and concisely) detailed. In the second campaign, in 2006, we were polling within three points and were on our way to a very close race despite the odds when the House Page Scandal erupted. Within a week, the average Republican Congressional candidate had dropped 11 points. Instead of flipping Democrat seats, we ended up losing several supposedly safe Republican seats. Speaker Denny Hastert was ousted in disgrace and Nancy Pelosi began the first of her two reigns of error as Speaker of the House. But the journey did forge a great, enduring friendship. Zinga has a rapier wit and an enduring zest for life. Some of you may remember that she won a national Emmy for her work as the anchor on duty at CNN on the night of the Olympic Park bombing. That, of course, was back in the day when CNN was a real news station. This piece is printed by permission of Andrea Zinga, who retains all rights to it-CJ)

How  the seduction of modern elective office promotes self-interest over service. And what can happen to those who point it out.  

By Andrea Zinga

America is in a state of national shock—and political chaos– centering on our now lame-duck President.

“Those in the know” (the media? Fellow politicians?)   are saying now that Joe Biden has been failing physically and mentally for the last three years…or pretty much his entire Presidency.

 In the highest office in the land—you could say in the world—it could be assumed that it’s difficult to hide declining health.  But, not so much.  This is largely because of the people around you—people whose power derives from your power. Take Vice President Harris, for instance, consistently insisting in the midst of her ever-present laughter : “He’s FINE!”)

Incredibly, many Americans at the time didn’t know that FDR was paralyzed from the waist down. Earlier, they didn’t know when President Grover Cleveland had a secret operation (aboard a yacht!) to remove a cancerous tumor.  They didn’t know when Woodrow Wilson was desperately ill and his wife Edith ran the country for most of his second term.

And it wasn’t until The Debate—the televised appearance with Donald Trump that started people whispering, and then eventually shouting, the “Emperor has no clothes”—that the health of the current leader of the free world became an issue.

If President Biden is unfit to run for re-election then he must be unfit to run the nation. So who is?  

Who’s running things?–that was our question about a sitting U.S. Representative 20 years ago this year, when the electorate at large not seeing a problem—and no one on the officeholder’s side being at pains to point it out—became something I personally lived. It happened when I ran for Congress.

Congress, while still national office, isn’t just one person like the Presidency is. There are 435 U.S. Representatives. As a county party chair once told me:  “Get on the School Board, your life is hell. Same with city council. But go to Congress and you’re invisible till the next election rolls around. Most people aren’t even sure if you’re a U.S. rep or a state rep—whether you’re in Washington or in Springfield.”

While some elected U.S. Reps go in to try to be a star, and the vast majority are probably there with the honest intent to serve the people, there are also plenty of members of Congress who find it quietly cozy on the back bench.

At the time I decided to run, our incumbent Congressman, Lane Evans of Illinois’ 17^th District, had already been in D.C. for 20 years.  But when I’d have occasion to talk with other U.S. Representatives who had also been in  office that long, they’d ask who I was running against—I’d tell them—and they’d say “Who??”

Congressman Evans was popular back home. He went in on a hazy non-combat record as a Viet Nam -era Marine—and he quickly established good constituent service offices.  He was painted as a tireless fighter and friend to veterans.

But to go looking for his record in office…well, there really wasn’t any.  Over two decades in office he had proposed NO bills that became law. Zero.

About the time I went public with my decision to run and was talking about his non-record, he got a one-page bill passed in Congress– to name a Post Office. (Later, there were two more—one, enacted through other measures than his own proposal,  allowed revising veterans benefits decisions when there ‘s been a clear and unmistakable error.  His final bill, in his final year in office, added Parkinson’s Disease research and clinics to VA services.  

Because  Congressman Evans was struggling with Parkinson’s Disease  himself. He’d announced it six years earlier.  With 15 years in Congress already under his belt at that time, he’d been there  long enough to earn a pension (he did) and to wield some clout (he didn’t.)

I knew something about Parkinson’s. My grandmother had it.  Michael J. Fox of course has Parkinson’s.  Jesse Jackson Sr. has Parkinson’s. A former news director with whom I worked has developed Parkinson’s. It’s an insidious, progressive disease and a scourge I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

But the situation with the Congressman existed. He shuffled.  There were the halting gait, the stiff limbs, the super-soft voice. His words slurred. He mumbled.

 Polite reporters would strain their ears and try to use his most intelligible soundbite. People most decidedly do not have to speak perfectly in our times to have their thoughts accepted.  But they at least have to have them comprehended. 

What puzzled my new, naïve campaign was why the electorate in the district didn’t really seem to know these facts. We in the local media had seen it advancing for quite some time by the early aughts. Prior to running for Congress I was for a quarter of a century a TV news reporter and anchor—working all over the country but the majority of that time in the district in which I was running.

Inside the media, we had more knowledge than the average person of what Congressman Evans was not doing in office, and of the progression of his PD.

Things had reached a point where he campaigned in absentia, while staff handled his campaign duties.  So by the time I decided to run, in 2003, it was obvious that we the electorate were being, if not lied to, at least not informed  about the ongoing health of our sitting Congressman.  He  refused debates and made ever rarer public appearances.  His district director and his economic advisor became the faces and voices of the Congressman.

 In the four years I campaigned against him, it was his District Director I went head-to-head with in community forums AND DEBATES. I never once engaged with the Congressman himself,  or even saw him face-to-face. Not in the dozens of parades. Not at public functions. And certainly not anywhere we might exchange words and thoughts, ideologies and ideas for the district.

 Congressman Evans  had the power and insolence of the incumbency to lean on.

Many an incumbent does this of course:  “I’m here, and I’m pretty confident that l’ll  continue to be here—why should I risk anything?” Especially in debate.

Joe Biden would have been wise to follow that model. 

Who, we wondered, was handling Representative Evans’ Congressional duties?

Even while, by this time, his physical condition was significantly impaired, his staff was insisting that he jogged, daily, from his Washington apartment to the Capitol. (His record shows that over all he missed twice as many roll call votes as the average member of Congress.) And they were even MORE insistent that his mental acuity was sharp as ever, just as Joe Biden tried so hard to convince a nation . (President Biden and PD have been linked lately, with several physicians ascribing him that diagnosis from outside observation .)

Our Congressman himself certainly never went so far as to say anything like: “My health is fine:  it’s just my brain” as did Joe Biden when talking with, of all people, Democrat governors.

In fact, in the four years I ran against him the Congressman never said anything much except “I love my job. What else would I do?”  He’d been, for a short time, an attorney: it seemed he could do that.

In the case of Parkinson’s Disease, the physical deterioration is obvious but the victim’s mental state is dodgier.  And in the years we were campaigning, at least, easier to dodge. His staff continued to insist that his mental ability was undisputed and unchanged.  Today, any quick browser check will show you that there are mental effects, “mental dysfunction”, as Parkinson’s advances. Cognitive impairment, confusion, even delusions and hallucinations.

Whatever work my opponent was doing by then, it was less than ever.

We made the difficult decision to make Evans’ health a centerpiece of my announcement as a candidate for Congress. People had, after all, known about his Parkinson’s for six years already.

So in a blitzkrieg tour of the District, I said that for the good of the District and himself, he should retire.

Overnight our little world  exploded.  By the following day everyone was weighing in on this shocking pronouncement: all the radio and TV stations made it their top local news story.  Newspaper columnists followed: general columnists, political columnists, feature columnists, even for God’s sake a sports columnist.  A friend told me that he went to dinner at a local restaurant and it was the topic of conversation at the first three booths he passed.

Michael J. Fox and the Parkinson’s Association weighed in. I was promptly branded by the Democrat party as being “against the disabled.”

__________________________________

It was only years later that I realized what had happened. I had spent 25 years of my life as a news reporter, unafraid and determined to give people the truth. Let them hear it. Then, let them decide.

However, this is NOT the rule in politics. In politics, you tell the people what they WANT to hear.

In this heavily Democrat district, voters wanted to hear that the man they elected over and over was a good choice.  (There’s a saying: “Voters believe all congressmen are crooks—except theirs.” )

I obviously could not, as a challenger, say he was a good choice. But it was heresy that I said he was incapable, because they believed he was a good man.

In either party, once you get elected and then are loved—and through being a veteran and establishing good consumer outreach, the Congressman made himself loved–then you are golden, period. This U.S. Rep was also the hand-picked darling of the powerful local party boss. Case closed.

What my sadder but wiser campaign came eventually to realize was that physical—and mental—disabilities are pretty easy to hide in Washington. 

But it also turned out that it wasn’t just a matter of the public not knowing what was going on. When it came to Democrat voters, many did not care. District Democrats then—just as many Democrats nationwide were doing so last week with Joe Biden—accepted this weakening. He was their party’s chosen man. He was THEIR man.  From the party—to the candidate—to the elected office—to the power of government. That’s the Democrat creed.  Republicans vote for the candidate:  Democrats vote for the party.

Some years before, when I already had this run in mind, I asked my mother if she thought anyone would ever defeat Mr. Evans. “No,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked. “He’s worthless.”

“Sympathy vote,” she simply replied.  I should have listened.

Maybe  President Biden could have won on a sympathy vote—many, many people would have stood behind him. 

After I’d lost that bid for Congress and decided to try it again—and after Mr. Evans had won the Democratic primary again in 2006—came the summer day he shocked the District  by announcing he was dropping out–retiring. The Democrat county party chair announced Evans’ replacement to run: my old nemesis, his district director. He won the seat this time.  (With, to be fair, approximately the same 60-40 split that we Republicans had been losing a chance at the office by in that district since 1983. )

So our “bringing up the health issue” probably didn’t hurt our campaign that much.  I like to think it might have been what finally forced the Congressman out as he grappled with his increasing debility—leading to a string of subsequent, and slightly more effective, successors to represent the 17^th.

And certainly it did raise some difficult questions about health and public service:

1. WHY do our elected officials sometimes stay on far past the time their age – and possibly also health – say it’s time to go?  Representative Nancy Pelosi is running for re-election, again, at 84. Is her knowledge and experience and value really still increasing? Or does she just want to deal a death blow to Donald Trump at last? What about all the younger talent out there, with new energy and ideas, waiting for their chance to actually govern?

Here’s one, huge answer to that question. Holding public office today is a figurative million light years from the  Founding Fathers and their public service. To them (except for maybe Benjamin Franklin), it was a hated duty. They wanted only one thing:  to do what they had to do, and then get back to their wives, their lovers, their children, their neglected plantations, farms, and trades.

Public office in the U.S. today is a ticket to wealth, power, fame, perks, bonuses (like free Country Club membership everywhere in your District), insider tips, and a fairly guaranteed future as a lobbyist, board member, consultant or media personality. Seats in Congress are passed on through election to wives and to children who bear the same familiar name. All you have to do is stay in:  staying in office is ALL.

Modern Members of Congress long ago figured out how to goose their incumbencies—by the way their Districts are drawn and redrawn. It becomes like falling off a log to win again—and again—and again. The money, perks, possible power and influence roll on.

 In the case of the U.S. House and Senate, many of these benefits are benefits that Congress has voted itself.  As the popular saying goes: “Your tax dollars at work.”

2. Which brings us to question 2 (and 3,4, 5 and 6). Elected officials are there at the service of and on the payroll of the public. Americans in general are respectful and tolerant. When, though, does respect for an individual become more important than respect for the elected office he or she holds?  In our campaigning days not much was said (except by us) about “for the good of the District.”  Not much has been said recently about “for the good of the country.”

Should the matter be so delicate? Who benefits by tiptoeing around an elected official’s physical and mental ability to do the job: the public who pay and put her there? Or the officeholder herself? What’s the elected official’s responsibility in all this, and to whom? To his personal interests–or to the office?

As one—count them, one—newspaper editorial asked at the time of our shocking expose: What is so bad, exactly, about considering the health of a public official who is put there by the people to do their work on their dime? 

Poor health is hard and not something to parade.

Unless you are in elected office—and refuse to let go. 

When your health fails you while you’re in office, hard or not, you will, eventually, be parading it. You will eventually be outed. And you will, eventually, be out. The tragedy is the time lost to doing the people’s work. 

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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