Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?

Item. For the second year in a row, the House of Representatives defeated the Farm Bill, this time by a vote of 234-195. Usually the Farm Bill is the least controversial legislation before the House, but 62 Republicans complained it was too expensive. Democrats opposed it because GOP cuts in food stamps were considered too much. (New York Times)

Anyone who watches Congress today must be reminded of Casey Stengel’s anguished remark during the New York Mets’ 1962 season: “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

Republicans and Democrats have barricaded themselves behind ideological stonewalls. No one talks, no one bargains, no one practices the political art of compromise. Only gray heads like me remember when representatives regularly crossed party lines for constructive bipartisan action.

How I long for those days.

When I was growing up in Central New York State in the 1950s, almost everyone I knew was a good Republican. My father wore a red plastic elephant on his lapel and I coveted the pin for its cartoon-like charm. My grandparents on both sides were solid Republicans.

Grandpa Emerson talked of having lunch with Theodore Roosevelt, although he never said if it was just Grandpa and Teddy or if a thousand other Republicans were there, too.

Grandpa Jenks was the Republican who ran the armory in Oneonta during the New Deal, and when he wanted to cuss really bad, he said, “Eleanor.” 



The biggest family party of the fifties was when Grandma and Grandma Jenks drove to Morrisville from Oneonta to watch the 1952 election returns on our 12-inch Admiral television. We cheered when Eisenhower was swept into office after 20 years of Democrat misrule. I still get giddy when I think about it. 


I knew only one other self-confessed Democrat in Morrisville, LaVerne Darrow, the village barber. LaVerne was a genial chap who wore a crisp white smock like his Mayberry counterpart, Floyd. LaVerne never talked politics with his Republican customers because that would have been bad business, but it was generally whispered about that he was not like the rest of us. 



My mother, it turned out, was a closet Democrat. Much to Grandpa Emerson's consternation, she voted for FDR in 1944 and JFK in 1960. I think she voted with the Democrats fairly consistently until 1980 when she switched to Ronald Reagan, co-star of her favorite film, King's Row. 


Looking back, I can easily imagine myself registering Republican, if only to get one of those cool plastic elephants for my lapel. John F. Kennedy changed that forever. JFK captured a generation of young idealists, made us think politics was honorable and good, and challenged us to ask not what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country.

But back then there wasn’t that much of a difference between Republicans and Democrats. Even Richard Nixon, despite the escalating paranoia that eventually ruined him, was a moderate Republican. And some of his best friends were Democrats.

Back then I, too, thought some of my best friends were Republicans. It had to be. My mother kept her politics to her self so I assumed my barber and I were the only Democrats in Morrisville. And in the early 60s, if I had any chance of following my political interests in Madison County, N.Y., it had to involve Republicans. 


Happily, there were some great Republicans around. Governor Nelson Rockefeller came to Colgate University, eight miles from Morrisville, to address the annual Boy's State gathering and my father, a Boy's State counselor, arranged for me to be in the balcony for the Governor's speech. Rocky was extroverted, charming and charismatic, and I thought then that when JFK retired from politics I could be a Rockefeller Republican. (Attica, the Rockefeller Drug Laws, and Megan Marshack were still in the future.) Too, the U.S. Senators from New York State, were Jacob Javits, a liberal Civil Rights advocate, and Kenneth Keating, a smiling moderate who parted his white hair like Floyd the barber. Despite my partisan enthusiasm for the New Frontier, all the Republicans I knew were decent, hardworking and open-minded public servants. 


Alexander Pirnie was my favorite, and certainly the most accessible of the area pols. Pirnie, a lawyer and businessman from Utica, was a World War II hero with a Bronze Star and Legion of Merit who represented us in Congress from 1959 to 1972. 


I don't remember what Pirnie's politics were exactly, but he couldn't have been elected in Central New York without being a conservative. I do know he was extremely responsive to his constituents, including a 16-year-old kid who couldn't vote.

I made sure I attended as many of Pirnie's visits to Morrisville as I could. He came to the dedication of the new post office in 1961 and presented the postmistress (Hannah Curtis, a Democrat appointed to the job during the Truman Administration) with a flag that had flown over the capitol. The huge portrait of JFK that hung in the post office lobby did not dismay Pirnie, and his greeting to the crowd was one of my first encounters with political palaver. 


“I’m always introduced by someone who says, ‘Well, here's the latest dope from Washington,’” he began, followed by a brief recap of legislation facing the House. He was great.

After his speech I decided to ask Pirnie how many flags flew over the Capitol before they were presented to post offices in the Congressional Districts. He leaned his head toward me attentively and his mouth dropped open a little when I asked, “Is there some guy there who raises and lowers flags all day?” 


He stood up and smiled. “Well, not all day, I don't think.”




“Are you going to vote for Sam Rayburn for Speaker?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Well, we Republicans are going to vote for Mr. Halleck (Charles A. Halleck of Indiana, House Minority Leader),” Pirnie replied. “But if he doesn't win …” he smiled broadly and winked … “I'll be happy to work with Mr. Rayburn.” 


Back then, who knew how radical that promise would sound fifty years later?

During my high school years I wrote to a wide variety of politicians in Washington, primarily to see if they would write back, or to collect autographs from the President, Vice President and other notables.

Pirnie was one of the politicians I wrote nearly every week -- so often that my name must have been too familiar to a harried typist who once mistyped the Congressman's signature block, “Alexander Jenks.” 


I joined the Air Force in 1964 and entered a period of my life where it was more important to write to old girl friends than to old congressmen, so I lost touch with Pirnie.

It wasn't until December 1, 1969, when I was in my freshman year at Eastern Baptist College, that I saw Pirnie on television, reaching into a large glass jar to draw a date for the Selective Service System draft lottery that would be the birthday of the first young men called to service. The look of concentration on his face was the same look he used to give me when I'd ask him how often they raised and lowered flags over the Capitol. 


Years later, in June 1982, I was attending an American Baptist meeting in Green Lake, Wis., when I read in the Milwaukee paper that former Congressman Alexander Pirnie had driven off the road in Canastota, probably after suffering a heart attack, and died. 



I put the paper down and remarked, “Hey, Alexander Pirnie died.” But the Baptists in the room just stared at me blankly. Pirnie was not an internationally known politician. 
He was just a good one. 


In Al Pirnie’s political era, Republicans and Democrats were bi-partisan and believed it was patriotic to cooperate with each other when it came to the public interest.

Today, political ideologies are sequestered (I use the term advisedly) behind wide, stagnant moats. Tea Party Republicans refuse to budge on any issue and recalcitrant Democrats stand stubbornly against their opponents. Neither side is talking and nothing is happening.

I think back with fondness on the days when the competition between Republicans and Democrats led to legislative milestones and made each party stronger.

Who knows if that spirit of bi-partisan cooperation will ever re-emerge.

If it does, it will take some major moderation on both sides. Weak and sometimes spiteful leadership by Democratic congressional leaders are part of the problem. But even more problematical, I dare day, is the GOP, which has been hijacked by Tea Party extremists who slash programs for the poor and push tax cuts for the rich.




Until thinking Republicans break free of the stranglehold of obdurate radicals, one has to wonder: Where are the heirs of Nelson Rockefeller, Margaret Chase Smith, Jack Javits, John Heinz, Harold Stassen, William Scranton, Bob Dole, and Mark Hatfield?

One can only hope their patriotic spirit is not gone forever.

Al Pirnie, won't you please come home?