From the Desk of Carl Levin U.S. Sen. (D-MI)
Mt. Pleasant – Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you, Pamela [Gates. Interim Dean of the College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences].
I have been lucky during my years in the Senate to receive many invitations, perhaps thousands, to speak about important topics. But tonight is especially humbling because of the character of the two leaders Central Michigan University has chosen to honor with this lecture series.
Phil Hart and Bill Milliken rank among the very best public servants our nation has produced. That’s not just because they were smart – though they both were. It’s not just because they were effective officeholders, one as a legislator, the other as an executive – though they both were very skilled at their jobs. These two men were great public servants because they put those talents to work with exceptional integrity and unshakeable dedication to the public good. Politics is, unfortunately, often a business in which one makes enemies. But these two men were so decent, so principled, so clearly striving to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, that even those who disagreed with them didn’t see them as enemies.
Yes, people disagreed with them all the time. Governor Milliken was attacked by many within his own party when he supported the city of Detroit, or, in more recent years, when he has opposed the ideological rigidity of many in his party. Senator Hart had a habit of telling audiences precisely what they didn’t want to hear. He’d tell Michigan audiences that GM should be broken up, or an all-white community that they should accept fair housing laws that would open their neighborhoods to people of color.
These men earned the respect and admiration of their constituents and their colleagues – extraordinary respect, of a depth very rare in politics. I don’t think I could give a finer tribute to Governor Milliken than something my older brother, Congressman Sander Levin, once said: “I think Bill Milliken has always been a thoroughgoing pluralist,” Sandy said. “He cherishes diversity and differences of opinion, and he shuns extremism.” And that’s from a guy who lost two gubernatorial elections to Milliken.
Senator Hart’s name, as you may know, graces one of the three Senate office buildings near the Capitol in Washington. Phil Hart was never a committee chairman, but in a bit of a break with tradition, the Senate voted to accord him the honor of naming the new and largest office building after him while he was still living. Why? Because he was, as the inscription on the Hart Building entrance reads, “the conscience of the Senate.” When we dedicated the new building, Senator Ted Kennedy explained: “The last thing Phil Hart ever wanted was a building in his name. But we went ahead and named it for him anyway, because we loved him.”
Now, it is true that on rare occasion, those of us in politics don’t quite live up to those high standards. You may know the story of the day that the Pope and a senator arrived before the Pearly Gates at the same time. St. Peter greeted them both, and then asked the Pope to wait while he attended to the senator.
So the Pope watched as St. Peter walked the senator to a large mansion. He saw St. Peter show the senator its many rooms, the swimming pools, the exquisite furniture. Truly, the Pope thought to himself, this is the glory of Heaven. After a while, St. Peter returned to a very excited Pope. But instead of another palatial home, St. Peter walked the Pope to a plain, rundown apartment building, and opened the door to a dingy studio apartment.
The Pope turned to St. Peter and said, “I don’t understand. I have spent a lifetime serving the Lord. Why is my reward this tiny apartment, while the senator is given a mansion?” “Well,” St. Peter answered, “we’ve got plenty of popes around here. But that was the first senator we’ve laid our eyes on.”
So, no, politicians are not often confused with saints. We often find ourselves in the middle of stormy seas, tossed to and fro by swirling winds that blow in so many directions it can be difficult to steer a steady course. We must consider the needs of our constituents –constituents with different, conflicting needs. We must consider our own opinions and values – leavened by the knowledge that subtle, subconscious bias may shade those values. We must weigh the good of our states and the good of the nation, even when they are not precisely in parallel. There are the opinions of respected colleagues, as well as the flood of analysis we receive from experts inside government and out, plus the steady stream of information, some good, some bad, that comes from individuals and all sorts of organized groups. And then, of course, there’s politics – the pressure of the next election.
Leaders must choose among many priorities while buffeted by these swirling crosswinds. The need for a moral compass is clear. Without an ethical framework to guide you as you balance these competing goals and interests, the crosswinds will knock you off course.
Easy to say; more difficult, perhaps, to do. But let’s start with a proposition. I consider my duty as a legislator to be a fiduciary’s duty – a trust. Just as in the financial world, a fiduciary is entrusted with a client’s assets and charged to operate in the client’s best financial interest, I am entrusted with one of Michigan’s two votes in the United States Senate. If I believe I am a fiduciary, my duty as a lawmaker is to cast that vote after a conscientious effort to determine what is best for my constituents, even though it might be an unpopular course to choose at the time.
This is not a universally accepted view. To many, the job of a legislator in a representative democracy is to do just that – represent and reflect the views of constituents, and faithfully ascertain and follow their majority opinion.
While I don’t subscribe to that view, I respect it. It seeks to keep our government in touch with the democratic ideal. It is certainly the view of many colleagues and constituents.
A few weeks ago, I spoke at a conference in Washington on our policy in Afghanistan. I’ll spare you the full speech, but the important part for tonight is that, while I expressed my opposition to committing more combat troops in Afghanistan, I also argued that we have important security interests in the region, and that we should renew our commitment to success there in ways other than by expanding our combat troop presence.
After my remarks, there was a question-and-answer period, and the first question was from a member of a very active anti-war group. “The president,” she said, “is supposed to represent the people, and the people have spoken in numerous polls.” Those polls, she said, show that most Americans oppose additional troop commitments to Afghanistan. “Shouldn’t the president be listening to the American people?” she asked.
It’s a good question. Aside from the political risk of adopting a policy most people oppose, does a public official violate his or her duty by looking beyond current popular sentiment? Is it not the responsibility of democratically elected officials to give the people what they want?
I answered the lady’s question with a question: Should I have voted for the Iraq war because public sentiment at the time strongly supported it? I suspect the Afghanistan war opponent who questioned me that day did not oppose my vote in that earlier case, and understood the rhetorical nature of my question. I don’t think “the public opinion polls made me do it” is a reason to vote for a war – or anything else, for that matter.
This question of what should guide a legislator is as old as representative government, and the fiduciary model is hardly my own idea.
A few years before the founding of our nation, in Great Britain, a famous statesman was making the case for the fiduciary duty of the legislator. Facing constituents who opposed many of his votes in Parliament, Edmund Burke explained himself to the voters of Bristol, saying that rather than owing them his obedience, “I owe you my judgment.” Burke went on: “I did not obey your instructions. No. I …. maintained your interest, against your opinions. … I am to look, indeed, to your opinions,” he said, “but to such opinions as you and I MUST have five years hence. I was not to look to the flash of the day.”
That is perhaps the most powerful statement there is for the fiduciary theory of representative government. And it can get a lawmaker all fired up about one’s solemn duty as a trustee of the people – until perhaps when he finds out that the voters of Bristol did not send Burke back to Parliament after he delivered that speech. Burke’s fate points out one of the many challenges to exercising this fiduciary role, and the most pointed and personal one: the right of the voters to choose a new fiduciary, the ultimate check on the judgment of the legislator.
Burke has been joined by a long line of lawmakers who suffered at the ballot box after decisions they felt served the public good. You may be familiar with some of these. John F. Kennedy, before he became president, wrote a book on the Senate’s “Profiles in Courage” that is still widely read five decades after its publication.
Henry Bellmon, a Republican from Oklahoma, served in the Senate well after Kennedy wrote his book. You probably haven’t heard of him. He was nearing the end of his second term in the Senate when I arrived there in 1979. Just a few months before, Senator Bellmon had cast the most controversial vote of his career: He had voted to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty, which would turn the U.S.-owned canal over to the Panamanian government.
Bellmon’s constituents were ardently opposed to the treaty. But he had fought as a Marine in World War II in some of the bloodiest jungle battles in the Pacific, on islands like Saipan and Iwo Jima. And he feared a similar fate for a new generation of Americans, in Central America this time, if the canal was not relinquished, because the people and leaders of Panama so resented our domination of the canal. Facing intense opposition at home for his vote and certain he could not win re-election, Bellmon decided not to seek another term. But years later, he said his vote had been the right choice, although he was effectively signing his own political death warrant. By the way, his political demise was short-lived: Six years after he left the Senate, Henry Bellmon was elected governor, a reminder that political courage can sometimes be rewarded. When he passed away in September, he was widely praised as one of the most decent and honorable public servants in his state’s history.
There’s another example you’re likely more familiar with, one closer to home. Few presidents have made a more controversial decision than Gerald Ford’s choice to pardon Richard Nixon. At the time, he was widely accused of covering up for a disgraced former president, and of short-circuiting the justice system. The opposition included some of his own staff; his press secretary resigned in protest. The pardon may not have been the only reason Ford lost his re-election bid in 1976, but the uproar after his decision was a major factor in his defeat. But at the time, and for the rest of his life, President Ford remained convinced that he had done the right thing for the nation, even at the expense of his own re-election. So long as Watergate hung over the nation, he felt, we could not focus on the other pressing problems we faced. Jerry Ford acted as a healer at a time when our nation needed heeling, and even if a majority of voters did not recognize his wisdom at the time, he is justly admired today for that courageous act.
Stories like this always come to my mind when young people ask for guidance about a career in politics. This is the advice I always give: Make sure there is something else you love to do, a fulfilling career you can pursue outside politics. Practically speaking, you’re probably going to need it. The odds are that you won’t get elected in the first place; most people lose. And if you are elected, at some point in your career, you may lose, just as Burke and Bellmon and Ford lost. But even if you win, you’ll need that “something else” if you follow the fiduciary model. It will better equip you to serve as a fiduciary. If holding elected office is your only ticket to job fulfillment, then the pressure grows to sacrifice your judgment to the current popular view when your judgment about what’s best for your constituents conflicts with theirs.
For me, “something else” has always been the law. I knew I could be happy with a career in law, even if politics didn’t work out. And that knowledge was vital during my freshman term in the Senate, when we voted on a tax-cut proposal from President Reagan. This proposal was promoted to the public, and the Congress, using what I believed to be the specious notion that economic growth sparked by the tax cuts would mean increased tax revenue. More than 80 percent of Americans supported the tax cuts. But most economists at the time, and nearly all economists today, dismiss it as fantasy. It was my judgment that those tax cuts would harm the interests of Michigan and the nation, that they would explode the deficit, increase economic inequality, and fail to spark the explosive growth their proponents claimed. Constituents didn’t see it that way at the time, and there was obvious political risk in voting against such a popular proposal. The fact that I could be happy inside public office or outside made it an easier vote to cast.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the United States Senate. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve in the Senate. Indeed, in last year’s election I spent a great deal of time, and no small amount of money, subjecting you all to 30-second TV ads so that I could remain in the Senate.
And I am emphatically NOT arguing for an “I-know-better-than-you” theory of legislative action. Arrogance is the enemy of wisdom and of wise action. If a lawmaker finds him or herself in the position of disagreement with the public, that circumstance should prompt a simple question: “Am I wrong?”
There is danger in being too certain of your course. You could end up like the ship captain who on a foggy night saw a light across the water, and signaled to the other ship, “We are on a collision course, change your course to starboard.” Back came a terse reply, “No, you change your course.” The greatly irritated captain signaled back, “Change your course now, I am captain of a battleship.” That brought an equally agitated reply: “You change course, sir, I’m only a seaman second class but I’m in charge of a lighthouse!”
Sometimes, the voters are that seaman second class, warning you that the course you thought was so true might steer you to rocky shores. And like the captain, you need to listen. While exercising independent judgment is vital, so is real openness to the opinions and knowledge of one’s constituents. Most people, most of the time, have a pretty good sense of the right and wrong of political issues. A lawmaker faced with a situation where conscience and constituent opinion collide should not surrender his conscience. But that decision can’t be made in a vacuum, isolated from public sentiment. You need to ask: “Am I wrong? What do they know that I do not?”
Constituents express their views in lots of ways, but the most common is by writing, in letters or e-mails. On Election Day last year, a man came up to me at a polling place, and let me know in no uncertain terms that he was looking forward to voting for my opponent. “But I’ll give you this, Levin,” he said. “You always answer when I write. Your answers tick me off – I disagree with every single thing you write. But you always write back.”
To which I could only reply: “If my replies get you so upset, do you want me to stop writing back?” He said, no, keep writing, and we parted ways as he walked into the polling place to vote for the other guy. There’s a lesson to be learned there. You may not win over most constituents to your side on an issue. But constituents rightly demand that you listen to them and respond. You owe that responsibility to the constituents who agree with you and those who don’t. Not surprisingly, constituents are far more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on a controversial issue if they know that you hear their voices.
Constituent opinion is one important source of information for our judgments, but hardly the only one. The taxpayers provide me with a staff whose job it is to gather information, monitor legislation, and advise me; I make sure that these are smart folks, and then I listen to their analysis too. They and I receive advice from independent analysts, and information through all forms of media. We also gather information from another source, the groups affected by our decisions, and yes, these groups are often represented by lobbyists.
Lobbyists are much maligned these days. And I have long advocated for more transparency in lobbying: In fact, in 1995, after five years of effort, the Senate passed legislation I had authored toughening our rules on lobbyist disclosure, one of the legislative achievements of which I am most proud. But just as the lawmaker who dismisses the view of his constituents is guilty of arrogance, so is the lawmaker who ignores the views of people directly affected by proposed legislation. Our system was not designed to exclude “special interests” – it is designed to balance them against one another as part of the effort to achieve the larger public good. Of course lobbyists need to be transparent in their efforts. But they also need to be heard, as do people or groups without paid lobbyists.
It is this flow of information that feeds the legislator’s decision-making. It passes through the filter of his or her judgment and experience. There is usually no shortage of information and advice. Sometimes it’s relatively easy – the advice, the information, public opinion and your own judgment point in the same direction. Sometimes you end up going in the direction your judgment sends you, even if the public isn’t with you – and, sometimes, even if it appears to be inconsistent with a previous position you have taken.
I discussed earlier my vote against the Iraq war, and how public opinion and my own judgment collided. As the war progressed, the swirl of competing priorities grew. I unsuccessfully offered legislation that would have directed President Bush to transition responsibility from our own military to Iraq’s government, and gradually reduce our troop presence. Having lost the vote to go to war, and votes to transition our military mission from combat to support, I had to decide: Would I vote in favor of funding for a war I had disagreed with from the start, but which was supported by a democratically elected president and a majority of Congress?
Some of my colleagues who felt the same way as I did about the war argued that we should try to cut off its funding. Congress’ ultimate authority is that of the purse, they said, and using that authority was the only way to end the war. The liberal group MoveOn.org paid for advertisements that aired in Michigan criticizing my past votes in favor of war funding and pressuring me to vote against future funding.
Even if I’d been inclined to simply follow the opinions of the moment, they were little help; the public was at this point conflicted about the war and its conduct. I could have argued that, since I had opposed the war, I would not vote to provide funding for it.
Against that I had to lay my conviction that the mistaken decision to go to war did not lessen our duty to those who were fighting it – to support them while in harm’s way, and afterward, to honor their sacrifices.
More than a century before, Abraham Lincoln had faced a similar dilemma. He had opposed the Mexican War as unconstitutional. But as a member of the House of Representatives, he felt morally bound to provide funding for the troops that had been committed to that war. His law partner in Illinois, William Herndon, wrote him, asking how he could vote to fund a war he opposed. Wasn’t he trying to have it both ways? Lincoln responded that he was not trying to hide his opposition to the war. He wrote of his conviction “that the Administration had done wrong in getting us into the war, but that the Officers and soldiers who went to the field must be supplied and sustained at all events.” One rarely goes astray following the example of Abraham Lincoln, and I decided to do so.
Great public servants such as Senator Phil Hart and Governor Bill Milliken, courageous leaders everyone knows of, such as Abraham Lincoln, and those you may not know, such as Henry Bellmon, each recognized that above all else, the obligation of a public servant is not to serve the public mood of the moment, but to serve the public interest, as best one can judge it. It is to act, as Lincoln said, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right” – after using our best efforts to determine what is best for those we serve, while never forgetting that such judgments are human and therefore fallible.
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