139: Ghosts of Elections Past
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Well election season is upon us again. We've all already endured the news of the first Iowa straw poll ahead of us, 14 months of pondering the choice of presidential candidates who seem to excite nobody who you ever meet. And it feels that once again, all of us are left in a position where we want to feel inspired, we want to believe in something, and nobody is showing up to do the job. And I find myself thinking about a candidate I met during the last presidential election. This wasn't anybody who made it big. His name was Chuck Weislaw. He was a retired professor of electronics engineering running for office as a Republican in a mostly Democratic district of East San Jose. I met him at the Republican National Convention in San Diego, standing in the afternoon sun, wearing a red, white, and blue bicentennial tie. He had never run for office before this. And talking to him, you could tell, I mean, he was so much more emotionally present than any normal political candidate who you meet. He looked you in the eye. When you asked him a question, he actually answered it. And he had done it that robotic, not quite human, pod people affect that so many candidates end up having. I retired a 10 year professorship to run for office, so I could have been secure in academia, right, as a 10 year professor. And why are you doing this? I love my country. I come from a really humble background, and my country has been, it has given me opportunity that all I had to do was take advantage of it. I'm the son of a coal miner. Are you somebody who's always wanted to run for office, you've always toyed with it in the back of your mind? No. When did the idea come into your head? Well, I had a family meeting. My daughter and the son, their grown college educated off on their own. My wife and I got together, and I says, I says to my kids, I says, I look like I might want to take an early retirement. And so my daughter says, why don't you run for office? I says, you've got to be kidding. And I says, do you know what is involved with running for office? You know, the mudslinging, and the long hours, and whatever, you know. Then all of a sudden, my daughter came up to me, and she says, and this is what turned my mind. She says, this is our country. We love it. If not you, who's in? If not you, who's in? And that's when you decided. He was spending $60,000 of his own retirement money to do this. And like a lot of people, I met at the Republican convention. What was most striking about Chuck Wiesel was his idealism. He seemed completely sincere about what he was doing. This is the puzzle of the American political system. It's filled with lots of profoundly idealistic people, working at all levels. And yet, it does not seem to produce idealistic candidates. I mean, what's the most inspiring thing you've ever heard Al Gore say? Or George Bush Jr. Or Elizabeth Dole? Well, today on our radio program as we head into another election season, to keep us off from feeling dispirited by the staged media and events, the negative ads, the issues that have all been pre-tested and focus groups, we bring you stories of political idealists. Stories to make us all feel some small sense of hope about politics in America. All of these stories taken from election coverage we did four years ago here in this American life. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, I'm Eric Glass. At one of our show today, Upside Down World, we have a campaign diary from Michael Lewis from four years ago about a politician you'll be hearing a lot about in the next few weeks and months. And the story of a moment when the opposite of normal politics became normal politics. Fact two, kiss and tell. A Walter Mondale voting gay rights supporting unrepentant liberal signs up as a Republican party member and ends up a party functionary, a delegate to the state Republican convention where he wreaks havoc. Act three, Pete and repeat. California Governor Pete Wilson's anti-immigrant policies found some supporters among immigrants themselves. We hear an explanation of the profoundly idealistic notion of self-deportation. Act four, throwing money at the problem. You may recall a best-selling book from a few years ago called There Are No Children Here. About two boys growing up in Chicago's Henry Horner public housing projects. Well, those projects were across the street from the site of the 1996 Democratic convention
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