Outsider in the White House (3 page)

I spent one year at Brooklyn College and four years at the University of Chicago, from which I graduated with a BA in 1964. I got through college with student loans and grants and through part-time work. I was not a good student. I took some time off from my studies when a dean suggested that perhaps I should “evaluate” my commitment to higher education. The truth is, though, that I learned a lot more from my out-of-class activities than I did through my formal studies. At the university I became a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Peace Union (SPU), and the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL). I participated in civil rights activities related to ending segregation in Chicago's school system and in housing, and I marched against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I also worked, very briefly, for a trade union, the United Packinghouse Workers. At the end of my junior year I worked in a mental hospital in California as part of a project for the American Friends Service Committee.

While coursework didn't interest me all that much, I read everything I could get my hands on—except what I was required to read for class. The University of Chicago has one of the great libraries in America, and I spent a lot of time burrowed deep in the “stacks”—the basement area where most of the books were stored. I read mostly about American and European history, philosophy, socialism, and psychology. Among many other writers, I read Jefferson, Lincoln, Fromm, Dewey, Debs, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Freud, and Reich. I also discovered the periodicals room.

In any case, there I was on a beautiful fall day in 1971 in a room full of strangers at a meeting of a group called the Liberty Union.

When I arrived, I soon discovered that the purpose of this meeting was to nominate candidates for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Vermont's senior senator, Winston Prouty, had died on September 10, 1971, and the state's lone congressman, Robert Stafford, had decided to give up his House seat to run for the open Senate post in a special election to be held in January. That left two positions vacant, with no incumbents contesting either race.

The small Liberty Union Party was not exactly overflowing with individuals who were interested in running for the two seats. So, full of enthusiasm for what I believed was right and just, I raised my hand and offered my views on education, the economy, and the war in Vietnam. An hour later, I had won the nomination as the Liberty Union candidate for the open Senate seat. Talk about grassroots democracy! That meeting also allowed me to meet two lifelong progressives who have remained close friends ever since, Dick and Betty Clark of Chittenden.

When I say “won” I am being overly generous to myself. I was chosen as the candidate unanimously because there was no competition. By day's end, I had embarked on the first political campaign of my life. Together with Doris Lake, who was selected as the candidate for the House, I was to present Vermont voters with a political perspective from outside of the two-party system.

At the beginning of the campaign I participated in my first ever radio broadcast—a talk show in Burlington. And what a show it was. I was so nervous that my knees shook, literally bouncing uncontrollably against the table. The sound engineer frantically waved his arms at me through the glass partition between the studio and the control room. The sound of the shaking table was being picked up by the microphone. A strange thumping noise traversed the airwaves as the Liberty Union candidate for the U.S. Senate began his political career. And the few calls that came in expressed no doubt that this career was to be short-lived. “Who
is
this guy?” one of the listeners asked.

Despite such inauspicious beginnings, I enjoyed the experience of running for office very much. What excited me most was the opportunity to express to the people of Vermont views that many of them had not heard before. Although Vermont is a very small rural state, it has dozens of radio stations, eleven daily newspapers, and over thirty weekly newspapers. As it turned out, much of the local media was delighted to report the strange opinions of the Liberty Union's candidate. Again and again during that summer and fall I stressed my opposition to the war in Vietnam, and articulated my belief in economic democracy and social justice.

My political opponents in Vermont often accuse me of being boring, of hammering away at the same themes. They're probably right. It has never made sense to me, then or now, that a tiny clique of people should have incredible wealth and power while most people have none. Justice is not a complicated concept, nor a “new” idea. Tragically, most politicians do not talk about the most serious issues facing our country, or the real causes of our problems. So I do. Over and over again. This drives the media and my opponents a bit crazy, but most Vermonters seem to appreciate that I address the issues most relevant to their lives. And should we ever achieve economic and social justice in this country, I promise that I'll write some new speeches.

Just prior to the 1970 election, the Banking Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives published a report documenting the degree to which large banks in America controlled many major corporations, exerting enormous economic influence over our society. (Little would I, or anyone else in Vermont, have believed then that twenty years later I would be a member of that committee.) I lugged that report all over the state, quoting from it extensively.

I used the publication to talk about the phenomenon of “interlocking directorates,” showing how a handful of very powerful people were making decisions affecting one major sector of the economy after another. I contrasted the reality of corporate domination with the lives of ordinary working people—laborers, farmers, shop owners—who had little or no say over what happened to them on the job.

Time after time, I pointed out that such disparity in the distribution of wealth and decision-making power was not just unfair economically, but that without economic democracy it was impossible to achieve genuine political democracy. The message could be reduced to a simple formula: wealth = power, lack of money = subservience. How could we change that? How could we create a truly democratic society?

For me, one of the highlights of that campaign was the public debates I had with Republican congressman Robert Stafford and the Democratic candidate, State Representative Randy Major. More often than not, the audience was sympathetic to the views I expressed—especially the call for economic justice. Although I was the candidate of a minor party, people were listening to what I had to say and they often supported my position.

The lesson I learned from those debates and the audience response—a lesson that remains with me today—is that the ideas I was espousing were not “far out” or “fringe.” Frankly, they were “mainstream.” They were concepts that a majority of people would support, if they had an opportunity to hear them. In short, social justice was neither “radical” nor “un-American.”

But another political fact became clear to me during this first campaign: the perpetual bane of American third parties. “I fully agree with what you're saying, Bernie,” someone in the audience would invariably tell me after a debate. “But I don't want to waste my vote on a third-party candidate.” How many times over the years have I heard that view?

That first campaign also provided a good introduction to the role of the media in politics. It was an unforgettable experience. The Democratic candidate, State Representative Randy Major, was not widely known and was considered a long shot in our (then) very Republican Vermont. So Major devised a plan to attract media attention by “skiing around the state to meet the voters.” It was a brilliant publicity gimmick, and it worked wonderfully. Throughout the campaign, people were talking about the skiing lawmaker.

In fact, far more press attention was paid to the condition of Major's ailing feet than the “issues” facing Vermont and the nation. Here I was, giving long-winded statements to a bored media about the major problems facing humanity, and the TV cameras were literally focused on Randy's blisters. It was “new,” fast-breaking news. Would he be able to continue his ski effort the next day? Tune in and find out. In any case, neither my “in-depth analyses” nor Randy's skiing made much of a difference to the election outcome. In January 1972, Bob Stafford won the special election by thirty-one percentage points. Spending less than one thousand dollars, I came in a very distant third, with only 2 percent of the vote.

But if the truth be told, I was proud of the campaign that I had run. The low vote I got did not depress me. I understood that making political change was a long process, and that we had achieved an important kind of success. The Liberty Union, with a few campaign workers and limited financial resources, had exposed tens of thousands of people to new perspectives. Some Vermonters were seeing politics beyond the prism of the two-party system.

Six months later, in the general election of 1972, I ran for governor of Vermont. During that campaign I naturally concentrated on the state and local issues that a governor deals with. The interest in my campaign increased but my percentage of the vote declined. This time, I ended up with only one percent. Now that's quite an experience—getting one percent of the vote. However, the issues that I and other Liberty Union candidates raised during that campaign helped play an important part in the election results and eventually resulted in changes in public policy.

Thomas Salmon, a Democrat, upset the Republican candidate, Fred Hackett, and was elected as only the second Democratic governor in the state's history. During the campaign, Salmon very shrewdly and effectively picked up on two issues that the Liberty Union was fighting for: property tax reform and dental care for low-income children. Under the Salmon administration, a popular property tax rebate program was established, as well as a “tooth fairy” program that went a long way toward improving dental care for kids. Despite our paltry one percent, the Liberty Union made an impact on major legislation.

1972 was the year Richard Nixon won a landslide victory over George McGovern. During that campaign, the Liberty Union threw its support behind the presidential candidate of the People's Party, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the world-famous pediatrician. A delightful man, Spock campaigned in Vermont on several occasions. Because he was one of the “major” candidates for president, Spock was provided with Secret Service protection and was guarded in exactly the same way as Nixon and McGovern. Some twenty-five agents watched over him, in shifts, twenty-four hours a day.

As the Liberty Union candidate for governor, and the head of our ticket, I was given the responsibility of meeting Spock at the airport when he came to Vermont. I was broke at the time, and needed to borrow a few bucks to put gas into my old VW bug just to get there. At the airport, after convincing the Secret Service that I really was a candidate for governor, I was able to welcome Spock to Vermont.

Later in the afternoon, Spock, I, and other Liberty Union candidates walked down Church Street, Burlington's main thoroughfare, and campaigned under the very watchful eyes of the Secret Service. I remember the incongruity of it all. Here I was, without a dime in my pocket, about to get one percent of the vote, being protected by a dozen well-armed agents of the federal government.

During that trip, Spock and I spoke at Johnson State College. In the midst of his speech, which was very well attended, a student ran into the auditorium and screamed out, “Is there a doctor in the house? There's been a car accident.” Some drunken students had driven their car off the side of the road, and it overturned. Can you imagine their surprise when they found Dr. Spock and the U.S. Secret Service tending to their needs? Probably sobered them right up.

I ran for the U.S. Senate again in 1974. That election, in which I was vying for the seat left open when the venerable George Aiken retired, was a very close, hard-fought contest. While most of the state focused on the major party candidates—Patrick Leahy, a Democratic state's attorney from Chittenden County, and Richard Mallary, the incumbent Republican member of the House—I doubled my highest previous vote total, now reaching 4 percent. Leahy pulled off a major upset in that election and became the first Democrat ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Vermont.

1974 was a very exciting year for the Liberty Union, and the high point of its existence. Michael Parenti, who had been dismissed from his teaching post at the University of Vermont because of his antiwar activities, ran an excellent campaign for the U.S. House and received 7 percent of the vote against Republican Jim Jeffords (who won) and a Democrat—an extraordinary showing for a third-party candidate. Michael, who remains a good friend, eventually left the state and has since become an outstanding progressive writer.

The Liberty Union also put up strong candidates that year for governor, lieutenant governor, and for a number of seats in the state legislature—and many of them did well. Martha Abbott, our candidate for governor, and Art DeLoy, our candidate for lieutenant governor, each received about 5 percent of the vote. Nancy Kaufman, a young attorney who was the Liberty Union candidate for attorney general, received over 6 percent. (Twenty years later, Martha Abbott was elected to the Burlington City Council as a Progressive, where she continues to play a leadership role in the progressive movement.)

In 1976, as the now “perennial candidate” of the Liberty Union, I ran for governor again, this time against Republican Richard Snelling and Democrat Stella Hackel. With a solid performance in a prime-time television debate and greatly increased name recognition, I ended up with 6 percent of the vote. An increase to be sure, and an all-time high for me, but a long way from victory.

After that campaign I decided to leave the Liberty Union Party. It was a painful decision. I was proud of what a small number of people could accomplish in terms of running good campaigns, fighting utility rate increases, and supporting striking workers. We had done extremely well with limited resources, had brought a number of serious issues before the public that otherwise would not have been aired, and we affected public policy. With almost no money, our candidates received as much as 8 percent of the vote in three-party statewide elections. Further, since many of our candidates were women, we played a role in breaking down sexism in statewide politics. We also provided excellent political opportunities for working people and low-income citizens. One of our candidates for lieutenant governor, Art DeLoy, was the leader of one of Vermont's largest unions—the first time in memory that an active trade unionist had run for office.