Nunn Dares Not Tread
GRANN, DAVID
Nunn Dares Not Tread by David Grann THE DEMOCRATS LAST HOPE may be a middleaged mother from the Rust Belt. She is Debbie Stabenow, a 45-year-old career state legislator who traveled last week from...
...Paul Simon, an ardent Great Society liberal...
...And Republicans, having seized the Capitol, may be about to dig a moat: a 60-seat, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in 1996...
...And in 1964, then-Democratic Sen...
...I've fought for certain values for 20 years...
...and Bradley, a former Rhodes Scholar and intellectual voice of moderation...
...And President Clinton called and pleaded with Mineta, who was offered a lucrative job with a defense contractor...
...That much is at stake...
...Some departures, like Rep...
...Preston Brooks beat Sen...
...In 1902, two Democratic senators punched each other in the face over their "honor...
...Mike Parker, who is considering the former...
...All to no avail...
...As a result, the party has lost its best and brightest-Mineta, a former chairman of the Public Works and Transportation Committee...
...For the Democrats' sake, she'd better...
...Right now conservative Democrats only have two choices: switch parties or retire," says Rep...
...Harry Johnston from Florida announced he was calling it quits at the end of the term...
...She is Debbie Stabenow, a 45-year-old career state legislator who traveled last week from her Michigan home to the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to consider a run for Congress...
...We call it the 'Normandy instinct," says Rich Davis, a former press secretary for Gibbons...
...Yet for six hours she listened, along with 70 other potential candidates, to Democratic recruiters cajole and counsel her, including a special plea from House minority leader Richard Gephardt...
...I haven't made up my mind yet," she says...
...The problem is that only an old-fashioned political brawl will save the Democratic party from imminent death...
...In 1856, Democrat Rep...
...And Sen...
...Ralph Yarborough outside the Senate Caucus Room and made him cry uncle...
...That's why the image of the 75-year-old Rep...
...Joseph Lieberman, a conservative Democrat, says he implored Nunn and Bradley to stay in the trenches...
...Indeed, in the Senate, Nunn, the highly regarded ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, said he'd rather go home than return in 1996...
...On the House side, the numbers are equally grim: Though only five Democrats have said they will retire so far, three others have found their inner Republican souls, one has resigned mid-session and another has gone to jail...
...So with their prize fighters like Sam Nunn and Bill Bradley slinking off to retirement homes, Stabenow isn't sure the battle is worth it...
...And a lot of people just can't take it...
...In an interview with The Hill newspaper, he said even his family was surprised at his sudden exit...
...Charles Sumner with a cane in the Senate chamber...
...Not if it means being trapped eternally in the minority...
...And with so many departures, some party faithful have tried to find a certain nobility in the exodus, as if they were Jews crossing the desert...
...Sam Gibbons yanking on Republicans' ties, throwing paper balls, and exploding on the House floor is so stirring for Democrats...
...But, as Stabenow notes, there's a third choice: Stay and fight...
...David Grann is executive editor of The Hill...
...He is the unprecedented eighth Democratic senator to announce his retirement in a single session...
...But she has come to Washington at a time when the once-potent party of Sam Rayburn and Harry Truman looks more like a gang of George Bush wimps...
...Yet with few exceptions, no Democrats are plummeting into the darkness...
...But others seem to be a product of Democratic blues, and a kind of sanctimonious passivity...
...Sounds good, even stirring, except for one thing: Politics has always been ugly...
...We need you," he said, becoming flushed and pounding his fist against the podium...
...Perhaps...
...Winning this election is about more than politics...
...It's about saving the country...
...I've never been afraid to back away from a fight," she says...
...Nunn, a defense expert...
...two more-Sens...
...Norman Mineta of California packed up his bags in mid-session and split for a job in the private sector, while Rep...
...He is 75...
...Democrats may have even discovered a newfound nobility in the minority...
...This is the group that will take the people's House back in '96...
...Richard Shelby and Ben Nighthorse Campbell-have switched parties...
...Just 24 hours earlier, Rep...
...Paul Simon groaned: "Politics today are unnecessarily ugly...
...Mineta took the money and ran, saying, "after 20 years, frankly, I have nothing to show for this...
...With Democrats like Nunn and Bradley heading for the hills, only people like Stabenow may be left to resist the Republican revolution...
...Both have moved away from my own concept of service and my own vision of what America can be...
...Strom Thurmond wrestled down Democratic Sen...
...On a basic level, politics is broken," he said...
...Just when the party needs them most, Democrats- long the champions of the underdog-have lost their legendary chutzpah...
...We won't tear things down just to prevail...
...It's not fun being in the minority," Stabenow says, having experienced it in the Michigan legislature...
...Bradley decried the state of American politics...
...If you didn't see manifestations of ugliness, you'd wonder what was wrong," says Senate historian Richard A. Baker...
...The party, facing the prospective end of its cherished New Deal and Great Society, has lost something much more critical than vision: guts...
...Gephardt cornered senior Democrats, begging them to keep fighting...
...It's easy to understand why Gephardt sounds so desperate...
...Call it a Democratic brain drain...
...The bottom line is that Gingrich's style of politics won't benefit the country," says Rep...
...Nunn echoed: "The ability to raise big money and buy saturation television ads has become the dominant theme of our political races...
...And if the future of the country is really at stake, as all the Democrats contend, where have all its defenders gone...
...My kids said, 'Gee, Dad, we thought you'd go out feet first.'" Instead, as Republican party chairman Haley Barbour has noted: "Democrats have voted with their feet...
...Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat...
...Sonny Montgomery's, were expected...
...Neither party speaks to people where they live their lives...
...People like Nunn and Bradley and Montgomery are too dignified for that...
...I'll have to make up my mind soon," she says...
...It's the same instinct that led him as a 24-year-old to parachute into darkness while German soldiers were firing at him...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 6
