clasp and tended to poll well with female voters despite his conservative politics. I had a sudden conviction that things were about to get really ugly.
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked, smiling easily, “that I might not like you, either?”
He paused, the deathly silence that White’s introduction had generated gradually giving way to a ripple of appreciative laughter. Much to my surprise, he’d said exactly the right thing. Straight talk was red meat to this crowd.
“My father was a rancher,” he continued, a barely perceptible down-home twang to his words, “and the only time I ever bumped into financial folk as a kid was when the local bank manager would come around and inquire after our ‘delinquent payments.’ I learned a lot of words listening to that banker—words like ‘delinquent,’ and ‘arrears,’ and ‘foreclosure.’ It was quite the education.”
He paused again, and I took a quick look around. Everyone present was leaning forward and paying attention. Maybe the entire purpose of White’s introduction had been to make Simpson seem sincere by contrast. Either way, there was no doubt that the senator had a knack for connecting with people.
“I wanted to continue that education, so I went off to college and then to law school. And my ultimate objective was to get myself to Washington, where I could persuade the government to work harder for honest folk like my father, and like the neighbors I’d grown up with. So, after I graduated, I took a job with the Bureau of Land Management in the U.S. Department of the Interior, one of thirty fresh-minted lawyers they hired that year alone. And I thought I had all the answers. I had a whole bunch of New Deal ideas about programs the government should institute—about things the government should
mandate
forrural America’s benefit. But much to my surprise, the day I started work at the BLM was the day my real education began. And what I learned was that everything the government touched became corrupt and bloated and snarled in red tape. I observed it time and again, firsthand, in every conceivable kind of circumstance, and I struggled mightily to integrate what I was seeing with my youthful big-government leanings. And then one day, like Paul on the road to Damascus, I saw the light. I came to realize that, as our esteemed president Ronald Reagan used to say, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.’”
He was in a groove now, having segued seamlessly into what sounded like a pretty standard stump speech. He held forth on the evils of big government for a few minutes, mainly battering the Democrats and the decisions of our current president but also careful to disavow Republican follies, such as the infamous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere. Realizing perhaps that his audience had a limited attention span, he wisely circled back to his starting point just as the energy started to leave the room and eyes began drifting back to BlackBerrys.
“So, it seems an irony that I’m a politician, the very thing I profess to dislike, and the very thing all of you so clearly despise. But let me tell you something I learned as a boy back home on the range—there’s a delicate balance in nature, and everything and everyone has a role to play. Coyotes are pests, but they keep down other pests, like rats and mice and rabbits. Financiers can be predatory, but they’re an instrument of market discipline, and they’re necessary if we’re going to get our economy going again. And politicians—well, maybe we can talk the truth sometimes, and tell people that more isn’t always better, that wishes are never fishes, and that strength and dignity are possible only when people accept responsibility for their own lives.”
There was some spontaneous applause despite the fact that he’d just compared his audience to animal pests, and it occurred to me that I might actually be listening
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked, smiling easily, “that I might not like you, either?”
He paused, the deathly silence that White’s introduction had generated gradually giving way to a ripple of appreciative laughter. Much to my surprise, he’d said exactly the right thing. Straight talk was red meat to this crowd.
“My father was a rancher,” he continued, a barely perceptible down-home twang to his words, “and the only time I ever bumped into financial folk as a kid was when the local bank manager would come around and inquire after our ‘delinquent payments.’ I learned a lot of words listening to that banker—words like ‘delinquent,’ and ‘arrears,’ and ‘foreclosure.’ It was quite the education.”
He paused again, and I took a quick look around. Everyone present was leaning forward and paying attention. Maybe the entire purpose of White’s introduction had been to make Simpson seem sincere by contrast. Either way, there was no doubt that the senator had a knack for connecting with people.
“I wanted to continue that education, so I went off to college and then to law school. And my ultimate objective was to get myself to Washington, where I could persuade the government to work harder for honest folk like my father, and like the neighbors I’d grown up with. So, after I graduated, I took a job with the Bureau of Land Management in the U.S. Department of the Interior, one of thirty fresh-minted lawyers they hired that year alone. And I thought I had all the answers. I had a whole bunch of New Deal ideas about programs the government should institute—about things the government should
mandate
forrural America’s benefit. But much to my surprise, the day I started work at the BLM was the day my real education began. And what I learned was that everything the government touched became corrupt and bloated and snarled in red tape. I observed it time and again, firsthand, in every conceivable kind of circumstance, and I struggled mightily to integrate what I was seeing with my youthful big-government leanings. And then one day, like Paul on the road to Damascus, I saw the light. I came to realize that, as our esteemed president Ronald Reagan used to say, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.’”
He was in a groove now, having segued seamlessly into what sounded like a pretty standard stump speech. He held forth on the evils of big government for a few minutes, mainly battering the Democrats and the decisions of our current president but also careful to disavow Republican follies, such as the infamous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere. Realizing perhaps that his audience had a limited attention span, he wisely circled back to his starting point just as the energy started to leave the room and eyes began drifting back to BlackBerrys.
“So, it seems an irony that I’m a politician, the very thing I profess to dislike, and the very thing all of you so clearly despise. But let me tell you something I learned as a boy back home on the range—there’s a delicate balance in nature, and everything and everyone has a role to play. Coyotes are pests, but they keep down other pests, like rats and mice and rabbits. Financiers can be predatory, but they’re an instrument of market discipline, and they’re necessary if we’re going to get our economy going again. And politicians—well, maybe we can talk the truth sometimes, and tell people that more isn’t always better, that wishes are never fishes, and that strength and dignity are possible only when people accept responsibility for their own lives.”
There was some spontaneous applause despite the fact that he’d just compared his audience to animal pests, and it occurred to me that I might actually be listening
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