Senate Journal: Page 923: Wednesday, April 2, 1997

  80th Day WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1997 923
  For the players, those little games can provide moments of fun. But for
  those of us
  who don't have the time or inclination or ability to keep track of it all
  and still have to
  live with the haphazard public policy that might result, it's bewildering.

  What stopped first, I wonder: The honor and respect that we almost
  automatically
  paid to a state legislator? Or the behavior, the demeanor, that commanded
  that honor
  and respect?

  Do I have a cure? An antidote? A reform? Lord, no. I'm having enough trouble
  just
  describing the condition.

  We live in a time when the only constant is change. The legislature is
  caught by that
  as surely as the rest of us.

  It may be a reflection of my age but what bothers me greatly is change for
  the sake
  of change, people changing a law without bothering to find out what the
  law's purpose
  was, what led to is passage in the first place.

  Almost every day in this place, many make a dreadful and dangerous
  assumption:
  That those who were here in the past were dummies and do not need to be
  heeded.

  Let me assure you: They were not dummies. Let me also assure you that, as
  the
  wise man said, those who do not read history are doomed to repeat its
  mistakes.

  There is no doubt in my mind that today's Iowa Legislature is more
  representative
  of the people of Iowa than yesterday's legislature was.

  The legislature's work and play, unfortunately, is not bathed in the high,
  good
  humor that marked it 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

  The passions back then were just as strong, I think, but the respect for
  decorum and
  the legislative traditions of good behavior were dominant.

  That resulted in the kind of class, for instance, that Minnette Doderer
  showed about
  30 years ago when she went up on a point of personal privilege to talk about
  Richard
  Radl of Lisbon.

  "When he goes home this weekend, I hope his mother comes out from under the
  porch and bites him," she said.

  In 1973, Charles City's Ralph McCartney filed a motion to censure Lucas
  DeKoster
  of Hull. "He used a fact in debate and that's a dangerous precedent," said
  McCartney.

  The same year Algona's Berl Priebe began to have doubts about the committee
  system: "Ever since my baby pig bill went to Education, I've been a little
  skeptical of
  committees," he said.

  In 1977, I asked the wife of a legislator if she thought if was right to
  serve as her
  husband's clerk even though she didn't have some secretarial skills such as
  short-
  hand.

  "I can write faster in longhand than he can think," she said. Case closed.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: Senate Journal (77th General Assembly: Session 1)

© 1997 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

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