Senate Journal: Page 925: Wednesday, April 2, 1997

  80th Day WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 1997 925
  Changes in politics and in business have made it all but impossible for some
  people
  who've been successful in private endeavors to serve in today's legislature.

  So some then and now comparisons are not appropriate.

  Whenever you get to talking with the old-timers in the legislative or
  lobbying or
  reporting stables, you get barraged about how bigger-than-life the members
  were way
  back when.

  I don't know why that is, because it's nonsense. Forty years from now, I
  tell you
  today, some of the members, the lobbyists, staffers and reporters here will
  be telling
  people about the giants that served here back in '97.

  I knew and liked and respected some of the giants of 40 years ago. I cherish
  some
  friendships that came from my days here. But I don't think most of
  yesterday's people
  were any different than today's members. Most of them would fit in quite
  easily today.

  They would have to learn how to deal with some changes just as today's
  members
  would have to learn to deal with yesterday's system.

  Despite my warnings about old-timers with giant stories, I do want to
  mention what
  I regard as the most extraordinary session in the state's history. The 1965
  session.

  It came as a result of the 1964 Johnson landslide over Goldwater, the first
  time in
  30 years that the Democrats were in control.

  There was a lot of fun, a lot of hell-raising, a lot of tipping over of
  tradition, but the
  hard fact was that there was not an issue that the general assembly refused
  to deal
  with.

  From both parties, it seemed to me, the members were there to do a job, get
  the
  state in order, not to get re-elected or prepare for some bigger office.

  It was an enormously creative session. Almost all of the legislative work in
  Iowa
  since has amounted to fine-tuning what was done in 1965.

  Someone like Bob Fulton or Minnette Doderer or Jack Kibbie or Bill Palmer
  should
  write a book.

  When I first came to the Iowa Legislature as a reporter, the committee
  meetings
  were closed. No one except members and the committee clerk was allowed in.
  It was
  not uncommon, you'd learn sometimes years after the fact, for a member to
  argue one
  way in committee and in another way in public.

  Leadership control was icy and ruthless. Issues weren't let out of committee
  for
  debate until they manifested substantial public support.

  As a kind of show, for example, two bills were debated at the same time on
  the same
  day in 1959: Reapportionment in one house and liquor by the drink in the
  other. There
  was no chance of either passing. The purpose was to let the debate be a
  safety valve to
  let off some public pressure.

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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