Some years ago I bumped into Alan Simpson while he was pushing a
shopping cart around Albertson’s in Cody — a typical encounter
— and he asked me what I’d been up to lately. I told him that
I’d just published a piece in the Weekly Standard.
“Good!” said Alan. “Ann [Mrs. Simpson] gets it”.
“Really?” I beamed. “You subscribe to the Weekly
Standard?
“Oh, no,” Alan said, correcting himself. “She gets the
Greybull Standard ” — a weekly newspaper in Ann
Simpson’s girlhood hometown.
I found this encounter odd, because it gave me the
impression that the ex-U.S. Senator (1979-1997) hadn’t read or
even heard of the Weekly Standard. That’s unimportant
because who has time to read everything? But maybe he finally
picked up on it a couple of years later when it editorialized
against the Baker-Hamilton Commission — the Iraq Study Group, on
which he served, and praised him for his astute knowledge of “gas
and B.O.” Another takeaway for me was that I’d wasted years of
writing time in Wyoming by not becoming the star columnist at the
Greybull Standard.
As we know, Alan Simpson — or Big Al, as he’s known in
Wyoming — has again
answered his country’s call (or Barack Obama’s anyway) to
serve on a “blue ribbon bipartisan commission” to come up with
ideas to shrink the huge deficit that that voice on the other end
of the line mostly brought on himself. Big Al has a lot of
experience with blue ribbons thanks to years of campaigning at
Wyoming county fairs, and maybe there’s something to a theory
that the federal deficit can be likened to a blueberry pie of
infinitude, but I’ll leave that to the economists.
To quote the economist Yogi Berra, this is a case of déjà
vu all over again. It certainly reminds us of the Iraq Study
Group, where Big Al was a proponent of “talking to the Iranians,”
something we’ve been doing ever since, with the result being
their upcoming membership in the nuclear club. Some of the
group’s recommendations were taken seriously by President Bush,
but he mostly thanked them for their time and service, and set
the well-known successful “surge” in motion.
Big Al’s latest political American Idol moment pairs him
with Clinton-hack Erskine Bowles, and — as sportswriters say —
a Congressional bipartisan team to be named later. I needn’t bore
TAS readers with details of the outcome of this (they
probably read the Wall Street Journal too), which will
probably call for minor spending cuts and a healthy tax hike for
the middle class. Unlike President Bush, President Obama will
heartily endorse the recommendations of this latest commission
and congratulate those involved for a job well done.
In the last few days, Big Al and his evil-if-much-shorter
twin Erskine have been saturating the broadcast media as they
make the case for mucking out Obama’s fiscal stables in the
interests of “the grandkids.” All the classical Simpsonian
rhetorical skills are on display as Wyoming’s Sagebrush Cicero
lambastes the “bitchers, and the whiners, and the snorters.” I
hope the grandkids are kept away from the TV when Big Al outlines
the upcoming scary attacks employed by entities known as
“Rush-babes.” And if the AARP jumps in it’ll really get
ugly.
Big Al’s political career is interesting, in that while
hailing from one of the most culturally conservative states in
the country, he has always been at best a moderate. For instance,
during his Senate career he was pro-choice on abortion, pro-gay
rights, and pro-immigration reform. Early on, Big Al, following
the example of his father Milward’s political career (more
later), tapped into Wyoming’s (and other Western states whose
outgoing federal tax revenues were paltry ) kneejerk bipartisan
tradition of the pork barrel, which said to Washington: Build us
dams, roads and bridges, charge our ranchers cheap fees to graze
cattle on federal land, but otherwise leave us alone. Can’t you
see that we’re rugged Marlboro Man individualist conservatives?
Just leave the money and go away. Oh, and if that new Yellowstone
superintendent doesn’t straighten up, we’ll see to it that he’s
transferred to the Dry Tortugas.
Simpsons have been involved in Wyoming’s public life for
over a century, ever since trial lawyer and granddad William
Simpson yucked-it-up with Butch Cassidy when the latter was a
guest of the Fremont County Jail in Lander for “horsetrading.”
Bill Simpson also killed man in a duel (a combination brawl and
gunfight) in Cody and was acquitted for self-defense. Bill begat
Milward, who went to Harvard Law School and served as Wyoming’s
governor (1955-1959), and then in the U.S. Senate (1962-1967).
Milward was a fearless guy, who once campaigned in Rock Springs
— a notoriously tough mining town full of unionized Democrats —
and as he stepped from the car was greeted by a shower of
tomatoes and other vegetable products. Milward was also a
Goldwater guy, and was one of six Republicans to vote against the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 on constitutional grounds. He is small
footnote in American literary history because he unsuccessfully
tried to derail President Kennedy’s nomination of Edmund Wilson
for a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Wilson was previously in
trouble with the IRS for exercising his freedom to not pay his
taxes (A book resulted: The Cold War and the Income Tax
--1964). What with the writing of Patriotic Gore
and other books, and his nightly investigations of multiple
tumblers of whiskey, the great critic simply forgot to file. And
the fourth generation goes forward as Alan’s son Colin — the
Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives — contemplates a
run for the governor’s office this fall.
Alan Simpson has served his state and his country in
admirable ways for most of his life. His post-Senate career is
known for public accessibility and the support of good causes.
He’s a major benefactor of the University of Wyoming. He’s a
colorful American original who’s done great things with
self-effacing wit, panache, and — to employ a barnyard metaphor
— quite a bit of what emanates from the south end of a bull. But
in light of his recent involvement with the precarious fiscal
health of the Republic, he’s nothing more than a tool of Obama
and the Democrats. “Flinty” (Obama’s quote) Big Al’s late-in-life
political vaudeville act is wearing thin. He must recall some
sound advice from his father that still eerily applies to his
post-Senate life: “Get out before they throw you out.”
Time to go wet a line in the South Fork, Al.
