Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053

This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of an unrehearsed interview. Please bear in mind that you are reading the spoken word rather than the written word.

Oral History Number: 036-009 Interviewee: Daniel Kemmis Interviewer: Claire Rhein Date of Interview: August 5,1981 Project: Daniel Kemmis Interviews Oral History Project

Claire Rhein: This is Claire Rhein, and I'm talking with Daniel Kemmis.

Picking up from our last conversation, you said you're looking at maybe one more session in the Montana legislature. You're aware, of course, that your name has been mentioned as a possible candidate for major in Missoula?

Daniel Kemmis: Well, I spent some time after the session, in fact at the end of the session, considering very seriously the possibility of running for mayor and I then let that word be put out in the press in Missoula in May of this year. I talked to a lot of people and I did a lot of serious thinking about it. It seemed like a lot longer but I think that I actually played with the idea seriously for about a month and then announced that I was not going to do it. Ever since that time the issue has really been closed. That was an interesting kind of experience though, thinking about that. I think there are very few people who understand at all why I even considered doing it.

CR: I'd like to know.

DK: Most of the reaction that I got, and I guess what was fairly decisive for me, was that so many of my constituents and others (other people from around the state)let me know that they very much preferred to have me in the legislature. I myself, I like the legislature so much that when I thought about not being there anymore that was a very sobering idea and not something that I could particularly look forward to. I would miss the legislature terribly, I think. So that was part of the final decision.

So why did I think about doing it at all? I think I've probably talked with you in the past about my perception of politics and the necessity for decentralization of the political structure... or at least what I believe is the necessity for that. I don't have a great deal of faith in large political organizations being able to meet the needs of the times. I may be entirely mistaken about that but it's become a more and more firm conviction over time. I don't believe very much in the ability of the Federal Government to solve very many real problems. I do think that state government, particularly in a state as small in population as Montana is, has more capacity to do that. But I've come to feel more and more that the real action—the real future of politics—is on a very localized level. In particular if what you want to do with politics is something besides have people who are elected make all the decision.

If what you really want to do is involve the people themselves as directly as possible in making

1 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, -Missoula. their own decisions, then I think local government is the only place that it can be done. It's because of that conviction that I really did have a very serious interest in local government and in the possibilities that exist there. I think that Missoula is as good a place as any that I know of for an experiment along those lines. I think the people of Missoula are a progressive people, they have some substantial pride in their community, and I think that here the possibilities really do exist of getting a substantial number of people involved in their government. That's a great challenge. I think that's the real challenge of politics as I see it. That's why I was interested in doing that. If something like that were ever to be done, and if there is an instrumental position for doing it, it is the major's position. But, I didn't do it.

CR: You talk about this each time --we have something in every conversation. Our last hour you talked about the initiative issue and the fact that people made their position on the problems clear to the Legislator even though the Republicans already came with a proposal to put that down. They got the message that could not be done. You feel strongly about this but you've got to admit that this is a different direction than that which most politicians would take. They would go from running for a local office, looking toward the state office and so on up.

DK: Yes, well, it is. I can't claim that I'm immune from that way of looking at the political ladder but I tend to think it's an inverted way of looking at it. What I was told time and again was that it would be a step down.

CR: To mayor?

DK: That's right. I understand that kind of thinking but I think that there is an element of—an archaic element—and the archaic element is the thought that bigger is better. The bigger the government the more important it is. I know that in some sense that is true. Certainly congressmen make, in some sense, more important decisions than city councilmen make. But in some sense it's the reverse of that because the fact is that people are almost entirely alienated from the federal government, and they are not entirely alienated from local government.

CR: This certainly is not a "party" decision or position.

DK: No. Although I have tried to convince Democrats that in the face of the whipping that we took in the 1980 election nationally and in the state that we've got to get started thinking about some new positions and one part of that, I believe, has to be for the Democratic Party to turn its back on the position that it has taken on federalism since the time of the New Deal. The Democratic Party has been the party of big government to far too great an extent and it is time for it to become decisively the party of small government.

There's a role to be played there because frankly, from my point of view, the Republican Party has become the party of no government — the party whose chief aim is to dismantle government at all levels. I think there is something to that position but I think it needs to be balanced by an aggressive statement that there is a role for government in the sense that government is the role of people taking care of their own affairs and that government should be decentralized. So it's only partisan in that sense, an emergence sort of sense.

CR: It certainly is something for a great dialogue.

DK: Yes.

CR: Kind of Jeffersonian?

DK: I think it is.

CR: Then this is not quite accidental.

DK: No.

CR: You sound as though you have spent quite a bit of time with Thomas Jefferson and some of his writings. Was that impressed on your background at any time?

DK: Jefferson's writings? Oh, yes. I think I am as influenced by Jefferson as by any political thinker. If I had to list political thinkers that influenced me it would be Plato, Rousseau [Jean- Jacques Rousseau], Jefferson, Lincoln [Abraham Lincoln], and Gandhi [Mahatma Gandhi].

CR: What other new positions do you see that the Party should perhaps look at to their advantage?

DK: Well, the other one that we've talked about in the past that I continue to try to get Democrats to get involved in in Montana is economic development—to take a stand on that and to become advocates of a program of economic development. We'll keep working on that. We've made a lot of progress on it.

CR: That's state level?

DK: Yes, state and local probably, but particularly state. We have more tools available at the state level and so far I would say that we have made considerable progress on those terms with legislators, Democratic legislators. I think that more and more of them have come to see the importance of that theme. I think many important members of the Party organization see it. I think some members of the administration see it but too few of them—of the Schwinden administration.

CR Too few?

DK: Yes. That's my own perspective. I think that in those terms the Schwinden administration is very conservative and I understand that. They need to be convinced. We will gradually convince

3 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. them, I believe.

CR: Our present governor was lieutenant governor, I believe, for two terms?

DK: No, just one term. He was commissioner of state lands.

CR: But it's not exactly the same as if he were new on the state level so obviously his positions are positions that he has established over a period of time. Is he moving very cautiously in this do you think?

DK: I think the governor is a canny politician who has a good sense of politics. He has a good sense of where things lie. He does have essentially a conservative background from the wheat fields of northeastern Montana, and it is one that I think is pretty well in tune with a majority of Montanans. I respect him, and I think it reflects the popular will to elect him. On issues like the questions of investment of state funds, that kind of conservativism leads him to the position of saying we should make investments for the highest yield that we could get for them and that, I believe, is a proposition that needs to be questioned. But it is a sound proposition and I don't blame the governor for staying there until he is convinced that there is a safer place to be.

CR: Let me make this clear... you're not saying that he should invest money other than "safely."

DK: Oh, no, no.

CR: You're saying that that money should be better invested in Montanans and creating a long­ term future...

DK: Right. I would say, first of all, that as far as "safely" goes that we should not take any substantial chances with the safety of the money. I do think that if you take a lower immediate return on the money that you can probably get a higher long-term return in terms of economic growth.

CR: Well, that definitely is a future look. But how long-term?

DK: I think it's 200 years.

CR: Very long term.

DK: I think you would see returns much more quickly. I think you would see returns within 30 years.

CR: Dan, that's an incredible projection though. Our national government is only 200 years old.

DK: Well, that's right. But I think we sit here in the Missoula valley and you look at and two hundred years is nothing. There have been people here under Mount Sentinel for how long? And finally I think you have to come to a perspective where you see that first of all you have some obligation to the mountains and the trees and the rivers and they're very old and you have to look at things from their time perspective, to a certain extent, and then I guess you also have to ask whether the vast disruptions that are taking place in human civilization are really in the best interest of humanity. Without planning you just bring on those disruptions.

CR: Do you think the view in Washington would not make you feel this way? You might lose some of this vision were you to—

DK: Well, I don't think there's much of it in Washington, I'll say that. I honestly do not. I think that kind of vision comes from being in a place, and being rooted in that place, and places are by definition localized. I think what we see coming out of Washington in far too great an extent is...well, just look at the attack on the Montana coal tax. To me what's going on there is the federal perspective. It's a perspective that is a "now" perspective. What is being said there is that we need coal now. High energy taxes or high severance taxes high energy bills for consumers now, and it's those problems that we have to take care of. Montana's position—if Montana would understand its position in its full ramification—is that we are not just concerned about now, that we are concerned about a very long term and we are determined that somebody is going to be concerned about future generations. The federal government has shown absolutely no willingness to be concerned about that and we are going to have to take care of that problem. That's what our severance tax, above all, is designed to do.

So, your question is, "Might a person lose that perspective in Washington?" Well, yes. I think Washington is not a place to gain that perspective that's for sure, and that if you move to Washington and never come back to the mountains of Montana then I suspect there would be a leak in that.

CR: We can move away from Dan Kemmis a moment but you've also been close to Max Baucus who does have another two years before he has to run again and he certainly is a Montanan born and bred in the mountains around Sieben and they are beautiful and wonderful. Are you in communication with him, and how do you feel about where he is in relation to your position?

DK: I am basically comfortable with him. I think that Max will do a good job of defending the Montana coal tax and I think he will be open to arguments about what it is that the tax really is based upon. He has a good staff who are, I think, capable of responding to those arguments. Basically I trust Max to do a good job.

CR: One doesn't hear much from him.

DK: Well, I think he has been hard at work on this issue and that he has made his voice heard and known in Montana on these important views. I think he'll keep doing that.

CR: Well, our coal tax is safe for a little while would you say?

5 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. DK: Well, it's under attack in Congress this year and I wouldn't be surprised if Congress this year would pass a bill limiting severance taxes. But it will take active opposition from Montana to prevent that and we have to be prepared for the next round.

CR: The Republican bills that we are going to have to live with as far as tax cuts are concerned seem to, at least from the Democratic point of view, present some benefits to larger corporations like energy and oil companies. The states will have to live with this bill as well as the people. I'm losing track of starting one place to get to another but I want to come back to this special session idea and now that you know what has happened nationally, what is going to happen in the special session to reflect that national position?

DK: Well, Congress still has not taken action on the spending side: they have taken final action on the tax cut which is the revenue side. We still don't know exactly what the block grant proposal will be that will come out of Congress. I'll be going to Helena tom orrow to meet with the governor about the special session with the governor and other legislative leaders, and we'll do some planning at that time (as well as we can) about the special session. I expect to be in Helena for half of October this year.

CR: Is that date still discussion?

DK: I don't know whether that will be in October or November. We'll see. But right now I have to get my mind ready to shift gears again and go back in October. I'd prefer not to but—

CR: Well, I must say that, personally, I'd prefer October.

DK: Yes, I'd like you to be able to go this year.

CR: That early—

DK: Well, the federal fiscal year begins in October and when Congress actually passes the bill then something has to be done by the state in response to it and I don't know how it will all work out yet. You never know. These things are always so flexible but I think there's a good chance we'll have to respond in October.

CR: What's your relationship with the Governor? Is he a very comfortable man to be with? Do you find him a man with whom you can negotiate? I don't think you are as close in your personal philosophies as you could be jet you are his minority leader...

DK: Well, that's true in a sense. That's one of the interesting features of being in a leadership position like this. My first loyalty is to the Democrats in the House who elected me as their leader. On the other hand, I did feel a very strong obligation to represent the governor. He is of the same party and I do believe it is the role of the floor leader to represent the governor of your own party. Sometimes there was a little bit of conflict in those two situations. For example, there was a gas tax increase bill which the governor supported which the members of my party in the House did not support and that put me in a difficult position. I tried to maintain all of my loyalties as well as I could and be very open with everybody about the conflicts that arose. I enjoyed working with the governor. I think I learned a great deal from it. The governor was in his first term. It was in his first four months in office while we were there. So he was learning the job to a certain extent although he had certainly been a very close student of it for many years—I think it's safe to say for 20 years—and he has watched the office for that long. I'd say he's good at it. He has a particular style. If I were governor it would not be my style but I respect it. I think he does a good job. He is a hard- headed man: he basically knows where he stands. He is open to conversation and suggestions but he is not easily persuaded and I think that that is to his credit—that he does know where he stands. He can be persuaded, but he's not wishy-washy. He's a good administrator and I enjoyed working with him all session.

[End of Side A]

7 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. [Side B]

DK: I think politically it's true that we don't stand in the same place and that's just no surprise. I've always known that about Ted Schwinden and myself. But there aren't any great major insurmountable differences and there's nothing in his position that I can think of that I don't respect.

CR: President Reagan [Ronald Reagan] made an interesting comment about Tip O'Neill [Thomas Phillip O'Neill, Jr.] a week or so ago and it was, "We're friends after five o'clock." It was a political statement but don't you sometimes find that as a lawyer you argue so strongly for a point or a client or a policy or idea and yet your opponent may very well be your very good friend after five o'clock over a long period of time. This is a thing that apparently happens in politics and how do you deal with this?

DK: Well, I think that gets back to what we were talking about the other day about the necessity for levity as a kind of cement among people. It's true, I think, both in the legal profession and in politics. The legal profession depends absolutely on advocacy and on opposing points of view being strongly presented to a finder of fact as a rule, and it does put you in a position where you fight very hard with somebody and sometimes, and not uncommonly, that leads to feelings of personal animosity. But those successful lawyers, and I don't mean successful in a monetary sense, but those successful in terms of managing their lives, are those who are able to get beyond those personal animosities. I think it's true also in politics. You have to be able to fight hard and come around and shake hands and be prepared to work together five minutes after you fight.

CR: Interesting. You don't at all seem a man of conflict and yet in your profession as a lawyer and as a politician it's almost continual conflict.

DK: Yes, I guess that's true. I enjoy conflict. I enjoy taking an advocacy position in both of those roles and I only enjoy it to the extent that the conflict is between ideas and not between people. I think that maybe a role of leadership is to remind people that the conflict is between ideas and the people are all brothers and sisters. We all have the same interests. It is part of life to only see one side of things at a time and that the way our process very often works is through conflict of ideas where one person or one group presents one side of an idea and the other group presents the other side. But I think it's very important to remember, and to remind others, that in the end it's the ideas that are in conflict and not the people.

CR: You're a militant philosopher, then, in a sense, so I think maybe you have a thesis for retirement years to deal with.

DK: Yes, I look forward to those years, Claire.

CR: Oh, you can't possibly at this point. I think, though, you have a good thesis to work with because I think perhaps basically you are a philosopher and you've had training in the area, and you think and plan based on that training. You aren't "accidental" at all I don't think.

DK: Well, I don't know. I'm always fascinated by the fact that politics calls into play so many different kinds of talents and abilities and it wouldn't work very well if it were too dominated by any one kind. I think there are many people who, when they look at me, can say, "Well, he's too philosophical to be a politician." But, I don't think it's true. I'm too philosophical to be the only kind of politician there is. If every politician were like me I don't think the system would work very well. But the fact is there is a place for that kind of approach in politics just as there is a place, and a necessary place, for a much more interest-oriented politics—horse-trading kind of politics. All of these things together, somehow, is what makes politics work. People get impatient with one kind or the other but I think that all of them are necessary. But then you talk about my thinking and being trained as a philosopher...Well, I'm not very well trained as a philosopher. I did study it for a couple of years as a graduate student here and I very much appreciate the training that I did get. I think it was good. I came to Montana to study philosophy in '72, not really knowing what I was getting into except for I was coming back to Montana. It was a great pleasure to discover the Philosophy Department here was tremendously well staffed with very impressive thinkers, from my point of view. What I gained from them was is something that is very important to me, and I maintain my contacts with them and I spend a fair amount of time up on the fourth floor of the Liberal Arts building still. I am always a little regretful of the fact that I really am not a thinker in the sense of a philosopher. I admire those who really can think well and who...I don't want to cop out. I'm tempted to say I admire those whose life situation allows them and encourages them to think carefully and well. Mainly, those who are paid to be philosophers, I guess. I'm sure it's not just that I just don't have the conditions that allow me to do that, it's probably also that I'm mentally lazy. I just say that's one of the regrets that I have in life, that so much of my time I'm either in law or in politics that I am dealing with things quickly and superficially rather than on a deeper level.

CR: Perhaps that's Washington's problem to o —crisis to crisis?

DK: Oh, I think so.

CR: Perhaps when you take time to deal with this (unintelligible) in your retirement, maybe you'll find you're quite a thinker. I think perhaps you are just reflecting where the study of philosophy has taken you, which in a strange way is from that study in politics.

DK: Yes. I think it is.

CR: There's quite a direct line there as I recall.

DK: Yes. I went directly from being a philosophy student. I was still a philosophy student when I first ran for the legislature. But I'll tell you story, okay, Claire? You know that I was interested in politics from the time that I was a boy. I think I've told you that, and that when I went to

9 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. college...maybe I told you this story already but we'll see. When I went to college, I studied government or politics because that is what I had always thought I would do. Somehow I (unintelligible) my real interest in politics as a way of life waned and essentially disappeared until I had come back to Montana, until after I was back in Montana. I came back here not at all interested in politics, but interested in philosophy. Then one day, I went over with some friends to Helena, and we just went for a little day trip. While my friends were over at the museum, I went over to the Capitol, and it was the first time that I had ever been to the Capitol. This was in 1974, in probably August or September of that year. I went over there and I went through the Capitol, and I went up to the legislature. I went around to the governor's area and so on. It was on Saturday so nothing was open. I went up to the legislature, and I had what was certainly a very important experience for me in terms of my life and my career because seeing those chambers brought back suddenly all of the attachment I had had from boyhood to politics. It reminded me of my Uncle W alter who had served in the Montana legislature and who had been one of my heroes in youth, but it did more than that. It sealed something inside of me or reopened something in a very dramatic way. I sat in the house gallery and I thought very hard and I just let it soak in. I really knew that sometime then I was going to get back into politics or an interest in it. When I came back to Missoula and thought about that, I was studying philosophy. I said to myself and I wrote that, yes, sometime I would like to think about getting back into politics, but first I needed to train myself as a philosopher and that that's what I really should do and I should gain what I could gain from philosophy first. That I felt so many inadequacies in myself as a human being that I didn't feel that I was prepared for politics. Well, I didn't follow my advice. It was only three months later that I decided to run for the legislature. So then I left philosophy as a disciplined study, and I didn't prepare myself. I guess I've always wondered now can you really prepare yourself in the way that I thought that I should be prepared during the course of things or not? Well, that's an open question.

CR: Well you certainly have to be one of the very few politicians in Montana who decided to prepare for the field through philosophy.

DK: Oh, I am sure of that, [laughs]

CR: You have got to be. That is quite unusual in Montana or any place else. Going to Harvard, I think you have to look at it in a sense of the context of the times when you were away from Montana into a completely different world in Cambridge and a completely different time—an awkward time for the country. Weren't you a bit of an activist at that time?

DK: Yes, I went through many, many changes. I guess I wouldn't classify myself as a militant. I don't know exactly where I put myself on the spectrum. When I first went to Cambridge in the fall of '64, I was in an extremely conservative phase. I had grown up as a Democrat, and I can remember being very involved in the 1960 presidential campaign and debating hotly with my friends. What was I, in seventh grade? I was very pro-Kennedy. By 1964, I suppose during 1964, I took up with the writing of Ayn Rand, and I became a Rand follower. It only lasted, I suppose, for seven or eight months or maybe a little longer. You know how things are at 18. Anyway, when I went to Harvard then, that's where I was. Then I would say that for the next year that politically I was I kind of footloose. During my sophomore year then, I had a tutor who was quite liberal, pretty close to radical, and a very intelligent person who had quite an influence on me. Between that and the anti-war activities that were going on, by the fall of 1965...No, I'm sorry, by the fall of 1966, I was very firmly anti-war and back on the left side of the political spectrum. I marched a lot at anti-war demonstrations, and I sat in a couple of times. I was active in that way. I never engaged in any violence or anything like that. I was not a member of SDS [Students for a Democratic Society]. I knew many people who were. But you're right, it was an extremely turbulent time, of course, and a person went through all kinds of changes and awakenings and so on. It was different than a Harvard education has been at most other times because a big part of your education was the radicalizing education of the Vietnam War.

CR: You do have a twisted path.

DK: Yes, yes, I do. [laughs]

CR: Thank you for sharing that, Dan. That's very useful to understand that we are not born in a position and stand with it and perhaps die with it.

DK: Some people are. I talked to Ken Nordtvedt, the young, emerging republican leader during the session. I admired him very much and many of my Democratic colleagues didn't like my admiring him so much, but he is a good thinker and a constant thinker and an honest man. I had dinner with him one time and we talked about this and that, but I was impressed by his being able to say that he had essentially been a Libertarian from the time he was 12, I think he'd said, and I believe it. He still is. He, oddly enough, was a member of an Ayn Rand Society in Cambridge. He was at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. He spent some time at Harvard also. He was there and in that phase at the same time that I was, but he was being consistent about it. I was in and out.

CR: Now you're both back in Montana, and that's kind of interesting.

DK: Yes, yes it is.

CR: We're running very short on time, and we've covered a lot of, perhaps, different things than you had in mind to talk about, [laughs] Certainly, that I did, but I wouldn't change it. We've come a long way today. I thank you. I do have to ask you quickly, the University [University of Montana] is in a much better position today than it was after the last legislature.

DK: Yes I think that it is.

CR: Would you like to tell me how it happened? Would you tell me?

DK: Well, I am not sure that I can tell you. It is a great variety of factors at play. I guess, I think that the biggest part of it is that the University of Montana in particular—its friends, its

11 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. supporters, and advocates—have been very active over a long span of time now in making the case for the University and for higher education generally. It is the University of Montana that has made that the case. It's far and beyond what the other units have done. We have done it not only on our own behalf but on behalf of the entire system. We have done it consistently for six years now and, I would say, constantly and persuasively until finally an interim committee looked at the funding picture and decided there were things wrong with it, and they were open-minded people who were willing to recommend some changes. Those changes essentially were adopted by the legislature, mot without continued work and pressure throughout the session. Personally, I give a great deal of credit to Dick Bowers [Richard Bowers], and there again I run afoul of some of my constituents who think that President Bowers was ineffective with the legislature. From my point of view, he was tireless and absolutely selfless in his devotion to the University of Montana. After he had been fired, there was nothing in the world that required him to go to Helena and spend practically the whole winter there working for the University, but he did it in an absolutely selfless way. I am very impressed by what he did. I am impressed by what people like Steve Carey (?) and Mike Donald (?), who have worked for three or four years now, representing the students but really representing the whole university. Those people know their way around the legislature better than almost anybody. They have done tremendously good work. I would just say that the entire University community has done well, has stuck together, and deserves what progress has been made.

CR: Interesting. I thought when you said "secures" that coincided with Bower's tenure.

DK: Yes, that is right. It does.

CR: I'm glad you came out and mentioned his name and gave him such strong support.

DK: Well, I became very fond of him in the time that I spent there, and he and I, of course, have spent many, many hours together now and in a lot of different settings. I traveled around Montana with him and with some other people a year ago. All the way around Montana, all the way out to Glendive.

CR: University advocacy?

DK: Right. I think we developed a mutual respect during that time that I hope will carry forward through the years. I really do respect him. I look forward to meeting Neil Bucklew, and I think that he is, in some ways, fortunate to inherit a situation that is more hopeful by far than what President Bowers had.

CR: I think we're going to miss him. I hope he's comfortable where he is, and I hope that he left without a feeling of dejection or that it was a job badly done here.

DK: I do too. I think it's a most unfortunate position to have been in. A hopeless one in some ways where you could only loose respect and so on, but not because of what he did by and large. CR: Thank you, Dan.

DK: Okay, Claire.

[End of Interview]

13 Daniel Kemmis Interview, OH 036-009, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.