WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

An Oral History Interview with

DAVID OBEY

Interviewer: Anita Hecht, Life History Services Recording Date: June 8,2011 Place: Arlington, Virginia. Length: 2.25 hours

David Obey was born in 1938 and raised in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and Wausau, Wisconsin. While studying at University of Wisconsin in the late 1950s he became active in Democrat Party politics. He graduated in 1960 with aB.A. in political science.

After graduation, Obey received a Fellowship under the National Defense Education Act for graduate level work in Soviet Affairs. From 1963 to 1969, Obey sewed in the Wisconsin State Assembly, where he was elected assistant minority leader in 1967 and 1969.

In April 1969, when he was just 30, Obey was elected to Congress. He represented the 7th Congressional District for 21 consecutive terms, from 1969 to 2011. His district included much of the northwestern portion of Wisconsin, including the cities of Wausau and Superior. Starting in 1969, he served on the House Appropriations Committee, chairing it in 1994-1995 and from 2007-2011. Both Sen. Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire participated in his campaigns.

As legislators controlling committees responsible for budgets and fiscal issues, Obey and Sen. Proxmire worked closely in Congress and focuses on many of the same matters. They also served together on the Joint Economic Committee.

David Obey Interview Transcript Proxmire Oral History Project PROJECT NAME: PROXMIRE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Verbatim Interview Transcript NARRATOR: DAVID ROSS OBEY INTERVIEWER: Anita Hecht INTERVIEW DATE: June 8,2011 INTERVIEW LOCATION: Arlington, Virginia INTERVIEW LENGTH: Approximately 2 Hours, 15 Minutes

KEY: DO David Obey BP Bill Proxmire JO Joseph McCarthy LBJ Lyndon B. Johnson PL Patrick Lucey GN Gaylord Nelson BG Bert Grover

SUBJECT INDEX

HOUR1

Hour 1/00:00 DO Family History Influences in DO's Life DO's Change from Republican to Democrat Early Interest in Politics

Hour 1/10:00 DO's Educational History State of Early Wisconsin Democratic Party

Hour 1/20:10 JM's Death/BP's Senate Run BP's Estrangement from Labor Leadership BP's Relationship with LBJ BP's Refusal to Accept Gifts

Hour 1/30:00 Political Budget Disagreements in '60s Relationship Between PL and GN

Hour 1/40:00 DO's Post-College Years DO's Post-High School Work History

Hour 1/50:00 BP's Skepticism of Soviet Union's Power DO's Decision to Run for State Assembly

"ranscript Proxmire Oral History Project HOUR 2

Hour 2/00:00 BP's '64 Senate Campaign Run BP's Early Refusal to Accept Favors BP's Relationship with Other Democrats

Hour 2/09:50 BP's Relationship With GN Golden Fleece Awards DO's Congressional Campaign

Hour 2/20:25 DO's Election to Congress DO's Campaign Strategies

Hour 2/30:35 Reason for S&L Crisis BP's Time on Joint Economics Committee BP's Influence on DO

Hour 2/40:00 DO's Speculated View on BP's Senate Run Today BP's Influence on BG Supersonic Transport

Hour 2/50:00 BP in Today's Political Climate BP's Retirement

HOUR 3

Hour 3/00:00 BP's Importance in Establishing Democratic Party Political Division Between Republicans and Democrats History of Republican Party Policies

Hour 3/10:10 Wisconsin's Current Republican Administration Impact of Today's Supreme Court

David Obey Interview Transcript Proxmire Oral History Project HOUR1

Hour 1/00:00 DO Family History, Influences in DO's Life, DO's Change from Republican to Democrat, Early Interest in Politics

The date is June $ in the year 2011. My name is Anita Hecht and I have the great pleasure and

honor of interviewing Congressman Dave Obey on behalf of the William Proxmire Oral History

Project for the Wisconsin Historical Society. And we find ourselves in Mr. Obey's home in

Arlington, Virginia. Thank you for agreeing to participate.

Sure.

And I'd like to just begin this interview by having you tell us a bit about your self and your

background, beginning with when and where you were born.

Well, as I said in the first sentence of my book, my father was the only man in the country who

moved to Oklahoma during the Depression to get a job. The week that he got married, he lost his job at the creamery in Marathon County. And my mother's uncle ran a JC Penney store in

Okmulgee, Oklahoma. And he said to my dad, "Orv, it's not much, but I got an opening in the

shoe department if you want it." So my dad said, "Hell, yes" -took the job. They moved to

Oklahoma. And then JC Penney Company had a national system under which employees, on the

David Obey Interview Transcript 4 Proxmire Oral History Project basis of seniority, could bid for any job they can see around the country. And so he did that and that's the way that he was able to get back first to Marshfield and then to Wausau.

But you were born in —

So I was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, by accident.

By accident. And when were you born?

October 3rd, '38.

Okay. So your family was originally from Wisconsin. Your ancestors came from Europe?

You know, they came from all over. We were French, Irish, English, Scotch. In the main - at

least on my dad's side - they came down through Canada and settled first in Tripoli. There were

a number of brothers who ran a saw mill that went bankrupt. Several of the brothers then went

into the seminary and several didn't. And I think I'm descended from one of them who didn't.

(laughter) But that's about all I know.

Any idea why Wisconsin?

I have no idea.

David Obey Interview Transcript 5 Proxmire Oral History Project You said that you were sort of born in the Depression; it affected your parent's lives. Tell me

about the other influences on your upbringing, either religious, political, educational.

I mean, my dad would buy a house, remodel it while we lived in it, sell it, and would buy another

house, remodel it and sell it. So I moved a lot as a kid. And I've probably lived in virtually every

neighborhood in the Wausau area except the rich ones. And my mother was a - it wasn't so

much she was political, but she had her opinions and she was a strong supporter of Douglas

MacArthur and did not like Harry Truman. My dad, I think, was more favorably disposed to

Truman but he really didn't talk politics much. And my folks were getting a divorce back when I

was in sixth and seventh grade. And I was frustrated. And so my folks had put me on a school

bus in the morning. We'd go into town. I'd get off the bus and half the time I'd turn around, walk back, grab my dog, go out and hide out in the woods. And I'd read or play the harmonica or

anything to pass the time. And then - so I skipped school about two days a week. And today I would have been expelled, I'm sure. But when I was in the seventh grade, our teacher assigned us to participate in a debate on Joe McCarthy. I'd never heard of any of this stuff. And she gave me some stuff to read. And I read it and I thought, "Geez, this is interesting." It was the first time

in a long time I'd been interested in anything. And so I started to read up on politics. I went

down to the Republican headquarters on the end of Third Avenue in Wausau and - either Third

or Fourth, I've forgotten which - I'm sorry, it was Third Street - I mean, it was Third Street or

Fourth Street on the south end of the main drag. And I stuffed literature - stuffed envelopes for the Republican candidates. I loaded my sister's wagon full of Republican literature, tied the

wagon to my bicycle, and I literally distributed Republican literature to about one-third of the

David Obey Interview Transcript 6 Proxmire Oral History Project houses in the City of Wausau for Eisenhower, Laird and McCarthy. And I've not really ever

regretted doing it for Laird and Eisenhower, but I certainly did for McCarthy.

What do you think appealed to you about the Republican — I mean, there wasn 't really much of a

Democratic Party at that time.

No. I mean, the County was Republican. In those days, Marathon County was solidly

Republican. The old La Follette progressive wing of the party had just collapsed. I didn't know

anything about that until later in life. And so it was just a Republican community and most

people thought that way. But then the '58 recession came along and changed everything in

Wisconsin because that was the Democrats - '57 and '58 were the Democratic break-through

years.

But you had already had a change of heart a little bit earlier?

Well, I mean, I learned that the McCarthy supporters on the school board had tried to fire the

best teacher I ever had in my life in high school or college. His name was Arthur Henderson. He was a high school history teacher. Tough - he was the toughest teacher I ever had. And I learned that they tried to fire him for being a quote, "Bolshevik," which those clowns were so far behind the times that they were still calling them "Bolsheviks" rather than Communists. And so we -

when I discovered that, I was just so turned off and I felt, "Hell, if that's what the Republican

Party is like, there's no room for somebody like me." And so I felt, you know, "I'm an

independent. I'm not going to get involved in party politics." But by 1956,1 had started to read

David Obey Interview Transcript 7 Proxmire Oral History Project Adlai Stevenson's speeches and I was really impressed by his thoughtfulness and his grace. And

so by 1956, after I graduated from high school, that fall, by then I was a committed Democrat.

And I tried to organize the Young Democratic Club on campus at the UW Marathon. That was just a small school in those days, about three hundred kids. And you needed to have ten people to

sign up in order to start a Young Democratic unit on campus. I could only get eight people to

sign up as Democrats. Everybody else was Republican or didn't care. So that was the beginnings

of my political activities. And then when I moved to Madison as a junior, the very first thing I

did was to go see Ralph Huitt, who had been recommended to me by Henderson as the best teacher in politic science in the country - he and Nelson Polsby. So I called on Huitt and talked with him. And he advised me to get involved in Young Democrats. He said, "This is a big place.

It's very impersonal. You need to find smaller groups that you're comfortable with so you have

some kind of focus structure." And so I went looking for - I went to the student union to get a

hamburger and the very first booth I ran into on the sidewalk there was the Young Democratic

organizing booth.

This would have been 1958?

1958, yeah.

So you got bit by the politic bug, the organizing kind of inspiration, early on in your life.

Hour 1/10:00 DO's Educational History, State of Early Wisconsin Democratic Party

David Obey Interview Transcript 8 Proxmire Oral History Project Yeah.

It's just part of your nature, do you think?

I mean, I suspect that at that time, everything was screwed up in my family life, and I think I was just looking for something that I could do that I would enjoy as opposed to going home, which I

hated to do.

You were educated in the public schools, going back to high school, is that correct?

I was in Saint James School until seventh grade.

Which was a Catholic school?

Yeah.

Okay.

And then one day, the nun asked a question in class. And I didn't hear her because we had three

girls from the Murr family in the seventh grade and two of the three were twins. And they were jabbering among themselves and I did not hear what the nun asked. And she asked me to answer the question and I said, "I'm sorry. Would you repeat the question?" And she came down the

aisle and she said, "Stand up!" And she said, "I'm so sick of you smart-aleck kids" and she

David Obey Interview Transcript 9 Proxmire Oral History Project hauled off and hit me across the face with her ring and it split my lip. And without thinking, I

decked her. So, I mean, I was the runt of the class. I was the smallest boy, the smallest girl, in the

class, and I just wasn't going to take that crap. And so she hit me and I hit her back. And so I was

sent down to the principal's office. And the deal was that I would be conditionally passed into the eighth grade. The condition was that I leave Saint James. So in the eighth grade, I went to junior high school. Years later, Pat Lucey told me once, he said, "I know something about you

you don't know I know." I said, "Well, what's that?" He said, "I know you slugged a nun once."

I said, "How the hell do you know that?" He said, "You remember Sister Mary Rose Francis, the

principal at Saint James?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "She was my cousin." So that's how I was

introduced to Pat Lucey.

That's a great story. So when you decided to go to the UW, was that something new in your family, to go onto higher education?

I mean, I was so isolated. I mean, I didn't even really have any real concept about what college

was until I was probably in ninth grade.

Had anybody ever gone to college in your family?

Not in my direct family. My dad's cousin had gone to the Naval Academy and there were a

couple other shirt-tailed relations, second or third cousins, who had gone to college, but nobody

in my direct family.

David Obey Interview Transcript 10 Proxmire Oral History Project So when you went, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do, or hopes about your future?

Oh! I mean, I thought, "Well, maybe law, maybe journalism." And then by the time I got to

Madison, I knew that I wanted to do something in politics. But I had in mind, you know, I thought maybe I could wind up being a staffer for a mayor or for a city manager or something

like that.

Little did you know.

I mean, I always thought that the House of Representatives was THE pinnacle - never the

Senate. I mean, my nickname in high school was "Senator." In fact, if you look at my yearbook,

it says - you know, they printed your name on the yearbook and it was Dave "Senator" Obey.

And the high school newspaper used to run - each week, they would run columns on Miss

Student and Mr. Student. They'd pick out a guy and a gal and do a little profile on them. And they did one on me. And the way it began was, "The year is 1970 and from the halls of the

United States Senate in the US Capitol can be heard the words, 'Blast it!'" That's what I used to

say whenever I got mad. And they said, "And that is the voice of the nation's youngest Senator."

And it was amazing because it was so prophetic. They had the chamber role, but it was 1970.

And they were right on on the year because I got elected in '69. And I was the youngest member, but it was of the House, not of the Senate. So it was an uncanny resemblance to what actually

happened.

David Obey Interview Transcript 11 Proxmire Oral History Project Wow. Tell me a little bit about the state of the Democratic Party when you joined the Young

Dems in Madison. And if also whatever you remember about Bill Proxmire crossing your radar.

Well, the first time I ever saw Proxmire was - I was at my grandfather's house. And right after the 5:30 news, back in the days when the networks had fifteen-minute news hours and then they

had the local news, and when that was done, Proxmire came on. And Prox would have one

minute spots and he did a couple of five minute spots. And he would simply come around and sit

on the corner of the desk. And then he would just talk into the camera. And I remember my

grandfather - I don't remember which year it was when he was running. He ran three times for

Governor. I suspect it was '54 or '56. And my grandfather - he wasn't very political. He was a

salesman for Northern Auto Parts. He lost his hand in a hunting accident when he was seventeen

and prided himself on being the best one-handed mechanic in town. But he watched Prox on this

ad and he said, "You know, it's too bad that that young fellow doesn't have any money, because

if he does, he could really go places." That's the first time I'd ever seen or heard of Proxmire.

And damned if he wasn't right. But I mean, when I transferred to Madison, the Democratic Party

had nothing. I mean, the Republicans - after the progressives fell apart in '46, the conservative

Republicans dominated everything. There was a guy by the name of Mark Catlin, who ran the

Assembly with an iron hand. And they just -1 mean, when Gaylord went to the Senate, there

were, I think, only three Democratic State Senators out of thirty-three. But we had nothing as a

party in '56. They controlled all of the statewide offices. But then Proxmire got elected in '57 when McCarthy died. And a year later, Nelson got elected Governor, Reynolds got elected

Attorney General and we took control of the State Assembly, all because of the '58 recession.

And because -1 mean, when La Follette collapsed, when the Progressives collapsed, you had all

David Obey Interview Transcript 12 Proxmire Oral History Project kinds of young, smart Progressives who had a choice to make: were they going to go into the

Republican Party or the Democratic Party? And ninety percent of them went into the Democratic

Party. And they formed what they called the Democratic Organizing Committee. And you had people like Gaylord Nelson, Pat Lucey, Elliot Walstad, Horace Wilkie, Carl Thompson, Frank

Nicolet, Tom Fox - people like that who just took over and, you know, built the party at the local

level and nationally things broke right. And so, miraculously, Wisconsin became a two party

state again.

Tell me about that moment when Joe McCarthy died and what you remember.

I remember I was on campus in Wausau. And it was a very cold day and a very, very wet day.

And I was walking. The campus was on the west side of town and I was walking to the high

school on the east side of town because we were putting on a campus play. We had this thing

called Campus Capers. It was a student written, directed and produced variety show. And we

would do it to raise money for scholarships.

Hour 1/20:10 JM's Death/BP's Senate Run, BP's Estrangement from Labor Leadership, BP's Relationship to With LBJ, BP's Refusal to Accept Gifts

And you were involved in the show?

Yeah. I've forgotten if I was the director or the producer. Bud Waldinger and I were the two

guys who organized it, along with Jerry Onheiber, who was out of the faculty. And we had a

David Obey Interview Transcript 13 Proxmire Oral History Project show called - it was a musical. You know, we just cannibalized other people's music and

rewrote the lyrics. And it was a spoof on the legend of Helen of Troy called To Hell and Back.

And I was walking over to the high school for a rehearsal. And one of the gals - I think it was

Dora Sheel - a car drove by and she rolled down the window in the rain or snow, whatever it was. I don't remember the month. And she said, "Hey, Dave, Senator Obey died." And I thought,

"What the hell is she talking about?" And she said, "I mean, Senator McCarthy died." And that's the way I heard that McCarthy had died.

And so at that point, Prox launched his —

Well, he'd run for Governor three times.

Right.

And by the time he'd lost the third time -1 mean, nobody could have won in those days. You

didn't have any money and you didn't have any organization. And Kohler was Governor and that was a household word. And Walter Kohler was a pretty reasonable guy - a good Governor. And

Prox had run three times and by that time, when McCarthy died, everybody was salivating to run. And almost everybody in the Party said, "God, not Prox; not again," you know, "He's a three-time loser." And I think that experience all shaped Prox because I think -1 mean, he had

always been a lone wolf - very much a lone wolf. But it really intensified. It was almost like it

confirmed those instincts because I think he probably thought, "What the hell. Nobody in this

David Obey Interview Transcript 14 Proxmire Oral History Project party is going to give me anything. I'm going to have to grab whatever I can." So I think that reinforced his lone wolf tendencies.

And what do you think accounts for his winning? The recognition he developed?

Well, he -1 mean, he did politics retail. I mean, one house at a time, one Main Street at a time.

He would stand at football games for hours and just shake hands. I remember walking into the

stadium in Milwaukee one day to see a game, when I was in the legislature, I was party whip.

And Prox knew me and I knew him. But Prox was so intent on shaking hands, he didn't even

recognize me. And I've had other people tell me the same stories about that, too. But he just - he

shook - he probably shook the hands of the largest percentage of the Wisconsin population by a

factor often of any politician who ever breathed.

Did you ever have occasion to talk to him about that practice and where he got the notion to do

that?

He just said, you know, if you don't have any money and you're running on your own, you just

gotta meet the people, you gotta meet the people. If you got the money for media, fine. But you

gotta meet the people. So he just -

So the Democratic Party, per se, didn 't necessarily support that candidacy in '57?

No. Have you read Joe Miller's book? Let me get it for you. (interruption)

David Obey Interview Transcript 15 Proxmire Oral History Project Alright. We 're back.

If you want a flavor of what kind of resistance there was to Proxmire, Lyndon Johnson sent Joe

Miller out to - who was a very effective political operative - he sent him out there to survey the

situation and try to help Proxmire. And one of the things he was supposed to do is to try to patch things up between Proxmire and the Wisconsin labor leadership. And he tells that the Wisconsin

labor leadership was so estranged from Prox that in the end, he got them to issue an endorsement

statement, but only if the statement did not mention Proxmire by name. It was really a strange thing. And if you want to -

So Prox had not ingratiated himself to the labor leadership at that point?

No, no. He hadn't ingratiated himself with anybody because he was just a one-man band. But I'll

show you this when it's over.

Okay. But in that first year in the Senate, does anything stand out to you about him?

For Prox?

Um-hmm. (affirmatively)

David Obey Interview Transcript 16 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, I mean, when Prox won, he was crucially important to Johnson because it meant that the

Democrats would have unquestioned control of the Senate. And so Johnson was very pleased

with Prox. But within a year, Prox had started going after the oil depletion allowance and that

really ticked Proxmire off.

Ticked Johnson off.

Or, ticked Johnson off, yeah. And Kastenmeier tells the story - years later when the federal

government was trying to select a site for a particle accelerator, a nuclear particular accelerator,

and they had a piece of land in the southeastern part of the state right near the Illinois border,

which Wisconsin was trying to sell for that project because they thought it would mean a lot of

federal money and jobs. And so the Wisconsin Democratic Delegation went down to see Johnson

after he was President. And they sat there and Proxmire sat right next to Johnson and briefly

made the pitch. And Johnson leaned over and put his hand on Proxmire's knee. He says, "Bill, now you know how much I'd like to help ya. You know how much I'd like to help ya." And he was looking straight at Proxmire's eyes. And Kastenmeier said, "Yeah, and that was the trouble.

We did know how much Johnson wanted to help Prox, which was not at all." (laughter)

Well, it shows a great deal of— I don't know what you would call it — chutzpah — that he would

take on Johnson so early on, in the first year.

Yeah.

David Obey Interview Transcript 17 Proxmire Oral History Project Did that stand out to you about his personality, his independence?

Well, I mean, I was - Prox served one term in the State Assembly and I was told the story - I've

forgotten by whom. It was somebody in the Assembly. I think Bob Huber, who later became

Democratic Speaker. But in those days when we were sworn in, as a souvenir of our being sworn

in, each legislator was given a Parker pen and pencil set. You know, just a little pen and pencil.

And I was told that Proxmire, when that happened, that Proxmire stood up and made a statement

on the Assembly floor that that was unethical, that they should not take those things because it was something of value and they should remain forever independent of anybody. And this was

something of value from Parker pen, or whoever paid for it. And so, you know, Proxmire, he

didn't wait until he was in the US Senate to exercise that kind of, you know, lone wolf approach to things.

It's an interesting question where that came from. Did you know much about his background in

terms of how he grew up?

No. All I know is that he grew up, you know, in a comfortable family. And everybody who knew

him tells me he just shopped around looking for a place where he could run for office. And, you

know, moved to Madison and became a reporter for The Capital Times and then ran. But that's

how he and Lucey got to know each other during that time because Lucey was an organizer in

Crawford County for the Party. And he got elected to the State Assembly for one term as well.

Hour 1/30:00 Political Budget Disagreements in '60s, Relationship Between PL and GN

David Obey Interview Transcript 18 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, he didn 't grow up like you for sure, in terms of very modest means. So I'm kind of

wondering where his, you know, standing up for the little guy and not wanting to be in anybody's pocket. And I wonder where that came from?

I don't know.

So he won again in '58. And there was a huge sea change. Tell me about the Democratic Party

at the time. You said there were some splits.

Well, it's always easier to hang together when you have no power. And so you're making noise

but not decisions. But by '58, you know, we were in - and the problem in Wisconsin was that there was a budget deficit, as there almost always is when you have bad economic times. And so the two parties were debating about how to close that deficit. And the Republicans felt that you

should add a sales tax to the existing income tax. And it was an article of faith with the

Democrats that the sales tax was regressive. And so if you were going to raise taxes, the

Democrats wanted it to be by raising the progressive income tax, especially the top bracket. And

so Gaylord was Governor and he had to sell whatever solution he had. And the Republicans

controlled the legislature by that time; at least they controlled the State Senate. Part of the time they controlled the Assembly, part of the time they didn't. Gaylord appointed Jim Doyle's father to head a study commission to make recommendations about how to eliminate the deficit. And they came in recommending a partial sales tax increase, as well as a partial income tax increase.

So there was a big fight within the Democratic Party. I mean, Gaylord got it through, and then

David Obey Interview Transcript 19 Proxmire Oral History Project the Republicans demagogued him, even though the Republicans had insisted on sales tax being

part of the deal. They ran their political campaign - "And two cents for Gaylord!" - was the way they played it, trying to pin the sales tax tail on Gaylord. And so Gaylord got his sales tax, but it was immensely unpopular around the state. And so when Gaylord ran for the US Senate in '62,

he had, you know, that albatross. And so Phil Kuehn was the Republican Governor. Everybody

expected Kuehn to win. They didn't think Reynolds had a chance. And Reynolds and Lucey, together with John Gronouski, who was the tax commissioner, they put together a campaign

based on the promise to repeal the Republican sales tax. And there was a big fight about that, because Gaylord's position was, "Look, if you take that position, you're throwing me under the bus." And so we had a big fight at the convention in Eau Claire.

That was in '61 ?

Yeah. And I don't remember if it was '61 or '62. I don't remember. But I think it was '61, but

I'm not sure. But anyway, there was a big fight at the convention. Jerry Clark was the principal

staffer for Bill Proxmire. And Clark was - he later became very active in AFSCME [American

Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees] out here. And Clark was there to help

Lucey and Reynolds on the sales tax issue, because that's where Proxmire was, on that side. And they had a hell of a fight. And they finally put together a compromise resolution on the issue.

And so to sell it to the delegates, you had Lucey, you had Reynolds, and you had Gaylord all on

stage, arms linked, in support of this compromise. And Jean Lucey on the floor of the

convention, shaking her fist and screaming at them, saying, "Goddamn Troika! Goddamn

David Obey Interview Transcript 20 Proxmire Oral History Project Troika!" (laughter) I mean, it was passionate stuff in those days. And then the differences were

also exacerbated by the '60 presidential campaign.

/ was going to ask you about that.

Because, I mean, Pat Lucey was Catholic and he felt strongly about Jack Kennedy. And Gaylord was actually for Stevenson, but because Stevenson wasn't on the ballot, Gaylord was under the table supporting Hubert Humphrey.

As were you, right?

Yes.

Managed his campaign.

On campus.

On campus? And Prox was a Kennedy supporter?

Prox was a Kennedy supporter, yeah. He was a little, you know, softer about it, but he was a

Kennedy supporter.

Was he as much involved in all this politicking as the others? Or was he also sort of a —

David Obey Interview Transcript 21 Proxmire Oral History Project I don't know how to answer that. I mean, he was certainly visible in what he was doing. But it

was more intense between Lucey and Gaylord because Gaylord's the Governor. If you're the

Governor of the state, you expect that the state party is going to be backing your play. And the

state party Chairman is usually seen as the right-hand man of the Governor. That certainly has been the case ever since. But, you know, Lucey, especially after Kennedy got elected, Lucey felt that because he had been the chief Kennedy guy, he should be the go-to guy whenever decisions were made on patronage or other issues. And Gaylord Nelson felt that as Governor, he should be the guy they go through. And so, you know, Kennedys were caught in a cross-fire on that stuff.

And I tell in my book, so was 1.1 was a young Republican at that time and I didn't know all this

stuff was going on behind the scenes.

A young Democrat.

Yeah, yeah. And I was appointed to represent the Young Democrats on the senior party's Central

Committee. And the way that happened is Bill Drew, who was then the state Chair of the Young

Repubs [sic] called me and said, "Dave, we're going to have a vacancy in the administrative rep job and I have to figure out who the hell to appoint, and some people are suggesting you." And he said, "I just have one question for you: Are you okay with Pat Lucey?" I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I said, "Well, sure. I think Pat Lucey is terrific." He said, "That's

all I need to know." Well, what he wanted to know is where I stood on the Lucey/Nelson thing,

but I didn't even know there was a split. So I went to my first meeting in LaCrosse. And there they had a fight in the Administrative Committee about who they would be recommending for

David Obey Interview Transcript 22 Proxmire Oral History Project the federal judgeship. And Howard Meister, who was from Milwaukee and was a Nelson

supporter and a roguishly acerbic speaker, he was pushing Gaylord's choice, which was Jim

Doyle, Senior. And Tom Pattison and others on the committee were pushing - at Lucey's behest

- they were pushing for Dave Rabinovitz, a lawyer from Sheboygan. And so I knew Jim Doyle

quite well and I thought quite highly of him, and I wasn't thinking of any party splits. And when the vote came, I voted for Doyle. And I think Doyle won by one or two votes on that motion.

And Lucey's people descended on me, "How could you betray Pat?" And, you know, I was

mortified. I didn't know what the hell I'd done.

Hour 1/40:00 DO's Post-College Years, DO's Post-High School Work History

But I realized there was a hell of a lot I didn't know about what was going on, you know? I was just a green kid! So that fight lingered for years. I mean, Frank Nicolet - Gaylord got Frank

Nicolet to run against Pat Lucey for state Chair, and then Frank was very active in the Guard,

and Reserves. And that was during the Berlin crisis. And when Kennedy called up the 32n

Division, that meant that Frank Nicolet had to go to Fort Lewis, Washington with his military unit. So that removed the challenge to Pat Lucey for state Party Chair. And that call up - I mean,

I was asked by Jim Wimmer, who later became Party Chair - but Wimmer was a staffer for

Gaylord. And Wimmer asked me if I would publicly endorse Nicolet. Well, I love Frank Nicolet.

So I said, "Yeah, I would," because I thought that Gaylord needed somebody in the chairmanship who was reliable. And so with brilliant timing, I put out a statement to the press, one day before the call-up came, and Nicolet was dogged as a candidate, (laughter) Oops! But I remember Jim

Buckley came down to campus to see me. He was the executive director of the Party.

David Obey Interview Transcript 23 Proxmire Oral History Project So what year are we talking about right now':

Well, when was the call-up? I thought it was - when was the Berlin call-up? '61 or '62?

So you 're still in college at this point?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. But anyway, Jim Buckley came up to me, or came down to campus to see me because he

heard I was going to put out a release. And he said, "Dave, you don't want to do that. Number

one, Lucey's going to win, and number two, you could have a nice career in politics. I don't think you want to kill a career before it even gets started." And I told Jim to, "Go to hell. Quit threatening me." I was going to do whatever the hell I damned pleased. And I did. I've never

regretted it.

And it didn 't stop your career in politics.

And then Frank wound up being mad at Gaylord in the end, and he was mad for a lot of years.

Because Frank thought that he had been promised Gaylord's support for that same judgeship.

And, you know, I don't know what the facts were, but when you can appoint people, all you do

David Obey Interview Transcript 24 Proxmire Oral History Project is lose. It's the old story: if you've got ten people trying to get a postmastership and you appoint

one, you'll wind up making nine enemies and one ingrate.

It's a tough situation. So, tell me about your path at this point. You get a degree in political

science in sixty —

In '60.

Right.

In '60. And then I got a three year fellowship under the National Defense Education Act to do

grad work in the -

The National. . . I'm sorry.

The National Defense Education.

Defense, okay.

Which Congress passed in the wake of Sputnik, which had an emphasis on science and math but

also on foreign languages, and especially an emphasis on Russia and China. So I got a three year

fellowship, a full boat fellowship, to study Soviet affairs.

David Obey Interview Transcript 25 Proxmire Oral History Project At the graduate level?

Yeah.

In Madison.

Yep, yep.

/ was going to ask you also how you funded your undergraduate education. Was that —I mean,

today —

Well, with that, the first two years I just went to Wausau so I didn't have any room and board

costs. I got a ninety dollar scholarship award when I graduated from high school that paid for one

semester's tuition.

Ninety dollars.

Yeah. And so I lived with - my dad lived with my grandparents and so I lived with them for that two years. So I didn't really many costs. My dad, he worked at 3M Company in the color quartz

lab but he also had a second job running a floor covering business. And I had worked with him

and his partner, Tommy Smith, for years installing linoleum and carpet and Formica countertops

and things like that and floor tile. In fact, I laid - all one summer, I laid floor tile in the old

Wausau High main building. So when I was in college, I worked Saturdays and a couple nights a

David Obey Interview Transcript 26 Proxmire Oral History Project week part-time doing that stuff to make some money. And then when I went to Madison, I

worked at Rennebohm Drug Store as a busboy.

On the square?

No, down - right kiddy-corner from the Old Brat House on State Street.

Okay, sure.

And then my landlord discovered that I knew how to install floor covering. And he was in the

process of replacing a lot of floors in this multi-unit apartment building of his. So he asked me if

I'd like to make some money. He said, "Well, try one room, and we'll see how you do." So I did.

And I think I finished seven or eight rooms. And so I got money there. And then during the

summers, I worked at the Brokaw paper mill, most of the time in the finishing room; once in

awhile in the machine room. And there, I was lucky. I listened to the Democratic Convention in

1960, in Los Angeles. I had a little portable radio in my shirt pocket, an earplug in my ear. And while I was packaging reams on the line in the finishing room, I was listening to Gene McCarthy

give that speech about Stevenson, saying, "Do not pass this man by." It was a great speech. And,

I mean, that's where I made the most money because the union guys, during the summer, they

wanted extra time off. And so I could work double shifts. So, you know, I could go in at seven in the morning until three and then hit another shift from three till eleven. Most of the time, the

guys would take off when they were on the midnight shift, so usually I'd go in at three in the

David Obey Interview Transcript 27 Proxmire Oral History Project afternoon, go till eleven at night and then take the next shift from eleven at night until seven in the morning.

So you worked your way through college that way?

Yeah. And, I mean, I had some financial help from my dad. He didn't have a hell of a lot of

money, but I got some help from him. And then in grad school, it was, you know, it was full

boat.

A full boat, that's great. So you studied Russian.

I studied Russian politics. And I remember being so incredulous at the obtuseness of the US

government because they were still having a debate in government circles about whether there

really was a split between the Soviet Union and the Chinese communists. And, you know, I'm

sitting in the library reading this stuff. And it was obvious that there was a huge doctrinal

difference between the Russian communists and the Chinese communists, you know, based on their historical experience. Because, you know, the Russians, their doctrine was you had to work

with the urban proletariat; whereas in China, that didn't fit the model because it was a peasant

society and so they were rural peasant based And, you know, these judgmental differences that

simply became theological differences from a bunch of true believers.

At that point, had Prox already started to question the estimates of Soviet power that the —

David Obey Interview Transcript 28 Proxmire Oral History Project Hour 1/50:00 BP's Skepticism of Soviet Union's Power, DO's Decision to Run for State Assembly

I don't remember when he started that, but, I mean, Prox had - there was a guy by the name of

Richard Kaufman who was a superb staffer on the Joint Economic Committee.

I also interviewed him.

And, I mean, he worked for Prox when Prox ran the committee and he worked for me when I ran

it. And he was superb. And Prox would consistently say, "They're not spending as much as we think and their economy isn't as strong as we think." And I remember after the Iron Curtain fell,

I became a Chairman of Foreign Ops the same year that Gorbachev came to power. And so I was

Chairman of that Subcommittee when we had all of this turmoil; the collapse of the Soviet

Union, trying to help transition Eastern European governments and economies from centrally-run

Marxist economies to market-oriented democracies. And when I was in Czechoslovakia, we were going around this military airport, and I saw these rusting pieces of equipment and saw these planes sitting out - no place to put them, no shelter. And you could see that this was - I mean, it was like a third world military, for god sake. And this was Czechoslovakia, and they

were supposed to be better than most. So, I just kept thinking, "God almighty, was Prox right!"

Well, going back a little chronologically, okay. So, we 're now in graduate school. Are you

thinking about a career in politics at this point?

David Obey Interview Transcript 29 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, I thought I was going to get a degree in Soviet politics and I thought I would be teaching that in college somewhere. And I had not thought about running for office - not in my wildest

dreams. And then Pat Lucey asked me if I would go home on a weekend - when I went home, he

asked me if I would talk with a guy by the name of John Reynolds, who was a newcomer to town

but had made quite a splash with the Democratic Party, people in Madison, because he sold a

number of- in those days, if you sold a hundred dollar ticket to the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, that was big stuff. And so John had sold a number of those tickets and Lucey thought this guy

might be a good Assembly candidate, so he asked me if I'd go up and try to persuade him to run.

I never met him, but I said, "Sure." So the next weekend, I went home and I stopped over to see

Reynolds. And he said, "No, no, no." He said, "I've got bigger fish to fry. I'm going after Mel

Laird." And I said, "You're crazy. Nobody can beat Mel Laird." He said, "Well, I've got a secret

plan. I'm going to beat him." And he said, "If you think running for the Assembly is such a hot

idea, you do it." And before I went to see John, I'd gone to the Secretary of State's office and

had gotten the votes precinct by precinct for the last five or six elections. And I'd analyzed the

district that I knew what wards had to be carried by about what margins in order to win. And the

numbers didn't leap out at you at first because we had a local controversy. In 1960, Kennedy took a bath in Marathon County. And the reason was because he was Catholic. And there was a

Catholic priest at St. James, Father Duffy. He was the guy who married Joan and me. And Duffy was an Irish priest and he sent letters home with kids telling parents that they - there was a

fundraising drive at that time to build a new YMCA in Wausau. And he sent word home that

under pain of sin, we could not join the YMCA. It was an anti-Catholic organization." And that

infuriated the town. And that played into the idea that, "Good god, you can't afford to have a

Catholic, because it would be run by the clergy." And so in that Assembly district, Democrats

David Obey Interview Transcript 30 Proxmire Oral History Project got killed that year. But I knew that was an aberration and that usually, we lost that district by a

much smaller margin. So I put together a model to show John how he could carry the damn

district. So when he turned it down, when I drove back to Madison, I was thinking about what he

said. And I went to Pat Lucey and I told him what he said and I showed Pat the model and he

said, "He's right." He said, "Why don't you run?" And so I went and talked to everybody I trusted. The only person that told me not to run was Jim Doyle's father. He said, "Look it, get

your degree. You can always fall back on that." But when I went to Ralph Huitt, he said, "You

gotta do it." He said, "The very fact that you're thinking about it shows me that you gotta do it."

He said, "Look it. It's in your blood. Get out there. Run. If you win, you got a career. If you

don't win, at least you get it out of your system and you'll be a better student." So, I thought that

was pretty good advice and I took it. And, again, I didn't think I was going to win, but you know,

in the end, I won by about eleven hundred votes and I spent about eleven hundred bucks.

Wow. A dollar a vote.

Five hundred of it was our own money. That was all the money we had in the world.

Really'/

We put it into that race.

And then you spent six years in the State Assembly, is that right?

David Obey Interview Transcript 31 Proxmire Oral History Project Six years and three months, yeah.

Okay. So these are, you know, there's so much to talk about in those years, but I want to focus a

little bit on the intent of this interview, which is how much did you follow in the '60s —'63 to '69

— what Bill Proxmire was doing in the Senate?

I didn't follow much because I was focused on my own job. And, you know, I was also focused,

marginally, on reapportionment. Normally, you're supposed to reapportion every ten years. In those days, you know, sometimes years went by before they did it. We were two years late. I think it was the Baker v. Carr decision that came down in the early '60s, that required

redistricting every ten years. So Wisconsin was two years late, but they did that in '64. And

Norm Anderson handled that for the Democrats, but Fred Kessler and I were involved to a lesser

degree, so that took a hell of a lot of time. So I wasn't paying much attention to what Prox was

doing in those days.

That's where I 'm going to stop this tape and move onto the next.

HOUR 2

Hour 2/00:00 BP's '64 Senate Campaign Race, BP's Early Refusal to Accept Favors, BP's Relationship With Other Democrats

David Obey Interview Transcript 32 Proxmire Oral History Project This is hour number two of my interview with Congressman Obey on June 8? , 2011. So, Prox

ran a Senate campaign in 1964. And I'm just wondering what you remember, if anything, about

that race.

Well, Prox was looked at as a shoe-in, but then Wilbur Renk announced. And Wilbur was on the

Board of Regents at the University. I don't remember if he was Chair or not. But he was very

well known. And he was also very well known in agribusiness circles - Renk Seed Corn, things

like that. And he was a very respected man. And all of a sudden, I think Prox thought he had a race on his hands. And so he went to people like Louie Hanson, who'd become Party Chair,

asking Louie for help in raising money. He was quite worried about it. Louie's an interesting person. Louie and Martin Hanson and their sister, Ann, grew up in Chicago. Their father and

uncle ran a furniture manufacturing company. And Louie had started in college as the older

brother. And then his father started making crazy business decisions and started going senile.

And so they had to take over the company from the parents. So Louie wound up never finishing

college, but he was the best-read man I've ever known. And Martin had served as a salesman for the company and Louie was trying to run the business. They sold the business. In the '30s, their

father and uncle had bought a large amount of land west of Mellen. It wound up being about nine miles of lake frontage. And it was cutover land, which they could buy for back taxes because

Weyerhaeuser and the so-called tree growing company had cut the hell out of the woods and

stripped it. So they bought this land, which over time grew back. And their father and uncle built

a number of cabins in the woods and a great, big dining hall. And it had become sort of the social

center during the summer for a hell of a lot of people in the Democratic Party. Martin Hanson was an incredible hunter and conservationist. And he would go all over the world - up to the

David Obey Interview Transcript 33 Proxmire Oral History Project Yukon, Alaska, other places - after big game. And he gradually changed and decided he wasn't

going to hunt anymore except with a camera. He had collected animals for the Chicago Zoo and

others. But he was a dedicated conservationist and knew a hell of a lot about this stuff. And so

I'd never heard of him. And Pat Lucey came to me. I remember I was standing in the back of the

Assembly chamber. And Pat Lucey came to me and he said, "Dave, what do you know about

Louie Hanson and how do you feel about him?" Well, the only time I'd ever seen Louie was

when Louie was in the state Party headquarters. I'd met him. And Louie had run for Congress

against Alvin O'Konski in '62. And Louie tells the story about how, "Alvin was a household

word. He'd served for thirty years until I beat him." But Louie said that he anxiously awaited his

campaign cards. And the day that they came, he put them in the car, he drove over to Superior,

stood outside the Belknap Shopping Center in Superior. And he said the very first guy who came by, Louie handed him a card and said, "Hi, I'm Louie Hanson, Democratic candidate for

Congress." And the guy said, "So what!" and walked by him. (laughter) And Louie said, "I took my cards. I put them in the car. I went back home and I had three martinis. I knew it was going to be a long campaign." But anyway, that's all I knew about Louie. And so I asked Pat, "Why do you ask?" He said, "Well, somebody's got to succeed me as Party Chair." And, he said, "I'm thinking of Louie," even though Louie had been a Nelson man. So Louie was the Chair when

Proxmire was running in '64 and helped Prox to raise some money. In the end, Prox didn't need

it because it was a hell of a good year.

Did you ever witness — I mean, you did witness, you said, Prox on the campaign trail in terms of

shaking hands. But I think you also told me a story about him coming through Wausau.

David Obey Interview Transcript 34 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, I think where you're going is -

The Gas Light—your father's —

Oh, oh that. That's different. Well, my dad ran the Gas Light Motel and Supper Club. And Prox

didn't drink.

Ever?

Well, I think he probably did earlier in his career, but he told Gaylord once, he said, "No. I

learned that every time you have a drink, you lose so many thousand brain cells and I don't want to lose my edge." So he quit drinking, if he ever did much. But when Prox came to town -1

mean, whenever any politician came to town who I knew, whether it was Mel Laird, or a

Republican, or Gaylord Nelson or anybody else, we would tell them, "Hey, stay at the motel.

Don't worry about it." I mean, hell, the best room we had was $7.50 a night. The other rooms

were $6.50 a night! It was a nice, clean, modern, new motel, but nothing fancy. But Prox would never accept. Prox would never stay free at the motel.

It was considered a favor. He didn 't want to —

Yeah - you know, "a technical contribution by a corporation." Well, that wasn't the way it was

meant. I mean, it was common courtesy to a friend.

David Obey Interview Transcript 35 Proxmire Oral History Project But an example of his early refusal to accept special treatment.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I remember he used to - in Wisconsin Rapids, he would stay at -1 think the name of the hotel was the Dixon Hotel. It was a real run-down, old, rickety place. And Prox

would stay there because it was, like, $4.50 or $5.00 bucks a night. I mean, the other thing Prox

would do, you know, he would not come into town and want to campaign with the local

Democrats. What he would often do is figure out who is the best vote getter in town. In

Marathon County, for instance, if it was Hank Gaetzman, who was the Sheriff, when he came to town, he might call Hank and ask Hank if he would, you know, [do] Main Street with him. But the would invariably call only the person who was clearly the most popular guy in town. He

wouldn't call the local State Assemblyman or the local State Senator unless they were the top

vote getter in town because he wanted to maximize his edge in every way.

It's very scientific. It sounds very methodical. So his relationship with the kind of state political

apparatus wasn 't very chummy in that way?

No, not at all chummy. I mean, I think he was convinced he'd won it on his own and the only

way he was going to keep winning things would be on his own because, you know, he did not have a warm and fuzzy relationship with other power centers in the Party.

Do you remember his use of local media at all? Do you have any comment on that?

David Obey Interview Transcript 36 Proxmire Oral History Project I mean, he would always go in for interviews. And he'd do radio interviews. He was terrific on radio. He was very conversational; very much straight, unadorned language, very clear - a

damned good communicator.

Well, there were many issues going on in those years. I mean, the Vietnam War and Civil Rights.

Do you remember any particular stances you either agreed or disagreed on?

Hour 2/09:50 BP's Relationship With GN, Golden Fleece Awards, DO's Congressional Campaign

Well, I mean, the key thing for Proxmire - Proxmire helped make the Democratic Party

acceptable to people on a whole range of activities because he was seen as being fiscally

cautious. Proxmire was seen as being anti-waste and anti-deficit. And so that helped the party to

bust through the stereotype that we were not fiscally responsible. The Democratic Party, in my view, has always been more fiscally responsible than the Republicans because the damn

Republicans will never support - you know, they will cut taxes like hell and hope that the huge

deficit that results will force you to lower the size of government. I mean, so it's an ideological

approach to the size of government. They don't give a rat's you-know-what in the end about

whether there are temporary deficits or not, because they see those deficits as useful in

accomplishing their ideological goals. But that was his key importance. But, I mean, I remember

when Prox pushed through Truth in Lending that required merchants to give you a sheet of paper that shows you the true rate of interest you were paying. I remember when Joan and I, right after we were married, we were buying either a refrigerator or a washer and dryer. And I remember

getting the sheet from the merchant that laid out what the payments would be and what the true

David Obey Interview Transcript 37 Proxmire Oral History Project rate of interest would be. And I remember the merchants were all screaming at Proxmire because

of unnecessary paperwork. But at least for the first time, you had an attempt to let people know

what the hell was the true cost of what it was they were buying. But then Vietnam came along,

and Prox - you know, Gaylord was one of the first guys to go against the war. And Prox was one

of the holdouts, supporting Johnson in the war. And in fact Prox would debate Wayne Morse

about the war, with Morse being against it and Prox for it. I don't remember when Prox finally

converted, but he was - it always surprised me that Prox was so outspoken in support of that war

in the early days.

Tell me a little bit about the relationship between Gaylord and Prox. Did you have a sense of

their —

Well, I don't really know, because it was very seldom that I was with both of them at the same time. But Prox would cast a lot of votes that would make Gaylord uncomfortable, because

Gaylord was much more a problem solver and Gaylord was much more a team player and a

conciliator. Gaylord was probably THE most popular man in the entire US Senate just because of

his personality. And he could charm his way through any discussion. Prox was on the

Appropriations Committee and so your job on the Appropriations Committee is to get the bills through and so that the government functions with some degree of regularity. And Prox would

almost vote like he was a part of the minority and he would vote against appropriations and vote to to cut them. I think Prox was - when he ran for re-election the first time in '58, Roland J.

Steinle ran against him. He was a judge. And they totaled up the cost of the bills that Bill had

introduced. And they called Proxmire "Billion Dollar Bill." And that really got to Prox and he

David Obey Interview Transcript 38 Proxmire Oral History Project was determined, by God, he was never going to make that mistake again. So it was almost a fetish - he'd go out of his way to be visible in cutting little things, more symbolically than real.

And then he did this Golden Fleece Award that Howard Shuman invented. Howard was a damn

good staffer who used to work for Paul Douglas and then went to work for Prox. And some of the stuff that Prox did with that, you know, was legitimate, and some was just cheap shot. You know, going after this or thatNIH [National Institutes of Health] researcher because of the funny title of the research grant. And, I mean, people still do that today. It was the bane of my existence

when I was Chair. And it used to drive Gaylord crazy because Gaylord would cast what he thought was a responsible vote and then Proxmire would come along and, you know, cast the

easy shot vote. And so I think there was always that kind of tension between Gaylord, who was

so operational, and Prox, who was just sort of flying a lone wolf mission.

So inside the beltway, do you think that his Golden Fleece Awards were viewed as kind of a publicity stunt?

I think many people felt they were publicity stunts, yeah, yeah. And, you know, the idea was a

good one, but you needed more thoughtful, nuanced analyses. And it was much more - it gave the appearance of being an effort to grab press rather than actually save money.

Well, and it was monthly, so it wasn 't — they cranked them out? He also started in 1967 a daily

speech on the Genocide Convention.

Yeah.

David Obey Interview Transcript 39 Proxmire Oral History Project Do you know anything about that, or what motivated that?

No. I don't know what drove him to do that. It was a good thing to do, but I don't know how he

got into that.

So tell me about your path to the House then, in 1969, and how he interfaced with that, if any.

Well, I was party whip in the Assembly. And in '68, after the election, the National Conference

of State Legislative Leaders had a meeting in Hawaii. And so Bob Huber went, Frank Nicolet went, Fred Risser went - Fred's still in the Senate - and I went. And we had our conference and

Scoop Jackson - the last night of our conference, it was December 6l, the night before Pearl

Harbor anniversary. And Scoop Jackson was supposed to be the speaker. And everybody thought he was going to be Nixon's Secretary of Defense. And when Jackson spoke that night, Huber

said, "Ain't no way that man's going to be Nixon's Secretary of Defense, not after some of the things he said tonight." And the next morning, we went to the USS .Arizona for the wreath laying

ceremony. And when that was over, we decided we were going to stay a couple of days on our

own hook and go over to the big island in Hawaii. So we did. And my wife, Joan, and I were in a

shop. She was looking at moo-moos, you know, their dresses, and Fred Risser came running into the store with a copy of the Honolulu Advertiser, saying, "Dave, you're going to Congress!

You're going to Congress!" I said, "What the hell are you talking about?" And he showed me the

front page headline and above the masthead, in pink letters, "Laird, Secretary of Defense." And I told people I damn near swam home! But my wife said, "Don't you dare. If we're going to spend

David Obey Interview Transcript 40 Proxmire Oral History Project this kind of money, we're not going to cut it short, for god sake," you know, "take an extra three

days." I'd also been sick. I'd been in the hospital. And she said, "You just need to relax." So I

did. And when I caught the plane home, landed in Chicago and had, like, three hours before the

connecting flight to home. So the first person I called was Frank Nicolet. Frank had been beaten

in '66 and then he'd been elected again in '68. So I called Frank and in the back of my mind I thought, "Well, none of us is probably going to win this thing, but Frank has - he's senior guy.

He's got a right to it if he wants a shot." And I knew Bert Grover from Shawano would be

interested. And so I called Frank. And the first words out of Frank's mouth -1 was in a telephone booth at O'Hare - and the first words out of Frank's mouth were, "Look. I'd like to do

it, but face it. None of us are probably going to win this damn thing, but you've got the best shot

because you're from the media center. You had the best media coverage the last four years.

You're the only shot we've got. Just tell me how I can help you to get Bert Grover out of it."

Hour 2/20:25 DO's Election to Congress, DO's Campaign Strategies

So, on the phone, without consulting with Joan or anything else, I had to make up my mind. I

didn't want to lose that chance. And I said, "Well, then I'm in." And so I called Jim Wimmer,

who was the Party Chair, and I told him that I was in. And he said, "Look. Let's get the

candidates together and see if we can't sort this out." So we met, I think, at the Edgewater Hotel

in Madison. And you had Bert Grover and me and Larry Dahl, who had run against Mel in '68,

and Wimmer and Frank - no, Frank was not there. He couldn't make it. But Frank had

authorized me to say that he was going to support me. And Grover said, "Obey, you can't win."

He said, "I come from the Republican part of the district and I'm the guy who has the best

David Obey Interview Transcript 41 Proxmire Oral History Project chance." And I didn't think that was true, but Bert was a damn good campaigner. And Larry

Dahl said, "Look it, by rights," he said, "I'm the guy who should run because when Mel Laird

was the candidate, none of you guys had guts enough to run against him. I did. And I didn't run a

bad race." And he said, "I think I've got a right to a shot." But I knew that - I'd called Helen

Sigmund ahead of time. Helen had been the Portage County Democratic Chair. And she later,

after her husband died, she remarried. Her name is now Helen Van Prooyen and she lives up in

Price County now. But she was the Portage County Chair and she had helped Larry Dahl a lot in the campaign. And I called Helen and I said, "Would you talk to Larry Dahl and find out where

Larry really is coming from and let him know that I'm in, but I would really appreciate his help."

And she called back and she said, "Larry's going to be okay. But he will want to get some things

off his chest first." So, Larry said, "I should be the guy who runs if you're talking about justice."

But, he said, "This doesn't have anything to do with justice. I want to win, and the only guy who

can win is Obey." And so he said, "I'm for you." And Bert declined. He said, "Well, I'm going to run." And I said, "Bert, you can run if you want, but if you do, none of us is going to win

because we don't have enough money for a primary and a general. And understand, you may think that you are better off in a general election, but in a primary, you come from counties that

aren't going to cast a dime and a nickel in a Democratic primary. And so, you know, I'm not trying to be a smartass about it, but I will win that primary." And Bert went home and called me the next day and he said, "Alright, I'm in. What can I do to help?" And he said, "I'll support you,

but goddammit, you gotta campaign over here hard, and I want to take you around everywhere."

And he did. And, I mean, we held our loss in Shawano to a very few hundred votes. And in

Waupaca, which was the most Republican county outside of Waushara, we held Chilsen to a low

vote total. And so we won with 51.2 percent.

David Obey Interview Transcript 42 Proxmire Oral History Project And you were the youngest member of Congress.

Yeah.

That must have been a moment.

I thought I was a one-term wonder. I never thought I'd be re-elected. I didn't think I'd be elected

in the first place.

Much less twenty times re-elected.

Yeah.

Did you use any ofPr ox's campaign strategies in terms of shaking hands and going down —

Well, neither of us had much chance to do that, because Chilsen was in the legislature and so was

I. And I had responsibilities as party whip. So both of us had to be in session because if either

one of us missed votes we knew the other would take advantage of it. So both of us - I mean, I

would get up in the morning about five o'clock, quarter to five or so, and I'd go wherever I was

going to go -to hit a plant gate. It's one day Wausau, the next day [Wisconsin] Rapids. The next

day, you name it. . . Shawano. And then after the plant gate, I would drive to Madison. We

would do the session, the floor session, that morning. I made the decision I wasn't going to -the

David Obey Interview Transcript 43 Proxmire Oral History Project committees weren't doing much in the early days anyway, so I made the decision I'd be there for the floor sessions but not committees. And Chilsen did the same thing. So I'd stay there until

noon. And then at noon I'd get in the car and I'd drive back up to the district. We got hit with a

long, foggy season that lasted almost ten days. And it drove me nuts because to drive it, you

couldn't see thirty feet ahead of the cars. So we were driving, like, twenty-five miles an hour on those damn roads, taking forever to get home. And so I would campaign in the afternoons and

evenings. I'd hit bowling alleys. I'd quit about ten o'clock at night, crawl in the sack, and do it

all over again the next day. And finally one day, three kids walked in from Amherst University.

And they said, "We read about this campaign in the New York Times and we'd like to help." And

Louie Hanson, who was there helping run the campaign, said, "For god's sake, drive him. He's

going to kill himself." I'd fallen asleep several times. I wound up in the median on the interstate.

So the kid who drove me was named Chet Atkins, who later was elected to the State Assembly

and the State Senate and became the State Democratic Party Chair and wound up serving on the

Appropriations Committee with me.

All these connections. Did Prox do any campaigning for you, or Nelson?

Oh, yeah. Gaylord came in six or seven times. He came in virtually every weekend but one or two. And, I mean, it was invaluable because in these Republican counties, I was discounted.

People didn't think, "Who the hell is he?" They thought Chilsen had it in the bag. I mean, he was

a State Senator. He'd been the news director and news anchor in the main TV station, in what

had been for years the only TV station in the district. So he was the Walter Cronkite of central

Wisconsin, plus a State Senator. And so everybody thought that he was going to whip me. I did

David Obey Interview Transcript 44 Proxmire Oral History Project too. And so Gaylord helped because the local papers wouldn't come to hear a speech by me but they'd come to hear Nelson. And then I'd be, you know, in the headline because it was my event.

And Prox came in I think twice. So both of them came in. Gaylord came in a lot more than Prox,

but Prox came in twice to help.

So he did do some supporting of other candidates?

Yeah, oh sure. I mean, Prox didn't run away from the Party most of the time. But he was always

very careful. He wanted to be identified with people who would help, not hurt.

And then when you got into the House of Representatives, did you have much to do with him in

those years?

Not at first. He had his world. I had mine. You know, Prox was fairly senior by that time. And so

he had his institutional responsibilities. And I was just focused on learning the House and getting re-elected. Gaylord was different because he would invite me over. Stan Kimmitt used to be the

Secretary of the Senate. He was Mike Mansfield's right-hand guy in terms of the mechanics of

running the Senate. And Stan - a couple nights a week, Stan would have people in his office:

Jim Eastland, Tom Eagleton, Gaylord - you know, people like that. And Gaylord would invite me over. So I'd have a drink with those guys and we'd talk. .And sometimes we'd go to the

Monocle and have a drink at the end of the day. And so Gaylord and I - he was always my

mentor.

David Obey Interview Transcript 45 Proxmire Oral History Project Hour 2/30:35 Reason for S&L Crisis, BP's Time on Joint Economic Committee, BP's Influence on DO

Gaylord?

Going back to the State Legislative days. We helped him organize when he was having his fights

as Governor. So Gaylord knew me before, much better than Proxmire did. .And so we became,

you know, buddies as well as patron-protege relationship.

Well, Prox certainly wasn't known for bringing home the bacon, so to speak, for Wisconsin. Did

that have any effect on your career?

Well, not at first because there were very limited earmarks in those days. .And the way that you

brought the bacon home in those days was not to get a specific earmark in a bill. What you

would do is go to the chairman and say, "Hey, I need some help with this agency. Can you call

and help me get this done?" So it was much more behind the scenes, hidden. And then gradually the direct earmarking process expanded. .And Prox didn't want to spend his time on that stuff. He

didn't do much of that. But, I mean, it really didn't take hold until after he'd left.

Anything about the '70s? He was Chair of the Banking Committee a good part of that decade,

worked on consumer protection, as you mentioned.

Well, I mean, I thought it was really interesting when Prox, after he left when he wrote that book

and blamed - took a fair share of the blame for the S&L crisis and made the point that he said,

David Obey Interview Transcript 46 Proxmire Oral History Project "Here we had one of the biggest financial crises in financial history, and the Chairman of the

Committee didn't see it coming." Well the reason he didn't see it coming is that states like

Wisconsin were well regulated. And so when you'd go home, you wouldn't hear all of this drum

beat about this institution or that institution has all of these bad loans. But states like California

and Arizona and Texas, you know, it's the typical nonsense you get from people - "Oh, don't regulate. We'll do it just fine." And it's the non-regulated states who then foul the nest for

everybody else. And so the states who caused the problem, who resisted regulation in the first

place, are the first goddamn states with their hands out -

For a bailout.

Asking for federal money to fix the problem. All the while, they're not doing a damn thing to

limit their executive bonuses or anything like that. So it's enough to give hypocrisy a bad name!

That's a good line.

It just drives you nuts. But, I mean, Prox - I think there were good reasons why Prox didn't see this, because ninety percent of what you do legislating and responding to the problems is

responding to what you see. And if you don't see it in your own area then it's not a reality to

you.

But in my reading, he certainly wasn 't favored by the banking industry.

David Obey Interview Transcript 47 Proxmire Oral History Project Oh, no.

You know, they weren 't able to lobby him.

No, no, no, that's right. No, there was no question, Prox was a public interest guy. The two things about him that were most important was that he was fiscally conservative, which gave him

credibility. He sure as hell was on the side of the little guy, and he was always public interest,

public interest. He and Gaylord were the same.

So do you have any memories of him on the social issues, which perhaps are bigger today than

they were back then?

No. I don't at all. I got to know him best after we were on the Joint Finance Committee - I mean,

after we were on the Joint Economic Committee. And he was amazing.

Well, let's talk about that a little bit.

He was amazing, because a lot of members, if they don't know the subject as well, you know, they will have the staff prepare a hundred questions and so they may ask seven or eight of the

questions that are prepared. They may know enough to have a follow-up question or two. But

Prox, I mean, the witness would say something like - if a BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] witness was appearing, Prox would take their testimony, their written testimony. He'd whisper to the staffer and the staffer would bring some committee record of a past testimony. And then he'd

David Obey Interview Transcript 48 Proxmire Oral History Project have some other article from somewhere else. And he would take that information and

synthesize it and ask his own questions, which would back that witness right into the corner Prox

wanted him. He was incredibly skillful. The two most skillful people I've ever seen doing that were Prox and Paul Sarbanes.

He thought well on his feet and he was able to articulate.

Well, yeah. He knew the subject. Whatever subject he was dealing with, he knew it. He had

mastered it.

Do you have any examples of things that you worked on together in theJEC [Joint Economic

Committee] that stand out to you?

No, no. I mean, he didn't need me to do what he was doing. He had his routine down pat and, you know, I was just learning the game at the committee. I mean, mostly what you did in Joint

Economic Committee was direct the staff to focus studies on things you thought needed looking

into and then driving questions in the press that would lead people to focus on whatever it is you

wanted them to focus on.

You mentioned staff, and I'm wondering if you had any connection to his office or his staff and

how he ran his office.

David Obey Interview Transcript 49 Proxmire Oral History Project I have no idea how he ran his office. I mean, he had good, quality people. His staff people were very cooperative. One thing we did work together on very hard was keeping Wisconsin off the

list of nuclear waste dumpsites, with this Yucca Mountain stuff going on in Nevada. At one time

- people forget this - but at one time, they were looking at several sites in Wisconsin as a

possible repository for high-level waste. .And one of them was in the Wausau -1 mean the

Marathon County /Portage County area; another was further up north - the Laurentian Shield - that rock was looked at as possible place to put that stuff. .And Prox and I worked damn hard

against that.

Through what committee?

Well, he worked - I forget what the Senate Committee was - in the end, he worked with Bennett

Johnson from Louisiana and we worked out an arrangement that set the criteria so that

Wisconsin would not be on the first or second tier of choices.

Well, thank you for that. Wow.

Yeah.

So that you did work together on. Did you have any disagreements on issues that you remember?

Well, I think we disagreed on the war for awhile until Prox came around on that. You know, like

I said, I disagreed with a lot of the things he was doing with NIH that nailed some of these -

David Obey Interview Transcript 50 Proxmire Oral History Project The Golden Fleece?

Yeah. I mean, once in awhile, he'd hit a home run with it, but a number of times it was - he was hitting into double plays.

Did he influence you in any way, either in your views or your style?

I mean, I think his campaign style influenced me because when I started, you know, I knew I

wasn't well known. I knew I was the underdog and not likely to win, whether it was the

Assembly or the Congress. .And so he was willing to take campaigning that extra mile, make that

extra level of effort in order to, you know, shake hands and meet people. .And so I just pounded the hell out of plant gates. I mean, every morning during the campaign I would hit a plant gate.

.And then I'd hit another one at three o'clock shift.

Hour 2/40:00 DO's Speculated View on BP's Senate Run Today, BP's Influence on BG, Supersonic Transport

So you came back to Wisconsin a lot, too?

Well, I mean, this was when I was in the Assembly.

This is when you were in the Assembly';

David Obey Interview Transcript 51 Proxmire Oral History Project Before I ever went.

But you had to get re-elected every two years.

.And then I did the same thing when I was in Congress. I would just come home and hit Main

Street a lot. You know, you have this phony - the Tea Party started demanding that people have

public forums so they could have an honest discussion of health care. Well, hell, all they wanted

was to have a Republican rally where they could scream at people. The best way to talk to people

is just to show up in a community unannounced, go up and down Main Street, go to a plant gate, pop into some businesses, and see what's going on. You get a hell of a lot more nuanced feel

about what's going on than to have some town meeting. I mean, the guy that succeeded me now,

it's the phoniest operation I've ever seen. He's afraid to give people notice that he's coming into

a town. And so what they'll do is they'll announce on a Saturday that so-and-so will be having

coffee at eight o'clock the next morning with his constituents at, you know, the local Howard

Johnsons or something. So they have, in a pro forma way -

Hand picked who's going to show up —

— Come in, but they have avoided any real public exposure. And fortunately, people have been

smart enough to anticipate that so they're beginning to organize efforts to expose what their

party line is.

David Obey Interview Transcript 52 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, politics has changed so much over the years.

Yeah.

With big money and lobbyists and special interests.

Well, I mean, lobbyists -1 don't think the lobbyists are much different than they ever were.

Okay.

I mean, people have a right to be organized and have somebody represent their interests. I don't think lobbyists have any more interest - or influence now than they did when I came. The

difference is that today, the system is torn apart. Because when I came here, no Senator, no

House Member, would have even entertained for two minutes the idea that some outside

ideological group could ask you to sign a pledge on this or that, like Grover Norquist has people

sign a pledge - all but what, eleven of the Republicans sign a pledge [that] they will not vote for

any kind of tax increase except the one that is blessed by Grover Norquist. And, I mean, when I

came to Congress, Members just had too damn much pride in the institution to do that. If

somebody told them to do that, they told them to go to hell. "I'll use my own judgment based on

what the country needs at the time. You think you got a magic answer? Goddamn it, you run!"

But that's the big change. .And then when you couple that with the ability of these groups that then spend money, you know, on indirect expenditures, that's the killer in the system today. And the US Supreme Court has absolutely ruined politics in this country.

David Obey Interview Transcript 53 Proxmire Oral History Project It kind of begs the question, I think, if Proxmire were to try to run today, do you think he could

do so? He was known, I think, after '70 for not taking any more campaign contributions.

Yeah, but he was able to do that because he was a household word. He was an institution and he

had lightweights running against him. But he admitted to Louie Hanson that if he ever had a tough campaign, he'd have to pick up the phone and start raising money. So it was a nice - it was

a lucky accident of history that Prox was able to do that. But the first time that they ran

somebody with a well-financed campaign, they would have forced him off that, because we've

seen that several times now, when somebody announces that they're not taking campaign

contributions and all of a sudden, they wound up with a three hundred thousand dollar buy in their district. And then, "Whoops! I better raise money."

So you think it was more of an accident of history than —you also said he had become an

institution. Did they choose not to run somebody seriously against him, you think, because he

was sort of a formidable —

Sure.

Yeah?

Yeah. I think after Wilbur Renk, they thought that Proxmire was the closest thing to unbeatable that you could be in Wisconsin.

David Obey Interview Transcript 54 Proxmire Oral History Project I asked you how he might have influenced you. Do you know anybody —

Well, the guy he influenced the most, I think, was Bert Grover. Bert worked as an intern in

Prox's office and watched how Prox operated. .And he sort of did the same thing in Shawano

County that Prox did in Wisconsin. Shawano County was a hugely Republican county. And so

Bert came home and just decided, you know, it was every man for himself. .And so he had the

slogan, "Cross over to Grover." And what he was telling people was, "Look it. Vote for every

Republican on the ticket, but then vote for me because I'm different." And they did. .And he also

learned the shoe leather kind of politics that Prox practiced. So Burt would go to every damn

farm in Shawano County, shake hands. I think he told me in one campaign he was bitten eleven times by dogs, (laughter)

Do you think anybody influenced Prox?

I do not know. I do not know.

Mentors?

I certainly think he could not have gotten where he did without Ellen, because she was a damn

good political operative. I mean, she knew people, she knew organization, you know, she knew the basics.

David Obey Interview Transcript 55 Proxmire Oral History Project She was actually involved very early on with the Democratic Organizing Committee.

Yeah, yeah. At one point, she was, I think, the Executive Director of the Party. And that meant that she was the Party because we didn't have any money or any organization in those days.

What else stands out to you? We 've covered a lot of different aspects to him. I know he was sort

of iconoclastic in his health regimen and his diet. Did you have occasion to witness any of that?

No. I mean, you know, we'd hear about -

Running.

We'd hear about his running downtown. I mean, a lot of people run now.

Yeah And he was doing it the early '70s when nobody was doing it.

He would do the walk across the state where he would - he'd drive in a car until he got outside the town and then he'd walk into town and shake hands with people and then he'd get in the car

on the other side of the town and go onto the next stop.

That didn 't influence you to do that?

David Obey Interview Transcript 56 Proxmire Oral History Project Well, no. I mean, I would routinely just go down Main Street. I didn't add the extra bit of theater to it.

The running and the — okay.

No.

Did he ever share any personal stories about his career with you?

Um-umm. (negatively)

No?

No.

So you don't know much about his —

Nope. It was all just -

Private life or — it was all public.

Yeah, yeah.

David Obey Interview Transcript 57 Proxmire Oral History Project Okay. Are there other memories I haven't asked you about? SST [Supersonic Transport] was a

big battle of his.

Oh, yeah. He was leading the fight against the SST. The greatest - I tell people - the greatest

debate I ever saw in the Congress was in the Appropriations Committee on the House side on the

SST. Eddie Boland was Chairman of the HUD and Independent Offices Subcommittee and Sid

Yates was not a member of that Subcommittee. And Sid was probably the classiest guy I ever

knew in the House. He was just elegant. And he -1 mean, when Sid decided to retire, he had a huge classical music collection, vinyl records. .And he gave a hell of a lot of them to me and to the Parliamentarian of the House.

Hour 2/50:00 BP in Today's Political Climate, BP's Retirement

He loved classical music. He was a hell of a golfer. And he was an all Big Ten basketball player

when he went to Northwestern. But he was like Prox in that he would take all of the stuff from

staff and he would synthesize his own presentation. .And the day that we had the fight in the

Committee, Eddie Boland brought the Subcommittee bill up for a vote and gave one hell of a

presentation. Eddie was terribly able. .And when he was finished, we thought, "My god, how is

Sid going to be able to counter this? What a masterful presentation." And Sid got up and gave a

stunningly effective presentation, making fun of all of the claims that the pro people were

pushing. We thought, "God! He just decapitated Eddie. What the hell is Eddie going to say?"

.And then Eddie got up and did the same thing to Sid. It went on and on and on for about twenty- five minutes. .And finally George Mahon, the Committee Chairman, said, "We will now vote."

David Obey Interview Transcript 58 Proxmire Oral History Project He just cut it off. .And at that point, everybody in the Committee stood up and gave those two

guys a standing ovation. I've never seen that happen before or since. But the person on the

Committee who most cared about the SST was Julia Butler Hansen. She was a member from the

state of Washington and she was Chairman of the Interior Subcommittee. She had been a truck

driver and I think she had also operated a tugboat out west. .And she was a tough, old bird. .And

when I went on the Appropriations Committee, I was assigned to Interior. And she said,

"Wisconsin!" And she knew all about the Party split. She said, "What's your history in

Wisconsin?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Were you a Nelson man or a Proxmire

man?" I said, "Well," I said, "my mentor is Nelson." She said, "Good. I hate that son-of-a-bitch

Proxmire!" (laughing) .And she was so mad because SST meant jobs and Boeing to her, you

know. So that's what I remember about the SST. But then, I mean, Sid lost that fight in the

Committee but won it on the House floor and then Proxmire won it in the Senate and that was the end of it.

It was kind of a long shot, it seemed, from the beginning.

Yeah, it sure was.

So it was a stunning turnaround.

Yep, yep. It's an example -1 mean, when you married the environmental issues with the cost and then compared it to other things you could do with the money, I mean, it was a no-brainer. But

when they started, it sure as hell didn't look like a no-brainer.

David Obey Interview Transcript 59 Proxmire Oral History Project What do you think his issues would be today if he were still around? I mean, clearly the financial

meltdown, (interruption)

Let me think a minute ... I think he would be very much in favor of deficit reduction but at the

same time, he would be very much in favor of making the tax system more progressive. .And I think he would recognize the difference between the need to provide short-term stimulus to the

economy and to provide long-term fiscal stringency to the economy. I also think he would be

going after waste in Pakistan and .Afghanistan with a vengeance. And I think he would be raising

absolute unshirted hell with Wall Street. .And I think he would raising holy hell with everybody

for not finding ways to deal with the housing crisis. They are congressional districts in this

country where one out of six houses are underwater in terms of their mortgages. I mean, it's mindless to let the banks sit here and pretend that you can fix this economy without dealing with that issue.

He decided not to run again in '88.

Surprised the hell out of everybody.

You were surprised about that?

Oh, yeah. I was stunned.

David Obey Interview Transcript 60 Proxmire Oral History Project Did you know why?

Never knew why, but Ellen told me years later that after Prox was in the nursing home, she was

going through his things one day in the dresser and she came across a pamphlet from NIH that talked about Alzheimer's. And she said that he was convinced that he had noticed a problem and

had it scouted out and that that's why he had quit.

Did you have much contact with him after he retired?

Ah, not much. I mean, I would see him once in awhile walking somewhere. The last time I really

had a conversation with Bill was at Les Aspin's funeral. And after the funeral, I had to go -1 think I had an editorial board meeting with the Milwaukee Journal before I went to the airport to

go back to Washington. .And I walked into the airport, and here was Prox sitting in a chair

watching the TV screen. And he had a brown bag with a sandwich and an orange in it. And his tie was askew and he needed a shave. Earlier at Aspin's service, he'd been way over on the other

side of the church so I hadn't seen how rough he looked. .And when I saw him, I took one look

and knew he had a problem. And, you know, we had a nice, little talk. He was perfectly jovial.

But, you know, things weren't really connecting. It was a sad thing to see.

Especially with somebody who had such a mind.

Yeah, yeah.

David Obey Interview Transcript 61 Proxmire Oral History Project Let me ask you a few more questions on the next tape.

Oh, the one thing about -

Let me just change the tape very quickly, because we 're out of time on this one.

Okay.

HOUR 3

Hour 3/00:00 BP's Importance in Establishing Democratic Party, Political Division Between Republicans and Democrats, History of Republican Party Policies

This is hour number three on June $ , 2011, with Dave Obey. You were talking about —

You were asking earlier about the relationship between Gaylord and Prox.

Uh-huh. (affirmatively)

.And one of the funnier things, I think, is that Gaylord could tear a telephone book in two. .And

Prox couldn't. .And Gaylord was a powerful man, but it wasn't so much that - his hands were very strong, but it wasn't so much his power. He had a technique. He understood how you had to

manipulate the pages in a certain way in order to begin to get them to tear. So that, I think,

David Obey Interview Transcript 62 Proxmire Oral History Project always irritated Prox, that Gaylord could do that and he couldn't. .And secondly, Gaylord could

do one-handed push-ups, which is really amazing. My roommate in college, a guy by the name

of John Kennedy - but not THE Kennedy - but he was on the wrestling team at the U W, and

before he went to bed every night, he would do thirty one-handed push-ups with each hand. I

mean, it was amazing. But you really had to have a great upper body strength to do that, and

Gaylord could do that.

And that irritated Prox?

.And Prox couldn't, yeah.

In his healthy lifestyle.

Yeah. I mean, Gaylord, by contrast -1 mean, after Prox started to go downhill, one of the

reporters interviewed Gaylord. .And he said, "Gaylord, you and Prox are about the same age but

Prox is beginning to show wear and tear, and you still look to be healthy as a horse. How do you

account for that?" And Gaylord said, "Well, I guess I'm simply an example of what drinking a

quart of milk and a quart of scotch will do for you." (laughing)

Right, right, right. That's funny. All that healthy living doesn 't necessarily —

Genes account for a lot, I guess.

David Obey Interview Transcript 63 Proxmire Oral History Project So we 're sort of at the end of our interview. If there are certain things that I haven't asked you

about—anything about his legacy, what you think it is or should be?

Well, I mean, without Prox, we would not have had the ascendency of the Democratic Party,

because he helped us break through by creating the image as the lead Democrat in the state. He

created - you know, he drove into the public consciousness the realization that there were

Democrats who were fiscally responsible and who weren't going to blow money on every damn thing in sight. .And he also made quite clear that, by god, if the Democratic Party was in his

image, it was in the public interest image. And to borrow a phrase from Warren Magnuson, the

Senator from Washington, who used to run on the slogan, "Re-elect Maggie. Keep the big boys

honest." Proxmire was certainly seen as a guy who did his damnedest to keep the big boys

honest.

And that survives to today, do you think, in terms of—

Well, I mean, it never survives unless it's renewed. I think that today people - certainly in

Wisconsin - people understand that there's a hell of a difference between the Republicans and the Democrats with respect to shared sacrifice and keeping the big boys honest. I mean, there's never been, in Wisconsin history, not since the days of Bob LaFollette, has there been a more

stark difference between the two parties with Governor Walker and company, being the Ayn

Rand disciples that they are. They believe in the survival of the fittest, Darwinist approach to the

economy and everything else; whereas the Democrats think that you ought to be able to count on

David Obey Interview Transcript 64 Proxmire Oral History Project more than just dumb luck to get by and they recognize that not everybody in society is born

lucky or born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

— Starts from the same place. So what do you think, just as a lifelong student of the public and politics, accounts for the division within the general public?

Well, it's always been that way. I mean, this country has been polarized many times in its history. But the problem you have now is that one party, the Republican Party, has just

determined that, with Obama in power there is an underlying racism that infects some people's

approach to politics - not all of them were opposed to Obama by any stretch, but there's an

unhealthy, critical mass there. And that if you add to that the fact that - I mean, let me back up. I think what's happening has been happening since FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] got elected.

Before FDR came along, government existed primarily to help the country expand westward and to help business expand the economy. Then, you had the slight efforts under Wilson and Teddy

Roosevelt to try to make the system a little more just, for average people. .And then when FDR

came along, FDR expanded the deal and widened it. .And through Social Security and minimum

wage and things like that and NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], he produced a set of

conditions that enabled average working people to also get a share of the .American dream. The

economic elite hated that and they called FDR a traitor to his class. And so they looked for ways to sandbag it. .And when Eisenhower got elected in '52, they were unhappy again because they

wanted Bob Taft because they thought that Taft would dismantle a lot of this stuff. But

Eisenhower said, "Hell, no. These are settled questions. We're going to move on." So the right

wing Republican types and the economic elite, the richest families in this country, some of them,

David Obey Interview Transcript 65 Proxmire Oral History Project they started organizing to take over the Republican Party and they succeeded with Barry

Goldwater. And Goldwater had his head handed to him by Johnson. So then the economic elite

started to pour a hell of a lot of money into think tanks - the Scaeffes, the Bradleys, the Kochs, you name it. And they produced all of these so-called independent reports, all justifying the same

prescription. .And over the last thirty years, they have managed to move the needle on public

opinion. And so now, you are back to almost where we were in '29, when the top one-hundredth

of one percent has seen, in the last thirty years, their income grow from three - on average, three

and a half million to thirty-five million bucks a year. Everybody else gets table scraps. So that

ruins people's confidence in the economy and in government. .And it demonstrates to the high

rollers that if they just invest enough money, they can keep all the marbles. And now we're

suffering the consequences of that. And so in the context of the largest transfer of income - up the income scale in the modem history of the country, you've got Walker and Ryan and their ilk, trying to do even more -to shove even more into the pockets of the top dogs. So, I mean, this is not an accident of history. This has been a planned drive since FDR's day to reverse the twentieth century, and that's what we're facing now. And Walker thinks - the dangerous thing

about Walker and his types, in contrast to Gingrich - Gingrich believes in nothing except winning. But Walker believes this crap and Ryan believes this crap. And so, at a time when we

need people working together, we have this huge confrontation because the right wing means to

destroy the government as a lever for average people to use.

Hour 3/10:10 Wisconsin's Current Republican Administration, Impact of Today's Supreme Court

David Obey Interview Transcript 66 Proxmire Oral History Project When you talked about moving the needle and how the think tanks helped move that needle more

to the right, do you think that was a tactic of misinformation or public — how do you get the public to move their opinion to —

I mean, in FDR's time, he basically used academia - used the universities - to try to put together

programs that helped. That started with the Progressive Movement with Roosevelt and with

Wilson - everything from the income tax to you name it. But the Republicans decided that they

needed to have an academic sheen to what they were doing, so they invented these think tanks.

.And then they would find these right wing professors who they would fund, so they'd produce

counter-information. And, you know, they've had, you know, thirty years to pedal their stuff through any media device. And now, with Obama, I mean, we've never had a President before

who had to take on as his enemy an entire national news network, like Fox.

Well, I guess that's where my question was going sort of the use of the media, and how that's

changed over the years and then what the antidote, in your mind, can be to this takeover.

I don't - I mean, the antidote is for the Republicans to reach too far, and get people to finally get

pissed off about this, and that's what happened in Wisconsin. I mean, people finally realized that

Walker wasn't doing what he was doing because he had to, he was making war on education and

local government because he wanted to. I mean, he says he has no choice but to cut the hell out

of education. But I asked the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, "Tell me what happened to income tax

rates in Wisconsin since the day I left the legislature." .And what they told me was that the

bottom tax rate had been increased by seventy percent since that time. The top tax rate - people

David Obey Interview Transcript 67 Proxmire Oral History Project who make over two hundred and ten grand a year - that tax rate has now been cut by twenty-two percent. If all Walker did was to return the top bracket to the ten percent level it was at in '69

rather than the 7.75 level it's at now, you would raise six hundred million bucks over biennium.

You'd cut in half the hit that he's laying on education. But he doesn't give a damn about that. He

wants to destroy unions. He wants to get the government out of everything. They don't even like

public education. I mean, there is a substantial group in that Republican right wing who would

like to privatize all of education.

So that the antidote is getting enough people to realize that this is happening.

Yeah. I mean, they cross - a reporter told me - he said, "You know, I didn't used to pay attention

much to this stuff." He said, "My wife was very interested in politics." "But," he said, "then they've come at us and they're cutting the hell out of local school districts and they're cutting the

hell out of our bargaining rights." .And he said, "They made it personal because they've come

after my family. Because now with what Walker's doing, it's - for the next three years, I'm not

going to be able to get a raise, and I'm going to be hit with this, that, and the other thing in terms

of additional costs." And so he said, "This is no longer an academic exercise or political fight.

It's become personal because it involves the welfare of my family." And that's why a hell of a

lot of those people were out on the Capitol square.

Well, we '11 see what happens with the recalls.

.Amen.

David Obey Interview Transcript 68 Proxmire Oral History Project Yeah. So, any closing thoughts?

I don't think so.

You 've done a lot of contextualizing the world that Proxmire operated in and I'm sure he would

be turning over in his grave with a lot of what's happening.

Well, I mean, he would be screaming at the campaign finance situation today. That's the worst.

.And there is no solution short of a constitutional amendment. I mean, the Federalist Society has won. The most dangerous man in America is Roberts, the Chief Justice - not Clarence Thomas.

We've known what he's been - not Scalia - we've known what he's been. But Roberts comes in

and he and Scalia put this civilized veneer on what is a god-awful philosophy of government.

.And, I mean, to really understand what's happened, there's another book that you ought to read -

Scorpions. It's about Roosevelt's appointees to the Supreme Court and what Frankfurter and

Black and Douglas and . . . I've forgotten the fourth one ... he handled the Nuremburg trials . . .

Bob ... it will come back in a minute [editors note: Robert Jackson]. But it really paints the picture of how important that Court is in this society.

Well, thank you for letting me do this oral history with you.

Okay.

David Obey Interview Transcript 69 Proxmire Oral History Project I think we need to do one on you now, and on a lot of the amazing men and women who 've

contributed to Wisconsin and the country.

The one guy who has not had a book written about him, and it's a big gap and it's going to be

lost pretty soon is Pat Lucey. Neil Shively, I guess, started to write a book. And I understand he

got hit with a stroke, so I don't know where Neil is in terms of his capacity.

Well, we 've got to get some more state funding of the Historical Society to make these kinds of

things apriority. But I'm going to close this interview now, so thank you.

Okay.

David Obey Interview Transcript 70 Proxmire Oral History Project