Saturdays, as many people know, are a social-media-free (and often all media-free) day for me, and this one was all media since I was spending time sitting fur-nephews Charlie and Ollie. So it wasn’t until I logged in Sunday morning that I saw that David Pryor had died.
I mourn the loss of not only the man, but all he represented, especially in the political realm.
I halfway remember meeting him a few times when I was a kid in 4-H, and even though I didn’t see him as often as I did Dale Bumpers (from nearby Charleston) and John Paul Hammerschmidt (from my home U.S. House district), he always struck me, like Bumpers and Hammerschmidt, as genuinely kind and a true public servant.
Pryor was one of those people who always had a kind word for others, and who endeavored to fight for all his constituents and for the best possible outcome for everyone, knowing that prioritizing the perfect over the good means nothing gets done for anyone. Fighting for party goals over all else just wasn’t who he was.
When a former public servant who truly believed in people over party dies, it’s a sad day indeed. And now all three of the Arkansas public servants I most looked up to have gone.
There aren’t many (if any) people like Pryor, Bumpers and Hammerschmidt left in state and national public office (you’ll have better luck finding them in local office, but they’re waning there as well thanks to the nationalization of hyperpartisan politics), and that’s to our detriment. While there have always been partisan squabbles (see the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, for good example), it took things like Newt Gingrich telling Republicans to return to their districts more often (rather than stay in D.C. on weekends and socialize with the people on the other side of the aisle, thus seeing them as human) and Barack Obama being elected (and Bill Clinton too) for things to get where they are now.
That would be blindly electing someone because of the letter after their name rather than taking the time to actually investigate what kind of a person that someone is and if they have real policy positions (because “I’m agin the other side” isn’t a policy position). We have people who’ve been elected solely to muck up the works (ahem, MTG and Bobo) and post on social media that the whole thing needs to be taken down because nothing can get done/the other side is evil/insert bad logic here.
When did that become a good idea? Why would otherwise intelligent people decide to vote based not on logic, but solely on partisan affiliation? Do they really believe that all Democrats and all Republicans think in lockstep?
Is it any wonder that independents in the United States outnumber those who declare an allegiance to any party (41 percent in the last Gallup poll in March, compared with 30 percent Republican and 28 percent Democrat)?
Most people are not monoliths of political partisanship, which is one more reason the nationalization of politics is insane (do you really think that Democrats in Arkansas … all seven or eight of them … are just like Democrats in California or New York?). They may be, like me, conservative on fiscal issues and more liberal on social issues, or have any combination of beliefs on a wide variety of things. They see nuance and understand that what they’d prefer is not necessarily what works for most people, and they’re OK with that as long as something is done to help those who need it. They know they’re not the most important people in the world, and can act civilly toward others because they know we must share resources to exist peacefully.
And yet we let the hyperpartisan run riot so often that peace becomes a pipe dream.
I have my own pipe dream. It’s where we don’t use party designations on ballots at all, and to get elected, candidates have to have actual policy positions (maybe even a few bits of legislation specific to their area in their hip pocket that didn’t come from a think tank) and talk to the people they hope to represent and get votes on the strength of that, not on party affiliation. Maybe we employ an open primary where everybody votes on the same candidates, with the top vote-getters going to the general election. Perhaps there’s ranked-choice voting, which allows for a bit of nuance.
And maybe all the states start apportioning Electoral College votes the way Maine and Nebraska do, proportionally with the winner of the statewide vote getting the two at-large votes, rather than assigning all the votes to the winner, which doesn’t reflect the actual vote very well. I’ve long believed that would be the better solution than scrapping the Electoral College altogether.
Ah, but that assumes that the loudest among us are willing to accede to the common good. Never mind.
David Pryor will be missed for many reasons, not least of which are his character and sense of humor. A quote at the end of The Washington Post’s obit on Pryor sums that up well:
“Throughout his career, Mr. Pryor maintained an unfussy, easygoing persona that kept him popular with constituents. Working alone late one night at the governor’s office, he recalled to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, he said he answered a phone personally—only to find an agitated caller on the line demanding to talk to someone ‘no lower than the governor himself.’
“‘Ma’am, there is no one lower than the governor himself,’ Mr. Pryor responded.”
The man who followed Pryor into the governor’s office after Pryor was elected to the U.S. Senate called him “one of Arkansas’ greatest servant leaders and one of the finest people I have ever known.”
Former governor and president Bill Clinton noted in his statement, “As state representative, U.S. representative, governor, and senator, he fought for progressive policies that helped us put the divided past behind us and move into a brighter future together. He was always one of America’s greatest advocates for the elderly, waging long battles to lower the cost of prescription drugs and to improve nursing homes and in-home care to help more people live in dignity.
“David made politics personal—from his famed retail campaigning to his ability to calmly and confidently explain tough votes to his constituents. He was honest, compassionate, and full of common sense. He really loved the people he represented, and they loved him back.”
Would that there were more in office like him now, willing to admit they aren’t the center of the universe. That was one of the reasons he was loved.
Farewell, sir.
Serenity is a fuzzy belly 