http://www.investors.com/editorial/issues.asp?v=5/22An Honesty Gap
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Politics: Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt wants to be the candidate of ordinary, blue-collar guys. Aren't they supposed to show up for work every day and be honest citizens?
Gephardt's convinced himself the way to capture the working-man's vote is by wooing Big Labor. But the fact that he's missed 162 House votes this year — 85% of the total — indicates that he might be spending too much time working the union halls.
By contrast, The Hill newspaper reports that Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, another Democratic presidential hopeful, has missed only 12 of the Senate votes.
In addition to what appears to be a dereliction of his duties, Gephardt the Candidate seems to be having some problems with the truth.
He's not a union man himself. He's spent most of his adult life as an elected official and, with a net worth probably close to $1 million and enough wealth to afford a vacation home on North Carolina's Outer Banks, he has little in common with the average union hand.
But Gephardt so badly wants to have some solidarity with the guys, he's taken to constantly bringing up his father's union ties, even if it requires mixing in a little fiction.
"My dad was a milk truck driver, a proud member of the Teamsters," Gephardt said at his campaign kickoff rally. "He always told me his union's bargaining power made it possible for him to put food on our table."
That's funny because Gephardt's brother Don remembers it differently. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1999 that their dad, the late Louis Gephardt, resented the Teamsters.
"My father was in the Teamsters, but that's because he had to be to get the job," Don Gephardt was recently quoted as saying in two Washington newspapers. "I don't recall him talking much about the union, how great it was. He prided himself on being a Republican. He hated (pro-union President) Harry Truman. He had the feeling you had to make it on your own, that any kind of welfare program would just raise taxes."
Forgive us for being cynical if we happen to find Don Gephardt's recollections a bit more plausible. After all, unlike his presidential candidate brother, Don Gephardt's future does not hinge on currying favor with Big Labor.
Indeed, perhaps the best way for Dick Gephardt to honor his father's memory would be to support right-to-work legislation. That would give ordinary blue-collar Joes and Janes the choice of whether to join unions — a choice his father probably never had.
Who knows? He might even find out that a lot of union people feel the same way Louis Gephardt did.
