Governing for all Iowans: A lesson in civility in four minutes

In January 2000, with the Iowa presidential caucuses approaching and candidates trading political shots, roughly 1,200 people gathered for the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s annual recognition dinner. The featured speaker on that Thursday evening, January 13, was former Republican President George H.W. Bush.  Iowa’s Democratic governor Tom Vilsack rose to introduce him. Bush gave a fine talk, by John Carlson’s account, but the introduction was what Carlson truly wanted Iowans to notice.

Carlson was a veteran Des Moines Register reporter who leaned conservative and had succeeded Chuck Offenburger as the paper’s Iowa columnist. His piece about the dinner — published on Sunday morning, January 16, 2000 — carried a headline that sounds almost wistful today: “Vilsack shows decency, respectfulness are possible.”

Vilsack took just four minutes to tell the audience why he admired the Republican former president. He spoke of Bush’s service as a decorated Navy aviator in World War II. He recalled Bush’s years in Congress, his diplomatic service, his time heading the CIA, and his tenure as Ronald Reagan’s vice president. He credited Bush’s leadership as President when the Berlin Wall fell, spoke warmly of his role as a father and public servant, and called him “a true patriot.”

Those were generous, specific words. Vilsack articulated exactly what he respected about Bush and why. Remarkably, he did this in front of a room full of Iowans just 11 days before January 24 Iowa caucuses, in the thick of a presidential campaign, when politicians have every incentive to stick purely to their own side.

Carlson included a confession at the end of his column, and it is the line that has always stayed with me:

“I didn’t vote for Vilsack, but it took him only four minutes the other night to start making me wish I had.”

I thought of that line when Rob Sand won the governor’s race. Sand has pledged to work across party lines, and the way Vilsack handled himself that night offers a blueprint for the kind of politics Sand hopes to bring to the governor's office. In practice, that means inviting Republicans into the conversation while there is still time to shape legislation, giving them credit when they bring forward a good idea, and listening to the Iowans who voted for someone else.

There will be plenty of occasions for Sand to disagree with Republican lawmakers, and I expect him to make his case plainly when he does. I also hope that, somewhere along the way, an Iowan who voted against him will read about how he handled one of those disagreements and find themselves thinking exactly what John Carlson thought after those four minutes in Des Moines back in 2000. It’s time for that kind of Governor leadership again in Iowa.

Kevin W. Techau served for eight years as a member of the Vilsack-Pederson administration as Director of the Department of Inspections and Appeals and Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. He later served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.