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iGHAPTER ONE POLITICS, [l;OUISVILLE AND )NASHINGTON, D.C. Icome from a political family. My great-uncle, Robert Connor, was lieutenant governor of Wisconsin under Governor Robert LaFollette and chairman of the Republican Party in Wisconsin for many years. I remember once asking my grandmother, "Granny, are you a Democrator a Republican?" Elizabeth Malcolm Connor Graham looked at me with scorn and replied, "I was forty before I saw a Democrat!" My grandmother's sister was the grandmother ofMelvin Laird, President Nixon's secretary of defense. I always especially admired Mel and his political career. He was a great secretary of defense and an outstanding politician in the best sense of that word. Early in his congressional career, while serving as ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, he was referred to as "the Richelieu of the cheese belt," his congressional district being in central Wisconsin. This important part of my heritage is deeply Republican, but progressive Republican. My guiding light with respect to political views since I968 has been Mel Laird. I used the term "progressive Republican" to indicate that part of the political spectrum which used to be called "eastern establishment Republicans." Many of the present-day heirs to this tradition are sometimes referred to as "moderate" Republicans. This is the tradition to which I adhere. It means being an internationalist and being conservative with respect to some social issues and liberal with respect to others. Personally, I am pro-choice on abortion, but I support the death penalty; I became opposed to the Vietnam War, but I strongly objected to the campus protests. My grandfather, Thomas Jackson Graham (named after Stonewall by my great-grandfather, a major in the Union Army, First Indiana Volunteers ), was a Presbyterian minister who moved to Louisville, Kentucky , in I920 to take over the Warren Memorial Presbyterian Church, the largest Presbyterian church in the city at that time. My father was at Princeton then and, inspired by Woodrow Wilson, decided to break with his Republican upbringing and become a Democrat. He remained an active Democrat all his life and was a mover and shaker in Louisville, serving as the party treasurer of the Jefferson County (Louisville) Democratic Party organization for thirty years and as chairman of the Sinking Fund (a part-time assignment with the civic organization that managed the city's longterm investments) for fifteen years. He finally was kicked out as treasurer in I966 because he joined the reelection campaign of Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, one of his longtime friends, whose first statewide campaign he had helped finance in I946. My father stood for mayor of Louisville in I948-much against my mother's wishes. The incumbent, Marion E. Taylor, had died after just a year in office. The twelve-man Board of Aldermen was charged with electing a successor to serve out the remainder of the four-year term. A vigorous contest ensued between my father and Charles Farnesly, an interesting and eccentric man. (After his political career, Farnesly ran an organization named the Lost Cause Press and he move, as I recall, a I9I9 Rolls-Royce automobile.) On the day of the vote, one of my father's supporters was sick and did not attend, and the result was a 5-5 tie (the chairman only voted in case of a tie). The chairman, Daniel Byck, a neighbor of ours, voted for Mr. Farnesly, much to the relief of my mother, who never liked politics. Charles Farnesly went on to serve seven years as mayor and a term or two in Congress, while my father returned to his investment business and part-time political career. My father and mother gave me a golden childhood. It was sufficiently joyous that an old family retainer once said to me when I was a teenager, "Mister Tom, your childhood has been so happy that you are sure to have some bad when you grow up." I have always remembered that-it has both good and bad connotations. Louisville when I was growing up in the I940S and I950S, while not perfect, was itself a rather golden place. It was reasonably prosperous, a tight-knit neighborly community, crime was nonexistent, and divorce was virtually unknown. Although alcoholism was a huge problem (particularly among business leaders-alcohol was the tranquilizer, the sedative of that place in those times), drugs were not present at all. And politics was fun. I went with my father to the I952 Democratic Convention in Chicago, accompanied by...

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