By Guest Contributor Vicki Gray
This oped appeared in the Vallejo (California) Times-Herald on August 31, 2008, but is now only available online for subscribers. It is a personal tribute to Republican Congressman Jim Leach who spoke at the Democratic Convention in Colorado in August. The author has given WhirledView permission to republish her oped for a wider audience. After ten years in the Navy and twenty-six in the Foreign Service, Vicki Gray taught at the National Defense University, before retiring to Vallejo.
Unless you were watching on PBS or C-SPAN, you probably missed it, but Monday night a wise and decent man spoke at the Democratic Convention, an Iowa Republican named Jim Leach. His speech that night said a lot about Barack Obama and spoke volumes to me.
I first met Jim in 1971, when we both worked in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency's Bureau of Multilateral Affairs. I was working on Indian Ocean naval limitations and Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions - MBFR- between NATO and the Soviet Union. Jim was working on nuclear issues at the Geneva Disarmament Conference. Jim, two years my junior, was then only twenty-nine. But, even then, he wore those now-familiar crew neck sweaters and tweedy jackets. And, even then, he was laid back and soft-spoken, exuding an integrity that needed few words.
We suffered together - in silence and quiet conversation - through that awful year of My Lai, the Pentagon Papers, and the Hanoi/Haiphong bombings. Those bombings and all we were doing to Vietnam led me to openly oppose the war and, in 1971, to come very close to quitting the Foreign Service I had joined in such hope just three years earlier. It was only at the urging of Bill Pregnell, my pastor, and Jonathan Bingham, my congressman, that I resolved to remain in government and fight within for what I believed. I am not sorry I did.
Over three decades, I faithfully served both Republican and Democratic Presidents - and, above all, the American people - on the frontlines of the Cold War. In the process, I learned the importance of having like-minded allies and, in my final Washington assignment, found myself working with ten of them to ensure, as the Berlin Wall crumbled, that the transition to a Europe whole and free would be a peaceful one.
Jim chose another course, resigning the next year under the weight of it all, made intolerable for him by the Saturday Night Massacre that unmasked the duplicity of the Nixon Administration we both sought to serve.
Three years later, Jim, a mainstream Republican from the heartland of Iowa, was elected to Congress. It was the first of fifteen terms. In every one he displayed the same integrity, decency . . . and wisdom he did as a young man.
Over the ensuing decades, Democrat though I am, I've admired Jim from a distance, as he sought to build bipartisan consensus for the sort of sane, forward-looking foreign policy this country needs to remain secure in a dangerous world. He led the fight for a Comprehensive Test Ban, opposed the foolish unilateralism of Iran-Contra, and consistently supported robust American participation in the United Nations and its associated agencies.
Above all, like Barack Obama, he recognized early on the wrong-headedness of the Administration's insistence on the unprovoked, unilateral invasion of Iraq and, in October 2002, joined five other House Republicans in voting against the authorization to do so. Convinced, however, that the war, once started, could not be sustained by tax cuts and that the burden of war should be borne not just by our soldiers and their families but by all Americans, he stood alone among Republicans in voting against the 2003 Bush tax cut - a tax cut that has bankrupted our economy and pushed us to the brink of Depression.
For all these reasons, Jim took the podium Monday night to announce his support of Barack Obama, calling him a "transcendent candidate" who would emulate John F. Kennedy in "recapturing the American Dream" and restoring "fairness at home and idealism abroad."
His words echoed those of over 240 Former Foreign Service Officers for Obama, myself included, who are firmly convinced that "new American leadership is critical at this juncture in world history" and that Barack Obama has the "courage, intelligence, energy, a fresh perspective and a focus on the future" to provide such leadership. As we have stressed in our written statement of purpose, "We believe based on our long foreign policy experience that he has the qualities needed to restore American leadership, credibility and respect in the world, the persona to make bipartisanship a possibility once again, and the judgment and vision to set our nation on the path to a better future." The full text of that statement and the names of all signatories can be found at http://www.foreignpolicyforobama.com/.*
How good, after nearly four decades, to know that Jim and I - Republican and Democrat - still have the same clear-eyed vision of the world. How good also to share the conviction that this country we both so love would best be served by the election of Barack Obama. For me, it is a conviction that approaches being a moral imperative.
*WhirledView update: The list of Former Foreign Service Officers for Obama is now close to 300 and the number continues to grow.