then the group went on talking, eventually ending up with the solution I had proposed, though it was as if I’d never offered it. As I thought about what happened, I realized that it’s often better to listen than to speak, particularly if you are the junior person around. Moreover, when a group has a problem to solve, they usually need to grapple with it for a while. If you have a solution, wait until people are ready for it, and then present it in a cool and collected way that makes the answer to the problem be about the answer—and not about you.
One night when we had been in the northern part of the state, the governor gave Mel Laird a ride to Chicago on the state’s official twin-engine plane. Mel was the congressman from Wisconsin’s 7th District, and he would become Richard Nixon’s secretary of defense during the height of the war in Vietnam. As the three of us, the governor, the congressman, and I, flew through the night, I listened to Laird warn his old friend to be very careful what he said about the war in Southeast Asia. It was 1966, and the American presence had just begun to expand. The antiwar movement had yet to gain much momentum, but Laird was concerned that the Johnson administration didn’t have a coherentpolicy on the war and that things would get much worse before they got any better. I remember being impressed by the way Laird was looking beyond the moment, and, as it turned out, he offered good advice.
I hit it off with the governor, and when my fellowship was over, he asked me to stay on. He even offered me a paycheck. At the same time, I’d decided to begin my Ph.D. at Wisconsin. Lynne and I both wanted to be college professors, and while we looked at other places where we might both do graduate work, there were few universities where both the political science and the English departments were as good as the ones at Wisconsin. We had also applied for and received teaching and research assistantships at Madison, which, combined with my part-time salary from the governor’s office, would pay our way.
Shortly after I began work on my Ph.D., I turned twenty-six and was no longer eligible for the draft. In the days when I had been, I had received deferments as a student and father. Earlier, when I was doing line work, I had been classified 1-A, but draft numbers were low and I wasn’t called. If I had been, I would have been happy to serve.
MY MAJOR PROFESSOR AT Wisconsin was Aage Clausen, who was working on a study of roll call voting in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The work was highly statistical, and I spent a lot of time on the university’s computer, which in those days filled most of a big room, running calculations to show the various factors that played into a member’s vote. Our assumption—that political behavior could be understood scientifically—was very much the trend of the time, and the
American Political Science Review,
a prestigious academic journal, published a long article we wrote about our research. Professor Clausen, a generous man, shared authorship of the paper with me.
But in 1967 many days were a reminder of a far messier politics. In October the presence on campus of recruiters from Dow Chemical Company, which made the napalm being used in Vietnam, precipitated what became known as the Dow Riot. When students blocked the entrance to the building where the recruiters had set up, the police were called in to remove them by force. In the resulting free-for-all, tear gaswas fired off, and demonstrators as well as police were bloodied. Prancing through the whole chaotic scene, urging the demonstrators on, was a mime troupe from San Francisco. Lynne encountered the white-faced mimes, who were carrying animal entrails over their heads, as she tried, but failed, to get to a classroom where she was supposed to teach freshman composition.
I strongly disagreed with the protestors trying to shut down the university and portray Ho Chi Minh as a hero. As
One night when we had been in the northern part of the state, the governor gave Mel Laird a ride to Chicago on the state’s official twin-engine plane. Mel was the congressman from Wisconsin’s 7th District, and he would become Richard Nixon’s secretary of defense during the height of the war in Vietnam. As the three of us, the governor, the congressman, and I, flew through the night, I listened to Laird warn his old friend to be very careful what he said about the war in Southeast Asia. It was 1966, and the American presence had just begun to expand. The antiwar movement had yet to gain much momentum, but Laird was concerned that the Johnson administration didn’t have a coherentpolicy on the war and that things would get much worse before they got any better. I remember being impressed by the way Laird was looking beyond the moment, and, as it turned out, he offered good advice.
I hit it off with the governor, and when my fellowship was over, he asked me to stay on. He even offered me a paycheck. At the same time, I’d decided to begin my Ph.D. at Wisconsin. Lynne and I both wanted to be college professors, and while we looked at other places where we might both do graduate work, there were few universities where both the political science and the English departments were as good as the ones at Wisconsin. We had also applied for and received teaching and research assistantships at Madison, which, combined with my part-time salary from the governor’s office, would pay our way.
Shortly after I began work on my Ph.D., I turned twenty-six and was no longer eligible for the draft. In the days when I had been, I had received deferments as a student and father. Earlier, when I was doing line work, I had been classified 1-A, but draft numbers were low and I wasn’t called. If I had been, I would have been happy to serve.
MY MAJOR PROFESSOR AT Wisconsin was Aage Clausen, who was working on a study of roll call voting in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The work was highly statistical, and I spent a lot of time on the university’s computer, which in those days filled most of a big room, running calculations to show the various factors that played into a member’s vote. Our assumption—that political behavior could be understood scientifically—was very much the trend of the time, and the
American Political Science Review,
a prestigious academic journal, published a long article we wrote about our research. Professor Clausen, a generous man, shared authorship of the paper with me.
But in 1967 many days were a reminder of a far messier politics. In October the presence on campus of recruiters from Dow Chemical Company, which made the napalm being used in Vietnam, precipitated what became known as the Dow Riot. When students blocked the entrance to the building where the recruiters had set up, the police were called in to remove them by force. In the resulting free-for-all, tear gaswas fired off, and demonstrators as well as police were bloodied. Prancing through the whole chaotic scene, urging the demonstrators on, was a mime troupe from San Francisco. Lynne encountered the white-faced mimes, who were carrying animal entrails over their heads, as she tried, but failed, to get to a classroom where she was supposed to teach freshman composition.
I strongly disagreed with the protestors trying to shut down the university and portray Ho Chi Minh as a hero. As
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