If Only We Had More John Bryants

AUSTIN — Trent Lott: Portrait Of A Man Who Just Doesn't Get It. At a post-election news conference, the Senate majority leader was asked about campaign finance reform and was ... well, tepid. The best he could manage was a pledge to "take a look at whatever they propose."

And as Gov. Bruce King of New Mexico once reminded us, "A promise is not a commitment."

When asked why he helped kill last session's reform effort, the McCain-Feingold bill, Lott replied that it contained a "public finance mechanism," using the tones one would use to describe the Ebola virus. No, it did not contain public financing, and it would have been a better bill if it had.

Lott might find it instructive to study the results of the five campaign reforms on the ballot as voter initiatives this year. All of them passed with wide margins, including Maine's public financing mechanism. The one close vote, 52 percent to 48 percent, was in Montana on a reform of the initiative procedure itself by outlawing corporate contributions to ballot measures; the corporations opposed it vigorously.

Ross Perot's election-night prediction that the politicians have gotten religion on campaign finance reform does not seem to apply to Lott. In the House, Speaker Newt Gingrich faces ethics accusations concerning a variety of possibly illegal fund-raising activities. Any politician who wants to be a national hero can jump up and take the lead on this.

In the electoral aftermath, it is customary to salute some of the fallen, and one Texan deserves special commendation. Brother John Bryant from Dallas was actually felled earlier this year in the U.S. Senate primary by Victor Morales. In retrospect, that's a particular shame; Texas is clearly sick of Sen. Phil Gramm, and Bryant, unlike Morales, could have run the kind of campaign that would have attracted the money needed to beat Gramm. Them's the breaks.

Johnny B. has been in the U.S. House since 1982, and before that, he served in the Lege. He made a name for himself as a reformer in the Texas House as one of the Gang of Four, all of whom went on to higher office. (See, being a reformer does pay.) In Congress, Bryant continued to push for elementary decency, and years of effort finally paid off when he passed the lobby disclosure and gift ban bill, a really strict act.

No more freebies for Congress. At the time, the owners of posh restaurants in D.C. claimed that it meant their doom, but last time I was there, I noticed they were still open; the lobbyists now lunch with each other.

Bryant also passed the Texas Wilderness Act, creating the first wilderness area in Texas: 40,000 acres of national forest now completely protected in East Texas. It's awfully close to heaven there in the springtime.

But truth to tell, Bryant's record is not a stunning list of achievements — nothing like Ralph Yarborough's lasting legacy. Just when he was getting enough seniority to be a major player among the D's, the R's took over. Breaks again.

What I find most typical of Bryant is that there's not an ounce of bitterness there. After he lost to Morales, not one Bryant staffer bad-mouthed Morales. There is a quiet decency about the man that is genuinely impressive. Although, come to think of it, I have heard him speak with some heat on the topic of The Dallas Morning News — not his favorite publication.

When I hear people cuss politicians and carelessly denounce them all as a bunch of craven crooks, I think of Johnny B. I have a copy of a letter he once wrote to an irate columnist (not moi) who had rather grandly denounced the entire Congress for having not one iota of courage. Bryant reminded this scribe that acts of courage occur almost daily, as pols risk their careers to do the right thing.

Remember when Clinton's budget package passed by one vote, without a single Republican supporting it? That's the package we now recognize as having set up a four-year economic expansion and having done more to cut the deficit than the Republicans have done with all their carry-on about a balanced-budget amendment. To this good day, the R's use it to claim that Clinton passed "the largest tax increase in history." Not only is that untrue, but the increase affected only the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. Yet it was a mighty hard vote, and it did cost some congressmen their careers.

It's hard to say what attracts people to public service. Bryant spent 14 years in Congress and never got rich or famous or even very powerful. Great men never courted him because they knew they could count on his vote for the right thing. Special interests never courted him because they knew they couldn't get his vote. Maybe he only did the job we paid him to do, but I think he earned more than our money. Respect and gratitude come to mind.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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