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Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey, Jr.

Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey, Jr., a Republican until 2007, was a U.S. representative from California from 1967 to 1983. He was a Republican candidate for president in 1972. In 2006, McCloskey ran as a primary challenger to then-Representative Richard Pombo. In April 2007, he announced that he was becoming a Democrat.

Nick Kotz and Josh Israel interviewed McCloskey on August 16, 2007.

You have had a remarkable career in government. Elected to Congress in ’67, ran for president in ’72, Senate in ’82, left the House in ’83, and then almost 25 years later you come back and make a significant challenge to then-Congressman Pombo.

Well, it was a damn fool thing to do. But we nicked [Pombo] enough and took him out in November. And that was a service.

Reflect for us, if you would, about what you consider the most significant events of your political career to date.

Well, I came to Congress. I had been a tax lawyer. I had been a Marine. I had stayed in the active Reserve. I had volunteered to go to Vietnam in ’65, but I was a lieutenant colonel. And they only had two battalions and the last thing they wanted was Reserve lieutenant colonel.

But you know how I got into politics? A fellow platoon leader, Chuck Daly, in the White House of [John F.] Kennedy, had gotten me invited to a civil-rights conference in 1963, after the Birmingham riots. I was so impressed with Kennedy, I asked Chuck what I could do to someday run for Congress. Up until then, I had thought politicians and politics were a dirty business.

The most significant thing, I think, was I made two speeches on the floor of the House: One against the impeachment of Justice [William O.] Douglas, who [then-House Minority Leader] Gerry Ford had been led by [President Richard] Nixon into trying to impeach after they lost [G. Harrold] Carswell and [Clement] Haynsworth. And the speech that I made, and the written speech which I had worked on for about a week after Ford had gotten up in the House to say that he wanted to support [impeaching] Douglas — remember they had lost Carswell and Haynsworth — that speech was picked up by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Manny [Emanuel] Celler, and had made the subject of the committee’s report rejecting the idea of [impeaching] Douglas.

And the second thing, and most important, was a speech I think I made on June 6, 1973. I had been an ex-[district attorney]. And I knew what obstruction of justice was. And Nixon came out and ordered the FBI to stop investigating the CIA. If you remember that, they were tracing the money trail. And I suggested that the House consider impeachment of Nixon for obstruction of justice, and cited the code section.

And then again, it was a speech I had worked on for about 10 days. [Nixon domestic affairs adviser John] Ehrlichman had been my friend. He and I had been debate partners at Stanford Law School. And, of course, our friendship was terminated at that point. But six minutes into the speech, special order, as the door burst open and Republican Congressman Earl Landgrebe [of Indiana] elbowed his way into those chambers and said, “You’ll impeach Nixon over my dead body,” and asked for a quorum call.

So the speech was put in the record, but they, of course, couldn’t get a quorum. A year later we did impeach Nixon. And Earl Landgrebe died [in 1986]. How’s that for two contributions to the world?

I think that those are two really very significant events.

Let me add a third, now as I think about it, if it’s all right.

Yes, please.

In, I am going to say 1973, we had an issue come up on the floor of the House over the continuation of the president’s authority to bomb in Laos and in Cambodia and in Vietnam. And I was, at that time, leading on the Republican side, at least, a sort of a growing effort against the war. And in the House debate on that amendment, I am going to say, June 25, 1973, Gerry Ford, the minority leader and good friend — I thought he was one of the most decent men I had ever met in politics; I still do.

I asked Gerry Ford, “Before we vote on this amendment to continue the authority to bomb . . .” It was an amendment to, at that time, we were going to limit the bombing or extend his right to bomb until August 15. And all of the moral people against the war said we’re going to kill a couple of hundred thousand Vietnamese by August 15 — this is June 25.

And Ford got up and he said, “It is my understanding that if the House defeats this amendment, the president will agree to stop the bombing in Vietnam.” And I get up and said as a lawyer, “My understanding is when a guy says ‘It’s my understanding,’ that means he thinks it, but is not sure.” And the debate was coming to a close. And Ford went into the cloakroom and called the president in San Clemente. He came back a few minutes later and, in his closing remarks, said: “I want to assure the gentlemen and the House that I have just talked to the president in San Clemente. And he agrees that if this amendment is defeated, he will not bomb after August 15, six weeks later.”

And that went into the Congressional Record. And the amendment failed by a vote of 204 to 204. You could draw a parallel to what’s happening about Iraq in the House right now. But in any event, by the failure of that amendment, it was a touch-and-go thing, because those of us who were against the war really didn’t want to give him six weeks to bomb. But we did. And it’s because of that assurance from Ford relayed from San Clemente.

A few months later, Nixon wanted to bomb again. And the Defense Department attorney, I think it was Howard Taft or something like that, [a] pretty prominent guy, gave the DOD the advice that because of that dialogue on the floor between McCloskey and Ford, the president didn’t have the right to start bombing again. This was at a point when the South Vietnamese were beginning to crack. So I guess I put those three things as the most significant things I ever did.

Well, that’s absolutely fascinating. You ran against Nixon in ’72 in the Republican primaries. Congressman, what was your goal in opposing Nixon?

I’ll tell you why. I went to Vietnam; I made three tours there. Once right before Tet in ’68 — I had been elected in December ’67 — I went home over Christmas and then went to Vietnam and spent two weeks. I went again in ’70, and again in ’71. And I just kept getting progressively appalled at what we were doing to a people and a countryside, and getting a lot of Marines killed in the process.

And the third time, in March 1971, I went with two former Marines, both of them silver-star guys: Chuck Daly, who had been in the Kennedy White House and got me into politics — he had been a platoon leader; we went on the same day in 1951 — and Paul L’Enfant, a colonel who had gotten a silver star in Okinawa in 1945.

We went to My Lai. And Chuck and I weren’t just disgusted — this was the place where this guy [William] Calley gunned down a couple of hundred — I was, literally, enraged. It was ruining my concept of the military and honor and everything else. And I came back and I testified in front of [Ted] Kennedy’s refugee committee and [William] Fulbright’s foreign affairs committee. And I couldn’t get anybody. I talked to [Senators] Mark Hatfield and Chuck Percy, both of whom were against the war, one other person — a Republican. Nobody wanted to challenge him.

And I just got fed up. The war was such an appalling waste of everything. It was destroying the Marines. The Marines were having a hell of a time, because we were [facing the challenge of both racial integration] and fragging of officers. And I just said, “Hell, if nobody else will do it, I’ll try to do it.” And I had the example of [Eugene] McCarthy, when in 1968 he had gone to New Hampshire. And his effort essentially caused Lyndon Johnson, I think, to decide not to run again.

So my goal was, essentially, to bring the issue of the war to the forefront and to get enough of a vote in New Hampshire to force an end of what I thought was a national disaster. New Hampshire is just a lovely place. I spent the better part of six months up there and fell in love with it. They have 247 small towns. And I got 20 percent of the vote.

I knew I wasn’t going to be president. Geez, as a Republican, I was a maverick, even in the House. But I thought, maybe, [that] I could force a vote on the war that could bring it to an end. That was the goal. And, of course, just before the New Hampshire vote on, I think it was March 7 or something, [Nixon] went to China the last two months of the campaign. Nobody wanted to hear about Vietnam. It was all about China and the pandas and the Great Wall.

Here we are back in ’71–’72; how much money did you raise and spend? And where did your support come from at that time?

We spent a hell of a lot of money. We had a volunteer outfit operating out of the basement of an abandoned shoe factory across from the state capitol and the marvelous statue of the hero of the Revolutionary War at Bunker Hill, John [Stark]. He was the guy that said, “Live free or die.”

The support came from a lot of ex-Marines. My chairman was Bob Reno. He had been a Marine officer. He was a trustee at Dartmouth and a member of Orr & Reno, the leading law firm in Concord. A lot of Korean War and World War II people who opposed the war. And, of course, people back in my own district in San Mateo County, which opposed the war. But it was a bootstrap campaign. I couldn’t tell you how much we spent or actually who gave what.

Nixon spent something like $250 million in that campaign. And we saw the dirty tricks of CREEP [the Committee for the Re-Election of the President], Watergate, and so forth. As you challenged him in the primary and afterward, what can you tell us and what did you see as the corrupting factor of money in that campaign?

Well, those were the years that Maurice Stans was his finance chair. I think he was secretary of commerce. And part of the Watergate crew of indictments, [Donald] Segretti, who I think went to jail for the dirty tricks. The most interesting thing that I have a copy of was a memorandum that Pat Buchanan wrote to Nixon via [White House Chief of Staff H.R.] Haldeman. He was then a speechwriter for Nixon.

He said the way to handle McCloskey in New Hampshire is to send somebody up to give $1,000 from the Gay Liberation Front to McCloskey and get a receipt from his dumb campaign chairman, who would have given it to him — Mike Brewer, he’s there in Washington with you now. And then take that receipt over to [William] Loeb [the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader], and he’ll publish it with a red border around it. And it will kill McCloskey in New Hampshire, getting money from the Gay Liberation Front.

When the Church Committee did its work, they unearthed a copy of this thing with Haldeman’s initials on it. Buchanan said the president may have to debate him if he keeps making headway up there. Haldeman wrote “never.” But in those days, you remember it could be given up to a certain date without recording who did it or how much.

But the money and corruption then, they look like Boy Scouts, the Nixon people, compared to the Republicans of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove. There was never anything that quite corrupted the country as much, I think, as the money in the Bush campaigns. It wasn’t money that beat me or that kept me down to 20 percent; it was the fact that the people still supported the war two-to-one in 1971. Or the Republicans did, at least.

Congressman, after you returned to the House following your challenge of Nixon, was it a different experience? Did they try to punish or retaliate? Did the administration try to punish you?

The administration did. I can remember, once, I was trying to get some money for the black people of East Palo Alto, the one part of my district where we had poor people. And the word went out to the Cabinet officers: Put all of the appropriation money going to McCloskey’s district so the people of East Palo Alto took a little beating. They had health care, urban housing problems. But the House kind of looked at me as sort of a curiosity. Gerry Ford was a good friend. And he was, as I say, a decent man.

One thing you might know, just as a historic footnote. In 1976, when [Ronald] Reagan took on Ford — the sitting president, but unelected president — the question turned on how they would do up in New Hampshire. And they took a poll about three weeks before that election. And it showed that of the 20 percent of the people that had voted for me in ’72 in the Republican primary, three were for Reagan, one was for Ford, and one was undecided.

So for the last three weekends before that election, we re-engendered the entire McCloskey organization of ’72 and went all over New Hampshire to convince people to vote for Ford instead of Reagan. And Ford won by, I think, 1,200 votes. But he got 18 delegates to Reagan’s three. And Gerry Ford always thought this, I think, until the day he died: that I had made the difference in New Hampshire in ’76 with the relics of the 1972 campaign. That’s kind of an interesting footnote. It’s not generally known. But Gerry, as I say, we remained friends. And the Reagan people weren’t all that happy with me.

After the Watergate scandal broke, the ’74 campaign-finance reform laws passed, which included the matching-fund system and public financing for the major-party nominees. And now it appears that both of the parties’ major candidates are opting out of the matching funds for the primary and probably going to opt out for the general. Do you see any . . .?

I think a Democratic Congress might change that and upgrade the law to be in accord with today’s financial realities. I would like to see them [create public financing] for Congress. I’ll tell you, lobbying money, that one bill they passed, the prescription-drug bill, lobbyists got in at the last moment. That’s going to cost the country $20 billion over 10 years. I think that provision that the government can’t negotiate the price down when they buy in bulk. Hell, we can finance every congressional election for $20 billion. And the country would be a lot better off paying for the costs of congressional elections [than] having the lobbyists do it.

How do you think that got passed? Do you think, in effect, that the drug companies and the insurance companies “bought” it?

Yes. I think that they had the power to get into conference. And the Republican values of today are no longer what they were in Gerry Ford’s time, or Barry Goldwater’s, or Bob Dole’s. These guys have a mission to cut the size of the government, to cut the entitlement programs, to squeeze everything, that money tree that Abramoff built up of the lobbyists and the staff all shooting over to K Street and reverting back the money to their former bosses.

If we had a gutsy Congress next year and a gutsy president, to pass public financing of campaigns I think would be the best thing that ever happened to the country. I should tell you one other story that would be of interest to you. I think I mentioned that John Ehrlichman was my debate partner at Stanford Law School. And our friendship remained strong. We exchanged cases over the years, until I went to Congress.

The next year, he came back as Nixon’s adviser. And our friendship languished after I made that speech in ’73. And I went to him in the Stafford Penitentiary in 1975 or ’76 on Thanksgiving Day. And I said, “John, we ought to be friends again.” And we sat out there in the desert and watched the Mexicans play baseball on Thanksgiving Day. And I bought him a big turkey sandwich with a lot of cranberry sauce. I said: “We ought to be friends again, John. Our kids grew up together.”

I asked him two questions. I said, “John, tell me about Nixon.” You know how the tapes showed that Nixon spent 11 percent of his time alone with Ehrlichman in the Oval Office, I think 60 percent or something alone with Haldeman, and the rest of the time with the Joint Chiefs and anybody else. And Ehrlichman looked up. He said, “Pete, I never really got to know him.” This is Nixon!

And the second question, I said: “John, whatever happened to you? You were an honest lawyer, a good family man, a good Christian Science guy. What the hell happened to you? Were you lying, cheating, offering a job to the judge handling the [Daniel] Ellsberg case if he’ll suppress the evidence?” You remember that?

Sure.

Well, Ehrlichman didn’t answer for about 30 seconds. He looked out across the desert. And he finally said: “Pete, it took us three and half years to be corrupted by the power of the White House. We came to believe that reelecting Nixon was essential to the national security.”

And I compare that with today, where the Republicans have felt it’s absolutely essential, the Neo-con case, that they have a Bush as president, not a Dole or a Gore or some “liberal.” That’s not unusual. As you look back at [George] Washington’s time, the Federalists or Anti-Federalists, they were at each other’s throats just as badly. But the hatred for the term “liberal” and the concept that if we have the power, we’ll use it if necessary, it’s not corrupt if it it’s in the interest of the national security. Of course, a little burglary or wiretapping is justified. But I think, honestly, these guys in the White House today make the Nixon crew look like Boy Scouts.

You came back on to the scene in 2005 with the “Revolt of the Elders” after the Republicans tried to change the ethics rules.

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit about what this is all about?

Well, it goes back to my former law partner, Lewis Butler. We had formed a law partnership in ’63 to do environmental cases. We came together here in San Francisco and said, “This is an outrage that they’re trying to change the ethics rules to protect Tom DeLay.” And we formed the Revolt of the Elders and we said: “We are going to try to beat these guys in Republican primaries. If we can’t, then let’s lick them in November.”

We put together a little money and went after Pombo. And I went after Texas and tried to encourage people to challenge DeLay. But it was essentially being offended by the corruption of the Republican leadership. And I say that against a background. When I was in the House from ’67 to ’83, the Democrats have controlled the House since, what, ’54? And they had been corrupted. We had 35 congressmen, as I recall, indicted in that 15 years. Thirty-four of them were Democrats. Remember Charlie Wilson? Have [you] read the book Charlie Wilson’s War [by George Crile]?

Yes.

It’s a classic account of how Congress operated and all those guys who were chairman when the Democrats had power. But yeah, we found, to our horror, that unlike the ’70s, we couldn’t get young people involved, that most of the people who cared about ethics were older people, our age, 70s. So the Revolt of the Elders — we knocked out Pombo. We came close to knocking out [John] Doolittle. I think the change in the rules forced DeLay out. I am hoping the Justice Department will go after people like Doolittle as they went after [Bob] Ney and Duke Cunningham. But you had, I think, the worst corruption in Congress in history under the DeLay-Abramoff “K Street Project” thing.

When you announced earlier this year that you were leaving the Republican Party, I found online the statement you made.

Have you read that statement?

Yeah. You said, “The single cardinal principle of political science that power corrupts has come to apply not only to Republican congressional leaders like Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, and John Doolittle, but to a succession of White House officials and appointees.”

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit about how the administration and the money and power have corrupted them?

Well, I think their belief in their mission, that they as Republicans knew what was best for the country, could justify anything just as the Nixon people thought it could justify wiretapping and burglary and what the “plumbers” were doing 35 years earlier: ’71 to ’06. Anyway, the problem that differs now that we didn’t have then is we had a strong and courageous press in 1971. You had the Pentagon Papers willing to get published by The New York Times at the risk of being declared traitors and indicted. We had [Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein and Dan Rather and people like that, who stood up to constant abuse and the White House trying to undermine their characters and their credibility.

I am not sure the press of the last two years has been that way. I think one of the things that terrified the press is that they can no longer keep their sources secure. And they are threatened with criminal prosecution if they leak government secrets. And the government has made the revealing of secrets a traitorous act. And I think the press has been affected by that. So the press is far less a counterbalance.

I always thought the fourth estate was the proper thing. There were five branches of government in the United States. Three in the courts and the executive and the Congress, the press was the fourth, and the people were the fifth. The people only rise to knowledge after some years pass; they are like a sleeping giant. They have taken us out of wars and will probably take us out of this war. But the White House comes to look on the people as an enemy. I mean the secrecy of this administration and the abuse of administrative powers, I think, threaten the whole basis of our democracy. I am fairly passionate on this, as you can tell. 

Now in that effort to stay in power, how do you think the money plays into it?

Well, the lobbyists, of course, could have the big money to spend. And they have the power to throw around; they generally hedge their bets these days. That came out of the 2006 elections. And man, they weren’t quite sure if the Republicans were going to stay in power. But guys like [Virginia Senator] Jim Webb tipped the ballots. Really, I think the election of Jim Webb may have been the most significant thing of the 2006 election. It not only changed the balance of power, but it brought a guy in there who will say what he thinks and swing from the heels. He may be president some day; another Navy Cross with a couple of Purple Hearts.

There is a funny thing. I have come to think, in later life, medals don’t mean a hell of a lot. But what the medals do is, they try to make you live up to something. You have a brief flash of courage, in your youth. And it isn’t really courage. It’s just not wanting the other boys to see you scared shitless. Now I am probably talking too much. And I am not sure I am answering all of your questions as directly as I should.

Well, the lobbyists, when they are not hedging their bets, or even when they are, what’s their method? What is it that they do that corrupts the system?

Well, it’s the money. The most demeaning thing about being a member of Congress is having to ask for money. I was lucky. I am not honest because I wanted to be, I am honest because the guys back in San Mateo County would always raise the money and insist that I be honest. I never had to worry about lobbyists. But the money became pervasive. And the need to raise money is so intense, you build up, what I would call, almost something as bad as [Dwight] Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex.

Most of these lobbyists are ex-members of Congress. I don’t think there’s more than a handful every year when they lose or leave Congress that don’t stay in Washington. Once you are inside the corridor of powers, it’s nice to be inside the Beltway. And you’ll find no lack of national organizations willing to hire. Hell, that guy [Louisiana Representative Billy] Tauzin, he left Congress to be the lobbyist for who, the drug industry?

PhRMA [Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America].

He was making $160,000 a year; they pay him $2 million. You have a congressman, ex-congressional lobby complex. And then they get the staff in there. The secret of Abramoff was that he got maybe 20 or 30 congressional staffers to leave their staff jobs, move over, and earn four times as much as lobbyists. And, of course, they could affect legislation in their former bosses like Ney and Doolittle.

In the connection of what you are talking about, talk to us about Pombo and the Pombo campaign. He spent $4.5 million in the [primary and general elections], [was] involved with Abramoff. Talk to us about Pombo and Abramoff and how that illustrates the points you are making.

Well, one of the great things we did in the campaign, we had a couple of bloggers working with us. And we developed a lot of stuff about Abramoff, even ahead of what the Justice Department was finding. We found that Abramoff’s first client was the Marianas Islands, this little [U.S. territory, like] Guam and Samoa and those places. And Abramoff got in with some Chinese entrepreneurs that ran a clothing [company] who figured in ’76 that there was some agreement, compact entered into with former territories. They could use the label “Made in the USA.” And that Chinese guy started bringing in women from all of the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, China, and Thailand. And these women were brought to the Marianas and put to work in clothing factories, and the [owners] made millions.

And for a while, they had arrangements with Gap and Levis and the other famous manufacturers, because they could use the “Made in the USA” label and turn out the stuff at huge profits. Well, Abramoff was not dumb, and seeing that, he got on contract with them. And, of course, the Committee on Resources had jurisdiction, then chaired by [Alaska Representative] Don Young, who has not been known if [money] passed through to not have a little stick to his hands. [Editor’s note: Young is reportedly under federal investigation for receiving illegal campaign contributions and gifts.  To date, he has not been charged with any crime.] He was there when I was there, from Alaska. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to him and [Alaska Senator Ted] Stevens. But with Young as chairman, they were able to block the effort.

When they took power in ’94, they were able to block legislation that would have brought labor-law reform and immigration reform in the Marianas. And these women were literally slaves or prostitutes. If they got pregnant or they bitched or anything, they would get sent back to their own countries. They weren’t making lots of money in the Marianas. And some of them were forced into prostitution and some of them into abortion. But as long as Young controlled the committee, Abramoff had a pipeline.

And then, of course, Doolittle and Pombo were key members of that committee. So he started paying for staff people to go over to the Marianas and participate in the largess of [what] Abramoff was earning. And, of course, Young stepped down. I think a guy named [James] Hansen from Utah became chairman in 2002. But DeLay was able to move Pombo to the chair of the committee in 2002 and Doolittle to appropriations.

I mean no way was [Illinois Representative Dennis] Hastert running the House. I think it was DeLay all of those years. And DeLay, Pombo, and Doolittle were three of a kind. And they all took money from Jack Abramoff, as did their wives. So that corruption, I think, rivals Teapot Dome. Did you ever read [Mark] Twain’s story, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg”? There ought to be a title for Abramoff, “The Man Who Corrupted the Republican House Leadership.” I can talk for a couple of hours on this subject.

In the statement you made when you announced you were going to run for Congress again, you talked about the need for campaign-financing and lobbying reform and alternate forms of public financing of congressional elections.

Something that I came to only reluctantly, and really only after we had formed the Revolt of the Elders. The more we saw money, lobbyists, and congressional action, the more offended I became, as did Lew Butler. Lew Butler you should know about. He was assistant secretary of HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare] under [Robert] Finch and [John] Veneman in the Nixon administration. He was a man without guile or ego. He was the first guy to resign from the Nixon administration.

And he wrote a letter. I’ll paraphrase for you. It’s Nixon in June of ’71. He said: “Dear Mr. President, The greatest honor that’s ever been done to me is when you put me in your Cabinet. Therefore, the only way I can express my dismay about your invasion of Cambodia is to return my commission. Here witnessed, respectfully, Lew Butler.”

And he came back to California where he became chairman of the Plowshares Foundation, which is an anti-nuclear deal. But he’d been in the Peace Corps in 1960, one of the first Peace Corps guys. And his idealism and my rage was essentially what the Revolt of the Elders was all about.

What types of campaign-finance reform do you think would make a real dent in the situation?

I think it’s the matching thing. I think we take the presidential model of ’74. And we say to congressmen, “You have to raise $20,000, or you have to meet the threshold.” That threshold’s got to be subject to change as the GNP [gross national product] and things change. But you meet a threshold. You show up; you have 2,000 people who are giving you $10 or more, and from then on we’ll match those contributions with federal money. And in the event you run into a guy like that guy who spent $30 million of his own money for the Senate in California and lost — he was the husband of this Arianna somebody.

[Michael] Huffington.

If you run into that kind of a thing, we may help you with that, too. But I think, clearly, independent people of reputation who don’t have a political ax to grind somehow have to get into this process. And, as I say, it’s cheaper for the public to pay for congressional elections by matching smaller donations than it is to have lobbyists get $20 billion drug [profits].

Do you think there is any chance that we are moving toward that?

I don’t know. I’ll tell you. I have some limited credibility. I am credited with having removed Pombo by the Democrats. They all think if I hadn’t taken him on in the primary, he’d still be there, and whether or not Nancy Pelosi and all of my friends are chairmen now. Nick Rahall is chairman of what Pombo used to chair. Jack Murtha is a powerful position, John Conyers, John Dingell; I hope they won’t go back to politics as usual.

I worry about it, though. I don’t see [it happening] unless a new president comes in with the idealism of a [Barack] Obama and takes a lead, and we have a return to [idealism]. I don’t know if you guys remember the idealism we had when [John F.] Kennedy was president. Somehow he tapped the enthusiasm for integrity. God, if people had known about his sexual activities, it probably would have destroyed his image.