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"Car won’t start? Your kid flunks a
math test? Erectile dysfunction? Call Al
Gore! (read
more)" -- Michael Graham, Free
Times
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| Issue #20.05 :: 01/31/2007 -
02/06/2007 |
|
Clyburn's
Climb
Local
Congressman Ascends to No. 3 Post in U.S.
House
|
BY ERIC K.
WARD
|
Democratic
Congressman James Clyburn personifies steely
determination. His rise from the segregated,
rural settings of South Carolina to the highest
levels of congressional power is a study in the
importance of keeping one’s eyes on the stars
and feet on the ground.
Born July 21,
1940, in Sumter to Enos and Almeta Clyburn, he
grew up rooted in the values of family, faith
and public service. His father was a
fundamentalist minister; his mother a
beautician.
Clyburn
attended South Carolina State University in
Orangeburg and went on to become a public school
teacher. Later he worked as an employment
counselor and director of two youth and
community development programs.
Active in the civil rights movement,
Clyburn was tapped in the early 1970s by
then-Gov. John West to direct the S.C. Human
Affairs Commission. Then, after nearly 18 years
in that position, he pursued his lifelong dream
— elected office.
At a spry
66, Clyburn has represented the 6th District,
which includes part of Richland County, since
1992. In that time he has served as chair of
both the House Democratic Caucus and the
Congressional Black Caucus. Now, following the
resounding Democratic victory in the November
elections, his colleagues have elected him
majority whip, the No. 3 post in the House.
Clyburn is the first South
Carolinian to hold the position, elevating the
state’s role and reputation in national
politics.
Casually,
people call the congressman Jim in a way that
reflects a keeping-it-real manner about
him.
“I’ve known him
since high school,” says Columbia City
Councilman Sam Davis, who cites Clyburn as a
personal and political mentor. “He was one of my
teachers in Charleston. He always had a good
rapport with young people in school.”
But there is another side to Clyburn
that contrasts with his down-to-earth persona,
one of frankness, intensity and strength of
conviction.
“He isn’t
afraid to make hard decisions, and he’s not
worried about popularity,” Davis
says.
Joe Erwin,
chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party,
met the majority whip about 30 years ago while
working with the state’s chapter of Young
Democrats.
“He is known for
giving great constituent service,” Erwin says,
“but also being a deep thinker, and a great
advocate and voice for those who don’t typically
have a voice in politics and government at the
highest levels. And that includes poor people,
who often get left out of the discussion. Jim
will not forget the least of these as he ascends
to greater and greater power in the state and in
the nation.”
Indeed,
against a federal lawsuit and the opposition of
Gov. Mark Sanford, environmentalists and certain
media outlets, Clyburn is fighting to build a
$150 million, 10-mile highway infrastructure
project in poor, mostly black communities near
Lake Marion in Calhoun County, which borders
Richland to the south.
The opponents’ main issue is a
proposed bridge across the lake that they charge
would harm nature and waste taxpayers’
money.
Clyburn counters
that there is a lot more to the project than a
bridge, and that the infrastructure would help
rectify decades of neglect of those communities
by the state.
On the
recent Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Clyburn sat
down with Free Times for an in-depth interview
at his Columbia office on Gervais Street. In the
following edited excerpts of the interview, he
discusses his ascension to majority whip, the
Iraq war and other key issues.
As for the Lake Marion project, as
Clyburn might say, it ain’t over till it’s
over.
Free
Times: How does it feel to be majority
whip?
James Clyburn: Well, it all
depends what day it is. It feels great this
weekend, running around to King Day services and
interacting with people who’ve been longtime
friends and, a few new ones. But, that’s the
easy part. It’s the part that gets you all the
accolades and people get to tell you how great
they think you are and all that stuff. That’s
great.
But then, I know
that come Tuesday, I’ll be back in Washington
and it’ll be my job to try and keep an agenda
going. And one of the things about being
majority whip on my side of the aisle is that we
have a very diverse caucus. There are 233
Democrats in our caucus. The problem is that
there are seven distinct caucuses within our
caucus. We have the Hispanic caucus. That’s
about 20, 21 Latinos. And even within that
caucus there are Mexicans. There are Puerto
Ricans. There are other people of Latino
heritage, from Colombia and places like that,
Nicaragua. They don’t always see things the same
way. You take the issue of Puerto Rican
statehood, that issue is very contentious within
the Hispanic community as well. And so, you have
to deal with that.
We have
the Congressional Black Caucus. There are 42 of
those 233 who are African-American. And if you
accept the notion, which, if you’re intelligent
at all you have to, that people are but the sum
total of their experiences, the experiences of
African-Americans have been different from the
experiences of other Americans.
And if you look on the Republican
side, they do have three Hispanics. They’re all
Cubans, and they come from contiguous districts
in South Florida. No diversity, at all.
African-Americans — 42 on our side, zero on
their side. So, the kind of inbred lobbying that
you get on our side, you don’t get over
there.
And so if you
get out of just the ethnicity of it, and look at
the philosophies, we have what we call
progressives. These are basically what a lot of
people call yellow-dog Democrats. They’re very
pure in their Democratic philosophies. Then
you’ve got the blue dogs. They are basically
pretty conservative; used to be called the boll
weevils and things of that sort. And so, you see
a clashing there between the progressives on
some issues and conservatives, or the blue
dogs.
Then we’ve got
another group called the new Dems. They fashion
themselves as being pro-business Democrats. I
don’t know of any Democrat that’s anti-business.
But that’s what they say is that we’re
pro-business. That simply means, basically, that
on trade issues they will probably be voting for
things like NAFTA [North American Free Trade
Agreement].
FT:
So with all the diverse interests, your job
…
JC: It’s a very, very difficult
thing to do. And you know people ask questions
all the time. They say, “Man you Democrats, why
can’t y’all get y’all’s act together?” Well why
can’t the country get its act together? We are
reflective of what this country’s all
about.
FT:
What about just the ascension to that position?
It’s a very powerful position in the
Congress.
JC: Yes it
is.
FT:
How do you approach that?
JC: Just
like I approach almost anything in life. It’s
the same way I approach getting along with my
family. I have three daughters that are very,
very different. And so I treat them differently.
And I tell people I really believe the reason I
was elected whip without a challenge — I mean
there are people who went out and they tested
the waters, and didn’t find it conducive and
decided not to run, and so I ended up getting
elected by acclamation, basically uncontested —
is simply because within the caucus, when I was
chair, and as vice chair, I tried to respect the
individual differences that all the members
have. And I tried to do what I can to not just
respect those differences but to honor
them.
So, I try to do
the same thing as whip. I try to study the
issues and I try to understand why members might
feel the way they feel about an issue. So when I
organized the whip operation, I organized it
different from the way it’s ever been organized
before. And they immediately noticed that, and a
lot of people, especially in the media, have
been asking me about this significant
difference. You see basically the whip operation
is supposed to be all about counting votes,
tabulation. I have decided that there’s gonna be
a two-pronged whip thing. We’ll have a group to
count votes. But then we’ve also got a group
that will do some long-range projections over
issues that we have, to begin to look at those
issues and look at our membership, to try and
help frame the issues in such a way that they
will be attractive or conducive to get the 218
votes we need [to pass legislation]. And that’s
what you gotta do when you have such a diverse
caucus.
Now, as a
personal thing, which I think you’re probably
trying to get to, I grew up in a household that
demanded two things. Every morning we had to
recite a Bible verse. I was never told to read
the Bible. I just knew that at the breakfast
table I had to recite a Bible verse. Wasn’t
gonna get that any other way except to read the
Bible. And every evening, we had to share some
current event with my parents before it was time
for bed. You couldn’t do that unless you read
the newspapers. So I just grew up very much in
touch with what was going on around me, and
pretty much grounded.
And
when I set out to do what I wanted to be my
life’s work, and that was elective office, I
lost three of the first four elections. Now, a
lot of people forget the fact that when I ran
for the [S.C.] House of Representatives in 1970,
down in Charleston, I was declared the winner
that [election] night, around 10 o’clock, and
found out the next morning that something had
happened and I did not win. And a lot of people
questioned what may or may not have happened.
But — I don’t know where I got the wisdom from
to do this — the next day when the newspapers
asked me, you know, what happened, I just said I
just didn’t get enough votes. It was a reaction
that caught the eye of [then-Gov.] John
West.
And so John West
asked me to join his staff. And one day after
[me] giving a pretty caustic speech somewhere,
John West called me [he chuckles] into his
office and he said I saw the accounts on TV last
night of the speech you gave and he says, you
know, when there’s a 12-ounce glass, with 6
ounces of water, I’m gonna see it as half full,
and you see it as half empty, and therefore we
aren’t gonna approach it the same way so don’t
even worry. He said but I’ll tell you this: You
catch many more flies with honey than you do
with vinegar. That had a profound impact on me.
And I started tempering my language and my
approach in such a way to try to be, a little
more palatable to people. I have a family that’s
interesting. My children, they’ve got a way of
letting me know when they think I am being too
important. They bring me back to reality. So
this whole [whip] thing, I’ve been able to be
real with it.
 |
| USC
President Andrew Sorensen gives Clyburn a
picture of the university after the majority
whip attended a recent Martin Luther King Jr.
Day event at
USC. |
FT:
We’re conducting this interview on the Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday, and I wanted to ask
you, if Dr. King were alive today, what do you
think his view would be of where this nation is
in terms of his “I Have a Dream”
speech?
JC: Well, King, in his “I
Have a Dream” speech, talked about, I think he
called it the fierce urgency of now. A lot of
people get caught up in the litany of that
speech and the poetry of it. But, he introduced
it by dealing with this notion of people who
were saying to him, all the stuff that you all
are talking about is good stuff and it’s
appropriate stuff but the time is not right for
that. I think that King would be bringing us
back to that.
Now what
a lot of people miss is that the “I Have a
Dream” speech was not the speech for that day.
King had given his speech, and he realized at
the ending of his speech that he had not moved
the crowd; 250,000 people standing before him,
he’s on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
there’s the Washington Monument out in front of
him, the whole [National] Mall, the largest
petition ever presented to the American people,
and he had given the speech, the greatest
oratory of our time, and had not moved the
group. And he knew he couldn’t sit down. So King
lapsed into a speech that he had given at Cobo
Hall in Detroit, Michigan, at a labor rally some
months earlier. That was the “I Have a Dream”
speech.
And, once again,
the whole notion of timing. When he first gave
that speech in Cobo Hall nobody heard it. Here
he was [he chuckles], it probably didn’t fit the
crowd up there. But it fit this one. And he
talked about the fierce urgency of now. What is
interesting about that speech, go back to him
sitting in the Birmingham, [Ala.], city jail
earlier, when he wrote his letter, and he dealt
with the whole notion of timing in that letter,
because in the letter that he was responding to,
he was asked to leave Birmingham because, though
his cause was right the time was wrong. King
said in that letter, which I talked about this
morning, and I talk about it a lot, that he had
come to the conclusion that the people of ill
will in our society make a much better use of
time than the people of good will. And then he
concluded that thought by saying that we are
gonna be made to account in this generation not
just for the vitriolic words and deeds of bad
people, but for the appalling silence of good
people.
Now, King,
were he here today, would look out at the war in
Iraq, and say, this is the effect of the
appalling silence of good people. Congress
[speaking slowly] sat silently, as this
administration took us into this quagmire. And
rather than stand up and do what they’re
supposed to do — provide oversight — we
rubberstamped. We [speaking slowly again] locked
down any kind of discussion, had no debate, no
nothing — the silence of good
people.
And I think
the American people broke their silence, this
past November. And I believe they’re gonna be
speaking up in every November going forward,
because the American people are now taking hold
to what King was talking about, about remaining
silent in the face of all that’s
[unjust].
And if King
were here today, I really believe he would find
justification in his teachings — if you look in
it it’s there — for what we did in Afghanistan.
He would be absolutely against, this pre-emption
in Iraq. I think King might find favor with what
the Bush administration is doing in its response
to AIDS on the continent of Africa. He would
absolutely be abhorred at what we’ve done to
undercut the ability of young people to receive
postsecondary education. He would be abhorred at
what we are doing with things like tax cuts for
the rich, and refusing to give a raise in the
minimum wage to poor people. I can’t imagine
that King wouldn’t be leading one of the largest
marches ever seen, against us [not] passing a
minimum wage bill [and] giving an almost $1
trillion tax break to 7,500
families.
FT:
Yeah. You have said that you believe there’s
been a serious lack of oversight of the Bush
administration by the
Congress.
JC: Absolutely.
FT:
What if anything are the Democrats going to
investigate with regard to the administration?
What do you support? And on the war, what about
the troop surge and will the Democrats push
back, de-fund the war? Is that something you’d
support?
JC: Well you gotta be
careful if you start talking about de-funding.
How do you de-fund the war? The fact of the
matter is we got 233 Democrats, but we’ve only
got one commander in chief. Bush made it very
clear, on 60 Minutes last night — I did not see
it but I read reports this morning, and I saw
one clip from it — that he’s going forward. As
commander in chief, constitutionally he can. So
yes, we can cut off funds. And when you cut off
funds, what does that do to the men and women
who are over there?
So
we are to provide oversight. But I think this
administration and the American people ought to
really break their silence on this: This
administration put together the Iraq Study
Group. James Baker and Lee Hamilton, the two of
them headed up a small group of Democrats and
Republicans, and they came out with a blueprint.
Bush put this group together. But all of a
sudden he decides well, I don’t like what they
came out with. These people did a lot of work to
come up with this. And so now he’s going with
this 21,500-person surge as he calls it. I call
that escalation. Based on what?
FT:
Do you oppose the surge?
JC:
Absolutely! I told him, to his teeth sitting in
the Cabinet room, the day that he made the
announcement. I met with him at 2:20 that
afternoon, and I said mister president, I got
real problems with this, and I said and my
problems got nothing to do with all this stuff
that they’ve been talking about. My problems
have to do with two people. When I was in Iraq
during Memorial Day weekend back in May, we met
with the speaker of the house for the Iraqi
government. This guy had all kinds of laudatory
things to say about the United States. I thought
it was the high point of our meeting. Three
weeks after I got back, this guy had the most
excruciating comments to make about the United
States and our involvement in Iraq as I’ve ever
seen. And [Nouri] al-Maliki, whatever his name
is …
FT:
The Iraqi prime minister?
JC: Yes.
When was it a year ago, when he was justifying
providing amnesty to Iraqis who killed
Americans? Everything Bush is doing depends upon
these guys cooperating.
FT:
So you don’t think de-funding the war is the
answer?
JC: No.
FT:
Then how do the Democrats respond to the
…
JC: Look at the Murtha plan [by
Rep. John Murtha]. I’ve been buying into the
Murtha plan from day one. Redeploy, redeploy,
move our people out of the red zone, get them
out into the other parts. There are nine
provinces where there ain’t no war going on at
all. This war is being fought in three
provinces, of about 12 over there. Get our folks
out of the war. Turn the red zone, these three
provinces, over to the Iraqi government. Go into
a training mode, out on the borders. Protect the
borders. And, that’s what we ought to be
doing.
FT:
How should congressional Democrats respond to
the president’s policy?
JC: With
oversight.
FT:
There’s been talk of a no-confidence
vote.
JC: Well yes, there has been
talk of that. Now, you know it’s nonbinding. And
so that’s, everybody may feel good about
that.
FT:
How do you push back?
JC: You push
back on bringing [Defense Secretary Robert]
Gates up there, bringing [Secretary of State]
Condoleezza Rice up there and making them
justify to the American people. Look, they’re in
trouble because they never got the American
people involved in what they were doing. And
we’re gonna be in trouble unless we get the
American people involved in what we’re doing. So
we just can’t say push back, push back, mister
president. We have got to provide public open
hearings. Let the American people look in on
what this administration is doing, and develop
some will among the American people to develop a
policy going forward. I think it’s unfair to
expect for the oversight body to be the
commander in chief. We’ve got to hold the
responsibility for being commander in chief to
the person who’s got it. Constitutionally we
can’t do a thing about it, no matter what we
say.
And another
thing: There’s enough money in the pipeline
right now for them to run this war the way they
want to run it for the next eight months. It’s
there. But we have to provide oversight on that.
We never got to provide oversight over the
operations of this war. There is $8.8 billion
missing that nobody asked any questions about.
Nobody wants to even talk about where that money
is. I’ll tell you where I think the money is. I
don’t know. I’m only just saying because it’s
what I believe. I believe that these people over
there, that speaker of the house and this,
al-Maliki or whatever his name is, they’re just
gonna do whatever they want to do until they can
leave the country. And they’ll leave the country
and follow that airplane and you’ll find $8.8
billion.
FT:
Will there be an investigation of the $8.8
billion?
JC:
Absolutely.
FT:
What else will you
investigate?
JC: Well you know I
don’t know what all they’re doing. I’m not on
that committee.
FT:
The energy policy? [crafted behind closed doors
by Vice President Dick Cheney and oil and gas
companies]
JC: Well I think so. I
think so. The Energy Committee will be doing
that.
[His press secretary, Hope Derrick,
says we have about five more
minutes.]
FT:
Intelligence gathering on
Iraq?
JC: The Intelligence
Committee’s gonna be doing their stuff. And the
operation of these [war] contracts is gonna be
done. [Rep.] Henry Waxman and the Government
Reform Committee’s gonna be doing that. And then
Murtha may be doing hearings. The chair of House
Armed Services, Ike Skelton, I know he’s having
hearings. Now that’s just on our side! They’ve
already started hearings on the Senate side. You
know my whole thing is I would hope that’s
there’s some coordination, ‘cause you’re gonna
have so many groups on hearings, you media
people ain’t gonna know which room to go
in.
[laughter]
FT:
Can I get you to speak on two more things really
quickly?
JC: Sure.
FT:
They’re kind of big topics and we’ve only got a
couple of minutes, but, one is, on Feb. 12
you’re scheduled to speak at a conference in
Myrtle Beach on the state of education for the
poor. It’s the Southeastern Association of
Education Opportunity Program
Personnel.
JC: Oh yeah, that TRIO
program — that’s Upward Bound Talent Search. I
used to run those programs.
FT:
I wanted to ask you about equitable education
funding in South Carolina. I know it’s a state
issue but it’s a huge issue here and people
might like to know your thoughts on that. And
the other thing is the Lake Marion bridge. A
state Department of Transportation official I
talked to said you’re earmarking money for that
project. As you know there’s been a lot of
controversy about it.
JC: Sure. Oh
I know about the controversy. Let me start with
that project first. Look, this issue has been
around for more than 40 years. The Legislature
passed a law to build this bridge in 1968. In
1968 I was a 28-year-old young man, still
dreaming about going to Congress. So this is not
Jim Clyburn’s issue. I responded to what the
state has been lacking in doing. Now, and I will
tell anybody, that I believe that it would be
heresy for me to go to the United States
Congress knowing what I know about state
policies in years past, and not do anything
about it. Now I know why those communities
around Lake Marion don’t have good drinking
water. I know why they don’t have the roads and
bridges that we want to
build.
Let’s just take
this Lake Marion bridge for instance. The bridge
is like 2.6 miles. But the project is 9.8 miles,
because we are putting in more than 6 miles of
infrastructure in communities that the state of
South Carolina has ignored in the past. Every
time these people wanted roads paved, the state
would go in and dig ditches. They put the paved
roads in the white communities, and dig ditches
for drainage in the black communities. We all
know that. And for us to sit here and just
pretend that Jim Clyburn is doing something that
is beyond thought, we know why these communities
got … [doesn’t finish
sentence]
So there’s a
catch 22. Now they’re gonna deny the [water
quality] permit I understand. I think [the S.C.
Department of Health and Environmental Control]
is gonna deny the permit. And the reason they’re
gonna deny the permit is they say that we need
to be mitigating 3 acres of wetlands — 3 acres
of wetlands, which are not connected to the
lake. These wetlands they’re talking about, are
the ditches that the people dug to keep from
giving the people paved roads! Now that’s
putting these poor black people in a catch 22,
under state action. It’s just like they did to
my daddy, when they wouldn’t provide him
education beyond the seventh grade.
[DHEC
recently rejected the permit and the DOT is
considering how to
respond.]
So I don’t
understand why people sit here and talk about,
we don’t understand what Clyburn is doing.
Clyburn [speaking slowly] is doing what King
told us to do: Don’t be silent when you see
unfairness, or when you see injustice. And those
people have been treated unfairly. They’ve been
treated with all kinds of injustices, and I
don’t give a damn what they do, I’m not gonna be
silent about it. Now they control the permitting
thing, and they’ve got the case in court. They
may win. But how many court cases I lost when I
was out there being jailed for sittin’ in? I
lost every one of ‘em. But look where I am
now.
FT:
That’s a very good
point.
[laughter]
FT:
Last question: education funding in South
Carolina, a huge issue.
JC: Oh
yeah. Oh and there’s no secret where I stand on
that.
FT:
It’s kind of a segue from what we were just
talking about.
JC: Yes. This
state, Brown v. Board of Education started in
South Carolina. People think it started out in
Kansas. It didn’t start in Kansas. It started in
Clarendon County, South Carolina as, well it
didn’t even start as Briggs v. Elliott. It
started as Pearson against Elliott. I knew those
people. I knew Levi Pearson. I knew these
people. My father used to pray every morning for
their safety.
Now,
this state and this, myopic governor that we
have in this state, we are being less than
honest, when we look out here and say that we’re
gonna do as the ancients did: When someone is
sick, you bleed them, you know to get the
illness out of their system. And that’s what
we’re talking about with the governor’s program,
what he calls, choice, school choice — taking
the money out of the public schools and send it
over to the private schools. You gotta be a
little bit idiotic to even feel that you’re
doing something that’s beneficial to the masses
of people.
So I am
unalterably opposed, to Mark Sanford’s school
plan and anybody else that’s funding it. And I
will tell anybody, no matter who it is, that I
will fight you hand, tooth and nail privately
and publicly over that. Because I believe that
free public schools and affordable college
education is the way any state like South
Carolina is going to ever move forward. And when
you make it impossible for young people to get
postsecondary education and you make it
impossible, or you make it hard for low-income
people to get a free public education, then I
think that what you are building is an elite
system for your friends and your friends’
friends, and you don’t give a damn about the
rest of us.
FT:
That’s sort of the essence of the judge’s ruling
… [in a lawsuit against the state by several
poor school districts, that the General Assembly
should provide more resources for early
childhood education]
JC: The
judge’s ruling didn’t go far enough. I know
Tommy Cooper and I think Tommy Cooper was a
little bit disingenuous in his ruling, because
he dealt with part of the problem, not the real
problem.
Now, come
back next week and I’ll tell you how I really
feel.
[laughter] |
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