It’s hard to imagine Wyoming without Sen. Al Simpson’s wisdom and wit 

When I learned about former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson’s death at age 93 last Friday, my encounters with one of the most colorful and influential Wyoming politicians in the state’s history filled my mind. I’d known for some time that I would someday write about Simpson’s remarkable life and some of our shared experiences — mostly good, but others not so friendly — but kept putting it off because I can’t write without a deadline.

Now, confronted with his death, I realized the real reason for my procrastination. I didn’t want to imagine a world without Simpson in it — particularly with the kind of divisive, dangerous politics we’re seeing across the state and nation. I didn’t agree with many of his views, but he’s a prime example of precisely what we are missing today: a tough straight shooter willing to work across the aisle and compromise to find solutions to some of the country’s most pressing problems.

Simpson loved taking on the media, especially when he believed it had treated him, his friends or his constituents unfairly. He wrote an entire book about it: “Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press.” It’s a good read, and the author doesn’t pull any of his punches at the Fourth Estate.

He was tough on journalists because he knew the importance of our work. It’s fitting to look back at Simpson’s life during National Sunshine Week, which recognizes the right of the public to access government records at all levels, because he staunchly supported the First Amendment. “America’s Founders were committed to a wide-open public forum in which all voices and perspectives could have a chance of being heard,” Simpson said.

Here’s another: “There is no ‘slippery slope’ toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.”

Simpson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978 after serving in the Wyoming Legislature for 12 years. It was a time when moderate conservatives were in firm control and most of the far-right ideologues who rule today deservedly suffered in obscurity.

Simpson had the Beltway media captivated soon after he arrived. Having a relatively young, lanky fellow roaming the Capitol halls with a steady supply of quips made him a popular interview subject, and he quickly rose to No. 2 in the Senate’s GOP leadership. Think Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” who also represented Wyoming on the silver screen.

There are many things I admire about Simpson, especially two of his greatest achievements. One was working with his U.S. Senate colleague Malcolm Wallop and U.S. Rep. Dick Cheney to pass the Wyoming Wilderness Act in 1984, which added 880,000 acres of designated wilderness in the Equality State.

Simpson helped spearhead the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided $1.25 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who were unjustly held captive during World War II solely because of their race. Simpson formed a lifelong friendship when his Cody Boy Scout troop visited the Japanese-American scouts held at the nearby internment camp at Heart Mountain, and he met Norman Mineta.

Mineta became a Democratic congressman from California and later the U.S. Treasury secretary. Hollywood is missing a potentially classic movie if it doesn’t make a film about this unlikely political partnership.

I covered a lot of news about Simpson during his Senate days, from his support of Wyoming people and projects to days on the campaign trail, when he’d cook burgers at campaign rallies and have the crowd roaring at corny jokes.

But it wasn’t always a merry time for Simpson, who admitted he went way beyond the pale by attacking lawyer Anita Hill during hearings on Clarence Thomas’ U.S. Supreme Court nomination. Silly and loud confrontations with the press about his relentless defense of President George H.W. Bush also put some chinks is his armor.

“In my 87 years I’ve achieved my ultimate goal: I’ve pissed off everyone in America,” Simpson told me in a 2018 WyoFile interview. He wasn’t kidding, and in fact seemed proud of that distinction.

I called him up when he joined 43 former senators who signed a bipartisan letter warning that America was facing a constitutional crisis during President Donald Trump’s first term. Boy, would I like to be able to ring him up again and ask about Trump’s first three constitution-crunching months in his second go-round.

But at the time, Simpson noted the letter wasn’t “an anti-Trump screed,” but about cataclysmic events like a government shut-down and fighting between the two houses. “Somebody’s got to settle down and do something as grown-ups, and we who signed the letter think it should be the U.S. Senate,” he said. “We were there and we worked together.”

Simpson often collaborated on legislation with Democrats, including Sens. Ted Kennedy, John Glenn, Lloyd Bentsen and Alan Cranston. That’s almost unheard of today, when compromise is viewed as a weakness in the upper chamber.

“We didn’t sit and harpoon each other and come out of a caucus and say, ‘We’re going to screw you,’” Simpson recalled. “No, we’d sit down and say, ‘I’ll tell you about our caucus.’ There’s a reason for doing something and you have to find the real reason. That’s what these guys don’t do.”

I can tell you from first-hand experience that going up against Simpson at any level for any reason was not a day at the beach.

On July 20, 1990, then-president George H.W. Bush visited Cheyenne for the Wyoming centennial celebration and the start of Frontier Days. As editor of the Wyoming Eagle, the capital city’s morning daily, I marked the moment with an editorial highlighting the 10 things not to say to the president if you met him.

Yes, just as it sounds, it was an unquestionably bad idea. A lame imitation of David Letterman’s Top 10 lists, but worst of all, I repeated an incorrect report that our congressional delegation flew to Wyoming on Air Force One. Definitely not my finest moment.

I later heard that our three-person congressional delegation traveling with Bush was not amused, especially Simpson.

“Man, look at this Bozo,” he said, according to an anonymous source who was delighted to recap the moment for me. “The president of the United States comes here, and this is the kind of crap Drake writes?”

Simpson wasn’t any happier with me a month later on a much more serious subject. He and four other U.S. senators met in Baghdad with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in April 1990. About five months later Iraq released a transcript of Simpson’s scathing critique of the press, which the senator claimed was a call for transparency. I didn’t see it that way, then or now.

“I believe that your problem lies with the Western media, and not with the U.S. government, because you are isolated from the media, and the press,” Simpson said. “The press is spoiled and conceited. All the journalists consider themselves brilliant political scientists. They do not want to see anything succeeding or achieving its objectives. My advice is that you allow those bastards to come here and see things for themselves.”

After those comments made sensational headlines in the U.S., a number of journalists, including this Bozo, called him out. 

“We have to wonder what in the world our state’s junior senator was thinking when he met with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein last April,” I wrote for a Sunday Wyoming Tribune-Eagle editorial on Aug. 28, 1990. “Is this the same Al Simpson who branded Saddam a madman comparable to Adolf Hitler during a press conference in Cheyenne last week?

“We doubt that if Al had been in the bunker with Adolf and Eva he would have suggested they talk to Life magazine and clean up their image problems. Why, when he had the opportunity to hit Saddam with some tough questions about his threats against Israel and his penchant for chemical warfare, did Simpson start acting like his public relations manager?”

Simpson thought it was a cheap shot, but I respectfully disagreed. I told him of course I knew that’s not what he would have told Hitler, but he opened up the issue by making the comparison between Saddam and the Nazi leader. I made the analogy because there was plenty of evidence before their meeting that Saddam was a ruthless madman who used chemical weapons against Iran. One month before, Saddam had even ordered the execution of a British journalist for allegedly spying for Israel.

Simpson said I and everyone else got it wrong. He claimed he wasn’t cozying up to the dictator, but trying to convince him to let the media get a look inside Iraq. He stressed that the Senate delegation delivered a warning to Iraq from Bush that its nuclear and chemical weapons programs had to stop.

Was the Simpson-Saddam exchange leaked to the American media by Iraq actually a ploy to allow closer scrutiny of a country on the verge of a war with Kuwait? It’s possible.

But I think Iraq’s transcript of the conversation obviously caught Simpson by surprise, and he knew it cast him in a negative light. In “Right in the Old Gazoo,” he wrote, “The characterization of that conversation as two old chums hacking away at the media because of their own woes is just stupid and irresponsible.”

Neither of us backed away from our words, but we let it rest. Soon Simpson was taking on a really big media fish in CNN’s Peter Arnett, whom he accused of being an “Iraqi sympathizer” for his coverage of the war. The senator didn’t need to spend time sparring with a little minnow from Wyoming.

But I came back on his radar soon enough. I wrote an editorial criticizing Simpson for ignoring the needs of our veterans. However, it was fatally flawed by mostly basing it on recollections of potshots he’d taken at veterans’ groups over the years. It lacked specific details that are essential to editorials.

The next time he came to town, Simpson asked for a meeting. When he arrived I knew this wasn’t going to be the kind of breezy chats we often had. He was upset, and wanted to know what he’d done that pissed me off so much that I’d insult him in print. Then he named everything he’d ever done for veterans, which he assured me was a lot.

“It was a chickenshit thing to do,” he said, repeating the phrase a few times. And I agreed and apologized. Chickenshit was the right word.

Simpson taught me a valuable lesson: If you’re going to criticize someone, bring the receipts. I think I could have made a strong case that he hadn’t been listening to complaints from some veterans who felt mistreated by the VA, but I didn’t do the research. I learned not to charge someone with not doing their job when I haven’t done mine.

I also grew to have even more respect for Simpson, a man I find myself repeatedly quoting in columns when I’m searching for a way to express inherently fair ideas about governing. I’ve talked to many Wyomingites who related stories about how he was always in their corner. That’s what people came to expect from the man who said, “If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

Despite our differences — and there were many — he always took my calls and gave thoughtful answers, ready to take on all topics. And when I had a crisis later in my career, he offered some encouraging words that I didn’t solicit but was immensely grateful to hear.

Thank you, Sen. Simpson, for teaching me so much about politics and public service.  I wish you were here to help steer an American ship that is at great risk of sinking. You took on immense budget and immigration problems when no one else would even try. There’s no finer example than you for a nation that needs real leaders.

The post It’s hard to imagine Wyoming without Sen. Al Simpson’s wisdom and wit  appeared first on WyoFile .