Senator sees remedies for flawed system

Hollings, 86, looks back at his long career in public service

"Show me the money."

This familiar catchphrase from "Jerry Maguire," a popular sports movie, applies just as snugly to national political figures immersed in the perpetual campaign, the perpetual pursuit of campaign cash, often to the detriment of the job they were elected to do. But it is only one way in which money, ill-used, exerts a disruptive influence on governance, says former Sen. Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings.

He considers money the cancer of the age. And he approaches the scourge like a surgeon in "Making Government Work: Lessons From a Life in Politics," to be released Monday by the University of South Carolina Press. Written with Kirk Victor, who covers the U.S. Senate for the National Journal, the book is equal parts memoir of a career in public service and a cautionary tale on the political and economic quandaries that face the nation.

Hollings says he had no intention of trotting out a tedious "He said, she said" narrative.

"I knew that if I was to write an autobiography, I was going to focus on what was really significant that I know about, something that would be a theme. And that theme is trying to make the government work again. We have a standoff now, and the election in November is not going to change this, not until they cut the money and untie the knot. The campaigns are way too long. Ten years ago, I had to raise $8.5 million, which is $30,000 a week, every week, for six years. Money is the cancer on the body politic. Nothing will get done until you cut the money."

Public service

Trained as a trial lawyer, the Charleston native began his political career as a South Carolina legislator (1949-54), progressing to lieutenant governor (1955-59), governor (1959-63) and U.S. senator (1966-2005). He was a U.S. presidential candidate in 1983-84. Throughout, says Hollings, he has focused on putting government on a sound financial basis and championing economic development.

With policy expertise on the budget, telecommunications, the environment, defense, trade and space, he was the author of the Coastal Zone Management Act (1972), Ocean Dumping Act (1972) and Automobile Fuel Economy Act (1975), as well as co-author of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985. Hollings led in the creation of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children in 1972 and passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In 2008, Hollings sees much in the way of governmental missteps — and inaction. His experience in the trenches suggests some remedies.

"It was said once that we give a six-year term to a senator, rather than to a congressman. Two years to be statesman, two years to be a politician and the last two years to be a demagogue. Now we spend all six years raising money. Big business controls much of the money flowing into campaigns, and this flow has anesthetized the public servant. We have to go to work for the country instead of the campaign. If you limit the money, you limit the campaign. Unlike (ex-Bush administration press secretary) Scott McClellan, who finally came clean, everything I say in the book I also said while I was in office."

Streamlining a life

At 360 pages, the six-term senator has not produced a volume on the order of former President Clinton's 900-page tome. Approaching it with a sense of economy, Hollings says he wrote most of it from memory. He had to (with the aid of Victor's fact-checking) after losing his voluminous notes to a house fire.

A 1942 graduate of The Citadel, Hollings received a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1947, beginning a 20-year practice the following year. But little of his early years and education makes the cut. Nor do his years in the military. Hollings served as an officer in the Army's 323rd and 457th Artillery during World War II (1942-45) and was awarded the Bronze Star.

"Even omitting most of this, I had to cut the book short. There's a heck of a lot of good stories I had to leave out. I don't spend much time discussing earmarks. They used to say, 'Rivers delivers,' but I have delivered way more than Mendel Rivers, I can tell you that. And I'm proud of it. But I had to do it quietly. And I left all of that out of the book. But I did put in my failures."

As an example of failure, he cites the federal budget.

"I thought we had balanced the budget under Bill Clinton in 1993 when he came to town, and I helped fashion that tax plan. We had eight years of the best economy and we gave George W. Bush surpluses as far as the eye could see. He said we'll get rid of the national debt. Then he went for tax cuts. And now we have added on an average, for seven years, $514 billion more than we've taken in each and every year. We will have added $4 trillion to the debt by September, which has zoomed up the interest costs over $400 billion, over $1 billion a day. These are interest payments to obtain ... nothing. The first thing the government does each day is borrow a billion dollars."

Hollings confronts what he terms an increasingly flawed political system and a government that has gone "into the ditch." It may seem stuck in that ditch, but it can be excavated, he says.

"It can. The willingness to do so is a reflection of the people."

Reality vs. illusion

Every generation of middle-age adults seems to survey the scene of civilization and conclude that we are all going to Hades in a handbasket. Politically and culturally, Hollings sees peril and promise ahead. Though his emphasis is on the former, he is optimistic we can escape the traps if there is the will to do so.

"I'm trying to get to today's reality in the book. We are going out of business. You not only have lost 3.2 million manufacturing jobs since George W. Bush got in, with a 94,500 net loss of manufacturing jobs in South Carolina, but what hasn't been outsourced — and there is a hemorrhaging of outsourcing of jobs — is being bought up because of the cheap dollar and us running all these deficits.

The French bought up Bell Labs. Japan owns Westinghouse Nuclear. Taiwan has Gateway. China has IBM and all its software. Some 8,600 plants at a cost of $1.3 trillion in the last 10 years have been bought. It's the cheap dollar. It perilous, and we need to wake up the government. We're in a trade war, and we have to start competing. There's no mystery to it."

Hollings also holds forth on strengthening regulations on free trade and amplifying our communications and education programs to compete more effectively in an information-driven global marketplace.

The chorus rhapsodizing over "free trade," Hollings says, is singing off-key.

"The idea of free trade is like world peace. It's a good goal. But you're not going to have world peace anytime soon. The way to get free trade is to raise a barrier to a barrier, then remove them both. Again, you have to compete. But this is against the rules now in government."

Hollings remains a staunch proponent of "fiscally responsible yet progressive programs" not being mutually exclusive.

"You learn as a governor that you cannot run for governor of South Carolina unless you promise to pay the bills. But if you are running for the Senate, forget about paying the bills; you promise the reverse: tax cuts. Neither party is going to recommend raising taxes again, but they've got to do it. We've got to make it profitable to produce in the United States. Corporate greed is not going to get you anywhere."

As the author or co-author of five trade bills, Hollings knows something of incentives and disincentives.

"Henry Ford helped create our trade policy, protecting American industry. He wanted the fellow manufacturing the car to be able to buy it. He doubled the minimum wage. He put in the first health benefits and the first retirement benefits, furthering the development of the middle class. Now, you try to put in a trade bill like old Hollings did, and they'll come down on your head: the banks, Wall Street, the Business Round Table, even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In 1992, I was the chamber's Man of the Year. By 1998, I was a pariah on account of my opposition to NAFTA."

And so on. Hollings, 86, says his worry in the course of writing the book was, "Could I be relevant?"

"Making Government Work" answers the question.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.

Editor's Note: Earlier versions of this story gave the incorrect location for Friday's book signing. The Post and Courier regrets the error.