| Photo by L. Carper |
Alan Simpson Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by L. Carper |
Page 2 of 7
What sort of political philosophy emerged from all of this, and when you went into the state legislature? If you would, just give me in a nutshell your view of politics.
My view is very clear. I am a legislator. I never wanted to be governor or president or vice president. If you're thinking of politics, make up your mind. You're going to legislate, or you want to be governor, president or emperor or king, what is it you're interested in? And make that choice. For me, it was to take an idea and personally draft the bill. Which I would do. I remember drafting bills like land use planning, or the revision of the podiatry laws.
This is when you were a legislator in Wyoming?
Yes. And I had no staff. I did my own amendments, would work the bill myself, manage it on the floor. And so I legislated. And then I got to Washington, with no agenda. I didn't know what I was going to do there. "What are you going to do to save the world?" I said, "I don't know, I'm just going to see what happens." And suddenly I'm thrown into the issue of immigration. I was on the select commission. So I started to work. Father Theodore M. Hesburgh was the chairman, God love him. Ron Mazzoli, a Democrat, me a Republican. And we did something that hadn't been done for thirty years.
Let's talk about that in a minute but I want to probe some more about, what does it mean to legislate? You said yesterday, "to take an idea and turn it into a law." What is that process like? What does it involve?
Well it's very satisfying.
A law should be understandable to the governed. The ones we're passing now in Congress are not, because the staff have tucked so many things into them, and then the lawyers rework it and regurgitate it. So some of them are tough to understand. But the pleasant job for me was to draft one in English, that people could understand, so you didn't have to do white papers and what with it, just say this bill is to set aside a certain amount of the coal and oil revenues of Wyoming into a permanent mineral trust fund. It was that big. And to try use the conciseness of language -- and I can be very verbose. And then you get the governor to sign it or the president to sign it. That's very satisfying. I like that.
But you have to listen to the issues before you come up with that document, right? As part of a hearing process, or talking to your colleagues, or something.
It's very difficult to do what I'm suggesting and become proficient at that skill if you're not the chairman of a committee, because as chairman you have to arrange the hearings. And when the hearing comes up all your pals will come in and make their four-minute statement and take off and leave you holding the sack. So you're forced to learn. You're there for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, and you're the only guy there and you're taking the testimony and the witnesses. And you learn. You then become the master of the issue. And once you master an issue, your colleagues, if they trust you, will allow you to go forward. And they did trust me on [the immigration] issue.
Next page: The Immigration Bill
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