Quick & Quotable

William Hershey

Description

William Hershey used his weekly columns as the Akron Beacon Journal's Washington correspondent to send letters home from a foreign country with strange and self-important ways. The columns looked at how members of Congress from Ohio contributed to the headlines and what the headlines meant for readers in terms of issues such as the economy, clean air, trade and the United States' place in the world. The columns also kept readers up to date on the victories and setbacks of Ohio's national hero, Democratic U.S. Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth. They also previewed Ohioans who would go on to become major players in Ohio and national politics, including John Kasich, Rob Portman and John Boehner who became Ohio governor, U.S. senator and U.S. House speaker, respectively. The columns explained how presidential candidates succeeded or failed to woo voters in the nation's premier battleground state. Some columns focused on everyday Ohioans who came to Washington to protest nuclear weapons or speak up for better bus service. From time to time the columns looked beyond the official federal city to the "real" Washington where many residents struggle to just get by in the midst of the federal government's plenty.

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: University of Akron Press
• Date de parution: 02 mars 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629221779
• Langue: English

Extrait

Quick & Quotable
BLISS INSTITUTE SERIES
Bliss Institute Series John C. Green, Editor
William L. Hershey, Quick & Quotable: Columns from Washington, 1985-1997
Jerry Austin, True Tales from the Campaign Trail: Stories Only Political Consultants Can Tell
William L. Hershey and John C. Green, Mr. Chairman: The Life and Times of Ray C. Bliss
Douglas M. Brattebo, Tom Lansford, Jack Covarrubias, and Robert J. Pauly Jr., editors, Culture, Rhetoric, and Voting: The Presidential Election of 2012
Douglas M. Brattebo, Tom Lansford, and Jack Covarrubias, editors, A Transformation in American National Politics: The Presidential Election of 2012
Daniel J. Coffey, John C. Green, David B. Cohen, and Stephen C. Brooks, Buckeye Battleground: Ohio, Campaigns, and Elections in the Twenty-First Century
Lee Leonard, A Columnist’s View of Capitol Square: Ohio Politics and Government, 1969–2005
Abe Zaidan, with John C. Green, Portraits of Power: Ohio and National Politics, 1964–2004
Quick & Quotable
Columns from Washington, 1985–1997
William L. Hershey
All new material copyright © 2020 by the University of Akron Press
The columns were originally written by William L. Hershey for the Akron Beacon Journal . Reprinted with permission of the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com .
All rights reserved • First Edition 2020 • Manufactured in the United States of America.
All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher, The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703.
ISBN : 978-1-629221-75-5 (paper) ISBN : 978-1-629221-76-2 (ePDF) ISBN : 978-1-629221-77-9 (ePub)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Hershey, William L., author.
Title: Quick & quotable : columns from Washington, 1985-1997 / William L. Hershey. Other titles: Newspaper columns. Selections | Quick and quotable | Akron beacon journal (Akron, Ohio : 1903) | Bliss Institute series.
Description: First edition. | Akron : University of Akron Press, 2019. | Series: Bliss Institute series | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019034287 (print) | LCCN 2019034288 (ebook) | ISBN 9781629221755 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781629221762 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781629221779 (ePub)
Classification: LCC PN4874.H4743 A5 2019 (print) | LCC PN4874.H4743 (ebook) | DDC 818/.5409--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034287
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034288
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI / NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Cover design: Amy Freels. Cover photo: Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Quick & Quotable was designed and typeset in Adobe Caslon with Avenir display by Amy Freels. Quick & Quotable was printed on sixty-pound natural and bound by Bookmasters of Ashland, Ohio.
In memory of Josephine and Clark Hershey, my mom and dad and my best teachers

William L. Hershey, author; Clark Hershey; Josephine Hershey; and U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich. Taken in Kildee’s Washington, D.C. office
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part I—The Gipper’s Curtain Call, 1985–1988
Part II—Washington Under Bush I, 1989–1992
Part III—Bill from Hope, 1993–1997
Foreword
Michael Douglas editorial page editor, retired, Akron Beacon Journal
Bill Hershey went to Washington well equipped.
He worked at the statehouse in Columbus as the bureau chief of the Beacon Journal, an assignment preceded by time covering city hall in Akron for the paper. This was a logical progression, repeated in many newsrooms, a reporter climbing up the levels of government. When done right, as Bill did, there was a rich accumulation of knowledge and insight, readers of the newspaper benefiting from a deeper understanding of how government works and those who operate it, in this instance, from the likes of Ray Kapper to Vern Riffe to Mike DeWine.
Yet the challenge involves more than becoming an informed observer, aware and quick enough to ask the right question and the next. The correspondent must tell the story in an engaging way, conveying the substance with a lighter touch, making the complex simpler, the personalities vivid, accented with timely appearances of wit.
This collection of columns from Bill’s time in Washington, 1985 to 1997, is all of that. He writes that he saw this part of the job “as sending letters back home from a foreign country.” There is another impression— of the traveler taking photographs, in this case each worth 750 or so words.
The columns serve as a collection of portraits, each clarifying something about Washington through the lens of Akron, its surroundings and the rest of Ohio.
It is fascinating to go back, say, to April 1989, Hershey talking with Vern Odom, the iconic leader of the Urban League in Akron. Odom laments the limited reach of the economic recovery, their conversation offering an early glimpse of mounting income inequality and, more, the persistent opportunity gap, so many left behind because they lack the start in life others have.
A year later, Bill tells the story of Don Plusquellic, just three years into what would be 28 years as the Akron mayor, traveling to Washington to highlight the shifting financial burden on cities for upgrading public works. Today, Akron residents are bearing nearly the entire $1.2 billion cost of overhauling the city’s antiquated and polluting combined sewers.
The presence of Plusquellic evokes something else—the array of engrossing characters the city, region and state sent to Washington. Bill captures their virtues and foibles. There are those in their prime, such as John Seiberling and John Glenn. There are others early in their careers yet on the rise, such as John Kasich and Rob Portman. Kasich often replays his work across the aisle with Ron Dellums, a California Democrat, in opposition to the Stealth bomber. Bill has the story in real time.
Through these portraits, Bill sets a context for today. There is Tom Sawyer at the congressional front in ensuring the accuracy of the census. In Ralph Regula, we see a lawmaker performing at the highest levels, practicing necessary yet vanishing crafts, bridging differences as he protects federal arts funding from an assault by Jesse Helms.
Regula feels the pinch of a Republican Party less appreciative of moderate voices. One of those eager to shake things up is a younger John Boehner, who goes from rabble-rousing freshman to House speaker, two decades later, at odds with those who see him as too much the pragmatist.
Bill tells how the combative Howard Metzenbaum found an ally in Ronald Reagan in attempting to restrict the availability of military-style assault weapons. Then there is Sherrod Brown in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, trade still a contentious matter, Brown a leading voice, first in the House and now in the Senate.
The modern op/ed page dates to 1970. John B. Oakes, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, wanted an array of perspectives, his cause aided in part by the closing of the New York Herald Tribune and its more conservative viewpoint. So that “op/ed” goes to more than the traditional positioning of the page in the paper. It indicates opposite to the opinion of the editorial page.
In newspapers, a good idea soon gets copied. As papers experimented with the op/ed concept, they made room for a variety of approaches. At the Beacon Journal, that included Bill writing a weekly column. The thinking was to gain a fuller portrait of how readers are represented and how Washington functions. That meant more than plunging further into politics and policy. It allowed for the comical, for which Bill has a sharp eye and clever touch, his columns eliciting laughs out loud and knowing smiles.
From my perch on the Beacon Journal editorial board during Bill’s time in Washington, his weekly column was something to enjoy. We got them one at a time. Now in this collection, we get them together as a fresh way of looking back and understanding better our own time.
Introduction
When Editor Paul A. Poorman assigned me to Washington in 1984 as the Beacon Journal’s correspondent, my instructions were clear. There were plenty of reporters already in Washington covering news that came out daily from the White House, Congress and federal agencies. My job was to search for news with special meaning for readers in Akron and surrounding communities. This meant covering the Akron-area delegation to the House of Representatives, and to a lesser extent the entire Ohio congressional delegation, including the two senators, at first Democrats John Glenn and Howard Metzenbaum, and later Glenn and Republican Mike DeWine.
This meant focusing on the issues these members of Congress emphasized and gauging their success and failure with accomplishing what they set out to do. It didn’t necessarily mean ignoring national issues, but always placing an emphasis on what Akron-area and Ohio members were doing to affect these issues.
This meant, particularly when I first arrived, covering lots of committee hearings that only produced news incrementally but were important to understanding how members of Congress worked, who their allies and opponents were, and how successful they were.
In addition, a few months after I arrived, Beacon Journal editors asked me to write a weekly column from Washington to take a look behind the headlines. I wrote a column nearly every week until I left the paper in 1997.
I liked to think of the columns as sending letters back home from a foreign country. I wasn’t, for the most part, trying to give readers my opinion, but was trying to analyze for them how members of Congress from our area contributed to the headlines and what the headlines meant for our readers in terms of issues such as the economy, clean air and the United States’ place in the world. I also, on occasion, wanted to try to make them laugh.
Sometimes this meant explaining the role