Make a Difference
1
Getting Involved
Traveler, there is no path; paths are made by walking.
—SPANISH SAYING
It was a cold, gray Chicago afternoon and I was headed to a meeting way down on the South Side in an area that clearly made my white cab driver uncomfortable. "Are you sure you know where you are going?" he said, observing my white face and middle-class attire. I had learned some time ago from my African-American friends that it wasn't wise to drive my Mercedes in the Grand Boulevard area because that car was much too inviting when stopped for a red light or a stop sign in front of clusters of young men loitering on the street corners. Once, when visiting a welfare office in Chicago's Austin community on the West Side, I walked the one short block to the CTA train, and a young black man raced across the street and grabbed my arm shouting, "Hey, white man, what are you doing down here? You're afraid of me, aren't you?" There was some combination of hatred and mocking in his eyes. Knowing the knives and other weapons that he and his friends surely possessed, I was definitely afraid. I remembered a friend of mine who was mugged and his arm slashed, cutting a nerve that caused him to lose the use of his thumb and fingers. I kept walking briskly, then sprinted up the stairs to the elevated train. It's hard to come to grips with the fact that a large number of people who don't even know you deeply resent you because of the color of your skin—and the privileges that color is thought to, and most assuredly does, bring with it.
This time I was headed for an afternoon discussion with a group of African-American women that the Reverend B. Herbert Martin and I came to call "the ladies in the backyard." I would be meeting with Maxine, a dour twenty-year-old felon and mother recently released from prison, and Lavon, a vivacious midtwenties mother and prostitute, among others. The Reverend Martin, a smart, handsome, charming man in his forties, had become a friend in the course of my work on the state's convoluted and problematic human services systems, and he was an important, though sometimes controversial, leader in Chicago's large African-American community. He became pastor of his church, Progressive Community, when it had only forty-two members, and in a dozen years had built it into a vibrant institution of over two thousand parishioners engaged in a wide range of activities, largely centered on outreach to the poverty-stricken Grand Boulevard community. His charisma was electric, and attending a service at Progressive is an unforgettable experience. B. Herbert, as he is often called, counted among his parishioners the legendary Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor—a man whose picture and memory are still omnipresent in Chicago's black community many years after his death.
My wife, Charlene, and I found his Sunday services inspirational and fascinating. At our first visit there, our white skins made us feel somewhat self-conscious, but the friendliness of the parishioners and the incredibly beautiful gospel singing of the huge choir soon dissipated our anxiety. The music soared in a very exciting way, and the end of each piece was followed by heartfelt exclamations of "Thank you, Lord!" from all parts of the congregation. I learned that this is part of the "talk-back" or "call and response" African-American religious tradition1 that enriches the service from beginning to end, finding its roots in the Deep South. We couldn't help but be swept up in the spiritual electricity and the deep devotion that filled the lively church.
The Reverend Martin's preaching made full use of the long pause, always stimulating responses ranging from the grateful "Amen!" to "Hallelujah, praise the Lord!" There was a musicality to his homilies, which often addressed the problems of race, overcoming great obstacles, and the importance of family. Although I didn't agree with everything he said, this church was clearly an oasis of hope and values at Ground Zero in the struggle against poverty and crime. Like many inner-city church leaders, B. Herbert ran a regular food pantry and countless other programs serving the community—without any government money. The congregation consisted predominantly of women and younger children, a large number of them dressed beautifully in white, with white hats and white gloves. The few men present were usually honored with leadership roles, in part, I suspect, to encourage their attendance. The Reverend Martin always sought out good male role models to strengthen the congregation. The services were long—one Palm Sunday service we attended lasted from 10:30 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.! When we asked B. Herbert about the length of the service, he said, "We are providing therapy to people who can't afford therapists—and look at what they have to go back to when they leave the service."
Several weeks before this afternoon's scheduled meeting, I got a call from B. Herbert asking to get together. We ended up agreeing to meet for breakfast at his apartment on Grand Boulevard. The apartment building was rehabbed public housing, and he was the only male tenant, living there with his teenage son and daughter. He greeted me at the door on the third floor of the walk-up and ushered me in to a small but comfortable apartment where a lavish breakfast was laid out on the kitchen table. Southern food traditions show up everywhere in Chicago's black community, and the dizzying variety and heaping portions are hallmarks of this folk cuisine. When we sat down I eagerly picked up a fork, but he paused and announced that it was my turn to say grace. I apologized, mumbling something about the food looking so good that I had inexcusably overlooked grace. Saying grace one-on-one with a man whose prayerful oratory is beyond eloquent made me a little nervous, but I think I did a passable job.
After some interesting small talk, he got to the point. "Gary, you are the only white guy I've seen in the twenty-five years I've been here who has come to this area to help and who has stayed with it to really make a difference. We've seen well-meaning white people ‘parachute in,' as we say, bringing an idea and good intentions. But they tend to disappear in reasonably short order. As you well know, Grand Boulevard is a very tough situation, and I don't want you to be disappointed. You and the governor need to really understand, at the grass roots, what you are up against."
He went on to tell me about a group of women who gathered most afternoons in the small backyard of his apartment building. He told of their drinking, swearing, and how they often shared their monthly welfare checks with their boyfriends. "The bottom line," he said, "is unless we can reach this group and do things that will result in a change in their behavior, we won't have succeeded in our reform efforts. You can change how the state does things and how it is organized, you can support the formation and operation of community groups, but until the ladies in the backyard change their behavior, you will not have success." I knew he was right. A rough analogy from my business world was the need to really get to know the customer. He ended by saying: "Gary, you are a great guy, I know you care a lot, but I don't want you to get hurt. You know this community and the human services systems well, probably better than any white guy I've ever met, but you may still be naive about what's going on here and how tough the challenge really is."
I was easily persuaded that there was much more to learn, and I was very happy when he agreed to attempt to arrange a meeting for me with the ladies in the backyard. He said it wouldn't be easy, given their natural suspicion of white people and people representing government. We would have to lean heavily on his credibility and persuade them that talking openly with me might do them some good and wouldn't come back to hurt them. Trust would have to be developed. My credentials for sitting with these ladies and having an open exchange must have seemed incredibly suspect. They might also wonder: why would I want to spend time like this? Meeting with the ladies in the backyard was another milestone in a journey that, much of it developing unconsciously, pointed inexorably to an intense commitment to do whatever I could to make a difference by helping to solve our country's welfare/poverty problem.
I had been the chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Human Services Reform for the state of Illinois since February 1993. For most of my career I was a businessman—a partner in McKinsey & Co., a large international management consulting firm, and CEO of Mark Controls Corporation, a company my management team and I built up from a small, marginal, money-losing valve manufacturing company into a Fortune 1000 electronic and process controls company. In 1987, the various divisions of Mark Controls were, in total, worth almost three times what the company's stock sold for on the New York Stock Exchange. I decided I should break it up by selling the pieces before some Wall Street raider decided to do it for me—our longtime investors deserved those gains. A Chicago Tribune headline said, "Firm Beating Raiders to the Punch, CEO Manages Himself Out of a Job."2 The overall strategy worked well, with the stock becoming worth $160 per share, compared with $10 per share when I became CEO. After selling the major units, I turned the remainder over to a longtime partner and went trekking in Nepal by myself in an effort to think through my future. I was on a number of corporate, venture capital, and foundation boards. A special interest, though only part-time, was the United Parcel Service board of directors, which I had joined on the recommendation of some McKinsey friends. The company has wonderful people and a legendary culture, and was in the process of rolling its service across the country, around the world, and into the air. These activities were very stimulating, but something was missing, and I felt a need for a core activity that was quite different from my business activities.
When my two sons, my best friends, went away to school, I moved from our small farm to an apartment in Chicago and also bought a small apartment in New York for business convenience and to pursue my passion for the theater and other arts. My first wife, with an affinity for the wilderness and an intense dislike of cities, went off to Wyoming. Over the years we had developed and changed quite differently, and I was single for the first time in many years. This arduous adventure in Nepal seemed like a good way to survey the possibilities of how my life might unspool from that point forward.
Trekking for days, purposely without reading material, and accompanied by a Sherpa, a porter, a cook, a yakateer (a young fellow with a firm stick who keeps the yaks moving), and two yaks laden with our small tents, food, and cooking gear, we were a quiet, purposeful group. The entire menagerie cost $25 per day, apparently attractive work in a country where the average income is $160 per year. My companions spoke Nepali only, with the exception of the Sherpa, whose limited English restricted conversation to primitive operational details. I was on a verbal fast—thinking was the only available activity besides walking. We marched on for days in silence—quite remarkable for someone as naturally loquacious as I am. I was determined to see Mount Everest, the highest spot on the face of the earth, with my own eyes, but more important, to think clearly about what to do with my life.
I was extremely fortunate to be financially secure at age fifty-one, and to have many options. I really didn't have to do anything. However, though I always enjoy traveling to an interesting spot in the world, or playing tennis at a resort, I'm soon anxious to get back and do something that I think is meaningful. My sons tease me because I can usually be counted on to judge activities on the basis of whether or not they will have some kind of "impact" on the world. A director and member of the search committee of Conrail had asked me to consider becoming Conrail's chairman and chief executive officer, a former Illinois governor had asked me to consider being the Republican nominee for the upcoming U.S. Senate race, venture capital firms had expressed interest in my becoming a partner, and there was the prospect of buying a company and starting anew.
To me, there has always been something spiritual about tall, beautiful mountains, compelling the soul to look upwards, leading to a higher level of consciousness. Years earlier I had climbed the Matterhorn and the Grand Teton, experiencing intimately the beauty and magnetism of the Alps and the Rockies, but to me the Himalayas were more awesome, more beautiful, and more mysterious. Looking down, the "usual" sights were magical endless vistas, dotted with tiny villages. Buddhist prayer flags and a prayer wheel could be seen in each village, proclaiming hope, I thought. Looking ahead, above the next segment of trail, was always another jagged, steep mountain pass, often enticingly wreathed in a wispy fog.
In such an incredibly beautiful setting, it was natural to think about the big questions: why am I here on this earth? How much of my good fortune was the result of decades of hard work, and how much was just plain luck? How am I different now than when I cleaned gas station restrooms for $1 an hour, or when I graduated from business school in debt? What am I good at, and what are my weaknesses? Whose lives do I most admire? Where does God fit into all of this? What makes me happy?
Several thoughts emerged. Yes, I worked hard, but without overwhelming good fortune, I could have been one of the illiterate Nepalese struggling at least as hard for mere survival in a remote mountain village. Instead, I was born in the greatest country in the world, white, male, and with some abilities in math and conceptual thinking. I was born on the South Side of Chicago but for Depression-related job reasons, my family moved to New Jersey when I was four. My parents were not college graduates, and though not poor, I was aware that we lived on the south side of the tracks in the then-small New Jersey town of Westfield, and the kids whose families belonged to the country club lived in bigger houses on the north side. Getting to swim in a pool, instead of using yard sprinklers, was an exciting event. It happened once or twice a summer when I was invited by a school friend to join him at the country club. My friends and I played baseball and football in the street almost every day after school and in the summers. I was sure there wasn't enough money for college, so I worked hard to get admitted to the Naval Academy.
When I was fifteen, my stepfather was transferred to California as plant manager of a paint factory, and I ended up going to engineering school at UCLA, where the tuition was a bargain at $48 a semester. I won a navy scholarship and worked as a stress analyst in an aircraft company to pay for living expenses. The scholarship was for any of fifty top schools, including the Ivy League, but I was only dimly aware of what the Ivy League was. In any event, I knew I couldn't afford to travel to the East. Why engineering? Though I had never even met an engineer and had little idea what they did, somewhere along the way I had developed the impression that if a person was good at math, engineering could be a route to a decent middle-class living. However, I found working part-time in college as a stress analyst "B" calculating airplane safety factors for Douglas Aircraft very tedious. Fortunately, a chance meeting with a banker led me to an awareness of graduate business schools that, to my great surprise, would accept engineers with no business training. I pursued this thread, and it dramatically changed my life, opening doors I didn't even know existed. The chanciness of these life choices and their profound implications have stayed with me over the years. What about a person from neighborhoods where not only is advice on college unavailable, but where no one in the family, building, or neighborhood even works.
When the rest of my family was transferred from California to Florida in 1955, I remember visiting Florida on a school break and seeing separate department store drinking fountains marked "white" and "colored." This made no sense to me at all, so I took great pleasure, one hot day, in switching the signs and watching everybody dutifully drinking from the "wrong" fountain. Suppose I had been born black, I thought. Clearly, I would not have been accepted in my fraternity, much less elected its president—a credential that helped me to be the only UCLA graduate admitted to my class at Harvard Business School. By the way, there were about ten women, all with specialized training, in my seven hundred-student business school class. There was only one African American, a man. My skin color, my ability to do well in math, my gender, those chance fragments of career advice—what luck! These issues did not come up in our family; in fact, to the extent they did come up, it was clear that my stepfather, who married my mother when I was four, was a racist. Though discussions of race didn't come up much since we were in an almost all-white town, occasional remarks about "colored people" let me know he thought that as a race they weren't as good as we were. Why was I sensitive to these fairness issues? Was it genetic in the same way some people seem naturally gregarious from an early age, while others are more reticent? Was it some sort of need to be different from my parents—to be better?
By the time I embarked on my Nepal trip, I had developed the rudiments of a political philosophy. From the navy I had learned of the incredible waste that occurs in large bureaucracies, and from my business experiences I came to appreciate the value of entrepreneurism, tenacity, hard work, and having a mentor. Lots of people with more initial advantages than I had not done as well, either personally or professionally. To me, this all added up to everyone deserving a reasonable chance, call it a "ladder of opportunity." But it is up to the individual to climb it. Life will never be completely fair, but it does make sense to try and level the playing field—not the final score.
Though not usually described this way in the press, I believe conservatives and liberals share the belief that it is not fair for children to start out life with bullets whizzing by on the way home from school, or to go to schools that don't teach the basics. It's also very tough to grow up with no productive role models—middle—class blacks have long since left the bullets and bad schools for the increasingly integrated suburbs. Rank-and-file conservatives tend to be underrepresented in the media and in academia and, with some exceptions, not very involved in the national debate. This, and their natural skepticism about bureaucracies, politicians, and the effectiveness of government programs leaves conservatives vulnerable to charges of not caring about the less fortunate. Extremists on both sides (liberals and conservatives are each saddled with a Jesse) help keep simplistic labeling of conservatives like me alive.
I'm unlikely to forget a benefit dinner for Voices for Illinois Children, an Illinois advocacy organization, where, seated at the prime table with the executive director and the guest of honor, I listened to speech after speech bashing Republicans and accusing them of not caring about children. I suppressed a strong urge to leap up and say, "We Republicans have children and love them very much. Because we know that birth circumstances are often very unfair, we help lots of nonprofit organizations and foundations that help others. Everyone deserves a good chance to help himself or herself, and many people do not get one. But we believe government has a job to do to demonstrate positive outcomes from the myriad of existing programs now spending billions without much to show for it, before we commit more taxpayer dollars." Some unthinking conservatives do believe that lack of character is the main reason people are on welfare, and some liberals don't look to character at all—thinking of all people on welfare as victims. Both views are, of course, narrow and wrong in most (but not all) cases, reflecting an intuitive lack of understanding of the much more complex reality.
During the many hours of climbing the trails up the Himalayas, my mentor and role model, Harvey Branigar, kept coming to mind. Harvey was about twenty-five years older than I, about the same age as both my father, whom I never saw, and my stepfather. I had spoken with Harvey, a former business partner and devout Christian Scientist, at least once a week on the phone for over twenty years. Harvey had taken over his father's bankrupt real estate company during the Depression, building it up into a major, high-quality development company. He sold the Branigar Organization for many millions when he was in his sixties, but stayed involved with other investments he had made, including my company, Mark Controls Corporation. He and his investment group gave me the opportunity to be the CEO of Mark Controls when I was thirty-three, despite my having had no corporate management experience. I had joined McKinsey & Co. right out of business school, and was doing well as a partner. However, after six years of consulting, the chance to have direct line responsibility was enticing. When we first met we had immediate mutual trust, the kind of chemistry that rarely occurs. This led to a wonderful yet stress-tested relationship that survived two periods of near bankruptcy but ended with a sixteenfold increase in the value of Mark Controls stock.
During the rough times, Harvey was always there: "If anyone can do it, you can," he would say one way or the other. Because I sensed that he meant it, and because I didn't want to let him down, this was a powerful message. He had a marvelous ability to inspire, to create in people the ability to see themselves at their full potential. Among many other roles, Harvey was always pushing me to not be too busy to develop my spiritual life. I remember when I was in grade school, my stepfather dropping me off at the local Episcopal church to sing in the choir. This was a remedial effort, since I had received a very poor grade in music in fourth grade. Sitting and singing through the services, I picked up some appreciation for what church was all about, but it never really took hold. For a long time I thought myself too busy running my international company and spending time with my two young sons, Gary and Mike, on their activities and other family activities to have time to get involved. Sunday morning was my only "free" time. Besides, I thought, I was doing a pretty good job following the Bible's teachings without the necessity of going to formal meetings. Perhaps sensing a lack in me, and once commenting tactfully on the lack of religious preparation given to Gary and Mike, Harvey suggested that I needed more, and he was right. I went back to church in 1985, after a thirty-five-year absence, and started to appreciate the importance and value to me of faith.
Harvey, though somewhat shy, was made of steel when it came to his unwavering personal convictions about right and wrong. He was just under six feet tall, of medium build, and with piercing but friendly bluest-of-blue eyes. His handsome, rugged face was usually deeply tanned from riding his favorite horse out on his Arizona ranch. When he talked with you, his head would be cocked and his eyes would sparkle in a quizzical way that expressed curiosity and real interest in what you were saying. He listened to every word. He could look through you, but his manner was so diffident that there was never any feeling of being threatened. He regarded humility as a great strength. Those of us who knew him well would compare notes on our efforts to get him to walk through a door before we did since he was invariably holding it for others. When Mark Controls Corporation grew and I was becoming successful and getting media attention, I received a carefully crafted letter from him warning me that humbleness was an asset more important than the visible trappings of success that were coming my way. I wasn't sure whether he had noticed signs of arrogant behavior or just felt it was a risk that came with success. I felt terrible that I might be letting him down, and made sure that I did not.
Harvey's caring for people came through in everything he did. He was a director of Mark Controls, and after the first few years we had an annual ritual: he would offer to retire and I would insist that he stay. I would then persuade him to give a talk at our annual management conference, when our one hundred top managers would assemble from around the world. In a featured talk at the conference, Harvey would tell stories about people, especially those in the factories, and their importance to our success. One poignant story about an after-hours farewell talk he had with an elderly, heavyset African-American cleaning woman at his real estate company brought some of us to tears. Harvey was retiring, and she wanted to (and did) hug him for taking a personal interest in her and her family, and for his kindness. He told the story in his usual, extremely modest way, explaining that his interest in and helpfulness to her was just the normal response of one human being to another, but it doesn't happen as often as it should. The younger Mark Controls managers, seeing a highly successful (and, of course, quite wealthy) entrepreneur in front of them placing people values at the top of the list was a powerful message. Get good people, inculcate those people with values, and you will be successful personally (most important) as well as professionally.
Harvey put most of his money in a foundation to provide scholarships for the disadvantaged—dealing personally with each individual. He would get letters from far and wide, and read most of them personally. In choosing recipients, he would look primarily for qualities of character, especially determination, as well as degree of hardship. Though possessed of incredibly good instincts and judgment, he didn't consider himself smart or particularly good with numbers. His scholarship selections favored tenacity and tough circumstances over test scores, and many lives were dramatically changed by his generosity. Every so often, I would get an envelope full of letters he found particularly interesting. Since he maintained correspondence with his recipients during and after the scholarship, the impact on people's lives could be felt. A mother of two who had spent time in prison before matriculating, with Harvey's help, at MIT was one I remember quite well. Trekking in the Himalayas provided great inspiration and space for reflections, and Harvey kept appearing in my thoughts.
As I trekked across the Himalayas I also often found myself thinking about God. Looking out at the incomparable vistas, and at the staggering image of Mount Everest, the case for His existence was overwhelming. What I was seeing with my own eyes each day transcended what most of us can even imagine. I reflected on what I read about top men of science returning to church and their explanations of how their scientific knowledge moved them toward belief in God, not away from it. I had made my own important leap of faith a few years ago, when Harvey inspired my return as a regular churchgoer. I usually found the once-a-week opportunity to listen to a story from the Old Testament, New Testament, and the Gospel very interesting and often helpful to me in my daily life. The discipline of sitting still and listening to the larger thoughts of life for an hour and a half most weeks was clearly helping to change me, moving me more outside myself. This preparation gave me a base to draw upon as the seemingly endless hours and days went by in Nepal. My trek was strengthening my belief that God is working in all of our lives. The phrase "we are all God's children" kept coming to mind as I wound my way up into these amazing mountains, passing incredibly poor Nepalese villages. The average per capita income in Nepal is less than 50 cents a day! This connected in my mind to the Canadian nurse who sat next to me on the flight from New Delhi into Katmandu who, turned down in her efforts to adopt a child in her own country because she was single, planned to come up into one of the villages to "arrange for the adoption," in effect, to purchase, a child from a poor Nepalese family. Imagine!
These larger thoughts came together with some others: the remembrance of the shock I experienced as a young naval officer when I volunteered to deliver a Christmas basket to a family in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina, and saw the pitiful living conditions—three beds in the one room, rickety stairs, no screens, a broken-down stove, and ragged, unhappy-looking people. I remembered my outrage at the segregated restrooms on the U.S. Naval base in Charleston, and the threatening response from the local congressman, L. Mendel Rivers, to my letter to him alerting him to this immoral and illegal condition. Congressman Rivers wrote me an angry response saying that if I had a problem with "alleged discrimination" I should write President Kennedy. At age twenty-three, I was jarred to learn that not only wasn't the congressman interested in ensuring that the law against discrimination on government bases was being carried out, but the thought crossed my mind that, as the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, his anger could show up in the form of a letter to the Pentagon delaying my scheduled release from the navy the following June. Later, I came to learn it was Mendel Rivers who caused most of those ships to be based in Charleston in the first place. If a powerful national leader with tremendous influence over our armed forces took this kind of position about segregated restrooms, what kind of influence must he have in other areas, such as employment and housing?
While in the Himalayas I also thought back on my embarrassment during a trip to Moscow in the Iron Curtain days when, on Moscow television, I saw homeless Americans sleeping in doorways in the inner city. The gist of the message was, "This is capitalism—you don't want it." I was affected by that message, because I didn't want the "Evil Empire" to have any rationale, and I was worried that the Soviets might have had a point. I came to believe that the message worked quite well, as subsequent conversations with educated Eastern Europeans, after the wall came down, revealed a genuine fear of capitalism that clouded their embrace of freedom. They wondered if they might be sleeping in doorways, without a caring "Big Brother" to plan their lives.
Now that the "Evil Empire" is gone there is an arguably more important need to show the world that the United States, as the paramount example of a free society, can have something approaching a level playing field for all of its citizens. A crass, but to me meaningful, rough test of success as a society would be to be able to walk by someone asking for a handout, knowing that the odds are overwhelming that the person has a decent "ladder of opportunity" to climb, and refuse to contribute. That is the tough love needed to push him or her to take advantage of the opportunity that awaits. Without really being conscious of it, I had been developing a personal philosophy about disadvantaged people over a number of years, and trekking in Nepal gave me the opportunity to start pulling the various threads together.
I had always taken great pride in the organizations that were an important part of my life (UCLA, Harvard, Mark Controls, UPS, McKinsey, and the navy) and I wanted to be just as proud of my country. Clearly, some things had to be fixed if I was going to be as proud of my country as I would like to be. We Americans had things right for 90 percent of our people, but we had some tough work to do to level the playing field for the remaining 10 percent. What could I do? I began with a self-assessment. I'm good at large-scale organization change. I enjoy people of all types—from cab drivers to factory workers to professors. I'm good at picturing how things ought to be—and how to get there.
I also knew I had an acute need for the intellectual stimulation of taking on new challenges—especially something that no one had done before. Undergirding the intellectual aspect of my Nepal thinking was my longtime service on the board of trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, the largest foundation in the country devoted solely to social science research. At the time of my Nepal trip, I was chairman of the board, and because of economic globalization and other trends, we had steered the foundation to a primary focus on poverty research. We met with and supported most of the leading poverty researchers in the country, and I had learned a lot in the process.
I remember vividly a Russell Sage trustees' weekend retreat at the famous Meyer mansion, now a conference center, in Seven Springs, New York. Mr. Meyer was the owner of the Washington Post among other properties, and his daughter, Katherine Graham, the publisher of the Post, grew up in the sylvan surroundings. As an odd contrast, the focus of the retreat was poverty, and we were joined by half a dozen leading poverty research grantees.
I had recently experienced a day teaching remedial algebra and meeting with students at the Lucy Flower Vocational High School in Chicago's inner city. Lucy Flower was one of those high schools where the dropout rate and pregnancy rate were both about 50 percent and the average ACT score was 8, the lowest in the entire city and less than half the score needed to get into an average college. I arrived the day after an incident in the schoolyard where a student had brought a loaded gun to school and had been threatening other children. Lucy Flower is an all black school, and a bitter white teacher who seemed to be counting her days to retirement escorted me around. When we arrived in the cafeteria it was quite rowdy, much like my memory of lunch period at my own high school. She turned to me and said, in all seriousness, "The only real answer to all of this is castration." Unbelievable, I thought—their teacher! The rest of the day was filled with stunning revelations—a code in each teacher's record book showing mental and physical disabilities and other problems diagnosed for each child, with more than half the children on each roster marked with one or more of these problems; the locked computer room full of computers donated by a manufacturer, idle due to lack of connecting cables and qualified teachers; the incredible noise level in each classroom, including the one I tried to teach; teachers in the faculty lunchroom telling of visits from the downtown bureaucracy where inspector/observers came to the school briefly, disappeared, and then filed reports that showed no understanding of the situation whatsoever; paint peeling off the walls and ceilings; and, finally, the principal who, I was told, spent much of her time in her office watching television. At one point I asked the kids what they would do if they were the principal. They said, among other things, "paint the classroom." By this time I really wanted to help, and turning to the teacher I said, "I'll buy the paint. Why don't we come in on Saturday and paint the classroom?" After discussion with the teachers I was told it wouldn't be possible—security would be required, we'd have to pay overtime to open the door for the building engineer who reported to his own separate downtown bureaucracy, and we'd have union problems for doing work normally done by unionized workers. It appeared that the actual work of painting would be a small fraction of the total time and expense required to make this simple idea happen. I was beginning to understand why it is so hard to fix a big city school system. In the meantime I found out that the very good Catholic schools in Chicago were shrinking in size due to lack of students, with tuition levels at about one-third the per capita cost of the public schools. But school choice is another complex subject for someone else's book.
After dinner at the Russell Sage retreat, as we were sitting in the beautiful living room of the famous Meyer mansion while brandy was served, I told the Lucy Flower story. I then asked the poverty researchers and trustees how many had visited one of these inner-city schools. To my great surprise, no one had. I then offered to arrange a visit, and no one expressed interest. Based on this and many other experiences, I've become convinced that, with rare exceptions, most poverty researchers are interested in the intellectual stimulation of manipulating data sets, writing articles, attending seminars, and occasionally designing top-down policy recommendations and new programs. This was the business equivalent of designing new products in the executive suite, without going out into the field and talking to customers—the Edsel and the "new Coke." No wonder we've spent billions for years without really finding a handle to this problem!
In addition to Russell Sage I had also become a trustee of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a foundation with a primary focus on the problems of disadvantaged children, with assets well over $3 billion. Jim Casey, the legendary founder of UPS, left a large portion of his estate to this foundation, named for his mother. Jim, a lifelong bachelor, founded UPS as a bicycle messenger service in Seattle in 1907 and led its growth to a multibillion dollar giant with over 120,000 employees at the time of his death in 1983 at the age of ninety-six.
One of the great privileges of my life was serving on the UPS board with Jim for about ten years. He had great vision, and, like Harvey, humility and a tremendous caring for people from all walks of life. This caring was manifested in the egalitarian culture that was built into the UPS organization which has since grown to 380,000 employees. Nobody has a private secretary, offices are plain and utilitarian, there are no limousines, everybody's on a first-name basis, and even the CEO answers his own phone. At the regular directors' meeting dinners we are seated at tables that include drivers, clerks, and janitors as well as front line and middle managers. Meetings are rotated around the country, and I vividly remember sitting next to a thirty-year janitor in Colorado who told me proudly of putting his three children through college and his pride in keeping his part of the package-sorting hub clean. His words are imprinted on me permanently: "You bring dignity to the job, the job doesn't bring dignity to you." Jim was also responsible for the strong company commitment to helping the communities in which it operates and for the remarkable fact that today, control of this huge company is vested in its employees and retirees with over 100,000 employee stockholders at all levels. Jim was a remarkable man, known well by almost every UPS employee, and virtually unknown outside the company.
As a UPS director, I saw helping shape the strategy of the emerging Casey Foundation as a great opportunity to contribute and to learn, so I volunteered for the board when Jim died. The early board sessions involved many hours listening to experts describe what is going on around the country in poor communities in the areas of education, teen pregnancy, mental health, drugs, and the like as background for developing a strategy to maximize the leverage of the foundation dollars in helping others. I noticed that the experts tended to see more money for their particular field as a primary solution to the problems. Given the billions already being spent, and the narrow focus of the experts, this didn't feel right to me.
Jim Casey, long interested in kids who were, in his words, "orphans," had also started a foster care organization called Casey Family Services, which became part of the foundation. I immediately started worrying that this was a high cost "Cadillac" operation that was not replicable on a wider basis. If we could get a sharper focus on the economics we could do more. It was great to help a few hundred kids, but we were the largest foundation in the country focused solely on disadvantaged children and their families. Therefore, in my view, we had a huge responsibility to leverage our efforts to change the country.
My interest grew—someone needed to get in there and make a difference, to really understand and help solve our country's welfare/poverty problem in a thoughtful, cohesive way. A leading conservative, Paul Weyrich, called this problem the "Achilles heel of capitalism," those Americans who are not part of our system as we know it. I don't worry about people who are capable but lazy. If someone is not mentally or physically disabled; has some kind of reasonable opportunity accessible to him or her; and some exposure as a child to a caring adult, mentor, or role model, then the rest is up to them. These individuals should not be denied the valuable and instructive consequences of individual failure.
An important problem with the ongoing welfare debate is the assumption that one size fits all. Yes, there are significant numbers of people who cheat the systems and some who have made a conscious decision that welfare is easier than working. However, I believe that there is a larger number of people who never had a real choice, whose life chances from their day of birth were overwhelmingly negative, and for them there is an important role for both government and private charities. I knew that every year many billions of dollars were being spent on welfare and related human services, most of it intended to help those in poverty. A whole industry of thousands of charity and government employees had been at work for years, yet the problem seemed to be getting worse. This was a problem I connected with emotionally and spiritually, and a tremendous challenge. I didn't know it, but my life was clearly moving toward the ladies in the backyard. I came back from Nepal determined to get involved, in one way or another, to make a difference for those whose life chances were really tough.
The first step, shortly after my return, turned out to be a commitment to work full-time as a volunteer in Washington in the 1988 Bush campaign, focusing on policy and speeches in the area of families and children's issues. Why not start at what might be the top? I had some credibility on domestic issues in the eyes of the campaign leadership from my position as chair at Russell Sage and as a Casey trustee.
My experience as a CEO was not particularly helpful in the campaign policy area, since in that role I had very little contact with unemployed or poor people. The hiring at our various factories and other facilities around the world went on at the local level, and obtaining qualified workers was normally not a problem. I typically met and interacted with workers after they were hired, and there were eventually about five thousand of them. However, I was subconsciously applying managerial thought to what I had learned so far in the human services area—thoughts such as accountability, listening to the customer, establishing principles and a strategy, redeploying funds, and organizing effectively.
To get introduced at the top of the campaign, I used some business connections, including one that resulted in a long chat with then Vice President Bush at a cocktail party. It was early in the primary season, before the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, and George Bush was battling Bob Dole and Pat Robertson, among others, for the Republican nomination. At our first meeting the two of us ended up talking off to the side, and I decided it would be helpful to him and that I had nothing to lose if I told him how poorly he came across on TV. I speculated that the staffers on his payroll might not be so direct, and he needed to hear an unvarnished reaction. Now was the time, I told him, to invest the time in whatever training it took to develop the necessary skills. I speculated that he was likely to smile and figure out a way to start talking to someone else. Instead, he listened carefully and suggested that I look at a tape of his recent David Frost interview and let him know my thoughts. He also wondered if I knew Roger Ailes, who had been trying to help him in this area. I was impressed by his openness, and shortly after that meeting I volunteered to go to work for him. Here was a chance to connect with the ideas that started to emerge in Nepal, and at a level much higher than I might have dreamed.
After George Bush won the primary, I was convinced that welfare reform could be an effective Republican issue in the general election against Michael Dukakis. The polls in 1988 were starting to show welfare reform as an emerging voter concern, and this would be a chance to show voters that Republicans had a heart. At one point, polls showed it fourth in importance. I wrote position papers, argued the case at the top levels and contributed to a few speeches and events, but crime, defense, and the economy got most of the airtime. I remember my excitement when I had contributed a few lines on families and children to a speech George Bush was to give in Seattle. On the day of the speech I eagerly turned on the ten o'clock evening news in my hotel room, hopeful to hear my eloquent, persuasive prose come out of his mouth and into the national debate. Alas, when the CBS newscaster switched to the campaign coverage, there was George Bush attempting to give his speech at Seattle University while facing shouting pro-abortion protesters. The entire campaign news clip that day was the protest, with no mention of the speech content. Making a difference sometimes isn't so easy!
When the campaign was in trouble—down seventeen points in June 1988—I was asked by Campaign Manager Lee Atwater to become assistant campaign manager for management. Lee called me in to his office and said, "Most CEOs are assholes, but you seem to be different. My people like you, and I think you can be a big help. We are in trouble, everybody's fighting, speeches aren't getting done on time, scheduling is a mess, the White House Office of the Vice President is at war with the campaign, and we don't agree on strategy. You're the only one around here who's ever been a real manager. I'd like your help in managing the campaign as assistant campaign manager for management." I protested that my real interest was policy for families and children, and he said I could continue with that if I wanted, but that my policy work wouldn't matter if we weren't organized to win. He sent me over to see Vice President Bush, who repeated the request, and so I began the extensive interviewing of key players, including Mary Matalin, Roger Ailes, Bob Teeter, George Bush, and the vice president's son, later Texas governor and now President George W. Bush. I developed recommendations for Vice President Bush and Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, and then helped implement a restructuring of the campaign. Among a long list of changes, I became a sort of glue for a seven-thirty meeting each morning with Campaign Manager Lee Atwater, Chief of Staff Craig Fuller, Senior Adviser Bob Teeter, communications guru Roger Ailes, Vice President Bush (when he was not on the road), and myself.3 I prepared an agenda to force decisions on scheduling, the message of the week, and other elements of the rapidly changing campaign. Discussion often focused on projecting the candidate's image on television.
Once, when the vice president was in our meeting, Roger Ailes (now head of the highly successful Fox News Channel) told him he needed to look warmer, and that he should put his arm around Barbara in public as Michael Dukakis did with his wife, Kitty. Bush bristled and said, "You go tell Bar. We've been married over forty years and getting along fine, changing things now is ridiculous." At another point Roger confided in me, "It's really hard to make him seem like a regular guy—he's the kind who thinks it's not proper to take a leak in the shower." Roger knows how to make a point graphically! I was learning a lot about campaigning. I took the decisions made in the morning meeting and passed them on to the rest of the campaign staff as the other attendees ran off to their frenetic personal schedules, talk shows, and the like. From my new leadership position in the campaign I pushed on the family and children's issues with limited success, quickly learning in the process the huge difference between campaigning and governing.
In later reflection on the campaign, my mind goes back to a meeting my wife-to-be, Charlene Gehm, and I had in 1990 with Yitzhak Rabin in his small Knesset office when Saddam Hussein had his missiles trained on Jerusalem just prior to the Gulf War. We had booked a trip to Israel before the Kuwait threat emerged, and I had help in arranging the trip from my longtime friend Harold Tanner, a leading New York fund-raiser for Jewish causes. The arrangers in Jerusalem learned of my background as a U.N. delegate, and we ended up in a series of meetings with Rabin, then—Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Jerusalem's mayor Teddy Kolleck. Most visitors to Israel had postponed their trips—there were very few in the King David Hotel—and these leaders seemed glad that we had made it. Commenting on the Seven Days War, which he had led heroically, Rabin said, "When you start a war you never know what is going to happen." Plans and intentions can quickly become irrelevant. Political campaigns are like wars, and the 1988 campaign twisted and turned in bizarre ways. Who would have guessed that the issues that would come to decide the campaign would be a questionable prisoner release program in Massachusetts symbolized by the murderer Willie Horton, the then—heavily polluted Boston Harbor, and Michael Dukakis's ill-advised photo op where he was riding in a tank looking goofy in a helmet and appearing to be the last person in the world a voter would want as commander-in-chief?
The closest we got to my interest in disadvantaged families and children were Peggy Noonan's memorable phrases in George Bush's convention acceptance speech that described a "thousand points of light" leading to a "kinder, gentler nation." Bob Teeter later told me that Peggy threatened anyone who tried to change those phrases (together with the infamous "read my lips—no new taxes") with her "scissors through their heart." She later told me that "the men who ran the campaign terrified" her. I knew that they, in turn, viewed her as a true genius with words, but impossible to manage. I give her credit as the only effective voice in the campaign even touching on the issues important to me.
Despite investing a year of my life in the campaign without pay, mostly living (at my own expense) in Washington's infamous Jefferson Hotel, I figure that I had somewhere between negligible and minimal impact raising the issues relating to disadvantaged families and children. I had to face it: in 1988 you didn't have to say much about children's and family issues in order to win a presidential campaign. However, it was a fascinating experience that helped, in unexpected ways, move me toward the meetings with the ladies in the backyard.
Upon Bush winning, I was asked what I wanted to do, and I decided that the job of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary had the potential for incredible impact on the problems important to me. What a chance to use my management background to help make effective the billions of dollars already being spent! This was an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of disadvantaged people—a shot at the "kinder, gentler nation."
The search for executives proceeds far differently in an American presidential transition than in the corporate world. There is no search firm retained to identify all the possible candidates, and there are no fixed prerequisites. What is required is to be on the lists that get put together by those who have the President-elect's ear. I did my best to be sure I was on those lists, and I soon became the leading candidate for HHS secretary, with mentions in many of the major newspapers. I was helped by the fact that nobody else who fought in the campaign trenches was interested in HHS, and Jim Baker, the President-elect's closest advisor and friend, told me he would support me for the job. My Nepal vision was taking shape in a very important and exciting way!
Then one day when I was in the transition team offices, George W Bush informed me that I had a "pigmentation problem" since the cabinet was short of African-Americans. In a thoughtful and friendly way he stated the importance of diversity in a President's cabinet, and did it in a way that made it clear to me he didn't have an ounce of racism in him. I was very disappointed, but I had to respect the need to have the cabinet reflect the electorate. Maybe it was a good lesson to experience discrimination against me because of the color of my skin on something I wanted very much. However, I wished they hadn't used up most of the other slots with white males. My consolation prize was a long column in the Wall Street Journal by Paul Gigot called "Perils of Tokenism4 …" citing me as the front runner pushed aside for tokenism and questioning whether, four years from now, we really would have a "kinder, gentler nation." Well, we didn't, and Bill Clinton adroitly exploited that weakness, along with an economic slowdown, to end George Bush's presidency.
I then went on, with the urging of Lee Atwater, who by then was chairman of the Republican National Committee, and with the earlier strong support of former Illinois governor Dick Ogilvie, to become a candidate for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Illinois, with the idea of having an impact on the reform of welfare and human services in the Senate. Dick died unexpectedly in the spring of 1988, but he had previously shown me how to build a network with Illinois party leaders, and had enlisted a number of them to support me. The Democrats had Pat Moynihan as their point person on poverty and the issues of the disadvantaged; maybe I could make a difference in the Senate since there was no clear Republican counterpart to elevate the understanding and work to really make a difference.
I set up a small "MacDougal for U.S. Senate" office on LaSalle Street in Chicago, and began running up and down the state, speaking at Lincoln Day dinners, raising money, and learning how to relate to the media. This was initially great fun, but soon became very hard work. Most county Republican organizations have Lincoln Day dinners, and there are 102 counties! One evening I finished a speech downstate in Effingham at 10:30 P.M., and had a 7:30 A.M. fund-raising breakfast with a group of Arthur Andersen partners the next morning in Chicago—a four-hour ride across the cornfields. Those nights were not fun.
I was fortunate that the top Republican business leaders in Illinois joined my finance committee. The committee was chaired by Bill Sanders, the savvy billionaire real estate mogul, and Larry Fuller, CEO of Amoco, the biggest company in the state. Soon hundreds of thousands of dollars came in. I became the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, with growing name recognition. I kept in regular touch with my Bush campaign boss Lee Atwater, who was a regular presence in the Oval Office. Lee assured me that I had his backing, and that rumors of Representative Lynn Martin's interest in running were nothing to worry about. "She is running for a House leadership post and doesn't want to make the Senate run—and besides, if she acts like she's thinking about running, I'll talk her out of it, because she'll lose." I campaigned vigorously for about six months, quite confident that the nomination was mine, and that I had the support of Lee as well as President Bush.
Quite unexpectedly, I was summoned to the Oval Office. The President and I each sat in one of those two wing chairs I had seen so often in pictures and John Sununu, his chief of staff, and Lee sat facing us on a couch. After some small talk and a few photographs, it was clear right away President Bush wanted me to step aside for Lynn Martin. Lynn had lost the House leadership race, and according to Lee, she had gone to the White House without Lee's knowledge to ask President Bush to help get me out of the race. As a congresswoman she had supported Bush in the early eighties, giving him much-needed credibility, leading to his selection as Reagan's running mate. She had been national cochair of his presidential campaign. George Bush is loyal to a fault. After hearing about my campaign and our progress and the reasons why Lynn Martin would lose, he put his head in his hands and said he had "screwed this one up." But it was clear he had given his word, and to me it was unthinkable that he would go back on his commitment. Picturing Air Force One coming in to raise money for my opponent, and wanting to be a good team player, I agreed to talk to her about supporting her, which I did. She lost by a very wide margin. I should have respectfully told the President that I was staying in the race because I would win—I was just too new in politics back then to oppose the President in the Oval Office.
In the course of the Oval Office discussion, after I agreed to pull out of the race, the President said he'd like me to stay on the team, and inquired if there was a job in the administration I might like. Knowing that I faced a press conference after the meeting, and figuring I would be asked what I "got" for stepping aside, I told him I thought it would be better if I could say that I made the decision because it was the right thing to do. Somehow, at that moment, a job offer seemed like bribery, although in retrospect I may have missed a chance to advance my Nepal agenda. Some time later, at a meeting in John Sununu's office, John asked me what I might be interested in doing. He rattled off a couple of top jobs that had not been filled, including SEC Chairman, and I told him I wasn't interested, reminding him of my desire to help on social issues. "I'd be very interested in setting up and chairing a commission on the homeless or children and families," I said. I pointed out that something like this would demonstrate that the President cared about people, which he did, and that we could come up with some worthwhile ideas. John replied, "One-third of the homeless have a drug problem, another third mental illness, and the rest are in and out with housing problems. There really is no homeless problem when you break it up." The way he spoke made it clear to me he had no interest or appreciation for my agenda. I began to understand the widespread take on him: "When you're in a room with John Sununu, it is clear he thinks there is only one smart person in the room, and it's not you." He later called asking if I would be interested in running the Social Security Administration, and after a Florida hurricane he asked if I would head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. These were important jobs that met John's needs at the moment, but not mine. However, while regrouping and planning my next move, I did sign on for a brief tour as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations. Among other duties, I was responsible for relations at the U.N. with East Bloc countries during their time of change, as well as for economic development for Third World nations. It was fun to see the Communists eagerly picking my brain on how capitalist businesses worked. I enjoyed being the first to lecture on American business and management at Karl Marx University in Bulgaria, and its counterpart in Prague. It was a tremendous experience, but I was anxious to get back to my main quest.
As an unsolicited bonus I was invited one day to ride with President Bush on Air Force One from Washington to Chicago—something to tell my mother about. The President wandered through the big living room—like main cabin, bantering in his usual friendly way. He greeted me enthusiastically and said he'd like me to come up to his private cabin after we were up in the air for a bit. My mind raced with possibilities—did he want some help on a domestic policy issue? After a while I was summoned to the presidential cabin where I found the President and Sam Skinner, then Transportation secretary, looking out the window trying to guess which steel mill or town in Ohio or Indiana we were flying over. I joined in, but couldn't contribute much. We discussed Illinois politics for a while, and that was it. The time wasn't right to try and change the nation's agenda. When we arrived I got another consolation prize—a mention in his speech to a huge crowd as a "great Illinoisian" that he was "pleased to fly in with." How could I use this newfound credibility and these experiences to move my Nepal agenda forward?
I had certainly fired some good shots in the twenty-four months since I had made my commitment in Nepal. The Bush presidential campaign, a strong HHS secretary candidacy, the U.S. Senate candidacy, and the Bush/Sununu ideas all had great potential, but none of it worked. I hadn't helped a single disadvantaged human being. Fortunately, things started to change, the tenacity Harvey always talked about would start to pay off, and the Washington experiences would be helpful.
I was back in Illinois and starting to look deeper at human services from a state level perspective. I had come to know Secretary of State Jim Edgar on the campaign circuit, and knew him as a decent, caring, honest person. I offered to help him in the policy area in his 1990 campaign for governor, and use that opportunity to get to know the huge state human services system. Out of that work I decided a massive overhaul was needed, and we needed to get all the key players, and some knowledgeable outsiders, around the table. I needed to persuade Governor Edgar to let me form a task force to work on the problem and to change things for the better.
This approach had the promise of being an even more meaningful hands-on experience than some of the Washington possibilities, with a real chance of making a major difference in people's lives. Here was an opportunity to draw upon my policy, political, business, and foundation backgrounds to lead the change in one major state with an extremely difficult city. In addition, the huge river of money, that famous $520 billion per year, was being managed in large part by the states, and at the state level you are closer to the real action. Success in Illinois, and especially Chicago, would make a real difference, and could be a model for the nation.
So there I was, in a cab on my way to the meeting the Reverend Martin had arranged for me with the ladies in the backyard. Knowing what was going on in their world was, in my mind, a crucial element in the major challenge of connecting the big policy ideas and the big dollars in a way that could create a ladder of opportunity for those willing to climb it. As chairman of the Governor's Task Force on Human Services Reform, I had become deeply enmeshed in my Nepal issues, and it was important to strengthen my understanding of the disadvantaged people who were the object of all the political rhetoric and the billions in spending, as well as to take Reverend Martin's advice.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Copyright © 2000, 2005 by Gary MacDougal.