We welcome this week’s debate over which of the candidates for Secretary of State are true Hoosiers. It allows us to revive our argument that Indiana politicians have for some time been expatriating after they built careers on the backs of Indiana voters and collected a sufficient number of government checks.
The debate is rich in irony in that Beau Bayh, from a family notorious for treating Indiana as a mailing address, has assumed the high ground thanks to a supine Indianapolis media. In any case, my measure of Hoosierdom is that your family has owned property here for at least three generations and you plan to retire here. That is an admittedly rigid test, with only an estimated 40 percent of Hoosiers now here three generations or more.
Gov. Mike Braun, former Gov. Eric Holcomb and U.S. Sen. Jim Banks, who can trace his ancestry to the Revolutionary War, meet my qualifications. Not meeting them would be anyone in the Bayh family, the late Dick Lugar, Dan Quayle, Greg Ballard or Pete Buttigieg. Disqualified under the three-generation rule are Mitch Daniels, the grandson of a Syrian immigrant, Todd Young, born in Pennsylvania, and Mike Pence, whose father moved the family here from Chicago shortly before he was born — nice guys but neo-carpetbaggers.
But to tell you the truth, I would be happy if my politicians would simply retire to the Indiana hometown that nourished them so generously. Holcomb, Banks, Daniels and Pence seem to like Hoosiers enough to live amongst them.
For there remains a hint of provincialism in Indiana. There is an expectation, however weak, that politicians who owe their status and ample retirement benefits not to marketable skills or business acumen but to the loyalty of a constituency should retire amid that constituency. We expect them to honor hometowns, not just a P.O. box.
What the rest of us mean by a hometown is what Harry Truman, “the man from Independence,” meant by a hometown. Keeping tabs on the retired president wasn’t difficult. Harry was always at home except for his morning walks. And it was the home, please know, that Harry owned before he went to the White House.
“I’ve been taking my walks around the city and passing places that bring back wonderful recollections,” Truman wrote. “The Presbyterian Church where I started to Sunday school at the age of six years, where I first saw a lovely little golden-haired girl who is still the lovely lady that is my wife. What a pleasure to be back here at home — once more a free and independent citizen.”
Times change, say those who reject such sentimentalism. The new politician, it can be argued, serves his hometown best by maintaining a presence near a power center — Washington, New York or, if duty calls, the exotic capitals of Europe or the Orient.
We could buy that except for the fact so many of the places in which our former politicians choose to retire have more beach frontage than the Indiana towns from which they first petitioned our trust and support. What is it about the Gulf of Mexico or the social swirl of Georgetown that so commands an attention to Hoosier interests?
And while we’re at it, isn’t there somewhere that our governor and legislative leaders could visit on their annual summer trips in search of Hoosier jobs that doesn’t require a luxurious jet ride to Europe or the Pacific?
Perhaps it’s too much to ask. For our leaders, in addition to the times, have changed. A British historian, Paul Johnson, relates a conversation between King George III and an adviser following the shocking news from Yorktown:
“What will George Washington do now?” the king asked.
“I expect he will go back to his farm,” was the answer.
“If he does that, he will be the greatest man on earth,” the king responded.
Indiana has less than six weeks remaining in another election season marked by unbridled ambition and narrow factional maneuver. It may be your last chance to cast a vote for a person of accomplishment just waiting at home among family, friends and neighbors until he is called to serve. — tcl
