Remembering Lee Metcalf

Lee Metcalf died 30 years ago last month. His life represented political and policy "change," the very thing now being pursued by candidates and voters alike.

With momentum cresting in this presidential primary season, the watchword is "change." In both parties, the overriding theme seems to be how to make government more relevant to the lives of the citizen, and on the Democratic side, hundreds of thousands of both independent and younger voters seem to be propelling the candidates toward a remodeling, restyling or, perhaps, a revolution of sorts in the way the federal government responds to our desires.

Change is a tall order, particularly when the very people who want it disagree about what "it" really is. As the parties and candidates struggle toward definition and development of the changes they will propose, it would be wise for them — and us — to remember that the presidency represents only one branch of government. If change, real transformation, is the goal, then certainly the U.S. Congress with its 535 members must also change.

As voters try to find the candidates who embody change, we Montanans should recall that we elected Lee Metcalf, who changed both Washington, D.C., and us, doing it in an incredibly quiet but effective manner.

Metcalf was first elected to the U.S. House in 1952 with the narrow margin of 50.3 percent. Following four terms in the House, he was elected to the Senate in 1960 and served for 18 years. His life was dedicated to political and policy change, and now that change is again in the air, we are well served to consider how Lee accomplished it.

First, he is the most experienced Montanan ever to be elected to the U.S. Congress: World War II veteran, a designer of the postwar democratic elections in Germany, a state legislator, assistant attorney general, and a justice of the Montana Supreme Court.

This unassuming man, who in a quarter century of congressional service, refused to issue a press release or read a poll, believed that change comes by both wanting and creating it through simple hard work informed through experience.

Before Metcalf was elected to Congress, seniors didn't have health care insurance coverage, our public schools operated without the benefit of adequate federal financial assistance, the only international experience offered to young Americans was to fight in our wars, the nation's public utilities — particularly in the energy realms — operated virtually out of public view, and our land, air and water has been despoiled by a century of industrial damage.

Americans then, as now, wanted change and with Montana's Metcalf, they got wit: Medicare, which Metcalf first introduced 10 years before its eventual passage; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was originally introduced as the Murray-Metcalf Bill; the Peace Corps, which passed under the leadership of Metcalf and Mike Mansfield; and unlike any other elected official, Lee Metcalf threw the bright light of public scrutiny on the nation's energy companies.

However, it was as conservationist — environmentalist — that Metcalf made seminal change for the West and the nation. Lee's close friend and ally, Judge Gordon Bennett, summed it up in his dedication speech at the naming of the Metcalf Natural Resource and Conservation Building in Helena: "In the annals of Congress his name will be memorialized as the author, sponsor or chief promoter of landmark conservation legislation."

From the initial Wilderness Act to landscape restoration, pesticide control to fish and wildlife refuges, Lee Metcalf moved doggedly and with success to preserve the best of the West, and in doing so he not only created a whole body of conservation laws for the nation, but he also changed the way we envisioned ourselves on the land.

Through the course of America's history people have wanted change. We have sought safety, security, a sound economy. From government we have wanted responsiveness, honesty, and rolled up sleeves.

The question, of course, is how best to achieve those goals. Although there is no single model to assure change, Lee Metcalf showed us that national change must include both the Congress and the president. He achieved change through dogged determination, not press releases; through experience, not promises.

One of Lee's good friends and trusted assistant, the late Vic Reinemer, said: "There are two kinds of public officials, the consensual — the many who wait for the majority support before they move — and, to coin a word, the inconsensual, the few trailblazers who light the way of the herd behind. Metcalf was one of those rare point men out front."

Former Montana Congressman Pat Williams is senior fellow at the University of Montana's Center for the Rocky Mountain West.