Who is Abner Mikva? An Article about Ab from Chicago Tribune’s Bruce Dold
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary
evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine expressed that profound sense of distrust toward government in his seminal
1776 pamphlet, "Common Sense." Two centuries later, the writer P. J. O'Rourke offered a
similar, if more graphic, sentiment: "Giving money and power to government is like
giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
There's never been a shortfall of cynicism toward government, but for the last quarter-century
in the United States it has been an exceptionally strong market. Even those who stand at the
top of the heap contribute--it was Ronald Reagan who in 1974 said, "In too many instances,
government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them."
From Watergate to Whitewater, a host of real and perceived cases of mendacious behavior on
the part of America's political leaders has just about dismantled public trust, which makes it all
the more remarkable that Abner Mikva, JD'51, whose life has turned on many of those events,
remains an evangelist with a creed that government is not just necessary, it is a compelling
force for good.
Mikva, 70, has had an extraordinary vantage point from which to forge his faith. He is one of a
small group in the nation's history to have served in high positions in all three branches of the
federal government: as a Democratic member of Congress; as chief justice of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for Washington, D.C.; and as chief counsel to the president. He retired from the White
House post last fall and he's coming home now, having received the University's Alumni Medal
in June and returning as a visiting professor and the Walter Schaefer fellow at the Law School
this fall.
He returns unbowed by the prevailing cynicism--indeed, as someone who believes the need for
government is greater than it has ever been. "Government is incredibly efficient," Mikva says.
"The problem is there's no newsworthiness in that, no reason why television or the press would
write about the successful program.”
"The closer we live together, cheek and jowl, the more we need government," he argues. "I
hope it's not Pollyannaish optimism. I just think there's no way that this many people can
survive together without government."
Mikva's introduction to government, Chicago style, was a curt message that it could survive
without him. It's a story that has become part of the city's political lore.
He was a U of C law student when he stopped in the 8th Ward Regular Democratic
headquarters, looking to volunteer for duty. This was suspect behavior.
"Who sent you?" the ward committeeman asked him.
"Nobody," Mikva answered.
"We don't want nobody nobody sent. We ain't got no jobs," the committeeman told him.
Mikva told him he wasn't looking for a job. This was even more suspect.
"We don't want nobody that don't want a job. Where are you from, anyway?"
"The University of Chicago," Mikva told him.
"We don't want nobody from the University of Chicago in this organization."
Thus ended Mikva's career as a cog in the Democratic machine.
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mikva graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1951 from
the Law School, where he edited the Law Review and was named to the Order of the Coif. He
clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sherman Minton, then returned to Chicago to practice labor
law in the firm of the late Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.
He had the political bug, though. In 1956 he ran for the Illinois House against the Democratic
organization and was, amazingly enough, elected, the first independent Democrat from Chicago
in the legislature. Mayor Richard J. Daley's forces tried to freeze him out. They wouldn't let him
pass any bills in the first year, but he quickly became known as a crusader, pointing to
corruption in the state welfare system and lobbying for open-housing laws. He made enough of
a splash to be named "Best Freshman Legislator" by the reporters in Springfield. Later in his
Springfield career, he authored comprehensive reforms of the state mental-health and criminal
codes.
"We were known as the Kosher Nostra," says Illinois Appellate Court Justice Anthony Scariano,
who shared an apartment with Mikva and longtime U.S. Senator Paul Simon when all three
were young state legislators. "Most of our guys were Jewish, and I guess I was the only one who
could lay claim to the Nostra part."
The roommates made an odd trio: Simon a teetotaler who stayed up late into the night clacking
away on his manual typewriter; Scariano and Mikva, well, they liked to have a good time-sometimes at Simon's expense:
"We went down to Paul's hometown one time and Tony couldn't resist," Mikva recalls. "He
goes into the local bar and says out loud, 'We're staying with Paul Simon and we want some
booze!'"
Mikva had an up and, mostly, down relationship with Chicago's boss. Daley helped 83-year-old
U.S. Representative Barrett O'Hara stave off a Mikva challenge in 1966, but two years later the
Daley machine dumped O'Hara and helped launch Mikva to Congress.
"Ab was gutsy and did his homework," says Simon, who retired from the U.S. Senate this year.
"And Daley respected those of us who were not in agreement with him. It was a grudging
respect, but it was respect."
As Mikva became more outspoken on issues that bedeviled Daley, such as open-housing laws
and the mayhem of the 1968 Democratic Convention, the mayor and his machine became
outright hostile to the congressman.
Whatever shaky understanding Mikva had with Daley was quashed in the convention chaos.
"That was the most awful political experience I've ever had," Mikva says. "The convention itself,
the bloodshed, the violence, the anger, the breakdown of institutions--everything went wrong,
including our police department.
"All the things that made Daley successful started to crumble. It made me aware what a thin
veneer our civility has, and probably prepared me for some of the incivility that goes on now."
When Mikva steps foot in Chicago's United Center in August, it will mark the first time he has
come to the Democratic Convention since 1968.
In 1971, with Daley's quiet approval, House Republicans redrew congressional boundaries to
throw Mikva into a losing contest with popular representative Ralph Metcalfe. Squeezed out of
a political future on the South Side, Mikva headed for Evanston and an open congressional seat.
That 1972 race--in which Mikva lost to Republican attorney Sam Young--set the stage for some
of the most memorable political campaigns in Illinois history. Mikva challenged Young again in
the Republican debacle of 1974, the first election after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in
disgrace. Had Watergate turned out to be nothing more than a third-rate burglary, Mikva's
congressional career probably would have ended right then.
It was, in many ways, an unlikely match: Mikva would be representing a suburban district that,
while having liberal pockets, was largely wealthy, conservative, and populated with business
executives--yet his agenda was considered quite liberal. He was, after all, one of the first Illinois
Democrats to endorse George McGovern in 1972, and he had emerged as the nation's leading
proponent of gun control, once calling the National Rifle Association the "street-crime lobby
in Washington." But he won the 1974 race and survived on the North Shore, even occasionally
garnering praise from unexpected places. Mikva's work on the House Ways and Means
Committee was extolled by the Wall Street Journal, no less, which called him "intellectually
gifted" and "probably the liberals' leading straight strategist."
"He stood up for what he believed in and forcefully advocated for it," says U.S. Representative
John Porter, who lost to Mikva in 1978. "People respected him for it." In fact, Porter believes
the NRA unwittingly cost him that election. Porter led in the polls by 10 points with just a few
weeks left in the campaign when the NRA announced it was gunning for Mikva. Even though
Mikva and Porter shared similar views on gun control, Mikva spent the final days campaigning
against the NRA, and it worked like a charm.
But every election was a war. In 1976, his third match against Young, Mikva won by just 201
votes. After he barely beat Porter, Mikva decided he had had enough of life on the political
edge. He sent word to President Jimmy Carter that he would like to be considered for
the bench.
Carter obliged, in 1979 nominating Mikva for the federal appeals court in the District of
Columbia, considered the most important court in the country after the Supreme Court. But the
nomination touched off a brawl with Mikva's nemesis, the NRA, which spent more than $1
million in a six-month lobbying effort to block his Senate confirmation.
"Mr. Mikva will go to any length to get your guns and my guns," Senator James McClure of
Idaho declared. The heavy lobbying forced some professed Mikva supporters, including Senator
Bob Dole, to vote against him, but in the end he barely squeaked out of the
Judiciary Committee and was confirmed on a 58-31 vote, a vote he is sure he'd lose today.
Mikva won largely because conservative Republican friends such as then House Minority Leader
Bob Michel stood by him under the pressure. "There's no way a prominent Republican leader
could testify for me today," he says. "That kind of bipartisanship just has gone by the boards.
It's too bad." As it was, the confirmation fight dogged him even after he went on the bench. On
the day of the confirmation, McClure filed a lawsuit challenging the appointment's legality--a
suit that hung over the new judge for two years, until it was rejected by the Supreme Court.
Mikva spent 16 years on the bench, serving with such jurists as Robert Bork, AB'48, JD'53;
Clarence Thomas; Antonin Scalia; and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He rose to chief judge in 1991, and
he authored more than 300 opinions. Among the notable rulings he wrote were
several defending constitutional protections for free speech, including one decision that
stopped the Federal Aviation Administration from banning political ads in Washington, D.C.,
airports.
His most controversial opinion curtailed the Reagan administration's efforts to deregulate
without congressional approval: The Supreme Court upheld the ruling that the National
Highway Transportation and Safety Administration had exceeded its authority by revoking rules
for automobile air bags. Mikva also points with considerable pride to an opinion that struck
down a Defense Department regulation against gays serving in the military, even though his
ruling was ultimately reversed.
As U of C Law School Dean Douglas Baird wrote in nominating Mikva for the Alumni Medal, his
"work on the bench evidences not only his commitment to free speech and other civil liberties,
but also his acute awareness of the role of the judiciary under our Constitution and its
relationship to both the executive and the legislative branches."
While making legal history, Mikva didn't exactly hide behind his robes. He had a small role as
the chief justice swearing in the president in the 1993 movie Dave, and he once wrote a piece
for TV Guide that ripped The People's Court. The show, Mikva opined, was "doing for the law
what Dynasty does for monogamy.'"
Mikva was often mentioned as a candidate, but 12 years of Republican rule in the White House
thwarted any hopes of a seat on the Supreme Court. By the time President Bill Clinton was
elected, Mikva knew he would no longer make the short list for the high court. "I'm too old, too
white, too male, and too liberal," he told reporters.
While he says he has no regrets, friends suggest it must have been tough for the traveling
companion of justices Scalia and Ginsburg, also a poker buddy of Chief Justice William
Rehnquist, to acknowledge he wouldn't join them on the highest court.
Clinton, however, had a different idea for Mikva: In 1994 the president asked him to replace
Lloyd Cutler as White House counsel. Mikva gave up his lifetime appointment to the bench-and stepped into a maelstrom. Much of his time was spent defending Clinton over FBI actions
at Ruby Ridge and Waco and several investigations of cabinet members. He pored over
thousands of Whitewater-related documents. ("There's nothing there.") But a year after he
took the job, he quit.
No scandal, he insists, the long hours and intense work were just too much.
Now Mikva and his wife, Zoe, PhB'47, AM'51--who retired last year from a fundraising job with
the Advocacy Institute--are selling their house on Capitol Hill and returning to Chicago, where
they will be close to their three daughters: Two are lawyers, the third is a rabbi.
He'll set up shop at the University of Chicago, with a considerably less hectic work schedule:
seminars and lectures in the fall, winter in Florida, a class schedule in the spring. He'll have
some time to reflect on a 40-year political and legal career and wait for the cycle to turn, for the
public's cynicism toward government to run its course. He trusts that it will.
Such trust is remarkable, considering the course of his political life. His initial interest in politics
was rebuffed because he was more interested in ideas than patronage. A president's disgrace
helped him to gain a seat in Congress. His advancement to the court was nearly snuffed by the
stranglehold that one special-interest group held on Congress. And he concludes his career at a
time when the Republican Party has gained more potency than it has had in 40 years by
standing for just about everything Mikva opposes.
In the face of all that, Mikva preaches faith and patience.
”There's no question that the Vietnam War and the ['68] convention and the Nixon era and
Watergate all together sowed a lot of disillusion in the body politic, and has allowed this new
generation of politicians to grow up being very cynical about governments and about the
institutions," he says.
"We've had these ebbs and flows before. We've had periods when people were very down on
government in this country: The wrenching of institutions that we had in the Civil War. The
incredible hatred that was spewed out against Lincoln and other federal officials.
The Reconstruction period was pretty grim," he says. "We had a lot of cynicism about
government in the late '20s and early '30s. A lot of serious people were thinking that we need a
new system. And yet after each one of those periods we've come back. "If you have trust in
government, the uncivil, the crazies will get thrown out," Ab Mikva predicts. "They always have
in the past."