WASHINGTON — When she was in high school in Springdale in the 1950s, Kay Goss remembers her father pointing out U.S. Rep. Wilbur Mills and saying to her: “There goes a leader.”
Goss, the author of a biography on Mills, had gone with her father to the University of Arkansas to visit the congressman, who was then an up-and-coming House member.
Over the next 20 years, as a political-science student at the university, a professor and congressional staff member, Goss watched Mills’ rise and fall closely. Now she has written a biography of Mills who, as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was regarded as the most powerful man in Washington for more than a decade in the 1960s and early 1970s.
In Mr. Chairman: The Life and Legacy of Wilbur D. Mills, which was published last week by Parkhurst Brothers Inc. in Little Rock, Goss depicts the heated debates over tax and health-care policy during Mills’ tenure. And in discussing Mills’ downfall, when his career succumbed to alcoholism and a friendship with Annabel Battistella - an Argentine burlesque dancer known as Fanne Foxe, the Argentine Firecracker - Goss shows that even the most powerful can suffer prolonged periods of personal weakness.
“One of the main reasons I wrote this book is I want the young people of Arkansas to understand that a person from a small state can rise in the public life,” Goss said. “That was reinforced by Bill Clinton. They both decided they wanted to go for the whole thing, to take politics as far as they could take it.”
Goss chronicles Mills’ life from his birth in Kensett, Ark., in 1909 to his election by White County voters as the youngest-ever county judge at age 25 and his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1938. At the time, at age 29, he was the youngest person ever elected to the House, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.
As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mills, a Democrat, was in charge of writing all tax and health-care policy.
He also ran for president in 1972.
Mills was generally a conservative and favored keeping government expenditures in check. But because Mills was from a poor state where many received substandard health care, Goss said Mills wanted to create a government program that would assist the elderly. But in 1965, as he developed Medicare, he knew that rising health-care costs would make it difficult to keep the program solvent.
“He said that if you establish a program like this, you’re going to have to fund it,” Goss said. “The cost is going to increase every year.”
Stuart Altman, a healthcare expert at Brandeis University who worked at the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare in the 1970s, agreed, and said Mills foresaw a lot of the budget battles currently being waged by lawmakers.
“He was very concerned that, if left alone, Medicare and Medicaid would overspend any budget,” Altman said.
But Altman said Mills always attempted to include input from both parties in crafting policy to keep the program afloat.
“He was a very ‘across the-aisle’ kind of guy,” Altman said. “I don’t think he’d be too pleased with the sort of partisanship going on today.” Mills’ approach, Altman said, was different from today’s lawmakers, who are attempting to avoid the “fiscal cliff” - a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect at the end of the year. The automatic changes will occur if lawmakers are not able to reach a deal.
As they attempt to avoid the deadline, lawmakers have brought tax policy and Medicare, two of Mills’ areas of expertise, to the table for discussion.
During his time at the helm of the Ways and Means Committee, Mills demonstrated a mastery of both subjects and an ability to get members of both parties to come to a deal.
“My guess is he’d be embarrassed by the chicanery and silliness of the past few years,” said Theodore Marmor, a professor emeritus at Yale University and author of The Politics of Medicare.
Marmor said the current deadlock over tax policy and entitlement spending has eroded Congress’ credibility. Mills, he said, was devoted to the institution of Congress, and would have worked to reach a deal in order to maintain the institution’s respect.
“Now you’ve got people playing Chicken Little games,” Marmor said, referring to the fabled “The Sky is Falling” figure. “He was not a Chicken Little. He would have struck a deal and figured out a responsible way to go forward.”
In her book, Goss quotes The Washington Post, which said of Mills upon his 1973 announcement that he was considering retirement: “Wilbur Mills is something that goes beyond his formal rank as committee chairman, and something that defies easy definition. It is something in the personality of the man, his calm self-assurance, his firm command of the committee that handles the critical issues that touch all Americans, a feeling that if Mills says the bill is a good one then it is.”
In October 1974, Mills was a passenger in a car that was stopped by U.S. Park Police for speeding and driving without lights. Battistella, one of several people in the car, ran outside, and in an apparent attempt to divert attention from the congressman, jumped into the Tidal Basin, a body of water off the Potomac River near the Jefferson Memorial.
The incident created lots of bad press, and with it came greater scrutiny of the chairman’s increasingly erratic behavior. Mills later admitted that he was addicted to alcohol.
Two months after the Tidal Basin incident, Mills retired from his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, and began dedicating his life to recovery. Two years later, he retired from Congress.
As Mills struggled with alcoholism, he realized he could use his place as a recognized leader to take hope to people who struggled with addiction, Goss said. Until his death in 1992, Mills spoke on behalf of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12-step recovery program he used to remain sober.
His alcoholism, Goss said, simply revealed that Mills was human.
“Nobody’s perfect,” she said.
Goss is the president of World Disaster Response Management, a disaster-recovery consulting company, and has held several private sector jobs. She also worked for Clinton’s gubernatorial administration in Little Rock as senior assistant for intergovernmental relations and during his presidency where she served in a similar post.
Goss will sign copies of her book Saturday at Wordsworth Bookstore, at 5920 R St. in Little Rock from 1-3 p.m. Details are available by calling (501) 663-9198. On Dec. 2, she will sign copies at the Historic Arkansas Museum at 200 East Third St. in Little Rock from 1-4 p.m. More information can be obtained by calling (501) 324-9351.
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 11/25/2012