Ex-congressman returns to area for 'third career'

His hair is gray and his step has slowed just a bit, but Bill Burlison still has a lean body, a sharp mind and an abiding affection for the Democratic Party.

The 75-year-old former congressman from Southeast Missouri, defeated in 1980 after six terms in office, has returned home to set up shop as a lawyer in what he calls his "third career."

The first career was as a young politician, winning office as Cape Girardeau County prosecuting attorney in 1962 and, after three terms in office, winning in 1968 what was then a traditionally Democratic seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Following his defeat by Bill Emerson in the 1980 election that also swept Ronald Reagan into the presidency in a landslide, Burlison returned to practicing law in eastern Maryland, and won two terms on the Ann Arundel County, Md., County Council. Barred by term limits from seeking a third term, Burlison briefly engaged in a bid for Congress but bowed out when John Sarbanes, the son of retiring U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes, entered the race.

"When I became convinced that Paul and John meant business, I folded my tent," Burlison said. "My judgment proved good on that call because there were other very prominent officials in that race and they stayed in and Sarbanes blew them out of the water."

'I am so homesick'

With political avenues closed and his wife's aging mother at home on a farm near Advance, Mo., the Burlisons decided to return to Missouri. "Now I am back for my third career, and I don't know how long this one is going to last," he said.

Friends in Maryland chided him about the move, he said, telling him that he was going home because he was forced out of politics there. "But I told them that is not why I am going to Missouri, I said I am going to Missouri because I am so homesick. My wife and I were both born and reared and educated here, and it just sort of made sense to come back."

The Burlisons are splitting their time between Advance and Bill Burlison's family home near Wardell, Mo., in the Bootheel. "After 27 years, you move a home and an office to two new homes and offices and if you haven't done it before you will find it is the most frustrating experience you have ever had. It is the most frustrating thing I have ever tried to do."

Burlison's early life was calculated to take him to Congress, he said. He received his law degree from the University of Missouri in 1956 and set up practice in Cape Girardeau, near the center of what was then the 10th Congressional District, and soon ran for prosecuting attorney.

After three two-year terms as prosecutor, the chance to run for Congress opened. As he looks back, he remembers an era not so partisan, "distinctly different" from today.

Burlison took office at the height of the Vietnam War, a conflict being compared to the Iraq war today. In Vietnam, like Iraq, American troops bore the brunt of the fighting while political leaders proclaimed they were preparing native forces to take over their nation's security needs.

But the Iraq war, Burlison said, has no true parallel in U.S. history. "I think the Iraq war is the greatest catastrophe we have had, with a president leading us into it through fraud and deceit."

First, he noted, the public was told Iraq had terribly powerful weapons that must be eliminated. Then, he said, the story changed to Iraq having connections with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. But those aren't the reasons President George W, Bush went in, Burlison said. "He went in because his dad didn't get it done in the first go around."

In November, the public removed Republicans from control of Congress. But Burlison said Democrats are moving too gingerly to stop the conflict. It is time to set a timetable for withdrawal and block Bush's call for more troops, he said.

"Turn it over to the Iraqis and get out of there," he said. "That is ultimately what it is going to happen anyway."

The only other alternative, he said, is to institute a military draft and add 1 million men to the armed forces, then proceed to conquer the Middle East. "But that is impractical. It can't happen politically because the American people will not stand for it and they will not take the thousands more people that will be killed and permanently injured."

While he has strong views, Burlison said he isn't seeking to be a candidate for office again. But he's not ruling anything out.

"I'm home, and I will have a better relationship with the media and fellow politicians," he said. "The first thing I am going to try to do is my job, and what comes, comes."

He does intend to be involved in his party. "I am a Democrat, and I have been a Democrat from the beginning, and I expect to remain a Democrat."

rkeller@semissourian.com

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