DUANE BENTON IS A NICE FIT FOR MISSOURI'S HIGHEST COURT

I must join in the cheers for the appointment of long-time friend Duane Benton to the Missouri Supreme Court, where he manifestly belongs. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University, first in his class and editor of the law journal at Yale Law School, family man, naval officer and lay preacher in the Baptist Church, this lawyer-CPA is a fellow of most unusual talents. Missourians are lucky to have this southern Missouri native in public service. By the way, among the qualities his friends prize is his marvelous sense of humor. Duane fully appreciates the absurdity, the irony, the sheer pomposity of so many events and people in the political arena.

"Luck," someone has said, "is what happens when preparation meets up with opportunity." Duane's life is an object lesson in this truism; he's spent years working hard, and working smart, to prepare himself for this moment. In the process, he's made the most of the opportunities that have come his way.

Readers may be interested that although Duane did most of his growing up in Willow Springs, his mother Pat moved to Cape in 1970 and raised his younger sister Pam and brother David here. Both of the younger siblings graduated from Cape Central. Pat Benton, Duane's mother, worked for years at the Social Security office here and made many friends, among them her fellow members on the Cape County Democratic Committee. (The family was historically Democratic, and Duane not only worked in Walkin' Joe Teasdale's gubernatorial campaign, but also holds the distinction of being Congressman Bill Burlison's first Washington summer intern, back in the summer of 1969.)

Sister Pam played basketball at Central, and later for the SEMO Otahkians. Her degree is from Southeast, as are brother David's and sister Patty's Masters Degree (she taught at Nell Holcomb).

Duane managed two gruelling congressional campaigns for his old friend Wendell Bailey, winning one (1980) and losing one (1982). In the process, he survived a 1980 plane crash that left him with a bad back, and a serious auto wreck (1982), adding still more color to the story of a colorful guy. He is that rarest of animals: A street-smart genius with common sense and a winning, people-oriented manner. Earlier this week I called his Jefferson City office, where for three years Duane has been Director of Revenue (something like 1500 employees call him boss), and caught him answering his own telephone. (That's common for him.)

Come to think of it, I'm saying all these nice things about him, but this is the guy who, for the first time in Missouri history, extended the sales tax to newspapers!

I have long thought that Benton and Bailey wrote a remarkable chapter in the history of Missouri politics when they emerged victorious from a 1980 congressional race teeming with 18 or 20 candidates in both parties. Want to hear about commitment? Managing the Bailey campaign, Duane worked for nine or 10 months without compensation, living on savings, as he inspired, cajoled, begged, pleaded and quarterbacked as energetic a group of spirited volunteers as this state has ever seen. That was the old 8th District, vacated in '80 by the retirement of long-time Rep. Richard Ichord. (Bailey, now wrapping up his second term as State Treasurer and running for Governor, was redistricted out of business by a brutally partisan federal court, just in time for the '82 election.)

In his "spare time", he became a CPA, making him perhaps the only CPA on a state Supreme Court anywhere, and well you get the drift.

One indication of the bipartisan esteem in which Duane's held is the comment of Sen. Roger Wilson, D.-Columbia. Some might be ready to fault a governor for going to his own cabinet for the choice selection; Sen. Wilson, the ambitious and usually partisan Democrat, simply said, "I would have appointed him myself."

Benton is only 40. Don't be surprised if, after Duane does a few years on the bench, a second-term George Bush (or another chief executive) taps him for service on our nation's highest court. (With a boost, one wonders, from a former boss, and future United States Attorney General, named John Ashcroft?) Duane is certainly of that calibre southern Missouri twang and all.

* * * * *

Now that I know I'll have at least one high-ranking judge reading this column, let's hear three cheers for Vice President Dan Quayle. The Vice President sounded a theme that will resonate with millions of Americans when he went to the American Bar Association meeting in Atlanta this week to decry the litigation explosion and an excess of lawyers. We're diverting too many of our brightest young people into the legal profession, when we need more engineers, scientists and inventors. This is a competitiveness issue for American business, and it has reached a critical stage. Any lawyer who denies this, I submit, is part of the problem.

Comparison: Japan runs a society of 100 million people with fewer than 12,000 lawyers; the United States (population 250 million) is swarming with 729,000 attorneys, according to the Economist of London.

Word is coming out of Washington that this is to be a major theme of the Bush-Quayle ticket's reelection campaign. I have neither the time nor the space to fully flesh out this theme here, but be assured that Vice President Quayle has opened a new chapter in a much-needed debate. It's to Quayle's credit that he went into the lion's den and, when challenged by the pompous ABA president, stood his ground and gave as well as he got. Much more on this topic is on the way.