No forgiveness for reformer

By Ken Newton

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- During the last moments of Sunday's closing ceremony, an NBC camera caught a rare moment of reality in the fairy-tale script used for the Olympics. An American athlete, on the stadium floor dancing to Bon Jovi, looked in the lens and, in a message that contradicted his physical joy, said, "I need a job."

What does a bobsledder do once they close the Olympic village? Don't pity these folks. Most of us could never hope to occupy the stage they did, even if it was for a short time. It comes as a jolt when the world of adulation melds into the real world.

When I was a young reporter, I worked in a building that was a converted furniture store, my desk near the large windows that faced a downtown street. At one point, the headquarters for a congressional candidate moved into the empty storefront across the street. And that's how I met David Barklage.

We both worked strange hours in those days, and the lighted storefronts on the deserted downtown street smacked of Edward Hopper. The phone rang one night. When I answered, a voice asked, "Want to go half on a pizza?" We ate pizza that night and others, two political junkies gossiping. Despite being just out of college, David managed the campaign of an incumbent congressman and proved the oddest of creatures in his line of work: a zealot with a sense of humor.

Unlike a lot of Reaganistas, though, he saw government not as a necessary evil but as fundamentally necessary. He held hope that those populating the public sector, if restrained, could actually do some good for the public.

This idealism intact, he later became the youngest person ever elected to the Cape Girardeau City Council. He remained a valuable news source, and we had lunch every month or so to stay in touch, then with less frequency.

I last saw David a few years ago at the State Capitol, and we caught up on old times and talked about his political consulting business, aimed mainly at winning Republican majorities in the Missouri General Assembly.

The last time I talked to him was just after he became chief of staff for Peter Kinder, his old political patron, who had just become president pro tem of the Missouri Senate. The Senate had its first GOP majority in 53 years, and David told me on the phone that day that the opportunity existed for cleaning up decades of bad governmental habits.

When this cleaning began, first with a 10 percent reduction in the chamber's $12 million annual budget, senators wigged out. One called it a "massacre." David helped orchestrate it, knowing that bucking inertia makes a rough ride.

Jefferson City forgives a lot of faults É forgives impudence and intemperance and infidelities. What it can't forgive is a reformer. Institutions lean on nothing if not the status quo.

David resigned his Senate job last week. Democrats wanted to tie up the legislative session while they investigated whether his ownership of the political consulting business conflicted with his public duties. Democrats called him "a distraction." Other than his boss, few Republicans came to his defense.

A student of this art, David knows how things work. You don't have to be guilty of anything; the appearance is enough. And when you're cut, no one in politics, friend or foe, offers a tourniquet.

It bothers me some that a friend got nicked up with this. But David's a big boy in a rough business. He might even enjoy the irony that his departure from the Senate frees more time to work for the election of more Republicans.

Safe from reality, Democrats did not heed the lesson of Sun Tzu (or was it Don Corleone?): Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Ken Newton is the online editor of the St. Joseph News-Press and a former editor of the Southeast Missourian.