News: Town Topics, Aug. 2, 2006

Courage and Character: The Adventures of Tom Kean

BY STUART MITCHNER
(Princeton Town Topics, Aug 2, 2006)

When Scott Fitzgerald said "Character is action," he meant that fictional characters develop dimensions according to what they do in the course of the narrative, not what the writer tells us about their personal history or appearance. An effective politician can be compared to an author developing a character: he has to make himself a sympathetic or compelling protagonist in a narrative of service where campaigning, legislating, and leading become the equivalent of action. In the context of politics, particularly partisan politics, examples of "character" suggesting integrity and depth are all too rare. Say "character is politics" today and you have a contradiction in terms, particularly in regard to serving the best interests of the nation rather than taking action for personal advancement, financial gain, or at the behest of lobbyists. If you want something positive to set against, say, the ugly spectacle of the partisan savaging of a president in the late 1990s, imagine a man of character and ideals using politics to actually advance the causes of education, the arts, and the environment and you would have the subject of Alvin S. Felzenberg's Governor Tom Kean: >From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 9-11 Commission (Rutgers $29.95).

On the back of the book, by the way, is a blurb from that same Democratic president, Bill Clinton, praising Republican Tom Kean's "demonstrated commitment to bipartisanship."

The Tom Kean story might have been less timely or even less publishable had today's political climate not been so poisonously partisan. Set the story in the days when Eisenhower or Kennedy or Johnson were in office or even back in the 1980s when President Reagan and Democratic pals like House Speaker Tip O'Neill could talk things out over a drink, and the protagonist of Mr. Felzenberg's story would not shine quite so brightly, nor would the subject of a fair-minded, bipartisan governor seem so novel. As the subtitle implies, what makes this book both timely and unique is that its protagonist was a shining light of bipartisanship as recently as his stewardship of the 9/11 Commission, where again and again he politely but firmly kept after an administration determined to give as little as possible to the investigation.

Kean at Princeton
Check the Princeton chapter of Felzenberg's book for some sign of the man who would become the "great American statesman" described by Jack Kemp on the back cover of Governor Tom Kean, and the evidence seems deceptively slim. You will learn that he was "anything but the big man on campus," that he "wanted as little to do with" the eating clubs as possible, that he did well in subjects that interested him but did little more than "get by" in others, and that he didn't involve himself in athletics. You can tell something more, however, from his disapproval of the way the clubs selected their members — even after the university mandated the "100 percent rule" that forced clubs to take anyone who had interviewed with every club. Kean found this "reform" unsatisfactory because everyone knew who the students deemed less desirable were anyway. This distinction suggests the sensibility of someone who, whatever he does in later life, is unlikely to be motivated by prejudice, someone who thinks as much or more of the outsiders than he does of the insiders.

The appreciation of the arts that motivated Kean as governor was also clearly evident during his Princeton years, thanks in part to Princeton's proximity to New York. Taking his "passion for opera" beyond the music, he became, as Felzenberg puts it, "interested in the lives and careers of singers, the strengths of various conductors, and in how opera companies were managed."

The Princeton chapter also notes the growth of Kean's interest in public affairs, his attendance at Whig-Clio debates, and his disdain for one particular topic ("Resolved: That Integration Would Be Harmful to the Negro"). Remember this is pre-coed Princeton, and only a decade removed from novelist James Baldwin's encounter with prejudice at a Nassau Street cafeteria serving "Princeton boys."

Kean in Power
As well as Felzenberg keeps the story moving, the book doesn't really come into its own until its subject does. Although Kean was able to accomplish a great deal in the New Jersey Assembly (sponsoring the Equal Opportunity Fund, putting together the first urban aid bill in the state, authoring the statute that protected the coastline against unrestrained development), the problems he faced as governor take the narrative to another level, especially as he confronts the challenges of a Republican governor dealing with an Assembly controlled by Democrats.

Considering the significance of the term "partisan" in the context of Kean's career, Felzenberg makes good use of the fact that the bipartisan governor's most formidable antagonist is a "partisan brawler" named Alan Karcher, the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly. What fun to be rooting for a Republican for a change, to watch Kean the Roadrunner run circles around Karcher's Wily Coyote. The three characteristics defining Kean's style as governor, according to Felzenberg, were "patience, persistence, and the capacity to cast his opponents as narrow partisans" while casting "himself as the embodiment of the hopes and aspirations of the people of the state." My favorite such moment comes "after the Democratic Speaker overreached himself for the third and final time" and delivered a "blistering personal attack" on Kean the day after an election in which Democrats retained their majorities in both houses. Asked to account for the Speaker's behavior, Kean said "It's just his nature," and when pressed, he recited the tale from Aesop's Fables about the scorpion and the frog (the same tale used by Orson Welles in his film, Mr. Arkadin): The scorpion hitches a ride across a stream on the frog's back. When frog says "But you'll sting me," scorpion says "If I did that, we'd both drown." Midway across, the scorpion stings the frog. Before they both drown, the frog asks why, and the scorpion says, "It's my nature." To which Kean added: "So that's his nature. He just cannot help himself."

The Photo
Looking at the photo of Tom Kean on the book jacket, I found myself comparing it to certain others: the what-me-worry/deer-in-the-headlights face of our president; the Mt. Rushmore of obstinacy outlined in the great stone face of Princeton alum Donald Rumsfeld; the face of yet another Princeton alumnus, that shining paragon of fairminded bipartisanship, Bill Frist; the doughy face of Karl Rove and the similarly deadly bland face of Ken Starr; the sneering, hate-distorted faces of the likes of Fox's Bill O'Reilly and the manic cover girl of the Far Right, Ann Coulter. Look closely at Kean's face and right away you see someone who seems to be thinking in more than one direction. If you wanted to read his expression negatively, you might say those narrowed eyes suggest a cunning, conspiratorial character. But more likely, he's sizing up a thought, or maybe even two thoughts or two points of view. Yes, the man actually seems to be listening and considering. His sleeves are rolled up, he's ready to work, and it's not hard to imagine this is the person who delivered the frog and the scorpion fable for the amusement of the press and public back in 1984.

Alvin S. Felzenberg will be appearing at the Princeton University Store on October 7 at 2 p.m.