BY DAN LOGAN
A free-lance writer of magazine and newspaper articles and industrial training material, he has been writing the "Chicago" column for Illinois Issues.

Dan Walker

GOV. DAN WALKER has had a tremendous impact on the life of every Illinois citizen, and he has done a tremendous amount to communicate that impact through the news media. We know so much about Dan Walker that it's easy to forget what we don't know. There has been scant coverage of his background, his motives, his view from the governor's chair. The following interview was conducted with the intent of presenting some of this information. The interview took place on February 14 in the governor's office in Chicago.

Q: The first 50 years of your life seem to be blank as far as the public is concerned.

A: Yes. I've always been surprised at the lack of perception on the part of commentators and people in the business world and in politics of what my background has consisted of. I really didn't come out of nowhere. I had a good deal of varied experience, a lot of it intellectual. If I pride myself on anything, it is my ability to think; I spent a lot of time honing it.

Q: Let's begin at the beginning. When you were- a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A: I started out wanting to be a lawyer. It resulted from my father's close association and pride in his brother, a judge in Texas after whom I was named. I continued to hold to that ambition throughout pre-teen and teen. I was interested in government and politics at an early age, and started reading Time magazine and the newspaper.

My father was always interested in politics. While an uneducated man, he was a great philosophizer; while not a religious man, an avid student of the Bible who felt that no man should run for public office unless he had read the lessons of the Bible. He was also a great student of Far Eastern philosophies and the intellectual discipline that goes with the thinking of the ancient philosophers of India, China, and so on. He picked this up as an enlisted man in the Navy.

I always worked hard in school. I believed in hard work.

Then I got diverted. World War II came along and I enlisted in the Navy. While I enjoyed it, I did not want to remain an enlisted man, so I took the competitive exams to go to the Naval Academy. Then I decided to make the Navy a career. After spending some time in the Navy, I changed my mind and went back to my original goal, which was the law.

Q: You came to Illinois from California to go to law school at Northwestern. What made you decide to settle here?

A: It was really by accident that I ended up at Northwestern Law School. I'd planned to go to Stanford. But there were mail complications. I was on a destroyer. The only school I was able to apply to was Northwestern. Those were the only papers I got.

My original plan was to go back to California. [Here Gov. Walker explained that his association with several individuals during and after law school got him interested in Illinois politics and he remained here. These individuals, all active in Democratic politics, included Adiai E. Stevenson who served as governor, 1949-53, and was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, Walter V. Schaefer, formerly a Northwestern University law professor and chairman of the Commission to Study State Government, who was appointed by Stevenson to fill a vacancy on the Illinois Supreme Court and who was subsequently elected and reelected to the court, and Paul H. Douglas, who was U.S. senator from Illinois, 1955-61 and 1961-67.]

Q: How did you first get into politics?

A: Working in the campaigns of Paul Douglas and Adiai Stevenson. In 1947 and 1948, a group of us revived the Young Democrats, which had been dormant during World War II and thereafter.

Q: That was the first time the Democratic machine coopted independents for important offices?

A: Precisely. Paul Douglas started the independent movement on the South Side years before. But the emergence of those two men, both of whom were highly regarded by the independents, started the independent movement growing. A lot of people like me got interested and involved and went on from there.

Q: Could you tell me about your involvement with the Committee on Illinois Government (CIG) and the Democratic Federation of Illinois (DFI)?

A: After Stevenson was defeated, I got a group together to keep the record on the [William G.] Stratton Administration — the CIG. We did clippings of newspapers, developed position papers, and so on. That was a research group.

Then we felt we needed an action group—so DFI was born. I was the second chairman and the first real president of DPI.

The common thread that runs from 1948 down to the present is that the Democratic Party in Illinois is not responsive to issues, is too dependent on the Chicago organization, and has closed primary system. I can remember hundreds of conversations about it with people like Jim Otis [Chicago lawyer],

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Dawn Netsch [state senator] - a whole group who were active in these organizations: "Let's get a good guy we can support and get him nominated." Every time the candidate would get coopted by the Democratic organization by going through slatemaking. We would say the only way we are going to change this is to defeat the organization in a primary contest. But nobody wanted to stick his neck out.

So there's a long background behind my final decision: "Well, I'm going to go out there and do it."

Q: You must have learned a lot about the use of power from writing the Walker Report. [The reference is to Daniel Walker, Rights in Conflict, 68, which Walker in the introduction scribed as "a graphic comprehensive count of the violence within the parks and streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, August 26-29, 1968."]

A: In a general way, yes. One thing that stands out is how to prepare for contingencies — the very great need for flexibility, one thing the city did not demonstrate in its handling of the contention. A strategic decision was made early on: It's confrontation. And, at no time was there movement to look at alternatives.

I was reminded of the problem in Jack Kennedy's relating how he learned from the Bay of Pigs. It's absolutely necessary for a leader to keep his options open as long as possible. Do not commit yourself to an irrevocable course of action until you absolutely haveveto. And then, always give the other guy room to get out. Don't pin him to the wall where he has nowhere to go except to engage in confrontation.

Q: You've said you're a fiscal conservative and a liberal on human issues. where do those positions come from?

A: I come from a Southern family, with all that implies in terms of how I was raised. Self-discipline was something my father was a very strong believer in. Intellectual curiosity was another thing he believed very strongly in. The power of the mind is something I've been hearing about from my father since I was old enough to understand. Add to that a military life, both when I was a kid living on naval stations and in the Naval Academy.

I had a great dissatisfaction with education at the Naval Academy, because of the lack of liberal arts, economics, and history, which by reaction led to a liberal bent in terms of human beings.

We also lived through the Depression, which was felt very much in our family, because my father was out of the Navy and out of work. I was attuned with the New Deal, because it was aimed at our kinds of people.

Going the other way, I have a great dissatisfaction with the way government is able to solve problems. It's been proved so many times over the last 20 years. It drives you in the direction of backing away from government spending.

Q: How about ethics in government? Several Illinois governors — including Dwight Green and Adlai Stevenson — have advocated high ethical standards in state government and separating politics from government. Do you see yourself as coming out of this tradition?

A: No, I couldn't say that. I know nothing about Green. I was not around then.

So far as Adiai Stevenson is concerned - yes, the emphasis is on ethics. But one thing Adiai did not recognize was the extent to which politics is inevitably intertwined with government. You simply cannot separate the two and he kept trying to.

I don't think you can be a successful governor unless you are involved in party politics. There's nothing wrong with that. The Constitution intended it to be that way.

Q: Just before you decided to run for governor, what were your ambitions?

A: This was no hasty decision. It was something I and a small group had been discussing for quite a while. But the opportunity did not appear to be there. It was a matter of timing and of economic opportunity — finally achieving some economic freedom.

Around 1969 I made the decision to forget the whole thing and concentrate on either remaining in corporate law or going back into private practice. Then I changed my mind.

Q: What exactly was your job at Marcor and what have you brought directly from that job to the governor's office? [Marcor is a holding company that owns Montgomery Ward & Co., Inc.]

A: Well, I was general counsel, and was responsible for all the legal policies and law suits of the company. It was a very large law department spread across the United States with regional offices. Then I had governmental affairs, which meant I was responsible for the company's actions in legislation in Washington and in all 50 states.

I also participated on the business side, sitting in on management meetings constantly. At one point the chief executive tried to persuade me to take a line vice presidency and shift over from law to the business side. I decided not to, but kept working on that side to learn.

One thing I brought was the ability to reason through a problem and come to a conclusion — the necessity for action that comes out of trial law and the corporate world: "Let's do something, not sit around and argue about it interminably."

There's a very strong belief I have had since I was little — again, my father's influence — that to be a howling success, you don't have to bat .800 or .900. Like baseball, if you bat .500 or even .300, you're a howling success. If you try to get 80 per cent successful decisions, you'll never do it and you'll take too much time. Much better to make a decision and go.

On the business side, an understanding of management by objectives and of budgeting. I told Neil Mehler [Chicago Tribune political editor] that, of all the things he has written about me, the one that piqued me was when he said I brought really no knowledge to the budget-making process. I understand Illinois government finance better than most governors because I've had background in corporate finance.

On the political side, the trial law is very helpful. You learn how to handle yourself on your feet, how to answer questions, how to express yourself.

The thing that gives me problems in government is that I have always been accustomed to thinking in a straight line from A to B. "Reason to a result." When you have a meeting to decide something, you sit down, you put your

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reasoning out on the table, you talk it through with logic, you come to a conclusion. This is the way my mind is structured.

Politics and government just don't work that way. It's hard for me to get accustomed to sitting down with politicians and people in government who have ulterior motives and pressures they don't lay out on the table that don't get taken into account in the verbalizing of the solution to a problem.

Q: Does that explain what the media call your confrontation style?

A: To a degree. But the confrontation most of the media talk about is the inevitable result of the political situation in this state. I'm not accepted as a member of the club in my party or the other party; in my own party the Daley power is so pervasive, and we've had a Republican-controlled legislature for two years ....

The only power base I have is people. The only way I can control the total situation is to take my case to the people. When you do that, you frequently end up in a confrontation mode.

Q: How important is your style in dramatizing your leadership?

A: Style is very important, but only so long as it relates to substance. If the substance isn't there, the style may last for a little while — but it's going to fall on its face.

Q: What was the most difficult aspect of the transition from the Ogilvie administration to yours?

A: Turning the departments around. I thought I could do it faster. It takes a while to really understand the interaction between the bureaucracy and policies. It took me a while to understand the relationship between Department of Mental Health operations and community groups, the interaction between the Department of Children and Family Services and private day- care agencies. between the Department of Conservation and hunters, fishermen, conservation groups. I could go on and on.

It's an area where government is totally different than anything else.

Q: Not having ever been governor before, what surprised you most about the job?

A: The difficulty of getting things done.

Also, I'm a little surprised at the preoccupation of the observing media with interaction of politicians to the exclusion of following what is really going on in government. This is true in Washington, too. It is almost as though the executive branch of government below the visible president or governor did not exist — unless there's a scandal.

Now I'm not on this kick of saying the press ought to report more of the good news, because I understand very well the realities of life as far as the reporter is concerned. I'm talking about perception of what is involved there.

I find the executive side of government — the problem-solving side, the management side — entrancing. While to me it is the most fun part of being governor, it is the most ignored part of being governor. It's hard to spend the time on it that you want to, because you are continually dealing with where everybody else is, which is over in this area.

Another thing that continually surprises me, and this is a fact of life: Because politics and government are inevitably interwoven, there is a tendency to always look for the political motive. This has to do with my philosophy of life: I believe that most often the reason why something happened is the obvious reason, the reason your common sense tells you is the reason, not the hidden reason. In reporting on government and politics, they're always looking for that hidden motive, which sometimes is there, forgetting about the fact that in most of the instances the real reason is the obvious reason — the given reason.

Q: In the columns, they write about what might be the reasons, and gossip - what other people think might be the reasons -

A: - where the obvious reason is the one. I vetoed tax relief for the elderly solely for a fiscal reason — no other reason. In fact, when you stop and think about it, there couldn't be any other - logical reason for it, because no politician would ever make that decision unless he was forced to. And yet I read repeatedly, "Walker must have been trying to get back at [Lt. Gov.] Neil Hartigan." That's looking for an ulterior motive which is not there.

[On April 22, Walker signed new senior citizen tax relief bills (Senate Bills 62 and 63).passed April 10 by the 79th General Assembly.]

Q: What's your opinion of the press in Illinois? Has it treated you fairly?

A: Oh, they've been fair overall, as fair as any press could be during the Watergate time. I was talking with the other governors about this in Kansas. Every one of us has the same problem, There has been a great increase in interest in so-called investigative reporting. Investigative reporting, while desirable, sometimes explores a story for the sake of exploring a story. I was impressed by the guidelines laid down by the Washington Post to reporters investigating Watergate. Sometimes the zeal to get out with the story means that reporters don't get all the facts together.

Let me give you an example. There was a story where the headlines said, "The chaos in the Department of Public Aid." Well, there were two key facts about that situation. Number one: story was old; it related back to May of 1974. Two: it followed immediately a fact that was not contained in the article— our taking over the Cook Count

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Department of Public Aid. Obviously, chaos to some degree is a result of that. That was a key governmental fact that the writer of the story completely ignored.

Reporters should perceive some of the realities and get them into the story with the proper expose of bad government.

There's another fallout of Watergate that has not been written about that is very, very troublesome. All of a sudden the heads of departments on federal and state levels are supposed to be independent of the chief executive. Loyalty is a discredited word. How can any chief executive of any enterprise, be it governmental or private, run that enterprise if he doesn't have department heads loyal to him? His organization will fall apart if they all run their own little duchies.

It really boggles my mind that somebody finds it strange that the assistant to the governor is talking to a director about what he's doing in his department. They label it interference. Everybody says, "Oh, God! What's the governor doing!" He's doing what he should do; he's running government.

This principle that department heads should not be loyal to their chief executive is really going to hurt government. Loyalty can be carried too far. But there must be a team concept, with a leader at the top of the team, to make any enterprise work.

Q: A governor can't do everything. What are your specialties? What do you spend the most time on?

A: Leadership. That sounds obvious, but that's what it is. Making the heads of departments feel I'm setting overall policy they can respond to and I'm watching them enough so I have control over the directions in which they are moving. That's a very difficult art when you have so many demands on your time.

The second one is just problem-solving. There has to be a place where the buck stops. The problems come to my desk and I have to solve them.

The third is relationships with people media, accountability sessions, press conferences.

The art of leadership is a difficult one. [Drawing on a sheet of paper.] If this is where the public is, and that's movement, a leader who is back here is not a leader. If a leader is right here with the public, he is not a leader. If a leader is way out here, he's going to be so far ahead of the public that he's not going to make progress because people will turn him off. You have to position yourself right about here. You have to know where the public is and station yourself out front so you're advocating direction, but not so far out front that you lose touch with people. That's a very difficult art.

Q: You've probably done more to find out what the people are thinking than any Illinois governor, using some sophisticated methods - accountability sessions, news summaries, a TV news clipping service.

A: Plus polling.

Q: Yes. Has [his been a successful communications system?

A: We have done fairly well.

Another aspect of it is internal - how you structure your staff. We're very free-flowing. If I don't have somebody in my office, my department heads and staff guys wander in at will. They are completely free and open. That kind of free-flowing communication and absence of formalized structure is absolutely necessary. Otherwise you find yourself gradually getting out of touch. It has to be a constant fight to keep the willingness on the part of the lowest staff guy to say, "Hey, Dan, I think you're wrong."

Q: Having done a lot of pulse feeling, do you feel you're getting your message across to the people of Illinois?

A: Of course, I don't know the complete answer to that question. I think reasonably well.

I think the public does perceive that I'm trying to lead in making state government more open and honest. I think the public by and large does recognize that I'm holding the line on taxes and trying to control runaway spending.

I base a lot of my reactions on the feel I get from being out there. It's not always in agreement with what I'm doing, but a friendly kind of feeling. As one guy said in an accountability session, "I don't always agree with you, but you're a gutsy guy."

One of my great tests is what people come up and say in my ear. That's from the heart. When they look you in the eye and other people are listening, they'll say one thing, but that guy who comes up and says, "Hey, Dan, right on," or, "You're wrong about that" — he's telling you what he really thinks.

Q: We've avoided talking about the walk so far. I do have one question about it. Was it a physical strain?

A: I made a bad mistake there. I didn't realize what a physical strain it was going to be and I was in pretty good shape when I started.

I also didn't anticipate the psychological strain of staying in a different home every night. You're with people all day, then you come into a strange home, a strange atmosphere, night after night. It's good for you; you learn a lot. But it gets to be a terrific inside strain.

Q: In two years, you went from corporate executive to populist gubernatorial candidate to governor. Was it hard on you psychologically?

A: It has taken time to adjust. But if you believe as strongly as I do in the power of the mind and intellectual discipline — that an intelligent man can adjust himself to a change in circumstances .... That's what I did. 

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