One my favorite things about living in
the West is driving the winding, two lane roads, if you can survive
the sluggish RVs, washouts, rock slides and icy patches. Now,
there’s a new traffic hazard — senators on Harleys.
Even if you don’t live near the mountains, you know our
famous roads from automobile commercials on television. They twist
along whitewater rivers, slice through desert or soar precipitously
over mountain passes. From Lexus to Mercedes, these roads hustle
cars.
Some politicians have figured out that these
highways are good for selling another product — that is, their
own, highly polished images. Nowadays, it seems politicians cannot
get a haircut without consulting a pollster and a flack. So, I
should not have been surprised this summer when I attended a
meeting of Western governors in Missoula, Mont.
The star
of the show turned out to be Dirk Kempthorne, Idaho’s
governor and former U.S senator who could eventually be the
president’s pick to head the EPA. Kempthorne is a polished
politician, but here he was in a rumpled suit and unkempt hair.
What’s going on, I wondered? Was the man from Idaho
celebrating “casual Friday?”
All was revealed when
Kempthorne took the podium. He told us he had ridden his Harley
Davidson up from Boise, along U.S. Highway 12, a marvelous if badly
patched two-lane that parallels the Lochsa River. The Republican
even told us how he’d pulled over to hear the birds chirp
along the river. (This, evidently, after he cut the engine, removed
his helmet and let his ears stop ringing.) The image was Marlon
Brando meets Marlin Perkins.
But when Kempthorne
apologized for his ruffled suit, his cover was blown. He said his
saddlebags didn’t afford much room. Excuse me? I mean, this
is a governor staying in one of Montana’s most expensive
hotels. You’re telling me he couldn’t find an iron? Or
an aide to pack a regular suitcase?
I had to give
Kempthorne’s performance a grudging smile. But my facial
muscles were tired by the time I heard about Montana Sen. Max
Baucus. The Democrat had a meeting in Glacier National Park, to
discuss the deteriorating condition of its Going-to-the-Sun Road.
The Sun Road is a multimillion dollar tourist funnel over the
Continental Divide, a feat of engineering that seems to defy
gravity. Only it doesn’t. Gravity is gradually winning this
very expensive fight.
Sen. Baucus seemed to present the
image that he was zooming to the rescue, federal checkbook in hand,
because how did he arrive? You guessed it — revving the throttle
of his Harley Davidson motorcycle. And, yes, he did tip off the
local TV stations before he arrived in town.
Perhaps we
can blame Colorado’s Republican Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell
for starting all this kerfuffle; he’s the man who cruises the
mountain passes of Colorado on a Harley without a brainbucket.
Campbell busted his arm in a 1996 crack-up but continues to ride
on. He has even been inducted into a “Motorcycle Hall of
Fame.”
Times have changed since California’s Sen.
George Murphy once called bikers “the lowest form of animal,” a
line some bikers probably employ to describe politicians.
Sure, senators want to look like regular guys, even though most of
them are millionaires who wouldn’t know a carburetor from a
camshaft. The U.S. Senate is the most elite club in the world, and
senators are the consummate insiders, the nation’s
establishment figures.
Harley Davidsons, on the other
hand, symbolize rebellion and the counter-culture. You don’t
see too many Hell’s Angels eating $50 lunches in
Georgetown.
Politicians make laws. Rebels break laws.
Politicians and Harleys go together like thermal long johns on an
August day in the Mojave. Just the idea makes me itch and want to
take a shower.
But image is everything in modern politics.
Ronald Reagan sometimes blurred the line between the real World War
II he avoided and the Hollywood movies that he starred in. Our
president spent the Vietnam War in the Texas National Guard, where
he bombed armadillos; yet he dons a flight jacket and rides a
fighter jet to make a policy speech on the deck of an aircraft
carrier.
All politicians — not just the Western variety
— look for good propaganda. So maybe senators on motorcycles
aren’t so bad; they’re merely silly. We know the
mundane truth: Politicians spend their days behind desks, not
behind handlebars.
Ben Long is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a syndication service of High Country News in
Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He writes in Kalispell,
Montana.
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