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“There are six generations of us hanging around in Wyoming and that does please us greatly,” Al said. “We don’t get up and tell people that everyday but man, oh man, it’s in your heart and your gut and you know you want to preserve it.”

JH Weekly: Both of you have achieved a point of iconic reverence in the Cowboy State, but you both play in Peoria, Illinois too. You’re at home on the range but comfortable in metropolitan circles. You both took a year of schooling in the Midwest for your first taste of life outside of Cody, Wyoming. I imagine your Boy Scout experience at Heart Mountain was likely an eye-opening experience as well.

Pete: For both of us, you just cited the same two incidents because Cranbrook was an eye-opener for a couple of guys growing up in a small town, going to a small high school, then going out to Michigan amongst these boys that were pretty tough and smart. It was an eye-opener but so was Heart Mountain for both Al and me.

(As members of the Boy Scouts, the Simpsons visited the Japanese internment camp at Heart Mountain during WWII. While there, Al befriended Norm Mineta, who would later achieve political fame. The two are still close friends.)

JHW: You both were born into the Great Depression. The state, the country, the world is in a similar economic downturn. What do you recall of growing up in those trying times?

Al: My dad was practicing law in Cody, Wyoming. Pete and I were little boys. All we do remember was the railroad station was across the river and suddenly, in the ‘30s, these people would come knocking at the door. And they might have a Fedora on or a nice coat or suit and they would ask, “Is there any work we could do here?” Pete and I would talk with them. We had no fear of them. They took us across the river and showed us how they cooked their food with a fire and tin can. They were just good solid Americans that didn’t have anything to eat or do.

Pete: I can also remember one time dad had accumulated a law fee or something and he bought Al and me a couple of pretty nice-looking bikes. We rode them down to the city park and we both got a nosebleed from guys.

Al: They beat us up!

Pete: They said, “Where’d you get that fancy stuff?” We went back home and tucked the bikes in for a while until we could toughen up.

JHW: The U.S. is currently searching for a graceful exit from Iraq. Afghanistan is now the new hotspot. Alan, you were part of the Iraq Study Group. Is it time for an Afghanistan Study Group?

Al: I was on the Iraq Study Group. We had 79 recommendations presented to [the Bush] administration and they followed about three of them. Now they have followed 75, or so, of them.

But don’t forget, people may not like the Iraq war or the war in Afghanistan, but they respect the military. That’s the true difference from Vietnam, where they hated the war, and they hated the soldiers. There are not people out in the world, unless they really are slobs and total non-patriots, who hate the military. You can’t hate the military. But people don’t think we’re at war.

Pete: What is it that the Stars and Stripes quoted one of the soldiers saying? “We went to war, and America went to Wal-mart.” To a great extent that’s true.

JHW: Al, you have stated that you never really had interest in governing. Your passion is in legislating.

Al: I couldn’t govern. It would be impossible for me. I couldn’t administer my way out of a paper bag. But I sure could legislate. I learned it in the Wyoming legislature. There’s a craft, a skill to legislating. It’s a sport and I enjoyed it thoroughly but I could never have been a good governor or mayor or anything else.

JHW: Yet you were tapped as a possible VP candidate for Bush in 1988?

Al: My name was in the mix. Pete and I met [George H.W.] Bush in ’62 when our father took over his father’s (Prescott Bush) office. We’re very close. So I called him and said, “I see my name popping up here and there, but go ahead and take my name off the list, George, I don’t want any part of it. I’d be at the funeral of every dead leader in [the world].

Pete: I am just now looking at a picture as we sit in Al’s outstanding office. It is a picture of George H.W. Bush and he has his head thrown back laughing to beat the band as Al just zings one in there. He loved the humor and the stories.

Later, when Al did have his name publicly announced as ‘off the list’ after the [VP] choice was made, Al’s comment when asked why he didn’t want it was: “I didn’t want somebody shining searchlights on my fishing stream up the South Fork.”

Al: We had fished with the Bushes when he was Vice President. We went to Glacier just the four of us – Barbara, George, Ann, and myself – for three wonderful days. We would sit by the fire at night having a beer and laughing, and there’d be about 84 sets of eyeballs staring at you.

JHW: I’m quoting William E. Simon. “Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.” There is certainly no shortage of bad politicians today. We have a corrupt Illinois governor, a South Carolina governor with an Argentinean mistress, and a disgraced Presidential candidate who admitted to an extramarital affair which may have resulted in an illegitimate child. Do the American people even care about their leaders’ misbehavior?

Al: I think they do care. Let me tell you, the guy at the barstool in Buffalo, he knows what Sanford’s doing and [Blagojevich] and he’s offended by it. But for every one of those there are five or ten guys doing it right. The media is interested only in conflict, confusion, and controversy; not clarity.

Here’s an example: Enzi and Kennedy did 28 bills together that had to do with workforce safety and public health safety. How much did you read about that? Not very damn much. That’s the way it works and it’s sad. As long as you’ve got talk shows babbling into the vapors about every indiscretion, good God … I tell people “turn off your television.”

Pete: Al has often said, when you think about it, at least 85 percent of those men and women are trying to do it right. There are 15 percent of [politicians] who are boobs, nuts, airheads, and maybe even criminals. But 15 percent of the population is boobs, nuts, airheads, and maybe criminals.

JHW: What do you think about the practice of bloating bills with sneaky, unrelated stuff as riders? The healthcare bill, for instance, is a monster.

Al: That is a classic American artform. That’s happened since people began to legislate in the Continental Congress. You see the train coming down the track and you say, “Hey, that baby is gonna pass, so I’m gonna put a wheel under that.” One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. There hasn’t been anything that has come up that something didn’t get tacked on as a rider and that’s the way it’s always worked.

Pete: I think in the state legislature, here at least, it’s a little tougher to do.

Al: Yeah, you don’t do it here.

Pete: You’re too close to these guys. Everybody’s bound with the same leg irons. You live with the people you represent and you live with the laws you make so you just don’t do that.

Al: I remember [Ted] Kennedy once said, “God, Al, it’s late at night and the bill’s floatin’ and I need some money for a witches museum in Salem.” I said, “That’s great, but I need a new fence for the elk preserve. Do that, and it’s a deal.”

JHW: You’ve been called “folksy” by some, Al, and “acerbic” by others. Men and women who know the real you might use terms like “loyal” and “principled.” I mean this in the kindest way possible and with no intentions of rushing anything, but what do you wish they will write on your tombstone?

Al: I want it to say, “You would have wanted him on your side.” That’s it right there; because loyalty, especially when your friends go down in flames and everybody leaves them, that’s all you’ve got left sometimes.

Pete: I quote the rabbi that said, when somebody looks into his casket, he’d like to have them say, “I think he moved.”

JHW: You saw Jackson Hole in the early days before the money came. What has it become now? Have we killed the golden goose here? You’re both businessmen and politicians – should government have any role in preserving Jackson’s heritage or wildlife?

Al: We’re going to cover that when we get there. There is a lot to that. But when the government owns 97 percent of the county, I would venture to say they are pretty well involved. You can’t have various governments – state, county, and federal – owning 97 percent of your county and then pretend you’re in charge.

Pete: I know that our dad was really involved in fighting the so-called Park extension (GTNP). Our grandmother came by one time and after seeing what had happened to the rest of the county, with the roadside stands and one thing or another at that time, and she said an amazing thing, because she was on the side of preventing the extension; she said, “Well, you can be wrong.” And that was surprising for her to say, but she loved the scenery, she loved the view, she loved the way it looked after all those years. Wherever the park protection is, it still looks that way.

Al: Our dad said the same thing. I see Cliff Hansen also said the same thing. They both said, “We put up a good fight, but we thought we were being deceived because they thought Snake River Land & Cattle Company was a private organization.” But it was the Rockefeller organization and it had to be that way otherwise the price of sagebrush would have gone way up for the people trying to preserve it. Dad said, “They were right, and we were wrong.”

JHW: Both Cody and Jackson depend on tourism to some extent. What are the similarities and differences between the two western Wyoming towns?

Pete: The upper South Fork has a lot of people that have moved in like Jackson people moved in on the west side of town and up toward Teton Village.  And those are people with lots of bucks who see the country and the scenery and love it and sequester a piece of it.

Al: We don’t have that tremendous influx of wealth here. That’s just not Cody. The one other difference I’ve noticed from being in public life is that in Cody, people don’t give a damn who you are. And in Jackson, there’s some people who hope somebody knows who they are. That’s a very significant difference.

Pete: Some of the students in my class have pointed out the circle with the JH in it, which is a sticker on a lot of cars. Somebody said that in Europe the distinctions between countries is designated by a circle with an initial in it, and sure enough there are people who believe Jackson Hole is a separate country.

JHW: We sure vote that way.

Al: You said it right there. There is a great anti-Cheney disgust or hatred in that county that’s very real.

Pete: But you also have a pretty powerful right-wing there.

JHW: So we have decided that the difference is Cody has the wind, Jackson has the windbags.

Al: Don’t put our names to that.

Pete: But you’re on to something there. JHW

Al and Pete Simpson will speak, 7 p.m., Sunday, at the Center for the Arts. $25. 733-4900.
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The Simpsons | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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