Damn right. Proud of it too.
Well, yes. You know about my father and his background, being a coal miner. My father was 54 when I was born, and my mother died when I was 10. I was the youngest of six kids. I used to have to get up in the morning, shovel coal in the furnace, get the heat going. But I mean, I didn’t think about being poor. All the other people around town were the same way. But I always felt when I was growing up that I had the opportunities to work, that there were jobs available, and I always tell the story about my father and the WPA and his working on this building and the fact that he was proud of it. I keep saying, to this day, I’ve never had one person come up and show me the stub of a welfare check and tell me how proud they were of it. That’s what made me a Democrat-because I felt the Democratic Party believed in the dignity and pride of work. My father once told me-maybe he read it someplace-he said the best social program is a job.
I’m asking Democrats to have the courage of their convictions, like I have the courage of my convictions. See, this is where a lot of Democrats bought into a Republican propaganda machine. [Harkin says the GOP’s 1988 landslide is a myth: the Democrats lost 1 under 4 percent of the vote.] I really believe after the last election, Republican gurus sat around and looked at the results of the election and they said: By God, we almost lost. So we’ve got to do two things. We’ve got to convince the people we won in a landslide, and secondly, we’ve got to convince them we won in a landslide because the Democrats stand for the wrong things.
Ruth and I went to this small island in the Bahamas in 1969 for Christmas. I built [our house] myself. I wired the whole thing myself I plumbed the whole thing myself, did the interior work myself And the house, as I’ve told people-people talk about this luxury house-it’s 660 square feet. It’s one room with a little kitchen, a little bathroom in one corner and a living area. I think the populist deal of it is that no one gave it to me. Ruth and I worked, and we saved our pennies, and we denied ourselves a lot of pleasures - we went for almost eight years of marriage before we even had a table to eat off of. We always ate off a card table.
Maybe I haven’t said it right. Someone once said: Have you ever seen a fighter pilot yet who didn’t brag a little bit? I didn’t get drafted. I volunteered. Not only did I volunteer, I put my rear end on the line I said I wanted to fly fighters, I wanted to fly the best jets they had. I did. For a lot of different reasons, I suppose, I never got sent to Vietnam. I suppose you could say that was a lucky break. But I flew for eight years, eight months and eight days. I got the document to prove it. I’m proud of the fact I served in the military.
I have too. My God, I’ve put my ass on the line many times going after B-2 bombers, going after some of these boondoggle spending things. Those are tough choices. I make ’em all the time in my subcommittee on appropriations. I’ll give you an example: Bush sent his budget down this year. He had a bigger increase in administration for health care than he did for preventive health care. So I just took $200 million out of administration and put it right into preventive health. Tough choice? Yes. But I thought that was where it ought to go.
My wife and kids love me. There was an article in the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine couple years ago about how when [Bob Dole] came to the Senate how tough he was, irascible. And then it said Bob Dole must have seen history repeating itself when Tom Harkin entered the Senate and took him on, because it’s what he had done. I showed that to Dole and he laughed.
I’m not very clubby - not that I have anything against it. But I believe you have work and you have your personal life. I’ve always been someone who spends a lot of time with my kids and with my wife, and we just don’t socialize that much. I think in all the years - let’s see, we bought our house in ‘79 - I can probably count on one hand the number of senators and congressmen I’ve ever had out to my house. I want to enjoy my home life. I don’t want to make it the center of political activity.
I can be very tough. And I think a lot of times I say what people think, but they say you shouldn’t say it. I think sometimes I have a penchant for forcing people to vote on things maybe they don’t want to vote on. And, yeah, in all my years in Congress, I’ve never been afraid to stick my finger in their eye. I can understand that people think that Harkin is a mean son of a bitch. But I’ve tried to do it in a way that wasn’t personal.
Oh, I’ve been described as that once in a while. I don’t know how to respond to that. Maybe so. My call sign when I was flying F-4s was Wolf One, because of the lone wolf. You’re in there by yourself. I’ve always thought of political debate and politics - it’s like being a fighter pilot. You train. You gather all the information. And you hone your skills as best as you can. And you get in the cockpit, and it’s only you. You’re out on the line. All the people who have talked to you, all the wonderful staff and everything. Your ass is on the line. You got to do it. And you win or you lose.
