Rep. Philip M. Crane of Illinois: from Goldwater to grandfather

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 27, 1997 | by Stephen Goode

For more than three decades, Congressman Crane has been an active conservative leader and Republican activist fighting always for more individual responsibility and less government control of our lives.

Philip M. Crane won reelection in November to his 15th term in Congress. An early supporter of Sen. Barry Goldwater's run for the presidency, Crane, a GOP stalwart who eschews what he calls "squishy Republicans," also found a hero in Ronald Reagan, whose voice Crane can imitate with comic precision, but always with admiration. Crane sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, announcing his candidacy in August 1978, the earliest declaration in history.

Insight: Tell me about your famous conservative father, whose "The Worry Clinic" was the most widely syndicated column of its time and gave advice on health, family life and social problems.

Philip Crane: He influenced my life profoundly. I dedicated my first book, Democrats Dilemma, to him and to my mother, who "bent the twig." When his obituary ran in papers coast to coast, I was inundated with mail -- really kind letters.

Something I marvel in retrospect: We lived on the south side of Chicago, just a block from Lake Michigan, and in those days you didn't have to worry about your kids on the street it was so civilized. But we had to be at the dinner table at 6 o'clock sharp. My mother would call us in. If we weren't there, she would literally come after us with that "twig," and sometimes it did get bent. [Laughter.]

And we were supposed to be home and indoors at 8 o'clock. Dad locked that door then, so we had to knock or ring the doorbell, and Pop would be standing there with his belt off. I would let my older brother, George, go in first because you had to make a dogleg left to run upstairs and I'd rather face the belt, running up those stairs, than face the look on dad's face when we violated the rules.

He never gave us allowances -- thought that was too much like welfare. He'd paste a nickle on this window, a dime on that window. You boys want some money? Do this chore, you'll get reimbursed. That was in the days when movies cost a dime. and we'd go down to a lover's lane by the lake every Saturday morning and pick up empty Coke bottles for the 2-cent redemption. On Saturday afternoons we'd see a triple feature, with a serial, the news and a comedy between the main features.

Insight: How did you get interested in politics?

PC: When we were kids my dad made sure we remembered shaking hands with my great-grandfather George Washington Crane the first. The significance of that, as he told us as we got older, was "when you shook hands with him, you shook hands with the hands that shook hands with Abraham Lincoln."

He'd gone over to Danville, Ill., in a wagon from Covington, Ind., in 1858 when he was a boy and Lincoln was campaigning for the Senate. Lincoln had put him on his lap and shook his hand.

We were kneejerk Republicans..But the first time I voted was for Ike in '52. We got a Republican Congress, the first until '94. But as that Eisenhower administration moved on, I started asking myself, what's the difference between Republicans and Democrats? [The Eisenhower Republicans] seemed to me to be a go-slower version of Democrats but still moving in the wrong direction. I cast Republican votes but not with a lot of enthusiasm, until Goldwater's name surfaced and I learned what Goldwater stood for. I got fired up, because those were the values I was brought up to believe in.

Insight: You taught history at Indiana University and then at Bradley. Did you find yourself isolated in academia as a conservative Republican?

PC: Oh, there were only two of us on the faculty who openly worked for Goldwater at Bradley. We were condemned by unidentified colleagues as Nazi sympathizers and bigots. The thing that tickled me about it was I figured we were really getting through to them with a vengeance! But you want to know something interesting? I am out there campaigning aggressively for him and one day I'm going in to teach a class and the chairman of our department came up to me in the hallway, looked both ways cautiously, and then said to me, "Keep up the good work, Phil."

That was the 1964 campaign when there was no college Democrat Club at Bradley. Students needed a faculty sponsor to form such a club and they couldn't find one, so I told one of my Democrat students, "I'll be your sponsor." That year I was faculty sponsor for the Democrats [laughs]. I did that so we conservative Republicans could have debates with them.

Insight: How did you happen to run for Don Rumsfeld's vacant seat in the House?

PC: I'd helped found a Christian school, a nondenominational grammar school in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1967, they asked me if I'd come up and serve as director of the school. I believed in the concept -- back to the basics, the stressing of reading, writing and arithmetic...memorization of math tables instead of the new math, the whole thing.

It was parents from that school who started [suggesting that I run for Congress]. I talked it over with [Illinois Republican leaders], who said, "Phil, what have you got to lose? It will be interesting hands-on experience you can take back into the classroom. You'll be spreading the gospel." That's the argument I used on my wife. I was the No. 8 candidate to announce -- there were finally 11 -- and I ended up winning with 23 percent of the vote. It was winner take all, and I've said there was nothing like the victory party that night. But the next morning when I got out of bed and turned on the light I said, "Good grief!"