A version of this column originally appeared in the Hartford Courant.
Here in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut, where there is still a sprinkling of working farms and a surviving streak of Yankee common sense about the workings of government, it was disturbing to hear our senior U.S. senator, Christopher Dodd, speak last week at a public forum in Cornwall. Not for what was said but for what was not said.
Our local town meetings and forums often give rise to frank, face-to-face, usually neighborly but sometimes heated conversations about public policy. It is not unusual for people to get to their feet during a public forum and wax indignant about the plight of the bog turtle, the cost of a road repair, or the kind of lumber used on swings to be built at a school playground.
In these parts, one might say, we generally appreciate the opportunity to question our elected officials closely on matters of fiduciary trust.
That is why it was all the more bewildering to have Sen. Dodd come to the gymnasium of the Cornwall Consolidated School on a beautiful spring afternoon for more than an hour and somehow manage not to utter a single word about the ongoing controversies surrounding his role as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. These are not exactly state secrets. There was the widely reported “sweetheart� or “V.I.P.� mortgage loan from Countrywide Financial to the senator as well as the six-figure campaign contributions from the American Insurance Group (AIG), whose executives, according to language Sen. Dodd wrote into a bailout bill, were entitled to large bonuses paid for with our tax dollars.
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The organizer and moderator of Saturday’s forum, Harriette Dorsen, chair of the local Democratic Party committee, told The Lakeville Journal before the event, “I think there are going to be a lot of tough questions.�
There weren’t. They were all softballs, pre-screened by the moderators. Instead of the usual give and take, with citizens speaking their minds, all the questions had to be written out in advance on 3-by-5-inch index cards. A contingent from this newspaper (including its publisher and my wife, Cynthia, the paper’s executive editor) was on hand, armed with probing questions. After some rather self-congratulatory remarks by Sen. Dodd and Chris Murphy, our U.S. representative (and a former intern in Dodd’s office), the questions were chosen and read.
Nothing about the banking crisis. Nothing about Countrywide or AIG. Nothing about Sen. Dodd’s lovely seaside “cottage� in Ireland, which has led to some intriguing questions about his mortgage financing and property transfers — subjects about which the local gentry is extremely well-versed. Not a word about any of it.
Cornwall, it should be mentioned, enjoys a reputation as a veritable hotbed of ex-hippies, graying pony-tailed former dissidents, and various organic speakers-of-truth-to-power. One expected a certain irreverence and degree of skepticism from this group, as a matter either of principle or of standard operating procedure learned from The Whole Earth Catalog.
As an ex-hippie myself, I had questions, based on a single thought that has continuously come to mind as I have read about these compromising relationships between government officials and the financial corporations they are supposed to oversee — that the only place in the country where prostitution seems to be legal is the United States Congress. My question for Sen. Dodd was this: Shouldn’t you consider, in light of what has been reported, resigning as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee?
It was not read. Nor were any questions submitted by the other journalists. Meanwhile, Messrs. Dodd and Murphy held forth, at length, on the benefits of single-payer health insurance (good), global warming (bad), and the beliefs and practices of the prior administration and Congress (really bad). The time passed slowly.
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The meeting was scheduled to last from 3 to 5 p.m. After what seemed like years, at 4:45 p.m., 15 minutes early, the moderator called the proceedings to an end, to the evident relief of Sen. Dodd and Rep. Murphy, who, wonky filibusters successful, moved on to cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.
As the forum broke up, my wife, sensing a story, went to the podium and requested the unread index cards. She figured it might be nice to publish the questions that had not been chosen. Not a chance. The moderators scooped up the dozens of unread cards and tucked them away.
It would have been good to read what was really on people’s minds. Meetings like this, in which ordinary citizens get to speak straightforwardly with their leaders, are the essence of New England democracy.
Sen. Dodd obviously does not want to answer questions about his dealings with the failed financial institutions that he is responsible for overseeing. Perhaps he just can’t answer them effectively. But while he goes around to stage-managed appearances, he will find himself losing independent thinkers and voters.
Yankees, by nature, don’t like dodgers.
Woody Hochswender, a Sharon resident and a former reporter for The New York Times, now writes for Sports Illustrated.
