Of Bill Janklow, Youth, and Our Better Angels

I worked for United Press International in South Dakota from 1978 to 1982, the time during which Bill Janklow began in earnest his reign as my home state’s version of Huey Long. Now, he’s announced he has brain cancer, and the prognosis is very poor.

When he dies, the obituary writers–in addition to talking about his propensity to speed that cost another man his life and Janklow his U.S. House seat and jail time–will talk about what did or didn’t happen with his kids’ babysitter when he was working on the Rosebud Reservation, his complex relationship with Russell Means, whether he actually sent criminals to California instead of jail because California wouldn’t extradite Dennis Banks, and about how he sued Viking Press and Newsweek. They’ll also write about how strange it was that a conservative governor got his state in the railroad business and tried to sell its water to a private concern. Because Bill won’t be around to threaten them, they’ll write what they want.

I was someone Janklow couldn’t bully; I’d grown up in a house of intimidation, and was pretty good at it myself. I think he appreciated that about me–that and the fact that I worked for the underdog wire service, and Bill’s youth had been spent as an underdog.

I’ve been thinking of the last conversation we had in the summer of 1982, as I was preparing to move to take a promotion in Nebraska. He asked why I was leaving.

I didn’t talk about getting away from the embarrassment of having a paranoid-schizophrenic father who called my competitors with wild stories; I didn’t talk about that with anyone. He looked pained when I told him there was nowhere for me to go professionally in South Dakota. He tried to explain about how his deal to remove interest rate ceilings was going to mean a lot of great jobs in the financial services industry. But it was too late for me, of course.

In the same conversation, I called Bill on one of his stock campaign phrases, that South Dakota couldn’t afford a lot of new programs because programs take money and he’d never met anyone who wanted to pay more taxes. “My mom’s still paying property tax on her house, and she’s on food stamps,” I said. “I don’t own a house, and we don’t have an income tax, so all I’m paying is sales, liquor, and gasoline tax. I should have been paying a lot more in taxes than her.” “I see your point,” he said in a thoughtful tone.

A few months later when I came home to visit, I saw a clip from one of Bill’s speeches. He was still talking about how South Dakota couldn’t afford new programs because programs cost money–then said he’d only ever had one person tell him they wanted to pay more taxes. I nodded; a sign that he had listened, a sign of his better angel coming out, just as it had when he’d spoken passionately about those financial services jobs he was convinced would keep people my age in the state he loved so fiercely.

Bill Janklow pushed around a lot of people in the intervening thirty or so years; I’ve been gone from the rigors of a-deadline-every-minute for nearly twenty-five years. Still, I think of him as one of my most influential teachers in the real world, and about the magic that can happen when you are passionate about your beliefs… and about what can happen in those moments when demons overtake your better self. When he dies, I’ll light a candle and pray for him.