If there could be written today another “Profiles in Courage,” one profile would record the unfaltering integrity and almost mean streak of independence that guided Henry Bellmon’s courageous stands for what was right and for what needed to be done.It was that courage that guided Henry Bellmon (who died on Tuesday) to push ahead as governor to eventually sign into law the significant education reform legislation of our time, House Bill 1017.
His support for and championing the measure perplexed many of his Republican colleagues, but he went ahead anyway, and became the ultimate Republican willing to work with the other side to get done what he believed was the right thing.
After serving his first term in the U.S. Senate back in the late 1970’s, Sen. Bellmon faced strong opposition and that opposition almost did him in.
Henry Bellmon was something of a controversial figure back then, largely because of his unpopular stance on the issue of busing, and that was true because he held the unpopular view that busing should be used as a tool to accomplish school desegregation.
As a result, Sen. Bellmon refused to support a state constitutional ban on the practice, and he almost lost his first reelection bid…..He won by a mere 3,000 votes, something of a weak showing for an incumbent senator from Oklahoma.
Sen. Bellmon became controversial again when he supported the effort to turn over the Panama Canal to the Panamanians, and his mail ran more than 9 to 1 against his votes for the treaty accomplishing that.
Well, two of the state’s most powerful businessmen told Sen. Bellmon in no uncertain terms that they opposed turning the canal over to Panama, but the senator from Oklahoma reminded those two of the wisdom of Edmond Burke.
“Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment,” Burke had written long ago, “and he betrays you, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
Well, that took courage, too.
It took courage, as well, when this moderate conservative Oklahoma politician was found supporting Gerald Ford for president over Ronald Reagan.
That REALLY took courage….especially in Oklahoma!
Henry Bellmon was a man of few words, but he seemed to know all along that you didn’t need to talk much in order to be a good and an effective politician.
You didn’t need to talk a whole lot, Henry Bellmon seemed to know, if you’re all about doing the right thing.
Another politician of some noted success once famously said: “All politics is local.”
Well, Henry Bellmon knew that to be true, as well, but perhaps our first elected Republican governor actually made an improvement on Speaker of the House Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill’s assessment of what politics is all about when he wrote in his 1992 autobiography these profoundly insightful words:
“Politics is people….people of all kinds,” Henry Bellmon wrote, “rich and poor, smart and dumb, honest and dishonest, good and bad.
“A successful politician has the instinctive ability to see through pretense and to understand the character and motives of others.”
Maybe that’s why Henry Bellmon did what he did.
Maybe he saw through all of us, and, having seen what he saw, went on about his business and did what was right and what needed to be done.
