#992: I'd Swap MTG, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Matt Gaetz and the Rest of the Congressional Clown Car For Florence Kahn Any Day of the Week. . .and Twice on Sunday

Back in the early 1980s, when Chuck Schumer was an unknown, very junior member of the House of Representatives, a savvy political journalist glimpsed into his or her crystal ball and prognosticated: It won’t be long before the most dangerous place in American politics will be the 5 or 6 feet between a television camera and the very young, very brash freshman representative from Brooklyn’s 16th Congressional District.

It turns out, of course, that the journalist hit the nail on the head. For not only has Chuck Schumer been one of the most oft-quoted members of Congress for the past forty years; he is the Senate Majority Leader - the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in all American history. Over the past half-century (Schumer was originally elected to two terms in the New York State Assembly starting in 1975), Schumer has been far, far more than a show-horse; he has long been a doer. He has long been a successful legislative leader whether in the majority or minority. Schumer’s fingerprints are easily visible on some of the most important bills enacted over the years including the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993) and the Violence Against Women Act (1994), as well as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka “Obama Care” 2010), which he played a decisive roil in steering it through committee and on to passage. Throughout his career, he has sponsored or cosponsored more than 2,300 pieces of legislation.

Schumer has long evinced the kind of mind, work ethic, collegiality, and understanding of the political process that easily sets him apart from the current crop of fatuous third-stringers currently striding the Halls of Congress . . . people like Senators Tuberville and Britt, Hawley, and Johnson, as well as Representatives Greene and Boebert, Gaetz, Luna, and Donalds, Gosar, Good, and Mace.

Over more than 3 decades, I have researched, written and published more than 215 biographic sketches and articles on the nearly 225 Jewish men and women who have served in the United States Congress. One of my very favorites, without question, is Florence Kahn, who represented what would eventually become Sala Burton’s, Barbara Boxer’s and Nancy Pelosi’s District in San Francisco. In interviewing the three for my biographic works The Congressional Minyan (2000) and The Jews of Capitol Hill (2010) they all remembered with great fondness the many hours they had spent with their young children (and now grandchildren) at the Julius Kahn Playground and Clubhouse which was named after Florence’s late husband Julius, himself a member of Congress for 24 years. Located at Jackson and Spruce, the “JK” was, until its name was officially changed to the “Presidio Wall Playground” in 2019, the nation’s largest urban park. (The name change came because Julius, it turned out, was also one of the members in Congress who helped extend the racist Chinese Exclusion Act [originally passed in 1882] to 1902. As a result of this, in 2019, the citizens of San Francisco demanded the name change.)

Florence’s husband, the German-born Julius (1861-1924) was originally a pretty well-known actor who trod the boards in his new country for a number of years. His wife Florence encouraged him to go to study law; by the early 1890s, he was a practicing attorney and, with his wife’s guidance got himself elected to the California State Assembly in 1892. She managed his first Congressional campaign in 1899 and worked as his Chief of Staff and campaign manager until he died in 1924. During his quarter-century in the House, Kahn became an expert on foreign affairs and, although a Republican, became President Woodrow Wilson’s guaranteeing American involvement in what was then called “The Great War.”

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 9, 1866, Florence’s parents, who had emigrated from Poland, were actually friends with the Mormon leader Brigham Young. Florence Prag Kahn lived a life of firsts:

The first Jew born in Utah
The first woman to graduate from Berkeley (class of 1887)
The first woman to manage a congressional campaign (for her husband Julius, in 1899)
The first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives
The first woman to serve on both the House Military Affairs and Appropriations Committees.

Additionally, she was largely responsible for the funding of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay Bridges, and was so instrumental in the early funding of the FBI that its director, J. Edgar Hoover, always referred to her as “The mother of the FBI.”

Politically adroit, fearless and frumpy, Rep. Kahn also had a dry sense of humor and was known to possess the quickest wit on The Hill. Once, when asked how she was able to pass far more significant legislation than most of her male colleagues, she famously responded: “Don’t you know? It’s my sex appeal, honey!” When assigned to the Committee on Indian Affairs, she flatly turned it down, telling then-Speaker Nicholas Longworth III (the husband of T.R.’s daughter “Princess Alice” Roosevelt) “The only Indians in my district are made of wood and sit outside cigar stores . . . and I can’t do a damn thing for them! Put me on Military Affairs!” Then there was the time that New York Representative Fiorello LaGuardia accused her of being “. . . nothing but a standpatter, following the reactionary Senator Moses of New Hampshire.” Mrs. Kahn is reported to have wriggled loose from her chair, jammed her nondescript hat over her nose, and bellowed: “Why shouldn’t I choose Moses as my leader? Haven’t my people been following him for ages?” The House erupted into gales of laughter, LaGuardia - himself the son of a Jewish mother - included.

My favorite Florence Prag Kahn quip - and one which likely wouldn’t get a laugh from members of the current Congressional “Clown Car Caucus” - comes from the time when the House’s most ultraconservative - and least liked - member acidly asked her, “Would you support a birth control law?” Without taking time to draw a breath, Rep. Kahn answered, “Yes I would . . . if you personally make it retroactive!”

I remember doing my initial research on Mrs. Kahn back in the early 1990s. I was occupying a tiny cubby on the top floor of Harvard’s Widener Library. When I came across this line I cracked up and almost fell out of my chair . . . so much so that there quickly erupted the sound of a couple of dozen people “shushing” me. Believe me, it was hard to stop laughing . . .

Frequently, Mrs. Kahn used her rapier-like wit as a cover for her revulsion or distaste; call it the verbal version of Bonaparte’s “iron fist in a velvet glove” . . . firmness being couched not with outward gentleness, but rather with wit. Alas, such is rarely the case within the halls and walls of Congress. Today, instead of wit and double-entendre zingers, we hear catcalls and shouts of “YOU LIE!” as well as inanities such as “a stepmother really isn’t a mother at all,” or “Women who support abortion rights are too ugly to need them. Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

The various members of “Clown Car Caucus” who make these sort of comments - comments which drip with animus and ignorance - are perfect examples of the sorts of people to whom Florence Kahn was referring - those who would have made far greater contributions to society by never having been born in the first place. Think of the Frank Capra/James Stewart classic it’s a Wonderful Life . . . but in reverse. In the 1946 classic (the best film never to have won an Oscar), Stewart’s character, George Bailey, sees his life fall apart so quickly that he contemplates suicide . . . that his family - indeed, the entire world - would be better off with him dead. But the prayers of his loved ones result in his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody, (played to perfection by Henry Travers who’s in the photo alongside Stewart) coming to Earth to help him, with the promise of earning his wings. He shows George what things would have been like if he had never been born. And of course, being a Frank Capra film, everything comes up roses, sweet tea and scones.

Now let’s reverse that by implementing Rep. Kahn’s sarcastic quip, and granting retroactivity to the births of people who are daily making the world more dangerous, less civil, and stupefyingly more intolerant by march, marching to the beat of their dictatorial drums. These are the merchants of mayhem, whose chief wares are fear, fanaticism provincialism, and bigotry . . . four things the world can definitely do without.

Oh, if only they had never been born!

I’ll take the likes of Florence Prag Kahn over the clowns any day of the week . . . and twice on Sunday!