Dan Glickman - President, Motion Pictures Association of America, Former Congressman and Presidential Cabinet Member (Agriculture) Back to previous page Dan Glickman was a nine-term representative to the U.S. House of Representatives from Kansas, and then Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton Administration. He grew up in Wichita, received a BA from the University of Michigan and a JD from George Washington University, and worked briefly as a Congressional aide before moving back to his home state in 1970. Glickman worked in his family business and as a school board member until he was elected to Congress in 1976. He is now Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.

(Exchange of pleasantries; Peter provides background on project for early-career development of leaders across different fields)

PH: Would love to just spend some time today learning about what was going through your mind. As I understand it, when you came out of law school at GW, you spent some time as a lawyer in private practice - Is that correct?

DG: Well, first of all, I was probably one of these people that's been genetically preoccupied with politics ever since I was a very little boy. There are some people like that, you know. I was president of the sixth grade. I was president of my senior class at the University of Michigan in the liberal arts college I was in. I was just active in running for things. I was election commissioner in high school - I mean, these things happen.

When I was in law school, I worked part-time for a United States Senator, a Republican Senator from Colorado. His name was Peter Dominick, and I went to law school largely because I wanted to develop a career in politics. So I worked for him doing, oh, pretty much intern-type work, but I did it for two and a half years. I used to come in some mornings very early in the morning, open the office, open the mail, sometimes answer mail, and so that was all part of this same kind of experience being in Washington.

So I just - I suppose one of the reasons I went back to - I worked for the government as a lawyer for about a year in Washington, after law school. Then I decided to go back to Kansas, where my parents lived. I'm sure one of the reasons why was because I felt like that was a logical place to start a political career, if I was going to be involved in a political career. So then I went back to Kansas, and practiced law there, and I was also involved in the family business there. My folks had been very active in the community for a very long time, so we had a pretty well-established name in Wichita, although they had never run for office and were fairly apolitical.

PH: Okay, so a couple questions. First off, what was it, do you think, that compelled that early interest in politics, that intensity of desire?

DG: I liked people a lot, and I was a good consensus builder. I don't think it was because of any powerful addictions to issues, however. This was back during the Vietnam War era, in the post-Vietnam War era - most of this took place between 1970 and 1976, I guess, because I ran for Congress ultimately in 1976, when I was 31. I think it was, I just felt like I was a good consensus-builder. I was always a good problem solver, and people would come to me, and "Let's work this out."

It was kind of a natural phenomena for me, as politics as a profession rather than as a cause. Some people go into politics because it's a cause. That was not me. I was much more because I thought I had good skills, good people skills, good skills in consensus building, and I thought this would be a good career for me. That's about as honestly as I can tell you.

PH: Did you ever think about other things besides that as a career?

DG: Well, first of all, I had a legal background, so you know, I practiced law and enjoyed it in Kansas. I had this affiliation with my dad's business, and my dad also owned this AAA baseball team, and he was very active in the community. While he wasn't a politician - both my parents were real people oriented. My dad was a shirt-tail comedian, he was - and both my parents were always very active. They pushed me into this world, actually, too. It was there.

I don't know if there was any one thing. When I came back to Kansas, I'm pretty sure that this was in the back of my mind, that I would ultimately run for office someday. I did, and the first office I ran for was for the school board in Wichita, in 1973, where I ran for the Wichita school board, and won.

PH: And how old were you at this point?

DG: I was 28.

PH: So that was three years before your first Congressional race.

DG: Right. I was 28. I ran for the school board. I think this was on my mind for going for a Congressional office, because this Wichita, Kansas school board encompassed an area of maybe half to 60% the size of the Congressional district, but more important, it was the entire media market. The city of Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, and the school district had about 50,000 students, so it was a - so I think that I don't know how clever I was, but I probably - It's been a long time - I think I considered other venues in politics, but I thought that this was a venue where I could move in faster, accomplish more, as opposed to starting in the state legislative route, where most people who're interested in politics as a career tend to start that way. So I went with the school board.

It was also a time when Wichita, Kansas, had been seriously involved in school desegregation efforts, and my entry came after a lot of the controversy, so I was able to be there slightly more quiet times, I guess. And then I was elected - I got myself elected president of the board, which was done by your peers, in 1975. I remember -

PH: So after being there a year.

DG: After being there about a year and a half, actually, or almost two years, maybe. Look, being honest about it, I think it was all part of a plan on my part to just move up politically. But most of the members of the board were much older than me, but I think they had a fair amount of confidence in me, felt like I was doing a good job. And I was always this consensus builder, always this "let's work it out, let's listen." My theory was you have two ears and one mouth, and that's the way you ought to govern yourself accordingly. I was not a loudmouth, in terms of leadership on the board.

PH: Now the school board wasn't a full-time job, was it?

DG: No, no, it wasn't even paid! But it was a full-time press job (chuckles) I spent a lot of time on it. I also - both in terms of - I think I went to every school in the district, which was well over 100. I was, I was - I both worked it smartly in terms of helping these districts in terms of helping them with substantive things, but I think I cleverly worked that political job for future plans, in terms of how I used that future experience.

PH: So it was a situation where you were doing this on the side, but during the day you were working in your family business -

DG: Working mostly in practicing law, but collaterally in the family business. And I was fortunate in that I was never - we were never wealthy wealthy - Our family was comfortable enough, so that I think that I had the confidence that I could do this kind of stuff, in the sense that, well, if it didn't work out, then I could go back to do whatever I was doing.

PH: So did you have any engagement or interest in your job with the business or with the law, or was it all those two things and the school board being devices towards your longer-term ambitions?

DG: No, I worked in the law firm. I was an active lawyer. I had cases - I mean, I did the normal kinds of things there. In the family business, my dad was a pretty strong, dominant force. One did not second-guess my dad when it came to business. But I, you know, worked with him. But I would say my lot in life was cast very early on by - I cast my line for politics. It was just, it was just part of what I was, how I was going to make my mark on the world.

PH: How did you come to understand that about yourself?

DG: It is just an enormously interesting thing. I'm - I think I knew it at a young age, like in my teens, I knew that this was part of it. We lived in a small state, that was - I remember going door to door for candidates in the past, and I worked on some nonpartisan races. I think I saw an opportunity there. I saw an opportunity where I didn't see a lot of very, very aggressive, young, bright people entering the picture, either. In some sense, there was kind of a void.

When I ultimately ran for Congress, I was 31, and I ran against a guy who was - I think he was 64 at the time. A very nice man, he was an incumbent Republican Congressman. His name was Garner E. Shriver, and he'd been in Congress in 16 years, but he was the antithesis of me as a personality. He was lethargic, and quiet. Actually, he was moderate. Today, I don't know if he would even survive in the Republican party. And I was energetic, and frenetic, and I ran that kind of a race, and it was in the post-Watergate era, and it just worked out perfectly for me. It was a non-ideological race. The race was based on style, and who was going to fight more for the district, and not based on philosophy at all.

PH: And was that something that you sort of set up, or was that the natural dynamic of the race?

DG: I think it was the natural dynamic of the race. First of all, I had liked this guy. He had been, I wouldn't say a close family friend, but he had been somebody who was a good constituent services Congressman, friendly, not a troublemaker, not anything like the House members of the present. (chuckles) This [type of] man does not exist anymore in the Republican party, and probably doesn't exist anymore. In fact, today I feel bad that I beat him (chuckles) because we needed more people like him, particularly in the Republican party. But anyway, it was as much a question of style. And I spent a lot of time going door to door. I walked about 50,000 homes. I mean I spent a year doing nothing else, and the whole campaign was based on energy and vitality, and just, it worked! I don't know if it would've worked again - I mean, I didn't win by a landslide, but I won by a few thousand votes.

PH: Sure. And when you were doing this as a 31-year-old, did you feel any lack of confidence or self doubt?

DG: None, none. I had absolute confidence. I didn't know if I was going to win or not, okay, but I had absolute confidence in myself. And a lot of that came from my parents. They gave me - they were - they gave me unconditional love and support. I mean, if somebody said something bad about me, I think my dad would've hired a hit man. There was a little bit of that in our family. (laughs) Just joking, of course - but that kind of thing.

And it's also the old example that when you're younger, you're willing to take risks that you do not take when you get older. You're willing to - you're not encumbered or burdened by life experiences, both good and bad. You haven't had a lot of experience, so you haven't been burned, but you also haven't been burned! In later years in life, when I thought of doing other risky things in politics, I ultimately said no. Like I was going to run for the Senate against Bob Dole, or do other kinds of risky things, which I didn't do, because I had too much experience behind me. And back then, when I decided to run against this guy, a lot of people in the community said, "No, no, no, you don't have a chance." I didn't even listen to them. "That's fine, where do I go tomorrow on my campaign?" But later on in life, I began to listen to them, as you get older.

PH: Interesting. How did things progress after you got started - The school board was one thing, but once you went to Congress, you were there 18 years, is that right?

DG: Right.

PH: How did you feel? There must've been some ups and downs in that period.

DG: I mean, first of all, I was - I tend to be friendly by nature. I have good people skills, which is the most important thing for a politician. I was a Democrat in a Republican state, so - but I tended to be moderate, anyway. I was always a consensus builder. And it was always a little bit tricky being, particularly when we had Democratic presidents, and not look like I was a, let's say captive of my own political party. I was willing to be independent. And at times that did become difficult, the longer I was in Congress. At the beginning when I was in Congress, I was a very free and independent spirit. I would oppose the President when I felt like it, and if the party didn't like it, that was tough. But the longer I was there, the more I became part of the system.

PH: What do you think drove that?

DG: I just think it was when you're part of an institution for a very long period of time, to be effective, you have to go along periodically. So if you wanted to get things done, or bills passed, or things brought back to your district, you couldn't be totally iconoclastic independent. You kind of had to work in the system.

I still always kept that iconoclastic behavior, at times. I would be the guy over the period of years who would be independent. I was the guy who fought elevator operators, and the automatic elevators of Congress. I was kind of the guy who was a little bit quirky. But the other side of me was - I'm not overstating my brilliance, but pretty smart, great street smarts. I have a great feeling about what ideas, what issues work, and often I was ahead of the games in terms of that. So I was able to be involved in issues sometimes before they were in fact big issues, so I was able to maintain that political base at home very very nicely, and ultimately, I think being a Democrat in a Republican district - the demographics of the district changed. The district became more conservative, and the abortion issue and the gun issue became bigger issues, and ultimately, I lost. And part of it was ultimately I lost my enthusiasm and fervor the longer I was in there.

PH: And getting back to - staying in Congress, but also getting in Congress with that first election, you must've had to assemble a big coalition of not just voting support, but also financial support, logistical support -

DG: Let me tell you, I raised a total of about $100,000 in that first election. I spent about $70 or 75 in the general, and about $25 in the primary. My opponent, the incumbent Congressman, didn't spend much more than I did. Just imagine. Today, a race against an incumbent, you'd have to raise $1.5 mm to run against an incumbent. An incumbent might raise $2.5 mm. So I was nearing the end of the era where you could defeat an incumbent. This is a rare race when you defeat an incumbent. Now, ironically, I got defeated in 1994. I was kind of hoisted on my own petard by a much more energetic, in a sense - well, there were other factors in my race. I think it was the anti-Clinton swing. You know, the Republicans won 67 Democratic House seats, and we got killed on guns and abortion and Clinton and health care, and a few other things, but for the most part, I didn't have the energy and the drive that I had the first time.

PH: That's really kind of one of my interests, that energy and drive you speak about. What are the other things that made it possible to pull together that support, when you were unproven, compared to what you became?

DG: First of all, if I didn't have the school board experience, I probably couldn't have won the race. After all, I was president of a local school board when I was 30 years old, and that was a 50,000-student school board, and this was a school district that had been very much involved in racial integration problems, and a lot of other things, school busing, and -

PH: It sort of gave you a profile.

DG: Yeah, absolutely, it gave me a profile. But then maybe I was too stupid to know any better, but I basically took this on as a challenge, that I was not afraid of this challenge at all. I can honestly say that I was - I viewed this as a climb, probably a mountainous climb, but it was nothing I wasn't prepared for personally, spiritually, and emotionally. I mean, I was ready for this, even as a kid. And there's just something in me that made me ready for this. And I was fortunate. It was the post-Watergate year, in 1976, and just a lot of things worked together. I had a fairly weak incumbent. Jimmy Carter was the head of the ticket, and it turned out he was fairly strong in Kansas that year. He was a farmer. Didn't win the state, but it was close. In fact, I got worried, because he put Dole on the ticket in '76, and I thought, "Uh, oh, that's the end of me." But it turned out not to be. It's an example of how a vice-presidential choice doesn't really make that much of a difference.

PH: Interesting. And thinking about that early stage in your career, it sounds like you had some early successes with the school board and Congress, but were there any setbacks or crossroads decisions that were very difficult for you?

DG: You know, one of them wasn't - I had always - I think I was always just kind of geared to go up, and higher, and more, and more, and so I must've thought many many times in my Congressional career about running for the Senate. And I always pulled back. In 1980, I'd only been there 4 years, I thought about running against Dole, and I took it to the precipice, and pulled back. In '84, I thought about Kassebaum, and she was - I don't know if you knew very much about her, but she was very strong -

PH: Yeah, she was the daughter of Alf Landon, right?

DG: I didn't think as strongly about running against her, but I thought about. And then in '86, I thought about it. And so -

PH: What was your motivation at each of those junctions? What was it about the Senate that appealed to you?

DG: Well, the Democrats controlled the Senate for at least part of that time. I thought that we needed a Democrat as well a Republican in the Senate. Kansas hadn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932, and I think it was just, frankly, a lot of ambition, too. You know, this is not that unusual. Over half of the members of the U.S. Senate today are former members of the House. It's just kind of a career path that a lot of people take. But I never took it. I think what I thought about intuitively was I probably couldn't win. If I could've won, I might've decided to do it. Maybe it was just my internal compass saying, "You know, Glickman, it's great, being a Senator is great, but you'd rather have what you've got than lose in a statewide race." It turned out I probably couldn't have beat Dole all those times. And so I think that was a real personal crisis for me, because you know, after thinking you could do about anything, I wrestled with that very, very strongly, several times over my Congressional life.

Now little did I know that some of these things in life do make a big difference. When I got to Congress in 1976, I was not expected to win, so I was not on any lists, and I remember getting there, and half the incumbent Democrats didn't know who I was. It was totally different than today, because we had big margins. The Democrats had big margins. But they put me on the agriculture committee. I'm from Wichita - I'm from Kansas, which is an agricultural state, but Wichita is a big industrial city. Half the airplanes in the world were made in Wichita, Kansas. It's the home of Cessna, and Beech, and Lear, and Boeing, and all this stuff. But they put me on the Agriculture Committee, and I was frankly disappointed. It turned out to be - it was a wonderful thing. I got to be a Cabinet secretary because of it. What I did was, I had a chief of staff who was my debate teacher in high school, by the way. She became my chief of staff, and she became a very influential woman in my life. Her name was Myrne Roe. If you wanted to talk to her, she could probably tell you a lot about that early race. I have an email address for her. It is mroe001@earthlink.net. You should feel free to contact her.

PH: That actually leads to another question.

DG: Anyway, she was my chief of staff, and she was my debate teacher. She was only four years older than me, but she said, "You're going to make this Agriculture assignment into the most important thing in your life." So I became one of the major advocates for agriculture in Congress over the years, and here I was this Jewish kid from Wichita. It was like, this classic case of turning lemons into lemonade. So I became a national, not folk hero, but leader in agriculture, and it was when in fact Mike Espy left the USDA seat, and they turned to me, and it was all because of that.

PH: Do you think you would've had that notion of turning lemons into lemonade if she hadn't encouraged you?

DG: Ah, probably, but I think she had a big impact on my life in helping me. She thought the same way I did, and she was very press-conscious.

PH: So that actually led to another question, which is, what about mentors or other relationships that helped you in your early career? She certainly sounds like one.

DG: She was a major force. My dad and mother were both major forces, particularly my dad. He was from the school that you could do anything. This is a great country. You can do anything. And it helped that I was, I never knew that I was never going to necessarily struggle, financially, if this didn't work out. So he was a major force. My wife became a major force, but not early on. She was uncomfortable with the political life, but then later on, she became very comfortable with it, and became an active force in my political life, but not for awhile.

PH: When you say major force, what kinds of things -

DG: Oh, she was very active in politics. She was very active on Capitol Hill. She worked for something called the Congressional Arts Caucus. She was the Executive Director of it. Which was kind of an ad hoc group of members of Congress interested in promoting the arts and humanities, and she was just, she was a very big force in my life, and my political life, too. But later on, it wasn't for another 10 years, probably or 5-10 years, after we came to Congress. And there was a Democratic Congressman from Kansas, and his name was Bill Roy. He ran against Dole in '74 and lost. And then he stayed reasonably active in Kansas politics, but he was never elected again. He was a mentor of mine, former U.S. Congressman Bill Roy from the Topeka area.

PH: And what kinds of things did he do for you?

DG: First of all, I got actively involved in partisan politics through his campaign. I was a regional coordinator. I was actively - It got me involved in partisan politics that I had not been involved with before. I was able to network a lot with people around the state. I stayed very close to him. I used to call him periodically on occasion. He still lives in the Topeka area. He's quite elderly now. I don't know exactly how active he is or was. Then -

PH: How did you meet these people? How did you identify who these people were going -

DG: Myrne Roe was my debate teacher. That was easy. When I decided to run for office, I went to her, and you know, we joined at the hip, you know. I had lots of friends and connections in the area, but it was pretty self-driven, the whole thing, I'll be honest with you. The reason for that was that if it were idea-driven - There are some candidacies in this world that are really idea-driven. Then I think you need a much greater collaboration. But on this one, it was much more personal. I had lots of friends at home, and my dad's business base, and everything like that. It was a different world, too. The bitter partisanship which exists now didn't exist back then.

PH: Interesting. And another question in terms of the big picture was, what about work-life balance? In the early part of your career, it sounds like you were very energetic, you were visiting all the school districts, you were working very hard in the Congress, did you ever find it a challenge to juggle your personal life outside of work?

DG: Well, I had two small kids, both born before I came to Congress. It's - both kids turned out to be very interesting. I'll tell you about them in a minute. My family moved to Washington, which was what I wanted. I didn't want them to stay in Kansas. Now, of course, most of the families stay at home, which is a terrible mistake. You don't work very hard - When I say hard, you might work 2-3 days a week in Congress, and the rest of the time is back at home raising money or working and stuff. Back when I was in Congress early on, we'd work 4-5 days a week, and I would go back home maybe 2 weekends a month, and I would stay in Washington a couple weekends a month, and I was able to balance it pretty well. It was never a major, enormous problem that I can recall.

My kids, it's interesting - my son is now a successful film producer. He's the president of a company called Spyglass Entertainment Films. He's made all sorts of films, Jackie Chan films, Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, and Shanghai Knights, and a lot of things. He got into this business because when I was away, my wife would take would take my kids and they would see 3-4-5 movies in a weekend. And then my wife was kind of involved in the arts, so it was a natural. His life went towards the entertainment world. And my daughter's in the fashion business in New York.

So I don't think there's - The truth of the matter is, unless you've just got your head screwed on the wrong way, you can manage this life fairly successfully.

PH: Okay, interesting. Were there specific tips, or ways you juggled that?

DG: You couldn't go home all the time. You had to - If your family was in Washington, you had to spend some time with your family. Early on, I did that. I was home a lot, but I was able to do that.

PH: Another - just to sum up, when you look back on that early stage of your career, what were the traits or the behaviors that really stand out in your mind as reasons for your success?

DG: I was a good speaker, first of all. I had taken debate and speech, and I was extremely comfortable on my feet. And I had good interpersonal skills even as a young person. I don't think that's changed at all with me. I was a good listener. In some sense, that made me somewhat non-threatening to people, which is an interesting phenomena in politics. People don't like hotshots around them. They won't vote for hotshots.

PH: Really?

DG: They vote for people who they think are like them, I mean, or you know, not a good ol' boy - I'm not a good ol' boy - but they like people that are likeable. That's a big thing.

And this was something I always wanted to do, so you have the drive and the ambition, and everything in your life is focused on that goal. You don't get off track.

Then I was pretty good at jumping at opportunities. There's an old joke my dad used to tell me about this businessman that goes to a high school, and he's advising the kids on how to be successful. And he says, "Remember this: you've got to jump when opportunity knocks." So one of the kids says, "Well, that's great for you - you're a rich businessman. How do you know when opportunity knocks?" And the guy says, "You don't. That's why you've got to keep jumping all the time." That's been kind of the rule - it means take advantage of opportunities. Never let an opportunity go. That requires a kind of sixth sense, too. If something bad happens, you make something good out of it.

The other thing I found out early on, which was a big thing, was that I would write everything down. I would leave nothing to memory, nothing. And you'd be surprised at what a big difference that makes in life.

PH: Interesting. But getting back to what you were saying about opportunity, is it really just the way the story went, you just jumped for everything? How did you discern -

DG: No, I was clever and careful about it. I ran for the school board because it was an election where four people were elected at one time, rather than one, okay, so I knew I could probably be one of the four. If I had to run for one, it would've been more difficult then. The school board was a highly publicized, high-profile political job that got a lot of press. While I was there, I did a good job both politically and substantively. I looked, and I knew I wanted to go higher, probably - it sounds crass, and I don't mean it to sound crass -

PH: No, not at all.

DG: You know, I looked out there, and I saw this very nice incumbent Congressman, who hadn't done very well the election before. He'd gotten less than 50% of the vote in the election of '74 - there'd been a third-party candidate in the race. It struck me that if you get an incumbent that doesn't get 50% of the vote, something's wrong! And I couldn't get a lot of the national political folks terribly interested in the race, but I was right. I was not a brilliant political observer, but it struck me that he wasn't too popular. And that's how it happened, I guess.

PH: So, okay, summing up, are there any big-picture lessons, or nuggets of philosophy, that you'd pass on to young people as they're entering that early stage in their career.

DG: One is to take risks while you're young, and don't wait forever to do something that really strikes your fancy, even if you're not successful on it. The other is to plan well. No step like what I did could be done just haphazardly. It required, even for a young guy like me at the time, it required some pretty serious planning. And then three is, know your strengths! If you don't have strengths in certain areas that you need to have, then you need to go out and get schooled on them. Like if you're fearful of public speaking, you can't be in politics without doing that. I'd say those are the major things. A fourth thing is just, in any line of work, people have to like you. If they don't like you, you can't get past first base. This is the great trait that both Bill Clinton and George Bush had, this President Bush. They are both fundamentally fairly likable people. It was the great trait that Al Gore didn't have. I'm just talking about - there are a million other examples. It's the great trait that Martha Stewart doesn't have! (laughs)

If people like you, they're willing to open their door to you, they're willing to forgive you, they're willing to be accessible to you. That's an intangible: how do you do that? Well, you do it - some of it's just innate, I'll be honest with you. (chuckles)

PH: I really appreciate it...