Oct.06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

This Week in Freudenfreude:

Dianne Feinstein was laid to rest yesterday. In a sign of the times, her memorial service was closed to the public, and the site of her grave was kept secret, because of credible threats by people who disliked the Senator.

We are not the ideal people to write obituaries. If that is what you want, then take a look at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, or the extensive coverage from The San Francisco Chronicle, her hometown paper.

What we are suited for, by contrast, is research. And so, to note Feinstein's passing, and to acknowledge her historic career, we present these ten short stories from her life:

1. Guess She Couldn't Get in to UCLA: After attending high school at Convent of the Sacred Heart—which, as you might guess, is a Catholic school despite Feinstein being an observant Jew—she was choosing between UC Berkeley and Stanford to continue her education. Her father, Leon Goldman, who was a physician of some note and is remembered as the first Jewish chair of surgery at UCSF's medical school, had earned all of his degrees from Cal, and he put on the hard sell for his alma mater. "Remember, Dianne," he told her, "it's better to sit one thousand feet away from a genius than one hundred feet from a mediocrity." She chose Stanford.
   
   
2. Go With Your Strengths: After enrolling at Stanford, Feinstein took a biology course... and barely passed. That told her that following her father into medicine was probably not a good call. She found, however, that she tended to do well in history and politics courses, particularly those that involved essays (and, thus, self-expression). Her first foray into politics came when she decided to run for vice president of the student body. You know those old cartoons/Marx Brothers films/Three Stooges shorts where an unpopular stage performer gets rotten fruit thrown at them, vaudeville-style? Well, that actually happened to Feinstein during her campaign speeches before audiences that were nearly all-male. On one occasion, one of the campus fraternities went further, and doused the candidate in a shower, to "cool her off." She also struggled to get anyone to volunteer for her campaign, and ended up conducting her own polls of the race.
   
   In the end, Feinstein got 63% of the vote and was elected. And in case you are wondering why she didn't run for president, the rules in place at the time prohibited women from holding that position.
   
   
3. Lofty Aspirations: In 1955, shortly after graduating, Feinstein applied for an internship with the Coro Foundation, which connects young people with political campaigns and organizations. On her application, she wrote: "I plan to run for political office on a local and possibly a national level." Not too remarkable today, but in 1955 there were just one woman in the Senate (Margaret Chase Smith) and just 15 in the House.
   
   
4. Be Prepared: Feinstein was witness to many different sorts of disasters and crises in her life. She experienced multiple house fires. She was targeted for assassination on at least two occasions. She was in San Francisco when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hit the city hard. At some point, many decades ago, she developed what became a well-known habit of always keeping a fireman's jacket in the trunk of her car, so she'd always be equipped for an emergency.
   
   
5. I Get a Kick Out of You: The most famous song about San Francisco was by Tony Bennett, and the most famous politician from San Francisco was Dianne Feinstein. This being the case, it's not too surprising that the pair, who were similar in age (6 years apart), became acquaintances and, eventually, fast friends:
   
   
   
   When Bennett passed earlier this year, Feinstein issued a heartfelt statement remembering their long friendship (undoubtedly the sentiment was genuine, even if she probably didn't have much to do with crafting the remarks). And Feinstein's funeral yesterday ended with the playing of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."
   
   
6. London Calling: Feinstein considered it to be part of her job to encourage young people, and to cultivate the next generation of leaders, often attending events staged by local schools. For example, in 1986, she was in the audience for a performance of the "Dianne Feinstein Band" at a junior high school in San Francisco. The French horn player in that band, who said playing for Feinstein was one of the transformative experiences of her life, was... current San Francisco mayor London Breed.
   
   
7. The Times, They Are A-Changin': You might know that once Barbara Boxer was sworn in as a senator in 1993, she and Feinstein formed the first all-female Senate delegation in U.S. history:
   
   
   
   What you might not know is that the two women were actually elected on the same day: November 3, 1992. Feinstein was elected to finish the term of Pete Wilson, who had resigned to become governor, and so took her seat the next day. Boxer was elected to replace the retiring (and disgraced, and ailing) Alan Cranston, and so took her seat on January 3, 1993.
   
   
8. The Artistic Temperament: When Feinstein first arrived in Washington, she felt isolated, since it's rather different from San Francisco. So, she took up pencil drawing, and showed some amount of talent, hanging some of her works on the wall of her office and giving others to friends and colleagues. For example, "Washington Spring" from 1994:
   
   
   
   Nearly all the drawings have at least some red in them. "Red is my color," Feinstein once explained.
   
   
9. Gunning for the Guns: Feinstein considered her proudest achievement to be the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, which she authored. She was, of course, bitterly disappointed when it was not renewed upon its expiry in 2004, and introduced a version of the bill during every Senate term thereafter. In total, she introduced 918 bills and 140 resolutions; roughly 50 of these became law. A success rate of 5% might seem low, but by U.S. Senate standards, that is squarely in "work horse" territory.
   
   
10. To the Bitter End: The final years of Feinstein's Senate career were less than stellar, to say the least. That said, while she probably should have thrown in the towel, she continued to answer the bell until the very end. Her last vote as a U.S. Senator came just 16 hours before she passed away. Even if the path that led to that ending was not a good one, there's nonetheless something noble in a finale like that, not unlike Queen Elizabeth II rising from her de facto deathbed to perform her duties one last time and to appoint Liz Truss as prime minister.
    
    Oh, and in case you wonder how often a senator dies with their boots on, Feinstein is number 302. There have been a little over 2,000 members of the Senate over the years, so that means your average senator has about a 15% chance of dying in office.

It was a heckuva career. Have a good weekend, all! (Z)