Milwaukee native Abner J. Mikva — former U.S. Representative from Illinois, federal judge and presidential legal advisor — did not yet know who won the national elections when The Chronicle spoke to him on Oct. 31.
But at 82, he has seen many elections; and “this is far and away the most exciting election I’ve ever lived through,” he said.
“What excites me and pleases me so much in my ripe old age is that I view this election as almost a rebirthing of our democracy, because there’s enthusiasm, there’s excitement, there’s high interest,” he said.
“The anticipation is that almost 130 million Americans will vote,” he continued. “I think that’s close to two-thirds of the registered voters. That’s what a democracy ought to have.
“We’ve been perilously close to 50 percent or less. When you get below 50 percent of eligible voters voting, I don’t know what you call it, but it sure isn’t a democracy.”
In Milwaukee to help campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Mikva spoke to about 100 local Jews gathered at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center.
Mikva said the daughter of one of his high school friends asked him to speak to this group about “why I thought Barack Obama was going to be such a great president … and in particular why he is going to be very good for causes that Jews hold dear, including the state of Israel.”
Mikva said he has known Obama since the candidate graduated from law school. Mikva was a federal judge in Washington, D.C., at that time and had offered to interview Obama for a clerkship, and felt a bit nonplussed when Obama turned him down in order to return to Chicago to run for office.
They reconnected when they both taught at the University of Chicago and became “social friends as well as political friends,” Mikva said. “And when he first decided he was going to run for the Senate, I was one of his earliest supporters.”
What to do first?
Mikva shared his thoughts about what each presidential candidate should do first, if elected.
While diffidently saying “I’m not going to try to set [a President Obama’s] agenda for him,” Mikva said that the economy should be the new administration’s first task.
An Obama administration has “to do something to break this credit freeze that is continuing to plague not only our markets but also markets all over the world,” Mikva said. “And that’s going to take some strong action. I don’t know what it will be.”
Mikva also said the new administration “has to do something about jobs” and reduce the current six percent unemployment rate. “I don’t think we can overestimate how important jobs are to how people perceive their government,” he said.
And an Obama administration has “got to get us out of Iraq.” This constitutes “part of the solution to the economic problem” and moreover “that war is no more winnable than the war in Vietnam,” Mikva said.
As much as Mikva didn’t want to admit the possibility of Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) winning, Mikva said, “The first thing” President McCain would have to do “is reassure this country that we still have a country left. There’s going to be a terrible amount of … anger in this country if Obama loses.”
“It will be on a very close vote if [Obama] were to lose,” Mikva continued. “There would be disputes about votes in places like Florida and Ohio, as there always are when it is close.
“And I think the first things McCain would have to do is say … and do some things to unite … and reassure the country that we can have a democracy and that he can help close some of the wounds.”
When asked about the significance of the election to the U.S. Jewish community, Mikva said he felt pleased that it looked as though most Jews would vote for Obama after a lot of talk about how Jews “weren’t going to vote for a black man and they were all angry because [New York Sen. Hillary Clinton] hadn’t been nominated…”
Mikva predicted that Obama would receive “the same or perhaps an even higher percentage of the Jewish vote” than past Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry, Al Gore or Bill Clinton did.
“Which is as it should be,” Mikva continued. “Jews are naturally liberal by instinct.”
As when it comes to Milwaukee’s Jews, Mikva said, “I think that when the votes are counted, when they analyze them, they will see that the Jewish community of Milwaukee has lived up to its tradition of supporting the right guy.”
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