Reply #15: Just found this little jobbie [View All]

[T_i_B]

http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/SO94/blow.html

Gephardt went to Northwestern University near Chicago, where he met his wife, Jane Ann Byrnes. He graduated from law school at the University of Michigan in 1965 and returned to St. Louis to practice law. In 1971, he became a local alderman; in 1976, he handily won a wide-open congressional race.

Heading off to Washington, D.C., the 35-year-old Gephardt was a perfect representative of his 98 percent white, socially conservative, blue-collar district: Personally, he was as colorless as Wonder Bread; politically, Gephardt thought Ronald Reagan had some good ideas, in particular, skepticism about government's role over business and the states. And Gephardt was moral, oh-so-moral. He wanted to pass a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion.

He made his mark quickly. In 1979, he and then-congressman David Stockman, a Republican who was later Ronald Reagan's budget director, torpedoed Jimmy Carter's health care cost-containment plan. (Their alternative was to encourage voluntary competition among insurance companies. Gephardt has since somewhat sheepishly repudiated this idea.) In 1985, Gephardt became the first head of the newly formed Democratic Leadership Council, a controversial group within the party because of its moderate-to-right leanings.

After 1985, Gephardt moved steadily to the left, aligning himself more closely with traditional New Deal Democratic constituencies: labor, old people, minorities. He did it partly because Reaganomics was harming his district, and partly to facilitate his climb within the House, whose Democratic caucus traditionally defines the left wing of the Democratic Party.