It wasn’t a surprise.
The column was a hard-hitting piece, one that argued he was failing to meet the historic moment his election to the highest post in Indiana’s state government presented and similarly failing to address the challenges confronting Hoosiers. It couldn’t have been pleasant for him to read.
But Bayh took it like an adult.
He called me—and he did it himself, not through a staffer—and asked if I could come over to the governor’s office for lunch so we could talk about the piece. He said he’d have sandwiches sent in and that we’d be able to talk in private.
When we got together, he didn’t lambast me. He didn’t whine that he was being treated unfairly.
He calmly made the case for what he and his administration were doing and what they were trying to do. He laid out what the obstacles were and what he and his team were doing to surmount or circumvent them. He talked about what his goals and priorities were and how they would help the people of this state.
He didn’t turn me into a convert because some of my criticisms of his leadership were and remain valid.
But he did persuade me that he was a serious, substantial man, one who could take a hit without dissolving into self-pity.
He also led me to adopt a practice of allowing any elected official who thought I’d treated him or her too harshly the chance to rebut my arguments.
I wrote another column with a brief introduction that presented his case.
After that, Bayh and I disagreed from time to time, but never without attempting to understand where the other was coming from.
A couple of decades later, I wrote another column, this time about Mitch Daniels. It also didn’t pull punches.
After Daniels left the governor’s office, emails from his time as the state’s chief executive surfaced in which he criticized the late Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and suggested he didn’t want it taught in Indiana schools.
I took him to task in terms that were less than gentle for failing to defend free speech and academic freedom.
He called me.
By then, he was president of Purdue University.
We had a civil, cordial conversation in which he responded, point by point, to my criticisms. I offered to do what I’d done with Bayh and write another column detailing his reasoning.
He said he would appreciate that.
As with Bayh, he didn’t completely turn my thinking around, but, like Bayh, he demonstrated he could take a punch and keep moving forward.
After that, upon occasion, he would send me texts, emails or notes about columns I’d done, most often pointing out what he saw as errors in my thinking but also every now and then including a compliment or two.
Again, those exchanges didn’t always persuade me, but they prompted me to ponder another point of view. I often learned from them.
I’ve been thinking about the exchanges with Evan Bayh and Mitch Daniels in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s temper tantrum over one of comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s jokes and current Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s meltdowns over Valparaiso parents criticizing a recent appearance of his and—Lord, help us—a Westfield High School band performance.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these episodes in the annals of thin-skinned fragility.
Was Kimmel’s joke—about Melania Trump’s “expectant widowhood”—a thigh-slapper?
No.
Was it bad enough to merit Kimmel’s firing?
Hardly.
And it’s more than a little absurd that the same president who sent a mob screaming “Hang Mike Pence!” after his own vice president is complaining about incitements to violence.
Then there’s Beckwith, whose education clearly failed him.
He seems to think that everyone else on this planet exists simply to agree with him and that it’s a crime if they don’t think or speak as he does.
Like Trump, every time someone questions him, he demands that they be fired just because they have a different opinion or point of view.
There are ways that mature adults and effective leaders handle differences of opinion.
It’s the approach Evan Bayh and Mitch Daniels took.
And then there’s the way Trump, Beckwith and small children do it.
