Batchelder, unveiling a bronze bust of McCulloch outside the Ohio House’s chamber, and Stokes, by audio remote, highlighted McCulloch’s work in Columbus and Washington. Like Batchelder, McCulloch served in Ohio’s House and became House speaker. Like Stokes, McCulloch served in Congress, though he arrived 21 years before. (Stokes was first elected to the U.S. House in 1968.)
Democrat Stokes underscored Republican McCulloch’s pivotal role in winning passage of crucial federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s. McCulloch was the ranking Republican member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. His record of commitment to equal rights is chronicled in a new biography, “McCulloch of Ohio: For the Republic,” by Mark Bernstein. (Bernstein also wrote “John J. Gilligan: The Politics of Principle,” the first full biography of the Cincinnati Democrat who was Ohio’s governor from 1971 through 1974).
Historically, among the many striking tributes to the GOP’s McCulloch was one from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in a letter she sent McCulloch when he announced his retirement from Congress. “I know that you, more than anyone, were responsible for the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and particularly for the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Onassis wrote. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed that measure, on July 2, 1964, a New York Times story described it as “the most sweeping civil rights legislation ever enacted in this country.”
McCulloch’s dedication to civil rights grew out of his moral code and his belief, Bernstein wrote, that Republicans “were the Party of Lincoln … [with] responsibility for furthering … freedom and equality.” Before the Civil War, McCulloch’s grandfather joined the then-new GOP because it opposed slavery’s expansion, Bernstein wrote.
There was something else in McCulloch’s makeup, and in his approach to government, that stoked his quest to get substantial civil rights legislation passed: A belief that the work of a legislator was, ideally, constructive. That is, he or she should strive to resolve differences, not make them worse. Bernstein quoted a striking 1971 House speech McCulloch made – using words state legislators in Columbus and federal legislators in Washington ought to ponder:
“We are a nation of many people and many views,” McCulloch said. “In such a nation, the prime purpose of a legislator … is accommodate the interests, desires, wants, and needs of all our citizens. … Lawmaking is the reconciliation of divergent views. In a democratic society like ours, the purpose of representative government is to soften tension – reduce strife – while enabling groups and individual to more nearly obtain the kind of life they wish to live.”
That is, the object of American politics isn’t, or shouldn’t be, to throw gasoline on fires – to grandstand – but to find some common ground. Today, we call the Miami Valley’s William M. McCulloch a great man not only because he knew that, but because he lived it. Too many of today’s officeholders don’t and won’t. That’s why what we call them may not be fit to print.
About the Author