“My Marine Corps ethos is at the core of everything I do,” said former Virginia Gov. Chuck Robb in a recent interview with the Gazette.
He added, “And I think that my Marine Corps ethos have served me well as an elected official.”
Robb served as the 64th governor of Virginia from 1982 to 1986 and a United States senator from 1989 until 2001. He was a highly popular politician, elected to the Senate with 71% of the vote. He often acted as a bridge between Democratic and Republican members.
I asked him where and how did he learn his statecraft.
“One of the core values that I learned as a young Marine officer was that leadership is built on respect,” Robb said. “When I went into politics, it was important to me to develop that respect among the people that I worked with and with the other side. I made a point of listening to all sides of an issue, listening to experts on the topic, and making judgments based on what I thought was right. It was never my style to make bombastic speeches — I though that I could get a lot more done by developing respect and working with others to find a way forward.”
Considering that President Lyndon B. Johnson, a master politician, was Robb’s father-in-law, I asked Robb what did he learn from him.
“President Johnson had a unique ability to discern or extract the essence of an issue and what he could do to actually address the problem that was at its core. He had deep convictions about fairness in the world and sought out ways to rectify unfairness in any way he could.”
Robb continued, “In his speech at the 1965 commencement address at Howard University, President Johnson said, ‘It is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.’ I really admired that about him.”
Robb explained that fairness and an end to discrimination of all kinds has always been crucially important to him. This was an area in which as an elected official he was happy to emulate his father-in-law’s example.
I was curious to learn what made Robb enter the political arena.
“Fundamentally, becoming an elected official was a way that I could serve my community,” he said. “The policy issues that we were facing in Virginia appealed to me as a challenge that I thought I could lead the efforts to help solve. I am by no means an expert in any of these policy areas, but I had a willingness to lead and listen to experts, to find solutions.”
In fact, Robb has been a political innovator. He founded the Democratic Governors Association and co-founded the Democratic Leadership Council.
“When we started the Democratic Leadership Council in the mid-1980s, the Democratic Party had lost four of the previous five presidential elections,” Robb said. “We felt that part of the reason for those losses was that the national party platform was largely dictated by a small portion of the party. We set out to put together a platform that could bring together disparate parts of the party, which the American people could truly get behind.”
He added: “Of course, taking on some of the party’s entrenched interest was not always easy and, as I say in my book, when you skewer a number of sacred cows, sometimes the herd turns on you.”
All this and much more is part of Robb’s recently published memoir, “In the Arena: A Memoir of Love, War, and Politics.” It is an in-depth recounting of his life.
“I wanted to write this book to leave behind an honest reflection on the life that I’ve lived,” he said. “I recognize that even I won’t live forever and I think that it can be helpful for future generations to understand the why behind events that came before them — why it was important for me to serve in combat, why I ran for office and why I took the stances that I did.”
Shatz is a Williamsburg resident. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” the compilation of his selected columns. The book is available at the Bruton Parish Shop and Amazon.com
