Vern Riffe (D-OH)
1993-1997
Like Howard Metzenbaum, to whom he is always compared, Vern Riffe was born to a low income family. Unlike his predecessor, Riffe was not a city man, born in the small town of Boston, Ohio. And unlike Metzenbaum Riffe would never make his fortune, politics would gain him stability, but not wealth.
Growing up in Appalachia, Riffe saw the continued poverty in the region first hand. The region at the time remained heavily Democratic, and Riffe flowed naturally into the party, becoming active in politics. This eventually became the launching point for his entry into the Ohio House.
Riffe quickly became an effective legislator, working on behalf of his constituents, and Southeast Ohio in general, to gain meaningful aid from the state government. Education and infrastructure were his top priorities, hoping to close the gap between Appalachia and the rest of the state. Riffe was known as a fairly moderate Representative, willing to work across the aisle with Republicans to get his bills passed. On the other hand, this meant his power also snaked into the Republican Party, with threats of campaign funds being poured into Democratic opponents being a common tactic.
After a failed run for State Treasurer in 1970, Riffe would pursue a Senate Seat in 1974, running a well funded, well managed campaign that saw him to Washington, becoming the Junior Senator to Howard Metzenbaum’s Senior. Riffe learned much from Metzenbaum including a deep knowledge of the Senate rules and the art of federal politicking, subtle differences from the Statehouse. However Riffe would not always see eye to eye with Metzenbaum. Metzenbaum was a great opponent of pork barrel spending, while Riffe reveled in delivering unto his constituents lavishly. Portsmouth, the anchor of his old legislature district, would receive massive investments that helped it wind up the East’s answer to Silicon Valley.
Less standoffish than Metzenbaum, Riffe would worm his way in Leadership, initially the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Chairmanship, which gave Riffe substantial leverage in the rat race for seats. With the Senate Majority that accompanied Newman’s election, Riffe would wind up Majority Whip, and was a major player in what little the Dean Administration got done. In 1985, after a wildly successful campaign season and the retirement of his predecessor, Riffe would ascend to the position of Majority Leader.
Not since Lyndon Johnson had a majority leader become so powerful. And perhaps Riffe even surpassed the old master Riffe centralized power in a way that offended many in the ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ doling out Committee assignments on a whim. The Senate’s walls against change had cracked with the “Kennedy Manoeuvre” undermining the filibuster, but Riffe would tear them down still further. Previously such actions had been limited in scope, but Riffe was willing to use them with such regularity the filibuster was curtailed into practical nothingness. Riffe also seized the title of “President Pro Tempore.” Tradition dictated the title, and it’s place in the line of succession, would go to the most senior majority Senator. But Riffe’s rule changes had made presiding over the Senate a much more powerful position. And so President Pro Tempore became synonymous with the majority leader, just as Speaker of the House was.
Most of these changes were wrought as Riffe pushed through Matzenbaum’s ambitious agenda, sending the massive changes down the line by hook and by crook and carrot and stick. Riffe’s tendrils spread into the Republican Party and even the House. Riffe was the spider at the center of a web, ensnaring Congress to deliver healthcare, unions, and infrastructure.
Riffe’s power and association with Matzenbaum made him a natural front runner in the 1992 election to succeed him. Some, perhaps rightly, accused him of being the ultimate insider, the Washington rat. But flush with the popularity of recent reforms and flush with cash from Unions and businesses alike, Riffe would steamroll his way through the primaries. By the time the First Five were finished, all of Riffe’s opponents had dropped out and he faced no opposition on Decision Day.
Riffe made history by selecting Congresswoman Pat Schroeder of Colorado as the first ever female Vice Presidential nominee. His Republican, Pete du Pont, had plenty of money but little momentum and the rich heir of a chemical company was not what America wanted in this era of heady liberalism. Riffe won in a landslide.
Riffe would not prove as sweeping as Metzenbaum. Some of this was simply that Metzenbaum had already accomplished the basic wishlist of many Democrats, but some of it was that Riffe was temperamentally more moderate. A sausage maker, not an idealist.
And there was plenty of sausage to be made. There was no particular reason why the Elementary Research Reactor should have been made on the Ohio-Indiana Border near Greenville. In fact there were compelling reasons not to. But it was anyway. Infrastructure continued to be built, and if areas with close allies of the Riffe administration happened to become hubs, where was the harm in that? And sure, the AFL-CIO was a major contributor to the Riffe campaign but hey we’re the largest union in the nation! What were they supposed to do, not involve them in the Smithsonian’s Museum of Labor?
It was not all cronyism however. Riffe would oversee the first successful Mars landing, welcoming Judy Resnik and her crew aboard the “Buckeye Clipper” back home in 1995. Further missions would follow.
Riffe’s signature domestic accomplishment was undoubtedly his American Education Acts. Always a passionate supporter of education, Riffe pushed hard for the legislation. Funding and standards for the Department of Education were increased, while a new Universal Pre-K system introduced, along with generous credits for families with children. Riffe also personally pushed for the “New Morrill Act,” which vastly expanded the number of schools available for Land Grant funding. And finally his crowning achievement, which granted free college to any American student who wanted it. Critics railed about the debt, but the nationwide higher education system Riffe ushered in remains one of the best in the world.
Through it all, Riffe maintained an ironclad grip over Congress with solid majorities. So long as he had control there, he reasoned, nothing would be amiss.
But there are things outside of Congress.
Abroad things seemed to be looking up for the Riffe Administration. 1993 was the Great Year of Revolution. Years of reforms had perhaps strengthened the Eastern block’s economy, but emboldened opposition movements and dissidents. The Berlin Wall fell, and soon much of the Warsaw Pact followed. Yugoslavia would lose Slovenia and Croatia, but would otherwise undergo “Belgiumification” and become the Byzantine democracy known today. In Asia the Chim Lac Revolution in Hanoi would bring about the peaceful reunification of Vietnam. With major reform movements in China and the USSR, it seemed as if Communism was on its way out.
But it was not to be. A coup in the USSR crushed the reformers and proclaimed ‘neo-Communism’. In Bulgaria and Romania as well, the Communist Party remained absolute, with Iran, Mongolia, Korea, and more remaining in Moscow’s orbit. The Iron Curtain had not felled, merely been pushed back. In Czechoslovakia the Great Slovak uprising began, and was brutally suppressed, launching Eastern Europe’s answer to the Troubles.
China, at least, moved beyond Communism. But the provisional government was so chaotic the Army stepped in. The authoritarian National Chinese State was declared, which was enough to bring the KMT dictatorship in Taiwan back into the fold. China began to draw closer with Pakistan and Burma. Much to the concern of India.
All of this made Riffe’s infamous Rotterdam Statement, declaring an end to the Cold War ring hollow, and badly damaged his credibility on foreign policy.
One area that did not see peace was Central America, where the slaughter continued and refugees flooded out. Many were making their way through Mexico to the American border and entering the country. This had been happening for years, but rioting in Brownsville exploded immigration into a national issue. Caught between ‘protecting American jobs’ on one hand and the progressive instincts of the party on the others, Riffe dithered and in doing so lost popularity.
In 1995 a major investigation was launched into the executive branch by members of the House. Although the President was cleared of any direct wrongdoing, the investigation did result in the resignations of several members of his staff and cabinet, and an official resolution that managed to break through Riffe’s control decrying a “culture of insider decision making” inside the White House.
1995 also saw the Nation enter a recession, the first in a decade. Critics alleged it was the result of too much government involvement in the economy. The President stridently denied it. Whatever the cause, the recession badly ate into the President’s support.
When a clearly exhausted Riffe announced in January 1996 he would not be pursuing a second term, many thought this a sure sign he was convinced he would lose. Perhaps this is somewhat true, but the most probable cause was seen just over a year later, when Riffe died at his home in South Ohio, less than 6 months after leaving the Presidency.
Riffe’s presidency is complex. Many remember him more for his efforts in the Senate than as President. His foreign policy is generally regarded as having missed the moment, and domestically his inability to change course in response to recession, scandal, or immigration do not speak well of him. Unlike most other Presidents, Riffe did not have a significant post-Presidency to frame or define his time in office. But perhaps one of the countless students emerging from the university system he rebuild will do so for him.
Riffe did live long enough to see his successor, who was not Pat Schroeder as he had hoped. Nor was it her Republican opponent.
It was an independent. A Democrat who had broken from his party in pursuit of power and who had obtained it, the first person to break the duopoly since Washington.
He would also make the allegations of corruption in the Riffe administration seem trivial.