Bob Traxler
                                             June 15, 2001
                                             Jeff Charnley,
                                              interviewer
Charnley: Today is Friday, June 15, the year 2001. I'm Jeff Charnley, Interviewing the Honorable
Robert Traxler, former Michigan congressman also former member and chairperson of the MSU
Board of Trustees. We are at the Traxler summer home on beautiful Mackinaw Island in Northern
Michigan. This interview is part of MSU's Sesquicentennial Oral History Project commemorating
the 150th anniversary of the university coming up in the year 2005.
        Mr. Traxler, you can see we've got a tape recorder here today for this session. Do you give
us permission to tape the interview?
Traxler: I certainly do.
Charnley: I'd like to start with some general questions about your personal background, your
educational background. Where were you born and raised and where did you go to high school?
Traxler: Bay City. Well, Kawkawlin, Michigan, just outside of Bay City, is my little home town.
My father was a small farmer and a rural mail carrier. My mother was a housewife. I attended high
school in Bay City, T.L. Handy High School. It's now an intermediate school, through
consolidation. I next went to, at that time the Bay City Community Junior College, and I was there
for two years, transferred my junior year to Michigan State.
        Finished there in 1953, did a military service in the U.S. Army of two years in Germany.
Returned to Michigan State for a year and used that time to come to some career decisions. I think
when you're faced with a draft situation as a senior, you're really not thinking about the future,
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because it's short term definitely.
Charnley: My number for the Vietnam War was nineteen, so in 1972 I was in a similar situation.
Traxler: You know exactly what I'm saying.
        While I was at State that year, which was the beginning of the summer of '55, I decided to
go to law school, and attended Detroit College of Law, which I think is an interesting fact due to
DCL having merged with Michigan State University now. I was very pleased as a member of the
board to participate in that matter.
        Following law school, I returned to Bay City and became an assistant prosecutor for two
years, and was elected to the State House of Representatives, and began my service there January 1
of 1963, with George [George W.] Romney as the governor, and served in the Michigan House as
the majority floor leader, and subsequently chairman of the House Judiciary Committee for a couple
of years before running in a special election in 1973 for the U.S. Congress. I was a so-called
Watergate baby. Upon entering the Congress, I was appointed to the House Appropriations
Committee, and served there during virtually my entire time in the House of Representatives, and
that was for a period of eighteen years.
        I left the Congress January 1, 1993, declined to seek reelection, was elected to the MSU
board in November of 1992, assuming office in January of '93, so I went on for eight more years of
elected public service, nearly eight years, because in August of the last year of my term in 2000, the
governor appointed me to Mackinaw Island State Park Commission in return for my resignation
from board. Since I had only a few months left, I thought that was a fair trade. I've been a
Mackinaw person for too many years. I'm enjoying my work on the commission, which is not very
substantial, but terribly interesting.
Charnley: What's that term?
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Traxler: I'll finish out an unfinished term. The term is for six years, and I've got four years left.
Charnley: We'll jump back, otherwise it would be a short interview. When you were in high
school, what was your field that you were interested in studying?
Traxler: I was really undecided. It really wasn't until I got to MSU that I made a career decision
that I wanted to major in political science and history, and that was based on gravitating to those
subjects which were the easiest for me and which I had the greatest interest in. I had always been
interested in politics and government, and indeed my father had taught me that government service
was next to the clergy in terms of its importance as far as society, and I have always recalled that
and found government service to be really one of the most enjoyable and personally rewarding of
any experience that I have ever had. I sometimes feel sorry for others if they haven't had the
opportunity to really serve both the state and the nation in terms of doing what one can to improve
the lot of fellow man. In that sense it's kind of related to what the clergy do, I suspect.
Charnley: As a high school student, did you have any contact with MSU?
Traxler: Not in those years, no. When I was a high school student, I was the first person in my
family to go to college, and that was really kind of a distant goal, even though I was on the college
prep program. I was quite undecided, because of financial reasons, as to where I would go. The
local at that time junior college, now Delta Community College, the junior college, by the way, had
an outstanding reputation across the state, and I received, I think, a very fine basic education there.
That was the thing. The finances of that and living at home permitted me and my family to save
money, so that I could attend Michigan State for the last two years.
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Charnley: When you arrived on campus in the early 1950s, what was the campus like?
Traxler: Well, very different from today. The student population was less than half of what it is
today. The north campus was principally where everything was. Shaw Hall had been constructed
on the south side of the river, but principally the dairy barns were over there and the agriculture
school sort of ran everything on that side of school, except for Shaw. The university was deeply
involved in preparing for the centennial in 1955. So we're fifty years later.
Charnley: Did you have any contact with President [John A.] Hannah as a student?
Traxler: Very causal. The person that I knew best was Dean King, and the fraternity that I
belonged to, we seemed to have a propensity for being in violation of college regulations, so Dean
King occasionally visited the fraternity and saw to it that we were on social probation for two years.
Charnley: What fraternity were you a member of?
Traxler: Kappa Sigma.
Charnley: Of your professors while you were at MSU, any memorable or that had a lasting
influence, for good or bad?
Traxler: There was Professor Fisher. There was the indomitable great lover of MSU, and raconteur
of lots of stories, Walter Adams was my favorite, even though I was not an economics major and
had little interest in economics because of the perception that I had in that time of my life that
economists did not understand the world. As a young socialist, I thought that wealth came from
labor. They, of course, argued that it came from capital. I'd never seen such a group of biased
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bigots in my entire life. And they still think that.
Charnley: So Walter Adams, you had him for a variety of courses?
Traxler: I just had him for one, and Walter was the kind of professor that left an impact on you. Of
course, he was very progressive in his thoughts. I had him for a courses called "War Economics,"
and the purpose of the class was to demonstrate how the military industrial complex ripped off the
taxpayer through procurement and the purchasing of ordinary items. We became friends, and he
would stop in and visit me in Washington. He lectured at the War College in Washington. He'd
come in usually once a year. I suspect that he was sort of the flip side of every other person that
they had lecture. [Laughter]
Charnley: The military service, you served in Germany?
Traxler: Yes.
Charnley: Did you go ROTC or were you commissioned?
Traxler: No. Because I attended a junior college where there was no ROTC, I wasn't eligible for
the program. I was a buckass private in the rear ranks.
Charnley: You served in Germany in occupation time?
Charnley: Well, we were sort of guests. I was there in 1954 and 1955, portions of those years, and
we were more looked upon as guests of the German Government.
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Charnley: Where did you actually serve?
Traxler: I originally was in Kaiserslautern. They moved me around a bit, my unit moved.
Principally I was in a town called Kaiserslautern which was a quiet rural-type atmosphere, and
Kaiserslautern was not one the prominent German cultural centers, shall we say, sort of the
backwaters of Germany in a sense. The proper Germans didn't think that they spoke very good
German there. They thought that they were without culture, although they did have a wonderful
opera house and a great performing group.
Charnley: Was that your first time overseas?
Traxler: Yes, and it had a profound impact on me. I was able to travel quite extensively on leave,
and I had a month. I think that that was very important for me to get a perspective of the world and
different people and how they saw the United States and how I saw them. It was most interesting,
very helpful in forming my philosophies in later years.
Charnley: Was there anything else about your military service that you thought of?
Traxler: No, except I think that it knocked a lot of the idealism out, and I found out that it was very
difficult to be successful against a huge bureaucracy that's able to impose its will upon you, and that
if you're at all to survive, you have to learn the rules and follow them, maintaining as much of your
self-respect and dignity as you can. Actually, looking back on it, I don't think that I thought that at
the time, looking back on it I think it was probably two of the more formidable years that I've ever
spent. I became acquainted with large numbers of people.
         We talk about the diversity on campus, but there is nothing to compare with the diversity of
the military when a draft is on, because you truly do get a cross-section of America. I mean you're
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living with them, you're sleeping with them. You all have the same issues, the same problems. I
knew those people better than their mothers did.
Charnley: What was your MOS? Not the number, but what did you actually do?
Traxler: I was the battalion supply clerk. I was a private battalion supply clerk.
Charnley: Doesn't appear high on your résumé. [Laughter]
Traxler: [Laughter] No. It sounds impressive. A supply clerk. Good God.
Charnley: You decided not to stay longer than two years in the military?
Traxler: In fact, I even applied for a sixty-day early release, and I always recalled the first sergeant
saying, "Traxler, you're going home in sixty days. What's this application?" I made it ninety days,
of course, and I filed it, and he said, "You're only going to be out sixty days early." And I said,
"Every second counts. Freedom."
Charnley: That perspective must have helped later on when you were in Congress.
Traxler: Truly. One of the early subcommittees I served on was the Military Construction
Subcommittee, and of course we had all kinds of generals marching in and out of there. It was very
helpful to me to have the experience of being a private and getting saluted by generals in later life.
Not quite saluted, but deferred to, shall we say.
Charnley: When you got out of the service and you came back to Michigan State, had it changed in
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those couple years at all?
Traxler: Well, it was the year of the centennial, and there was a lot of activities on campus, and the
Water Carnival was still going on. My fraternity in '53, my graduation year, won the Water
Carnival first prize for a float, so that was a great evening celebration.
         I think, looking at '55, it hadn't been so much that the campus had changed in those two
years. I think that the students were beginning to move towards the sixties, and the Beatles were
coming. I'm trying to recall--who was that silly character who shook his hips and strummed the
guitar, and got it all going?
Charnley: Elvis.
Traxler: Was that Elvis? Elvis was coming. I think I noticed this more, I came back for a football
game and stayed at the fraternity house in 1958, fall of '58, maybe '59, and I was absolutely
shocked. I mean, these students were so young, even though I had been there less than three or four
years earlier. The music was very different. Their attitudes were very different. And I was only
there two nights. I truly knew that I had achieved adult status and that there was no going back to
college days.
Charnley: I've talked with other people who mentioned the Water Carnival, but I haven't talked to
anyone who participated, actually. That's not there now. It went away in the sixties?
Traxler: The various housing units on campus participated in building floats on steel drums. There
was a theme for the Water Carnival each year, and your float related to the theme. I don't recall the
theme for 1953, but I do recall our float. It was a carriage, and I must say it was well done, well
made. In any event, it took first place.
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Charnley: And you just floated down the Red Cedar?
Traxler: You just floated down the Cedar.
Charnley: Students lined up along?
Traxler: Yes, they had bleachers, and it drew the community.
Charnley: Who did the judging?
Traxler: I think that they had a group, typically they would have off-campus people, celebrities and
stuff.
Charnley: And Greek life also, I haven't interviewed anyone who was a fraternity member at the
time, so this will be the first one.
Traxler: I don't things have changed in terms of fraternities. I think my fraternity years really made
a direct connection with the university, because the people that I lived with in that house are still my
best friends today, and our association with the university is homecoming over at the fraternity
house, there they are, look through some of the old scrapbooks and realized how prominent, shall I
say, we were in terms of maintaining a scrapbook during the years that we were there. It's still there
today, and I think it's the best.
Charnley: Is the house the same place?
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Traxler: No, the house was sold. The fraternity went de-active for a period of a couple of years and
finally got started back up again. I can't tell you what those years were. I sort of lost track with
them. While I was working on my career, it was very difficult being in the Congress and trying to
get back and do things on weekends when I had other commitments in the district or in Washington.
 I'd get over there occasionally.
Charnley: When you came back to Michigan State and then you made the discussion to go into law,
what was involved in that? You were going into teaching?
Traxler: I had come back to Michigan State to work on a teaching certificate. That was starting in
'55. As I took the education courses, I was also paralleling that with some additional political
science classes, and I became a research assistant, and did some things relating to the law. My
professor was particularly interested in doing research on amicus curiae briefs, and my assignment
was to interview a selected group of lawyers in the Lansing area and ask them about amicus curiae,
whether or not they'd ever intervened, had they filed a brief on behalf of any client or any interest.
         I really had been thinking about the law, but it was sort of an aspiration beyond--I mean I
wasn't focused on it, and I realized that I wasn't going to be a teacher, even though I had kind of
liked the idea in a sense. I was really almost preordained to be in politics. I mean my father thought
that politics, again, was one of the highest callings. He voted every year, and I would go to the polls
with him when I was a boy. He ran his own voter identification program and took little widows, as
long as they were Republican.
         He was a classic rural farm Republican whose greatest hero was Theodore Roosevelt, and
he loved Abraham Lincoln because Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves, and that was critical.
Part of his very being was the sense of equality among men, and that was an important historic
event for him. He liked Theodore Roosevelt because Theodore Roosevelt represented a force on
behalf of the little people, as he called them, the little people, and opposed the monopolies, the
                                                                                                     10


railroads, the Rockefeller monopoly of oil.
         He was not a laissez faire Republican, even though he had great reservations about
Roosevelt, because Roosevelt, with his efforts to revitalize the nation's economy, injected, from my
father's standpoint, too much stateism, and the idea of killing little pigs. I think that was sort of a
war cry for Republicans at that time. "How could you slaughter little pigs, the innocents?" That
troubled my dad. He thought that farmers should produce, and that there ought not to be any
artificial constraints placed on them, even if you could make a strong case that that would be healthy
for the small farmer.
Charnley: Did the Depression shake any of those views?
Traxler: No, he was a rural mail carrier, so he came through the Depression relatively unscathed.
He didn't go without any checks. He always had a job there. He retired in the late thirties after
thirty-five years of carrying the mail.
Charnley: When did you become politically active in the Democratic Party?
Traxler: During my law school years. In my college years, principally it was a plague on both
parties, and I thought that the government ought to own the basic means of production and
transportation, government should own the steel mills, government ought to own the mines. I'm sort
of a Fabian socialist. I think that my first ballot was for Adlai Stevenson, even though I wanted to
vote for the socialist candidate, I knew that he couldn't win, and I liked Adlai Stevenson because of
his rationality, and he had just some of the best speeches probably of any recent candidate for the
presidency. He was my favorite.
Charnley: Would you talk a little bit about Detroit College of Law and your experiences there?
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Traxler: DCL, of course, was a downtown Detroit law school, and it was a private school and had a
reputation for its graduates being the highest percentage passing the state bar exam, for whatever
that's worth. DCL doesn't do that well currently, for whatever reasons, but it was an interesting
experience there. DCL had a whole wide-- [Telephone rings. Tape recorder turned off.]
Charnley: We were talking about Detroit College of Law and your experience there.
Traxler: I think that by the point in time that I became a law student, and I was very fortunate I had
the G.I. Bill of Rights, which paid my tuition and gave me a stipend to live on, and I carefully
husbanded that $100 a month that I received. I think that by the time I was a law student, I had
pretty well decided that I was interested in politics as a career, and that law was an excellent means
of supporting myself as a candidate or between political offices, or in the event that I was a failure
as a candidate, then as a career of and by itself, because I truly love the law. It's my second love,
first being politics and government.
Charnley: Then after graduation you went to Bay City?
Traxler: I was appointed an assistant prosecutor in Bay City, which is an excellent stepping stone to
an elected position, namely state legislature.
Charnley: What about that first election?
Traxler: It was interesting. The county was malapportioned. This was 1962, and we did not have
the concept of "one vote, one man" by the state U.S. Supreme court, and the county wasn't a
legislative district at that point. It wasn't evenly divided; it tilted slightly towards the Republicans.
                                                                                                        12


We hadn't had a Democratic state representative there since the Depression, and that person only
served two years.
         So it was quite challenging to get elected, but because of the contacts that I had made as
assistant prosecutor in the two years I was there, and the fact that I came from a rural part of the
county, and my father was well known as a farmer and a rural mailman, I had a strong base of
support in the Republican part of the county, and, of course, the Democratic areas, the ethnic areas,
the Poles, the French supported me, the Irish supported me very strongly, and consequently I won
by, I think it was 1,800 votes. I went on to serve eleven years, twelve years something like that,
State House.
Charnley: What was service in the House like at that time?
Traxler: For me it was just challenging and interesting. I wasn't on the Appropriations Committee,
so I lived in a world of ideas, and I was the majority floor leader my second term, and that got me
involved in all kinds of policy issues, making decisions about what was going to be scheduled on
the floor, working with other members to get their bills out of committee.
         That was the Democrat landslide in 1964, Lyndon Johnson's landslide, and we controlled
the House almost by two-thirds vote, and I was the majority floor leader at that time. The House
flipped back Republican at the end of those two years when the Democrats stayed home in 1966.
Nationwide, the Democrats took a beating. Things were too good. There's an old saying that if a
Democrat has a full belly, he has an empty head. Prosperity really was the Democrats' worst
enemy.
         But this was the first Democratic legislature since two years in the early 1930s, and there
was a lot of legislation to do. The Republicans principally believed in no government, not less, just
no government. They hadn't done anything of any consequence in years and years, and we had a lot
of new members who were very proactive and receptive to ideas, and we, unlike the current
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legislature, we really worked ten, eleven months out of the year. I can recall leaving on the Fourth
of July as the sun was coming up, it was about 5:30, and walking out of the Capitol after an all-night
session to wrap up the appropriation bills and some other needed legislation.
Charnley: Did you work with Governor [John B.] Swainson?
Traxler: No. George Romney.
Charnley. What was it like working with him?
Traxler: I truly enjoyed it. He had good staffing. By comparison to today's Republican, he was
very modern, quite progressive. He fought for a state income tax. Imagine that, a Republican
fighting for an income tax. But there was an element of reform within his tax program. It was
further enhanced, and I can recall sitting at the table with him, with Bill Ryan, who was the
principal negotiator on behalf of the Democrats. Bill was an old UAW negotiator from Detroit. He
was Jesuit-schooled. He had an immense amount of patience, and he and Romney would sit there
for a couple of hours, literally, talking about the finer points, and each of them making a case for or
against the other's idea.
         It was all done, I think, by today's standards it was a very civilized process, very congenial.
It was the issues that mattered, and no one went away, or came to the table, for that matter, with the
sense that the person on the other side of the table was an enemy, a trader, someone who is doing
great disservice to the nation. But that is today's politics. American politics have always been, I
think, really, really rough. If you look at some of the old campaigns in the last century, but at the
same time, when those campaigns were over, people got things done. My years in the Congress, at
least the early and middle years before the right-wingers got there, my best friends were among the
Republicans, not all of my best friends, but I had numerous Republicans who were very good
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friends, and still are today. But you know, I don't know that people in the Congress or legislature
today can say that, can say--
[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
Traxler: It was an attitude of self-righteousness, an "I'm right, you're wrong" hypocrisy, virtually,
and these candidates go off to candidate school where I think their brain is sucked out and mush is
pumped in. It's really a sad thing for the nation. If you look at the House of Representatives today,
there is no interaction between the two parties on a personal level and when-- [Doorbell rings.
Tape recorder turned off.]
Charnley: We were talking about politics and how modern-day politicians frequently in
Washington don't cooperate beyond the House or the Senate.
Traxler: And there it is very contentious. As a member of the Michigan legislature, I think, by the
way, the same mentality carries on in the Michigan legislature as in the Congress. think politics
have become extremely confrontational and it isn't just a contest of ideas, but it becomes a contest
of, in several people's minds, of right versus wrong, and they're right and the other people are
wrong, not just philosophically but morally as well. They interject this issue of "You are evil. Your
views are destructive to our society," and put on a very personal level, which it ought not to be
because there isn't that clearly defined road map to goodness and to, shall we say, salvation. But
they make it that way, and that's their principal failure. They think that politics is mortal combat
and you have to kill your opponent. It's very sad, very sad.
Charnley: Do you think term limits have made that worse?
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Traxler: I don't know that term limits have made it worse. I strongly oppose term limits. It's
ridiculous for the citizenry to place the limitation on their right of who they want as their elected
representative, senator, governor makes little sense to me. It was one of those things that the right
wing got enthused about. The media kind of liked it because it was controversial. It was
something, quote unquote, "new," and it was nothing that they examined at any depth, of course, not
that they do anyhow, but nothing that they had looked at from a serious philosophical standpoint, or
it never would have passed, of course.
         I think the people are beginning to understand that term limits isn't the way in which you
correct the wrongs in the system. The biggest wrong in the system, of course, is financing, and
nobody's prepared to really address that question. A lot of talk about it.
         I think in the Congress they're moving in the right direction. They have certain limitations
by way of the Constitution in terms of free speech. But the state legislature doesn't go anywhere
near that question of the corruption of political money of the system, and that's one of the major
factors that makes our system unrepresentative. It's representative only of the money and not of
people and what's best for the country.
Charnley: When you were in the State House, what was your contact with the university at that
time?
Traxler: Well, it was frequent. Jack Breslin represented the university. Occasionally I'd see
President Hannah in my early years of the State House. Later on, of course, Hannah resigned as
president and Walter Adams was interim president. And then we had Cliff [Clifton R.] Wharton
[Jr.]. I didn't get to know Wharton. What was Wharton's term?
Charnley: 1970 to '77.
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Traxler: My election was in April of '73 and I had been campaigning in '72 for the position, and so I
had very little contact with Wharton.
Charnley: Will you talk a little about Jack Breslin?
Traxler: Well, Jack was the consummate MSU'er. He was "Mr. MSU," and he dearly cared and
loved the university. I think he was so knowledgeable about the institution and he wanted so much
for the right thing to happen in the legislature towards the university.
         A lot of his issues went to the question of financing, as they do now. The representatives of
the university, public affairs people, legislative affairs people, they are so focused, and rightfully so,
on the finances because the legislature, under our Constitution can do very little to effect the internal
operation of the university. They do put some limitations on appropriations that probably aren't
constitutional, but we haven't challenged them, neither have the other universities, because they
haven't gone right to the heart of control.
         So Jack was a lobbyist, an ambassador of good will, a personal friend. We differed
politically. Jack was, of course, a Republican working for [unclear]. He had to be a Republican. I
think that it was during his years, as a consequence of the state income tax, the state had money and
it was a very different kind of a place from the first couple of years I spent there, which was kind of
a log cabin legislature. And as a consequence of George Romney, Bill Ryan, Jim Corrue [phonetic]
in the House, also, he was a legislator, these are the people that negotiate the final package.
         On the Senate side, I don't recall who spoke for the senators, who was part of that
conference. I think a senator from Detroit who was majority leader, Denzen [phonetic]? It's been
so many years. I haven't thought of him. Denzel? Delzel? Denzel, I think it was. But there was no
one on the Senate side that could hold a candle to Romney or Bill Ryan or Jim Corrue. They really
were knowledgeable on the details.
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         I sat there as majority floor leader and, frankly, my contributions were minimal, because my
interests were not in taxation or expenditures at that time. I had to be concerned with the flow of
legislation and the type of legislation that would be coming to the floor. Some things we didn't want
on the floor, other things we did. So I was a traffic cop in many respects. I had to cajole the
Democrat majority and move them, sometimes they thought too fast, too much.
         One of them said, after we had lost the majority in the election of 1964, he said, "You did
too much. You didn't leave anything on the plate that was unfinished."
         I said, "No, no. This election demonstrates that politicians are really victims of
circumstances in many respects." We had very fine people that were elected in the Lyndon Johnson
landslide of '64 and here it is, 1966 and I want to correct myself. I said '64.
Charnley: Yes.
Traxler: I meant the election of '66 that we lost the control of the Michigan House. Talented and
gifted people lost their bid for reelection; they only served two years.
Charnley: Jack Breslin's method of lobbying, was it anything different or special from what most
lobbyists did? Obviously he had a different interest.
Traxler: Sure he did. He was a gentleman and he really tried to deal with the facts and he would
also, for those of us who were MSU'ers-
Charnley: He had a good list of those.
Traxler: He had a good list and he worked our heart. [Laughter] I think with quite favorable
results. I think as a consequence of John Hannah and his long association within the Republican
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party, and you remember he was the vice chairman, along with George Romney, for the
Constitutional Convention of 1963.
Charnley: Which was on campus.
Traxler: Yes.
Charnley: Do you remember any time when Hannah came to legislature and dealt with money
issues?
Traxler: It's hard for me to answer that, because I wasn't on the Appropriations Committee,
especially higher education part of it, and I can't comment on how often he came over or if he even
did. I'm not that knowledgeable. My areas in those two years, we were in the majority at that time,
my areas were, as I've said, were playing traffic cop and moving legislation. I was interested in
certain reform legislation that really hadn't been addressed in the previous years.
        There was a long list of bills that were enacted at that time, the creation of the Arts Council,
no-fault insurance legislation, reformation of workmen's comp, of workmen's unemployment.
These weren't extreme because we had a Republican governor, but they were needed, necessary
changes to those important social--and had been very, very contentious because of the opposition of
kind of a Neanderthal business community.
        So consequently, there was a lot of work to be done, because principally in the thirty years
preceding that legislature, nothing much had been achieved. We need mental health legislation. I
think under [G. Mennan] Williams there were certain steps that were taken to move the state
forward with the help of five or six members of the House. They were called young Turks. A
couple of them I became acquainted with, later after they left the legislature. One was Dick Smith
from Bay City. Another chap was from Midland. Another one was from Ann Arbor. They're just
                                                                                                     19


people of good will who wanted to see the state come out of the Neanderthal stage and move
forward.
         During the two years in which the Republican controlled, a fellow by the name of Bob
Waldron was the Speaker at that time. I was in sort of a neutral mode. I found it hard to adjust to
being in the minority after having worked long hours for two years and been used to pulling the
levers. So I was sort of silent. I took a seat on the Judiciary Committee. When we came back into
power in 1968, I became chairman of the Judiciary Committee, where I stayed until I left in 1973,
resigned in '73 following my special election.
         I thought those years as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee were probably the happiest
and the most productive of my legislative career. Wrote the state lottery law, the state bingo law.
We were involved in reforming the jury process, jury selections, no-fault divorce. A long list.
Reformation of the method by which you select county commissioners. They were then called
supervisors. Some were appointed. It was all malapportioned. During the first Democrat majority,
the majority of the election of '62, that legislation passed. Very important. I was very, very
satisfied with my work during those four years or so.
         Had outstanding committee of Democrats and Republicans, people like Don Holbrook,
Court of Appeals judge, Joe Swallow, who was a circuit judge, Jim O'Neill, Hal Ziegler. They were
people who really liked the idea of working with ideas and draftsmanship. We were not just
visionaries, but we were darned good technicians and we had an outstanding staff person, Bruce
Kimmens [phonetic], and Bruce has been with the legislature since--came as an intern in 1962 while
he was in law school and he stayed on and he became counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, a
very, very young age, and served under Democrats. It was strange, it was the Republicans who kind
of bounced him out or moved him around. Moved him around and made him part of their central
staffing where he sort of gets lost. But Bruce was an incredible gifted and talented, and is. He's still
with the legislature.
                                                                                                    20


Charnley: How was it that you came to run for Congress in that special election?
Traxler: Well, it was opportunity. I'd always been a child of circumstance and good fortune, and I
think that in politics we say "timing is all," but there's another factor and that is good luck. It was an
interesting story surrounding how I came to run. I was with some friends on a Friday, TGIF'ing it
back in Bay City. We were just discussing the usual things about politics around our roundtable,
and a friend of mine from the newspaper came in and said, "Well, are you going to run for
Congress?"
         I said, "I have no intention of running for Congress."
         He said, "Oh."
         I said, "Why are you asking?" This is 1972 and elections are a bit away. Reapportionment
had taken place and I was pretty happy in the House of Representatives. And the district was a
Republican district, and I didn't want to end my career by running against a Republican incumbent
who no one was angry with and throwing away my future. His was Dave Rogers [phonetic]. Dave
went on to say, "Well, we just got a wire story out of Washington saying that Nixon is going to
appoint Congressman Harvey to the federal bench, and that will be in our paper tomorrow
morning." Oh my God.
Charnley: He planted the seed.
Traxler: So my friends at the table said, "Well you've got to run. It'll be a special election. You
need to be a candidate."
         I said, "I haven't even considered that."
         And one of the chaps sitting there was one of my mentors, his name was Ray Kewen
[phonetic]. He had been with the Bay City Times for a number of years and had just recently retired.
 He said, "Come one. We're getting out of here. We've got to do press releases. Call the television
                                                                                                       21


stations. You've got to be on tonight announcing your candidacy."
         I said, "I think I'll be announcing Harvey's leaving."
         He said, "That's not the damn story; the story is you running. Don't forget that."
         So we went over to my home, batted out a quick press release on an old broken-down
Underwood typewriter, called the TV stations and asked to get on and, believe it or not, I made the
six o'clock news and I was announcing that the Republican congressman was going to take over an
appointment from the Republican President, and that I was a candidate for the vacancy. Nobody
could believe this story. It was hot off my lips.
         Subsequently, I came to know that the Republicans believed for weeks that the Republican
congressman, who was a moderate, had leaked this information to me and was sponsoring, in that
fashion, my candidacy, which was ridiculous because the story really came out of a friend at the
local newspaper.
Charnley: You scooped the President.
Traxler: It was just hilarious the way it all played out. Of course, the Watergate matter. Dick
Nixon came to the district to campaign on behalf of my opponent.
Charnley: Who was your opponent?
Traxler: A fellow by the name of Jim Sparling. I haven't thought about Jim in years.
Unfortunately, he's now deceased. But he had been Harvey's press secretary and administrative
assistant, he had worked at the Saginaw News as a sports reporter. He had, just a couple of months
before, maybe five, gone over to the White House as a legislative affairs person. All in all, he had
good credentials. He knew the issues fairly well. It was a spirited campaign, nationwide attention,
international publicity. He had television crews from Germany, Holland, Scandinavia that came,
                                                                                                   22


plus the three networks here in the United States.
Charnley: So it was viewed as a referendum on Watergate, on Nixon?
Traxler: Correct. When I won that election, he never ventured out of Washington again. He
became a captive of the White House and by that time, end of April, of '74 he was simply trying to
evade prosecution and the next months he resigned, of course. I think it was the first part of August.
 The way I found out about his resignation was I got a call from [Gerald] Jerry Ford's office saying
that Nixon had resigned, and that Ford would be sworn in that morning in the White House and
wanted the Michigan delegation to be present and could I attend? And, of course I said,
"Absolutely."
        I went over to the White House, and there were no more than two hundred people there.
The entire Michigan delegation was there, both the two senators, United States senators and the
members of the House. They had the House and Senate leadership, four from each body in the
entire Michigan delegation, which I thought was most thoughtful of Jerry Ford. He was, and is,
wonderful human being and he had many, many friends. He came out of that time when you could
be friends. You could disagree, but you disagreed politely. You may even be voting differently, but
didn't impact upon your personal relationships, which, as we said, isn't the case today. And so he
had this gentlemanly courtesy about him and thoughtfulness when it came to members of the
Congress. He was a decent human being.
Charnley: That tension in the room must have been--
Traxler: What an historic event. Nixon had already climbed on the helicopter and gave that famous
wide, sweeping-of-his-arm farewell as he turned just before he entered the helicopter, and went off
to Andrews Air Force Base to fly to California and became part of history. A few hours later, Jerry
                                                                                                   23


Ford was sworn in.
Charnley: During your congressional career, did you ever have any contact with Michigan State?
Traxler: Frequently. Frequently.
Charnley: Were you back on campus at all?
Traxler: Yes, on occasion. Usually it was the vice president for research that would interface with
me, but not always.
Charnley: Probably John Cantlon.
Traxler: John was the person who I first did, and then, of course, it was the Cooperative Extension
and the Ag School, and John. So there was a three-pronged attack. [Laughter] I happened to serve
on the Appropriations Committee and on the Agriculture Subcommittee. It was interesting. John
let me know, came to Washington to tell me that the question of financing a Cyclotron-Michigan
State has a cyclotron. At that point in time, these things were funded from Department of Energy,
and they said that it was unnecessary, that there could be no original and creative research coming
out of a cyclotron, and they weren't going to fund it.
        So I went to a friend of mine, Eddie Boland, who served on the energy subcommittee of
appropriations and explained to him that this was terribly important and this was a very essential
matter for me. I think I perhaps stretched things a bit and said that it was necessary for my
reelection. And he put it in the bill. I can't recall if it was six or nine million. It went forward,
became law, and that's how the cyclotron got started.
        There was another project that Gordon Guyer was responsible for, and he talked with me
                                                                                                      24


and my administrative assistant and the guy who followed my ag matters. He was really "Mr.
Agriculture," and that was Roger Shamrye [phonetic]. Roger and Gordon became fast friends, as
Gordon and I were and had been. Gordon was extremely helpful in my second election, because I
had just been appointed to Appropriations Committee and Gordon got me together with some of the
prominent farmers and several of the thumb counties. He was very cautious, of course. He wasn't
into partisan politics. I was a congressman and he wanted me to, in informal settings, meet some of
the prominent agriculture types in Heron and Tuscola and [unclear].
Charnley: Do you think it worked to your advantage that you were a Michigan State alum in that
election, or in that location?
Traxler: Absolutely. Absolutely. And the fact that my father had been a small farmer and a rural
mailman, nobody's mad at their mailman, not in those days, at least. So I was in ideal position,
because the other committee I served on funded the National Science Foundation, which is where
John had a lot of interest. So I was able to be helpful.
        The Food Toxicology Building was something that Gordon had spoke to me about over a
period of years, and we kept asking questions and questions of the Department of Agriculture in
terms of this issue and building a foundation to get the appropriation. Finally, I had worked my way
up in the committee, as well as was, I think, a personal friend of the chairman who I deeply
admired. He was a Southerner, Jamie Whitten, a remarkable individual. Towards the conclusion of
my congressional career, we got the first appropriations for the building, and before I'd left, the
building was fairly well locked in place. It was interesting to come to MSU and participate in the
groundbreaking. And then the dedication. [Laughter] And they wanted to put up a plaque in the
building. I said, "No, no. You can't do that. I'm not going to have that."
Charnley: While you were in Congress, other than the couple of these situations in terms of contact,
                                                                                                    25


were there any other contacts with the presidents, either [M. Cecil] Mackey or [John A.] DiBiaggio
at that time?
Traxler: Yes. DiBiaggio came to Washington to speak to my subcommittee on the importance of
funding for the National Science Foundation. He was selected to do that because I was the
chairman of the subcommittee then. So the other presidents appointed him as their emissary to
plead the cause of more funding for the National Science Foundation.
         It happened on that day I had a conflict and I couldn't chair the subcommittee because of the
other conflict, so what I did was I came into the committee room, and John was there waiting his
turn to address the committee and he knew that I wasn't chairing, obviously, and I asked him to step
into my office off the committee room's floor, and I told him that I was very regretful that I couldn't
hear his testimony. I'd read his prepared remarks and told him he could be assured that his National
Science Foundation will be well taken care of to the fullest extent that our finances will allow.
         John was very distressed, and let it be known that he had come all the way to Washington to
testify before the chairman, he chairman, not the vice chairman. I was frankly somewhat amazed
that he was so insensitive to the fact that congresspeople can have conflicts, and that you may be
required at more than one place at the same time, and that you make your apologies and you make
your amends and you try to explain to constituents that this, unfortunately, is the case.
         Well, I don't think there was any way you could persuade John that there could be a conflict,
that his presence commanded everyone else to be there. That was one of my first realizations of the
egos of presidents, university presidents. I always thought that some members of the House and
Senate had egos, but I soon discovered that it was a common phenomenon among academics. In
fact, I almost told him to go to hell.
[Begin Tape 1, Side 2]
                                                                                                    26


Charnley: This is tape two of the Bob Traxler interview.
          When the last tape ended, we were talking about the decision to run MSU board.
Traxler: As I was saying, the decision was based on several factors. One, what do I do with my life
after Congress; two, how can I still serve the public. And I didn't want anything to do with partisan
politics, didn't want elected office. I wasn't going to be engaged, so to speak. I thought that in
going to academia, it would be the perfect kind of a slow build-down to a settled life where I could
still be involved in public policy, but at a much higher level than I'd participated in, shall we say,
than in elected office, partisan office. Even though MSU's board, they're elected and nominated in a
partisan fashion.
          Little did I know what awaited me. [Laughter] Another reason I wanted to be on the MSU
board was my deep affection and love for the university, and I owed it a great deal. It had been very
formative in development in my persona, in my education, the development of my philosophical
views of the proper society, and I thought it was payback time. So I looked forward to that.
          I think I was there something like four months, five months, had been to a couple of board
meetings, and announced that I wasn't going to seek reelection. [Laughter] This was not a place for
me. You go to a university after having been in elected office, I think especially the Congress,
especially having been what's referred to as a member of the College of Cardinals, and you go to a
university board where boards really don't matter and you think that you're going to be involved in
policy and voting on issues of some importance, and you discover, first thing, nobody wants to vote
on any issue. The next thing is, no one, including most of the members of the board, want to make
policy. And thirdly, all of the above plus, "The only thing I'm interested in is athletics." [Laughter]
          So I didn't want to be a do-nothing trustee and that's why I said, "I'm not going to run for
reelection."
          And everyone kind of looked at me and said, "Oh well. This guy. Who's he kidding?" But
most of my colleagues can't imagine a life after the university. Most of them all seek reelection, and
                                                                                                       27


for them it is the beginning and the end of everything.
Charnley: Dr. DiBiaggio left and then the search.
Traxler: Yes, Gordon Guyer was acting president. I tried to get Gordon to stay on for a couple of
years, at least one. I said, "Gordon, you're in an ideal position to make the necessary changes here
and to leave this place for the next president well structured."
         And he looked at me and he said, "Bob, I've spent my entire life at Michigan State
University. All these people are my friends, and I'm not going to disturb that relationship."
         I said, "Even doing what needs to be done?"
         He said, "That's the job of the next president." [Tape interruption.]
Charnley: We're talking about the early years of Gordon Guyer as acting president when you first
came to the board, and then you said that he didn't want to continue on as president.
Traxler: Yes. And I was a freshman on the board, my first year, and I became chairman of the
search committee. I didn't know what I was doing. We had a good committee in many respects, but
the secretary to the committee was Bruce Miller. Bruce was from the philosophy department. He'd
been in MSU for a number of years. Bruce was looking forward, within a few years, to retirement.
Very even person, very even personality, totally devoted to the institution, very helpful.
         I had formed an alliance with the three Republicans, with the commitment that we would
look for a strong academic person to come in as president of the university. Of course, there were a
lot of problems. I mean, you've got so many different stakeholders. When the appointment of a
president comes up, every one of the stakeholders wants their person as president. The faculty
would like a strong academic who's had experience teaching and research. The minorities want one
of theirs, whether it's black, Hispanic, Asian. The other factors are, "Is this candidate strong on
                                                                                                    28


athletics? Is he going to do justice to our academic or our sports traditions at the university, or is he
one of those fuzzy-haired thinkers who is focused on academics and doesn't care less about
football?"
        So there were these confrontations done quietly, but differences of opinion as to what kind
of a person we really wanted. The then construction, interpretation of the Open Meetings Act really
hurt the search process. The media doesn't believe this but, more importantly, they don't care. They
don't want to believe it and even if they did believe it, "It's irrelevant and we don't care what kind of
president you got. We want to be sitting in that room and listen to every bit of gossip that comes out
on that nominee, each and every one of them. We want access to every report you got on him and
on her and we want to know what size underwear do they wear." It was an impossible process.
        The search committee, we were going to have three invitees for a public appearance,
interviews, public interviews. And one of the three was a chap, an MSU graduate, whose sister-in-
law had served on the board as a trustee several years ago. He was a mathematics major and he was
the president of Florida State University, and he had been president in two previous institutions, one
in the Mid-Atlantic, I think, South Carolina. Maybe a private school, I'm not sure. And also a
university in Maine. He struck me as exactly the kind of person we were looking for. Clearly,
Florida State, a large university, land-grant institution, and strong in athletics, which was important
to a number of members of the board. I thought with his academic background, especially
mathematics, I was very impressed with that, I thought that this was just ideal.
        What happened was, he got sabotaged by some of the stakeholder organizations and he was
accused of racism. They wanted to wipe him out, hoping that their favorite candidate would rise to
the surface, whoever that happened to be. So he got wiped out and that presented an opportunity to
put forward a candidate who hadn't made the preliminary cut, and that was [M. Peter] McPherson.
        McPherson had as his allies, the governor, unknown to me at that point, and one of the
governor's best friends who had known McPherson, they were both students at MSU and that was
Richard McClellan. McClellan was able to move several Democrat trustees into McPherson's
                                                                                                       29


camp, and McPherson sort of appeared very, very suddenly. It was just at the tail end of the
process, and the search committee recommended him.
        I wasn't the chairman of the search committee. I had resigned, because I so strongly
believed in keeping this process a congenial one, I wanted to get off the search committee to comply
with Open Meetings Act so that we'd have no more than four members on the search committee,
four members of the board of trustees. I got off so the search committee could meet in private. That
was the way the law was interpreted then. Of course, it's quite different now. The Supreme Court
has said you don't have to have open meetings for the selection of the president, thank heavens.
Charnley: Did you take flak at the time, in the press? Did you take a lot of flak?
Traxler: I took that position during my election. I just said, "The Open Meetings Act as it is being
applied today is unconstitutional." I had argued that in the board when we got involved in litigation.
 The question was, should we appeal the decision of the Court of Appeals on this issue? We'd won
on the circuit court level and lost at the court of appeals level. The president was very nervous
about this, because he was afraid that if we went to the Supreme Court, they would affirm the court
of appeals and he'd sort of be out in never-never land, having been quote, unquote, "selected
improperly." Well, he didn't want that kind of publicity. He's very conscious of--he's got a very
thin skin.
        I persuaded the board. It was very interesting that the Constitution is very clear in this
regard and that we had as a matter of responsibility as a board to uphold both the Constitution and
our duties as trustees for the selection of the president. We had to appeal. And finally, the president
realized that and climbed aboard our express train, and we were successful in the Supreme Court.
That's the interpretation in the law today.
        Well, the night that the board met to consider McPherson's presidency, well, first off, my
three Republican friends abandoned me. They got calls from the governor and McClellan.
                                                                                                    30


McClellan lined up two Democrats on the board. He didn't have to line up Joel [Ferguson]. Joel
already cut a deal with the governor on this issue, and Joel got what he wanted out of the governor.
The two Democrat women were both state employees and they were in a precarious position,
obviously, so they supported McPherson's presidency, and all three Republicans did, too, of course.
         [Robert E.] Bob Weiss and myself voted "no" and made it clear that there was nothing
personal in this, it was just simply in our best judgment, the process had failed and that, number
two, the candidate lacked the qualifications to become president and wasn't the appropriate kind of a
person that we wanted at that point in time for the presidency. So that's how McPherson came to
MSU.
Charnley: In some of those early years, what were the issues that you've had to face as a board?
Traxler: The board really doesn't go out and initiate a process. I argued, for instance, we ought to
change the bylaws. I was procedure oriented as well as substance, and I felt that the secretary of the
board ought to be appointed by the Board of Trustees, which put me at considerable odds with the
president and all administrators who just were terrorized with the thought that the board might have
an inside representative. I was told that this could never work, the secretary would be ignored,
would not be in on any of the decisions. I said, "It doesn't matter now. She's in or out. She's
serving two masters. The president appoints her, or recommends her. Under our bylaws, he makes
a recommendation. We approve or disapprove." And I said, "You've never disapproved. It won't
happen," even though I voted "no" on every secretary that came before us for a vote, not because I
didn't think they'd do a good job or had some problem with them, it was simply the process was
flawed. If I am constitutionally held accountable for what happens at the university, my judgment
was that I ought to be involved in the policy issues, and that distressed the administrators to no end.
 Boards are supposed to be seldom seen and never heard from.
         I don't think this is a unique phenomenon at MSU. I think, though, it's probably accentuated
                                                                                                     31


at MSU because we've had a history of, by and large, strong presidents, going back to John Hannah,
who originated it all. I think that there were concerted efforts during my years on the board to
provide members with those things that a member of the board was most interested in, and,
generally speaking, that would involve the question as to who would run the athletic department.
Bob and Joel was always vying for that title. And if there's any land mine that a president is
constantly aware of, it's the issue of athletics.
        I think for some other members they had different views as to why they didn't want to
behave as a trustee, but rather wanted to be known as a cooperative, supportive, a non-engaged
trustee. And those reasons would vary from one to another. One would like the attention of being a
confident of the president, whoever the president was--DiBiaggio. She was a very good friend of
DiBiaggio's, a very good friend of McPherson's and couldn't see the role of trustee as a policy-
making position in which you could be original and creative and businesslike.
        My sense is that the election process of trustees is not a suitable way to bring people to the
board as MSU. I think Michigan is much more successful in having people of judgment and
understanding of the role that this region plays, because the region is, indeed, a trustee. The
definition of trusteeship really is one that Michigan State, I think, has, by and large, failed. I think
Michigan is much better governed than Michigan State from a standpoint they have a better board.
Not that the people at Michigan State aren't gifted and talented; that's not the issue. The issue is,
historically, at Michigan State, all effort is made to subvert the board and turn it into lapdog. That
doesn't work at Michigan. They don't have that tradition and, indeed, their last president, not the
present one, but the last president before this one lost his position because of failure to advise the
board on several important questions and acting unilaterally. That hasn't happened ever at Michigan
State. I'll salute the day that it does.  I think, unfortunately, having served on the Appropriations
Committee in the Congress, a place where there's immense amounts of tradition and incredibly
gifted staff and where you're focused on a couple of agencies, and you hold extensive hearings with
the agency people coming before you and you ask them, "What did you do with the money we gave
                                                                                                       32


you last year, and what is it you want for next year, the next cycle of appropriations?" We have
careful review of what they said the year before and the year before. You have extensive
comparisons in the finances as to where the money went over a period of time. Even though you're
dealing in billions, it soon adds up, as the old saying goes.
         I think that that questioning, no matter who was before you, whether it was a president of
your party of president of the other party, the nominees and appointees that were before you, gave
an appropriate sense to a member of the committee that the role of the Congress as appropriators
and as policy-makers is one that's vital to the success of the democratic process. When presidents
ignore the law, or you get things happening like Watergate and Iran Contra, it behooves those
bodies which have a constitutional responsibility to perform their task in keeping with the objective
of check and balance.
         Lord Atkin [phonetic] said, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That
is an axiom that no one ever ought to forget. It holds just as true in a university setting as it does in
some other governmental setting, and it's essential that there be a balance of check to administration
power. Otherwise, it will soon turn into a corrupt organization.
         So I viewed my period as a trustee, one, as kind of a watchdog. One, are they following all
the rules? Are they doing what we've instructed them to do? Are the following the policies that
have been long established here? Number two, what are policies that we need that will enhance our
watchdog role? What can the board of trustees be doing by way of policy that will assure that the
highest degree of fiscal and ethical accountability exists at the university?
         The budgeting process, having come from almost twenty years of budgeting, the budgeting
process basically leaves out the Board of Trustees. Principally, they're rubber stamps. The question
on development of policy is very much a mixed bag and the board is better in terms of policy than it
is in terms of budgeting. Of course, budgeting in itself is policy. Where you put the money is a
very important policy decision.
         In terms of policy, for instance, there were a number of areas in which good business
                                                                                                        33


practices were just ignored. I strongly believed in what I refer to as request for proposals. I firmly
believe in periodically shifting vendors. I think that the buddy relationship that develops between
university officials and people who are selling to the university is not conducive to getting the
biggest return to your dollar spent, and that eternal vigilance is necessary when you're dealing with
money. You need internal controls that are workable and working. You need good independent
auditors. This was something that I firmly believed in, I felt that the board should appoint our
internal auditor and that that auditor had the responsibility of reporting back to the board, both in
terms of the fiscal matters of the university and how the money was being spent and who spent it,
but also in terms of were the policies that previous boards have adopted, were they being followed.
         That concept of having a board that appointed internal auditors was absolutely chilling to the
administrators and especially to the president. The idea that a university official would be
accountable to the board and not directly to the president, where you filter it through these layers of
bureaucrats and finally it gets to the board and it's so sanitized, you'd think you'd arrived in heaven.
So I made the case for that. One or two people on the board knew what I was talking about, were
sympathetic towards it. But as one of the guys said to me, he said, "Bob, when and if you got four
votes, I'll be your fifth." And that's the way it was.
         I had some other hopes. I was very distressed the way in which our travel was handled at
the university. We had a preferred travel agency, which had big contracts with the university for
more years than anybody could remember. I often wondered, is this really the best way in which to
spend over twenty million dollars a year, on airlines and car rentals and housing? Is there a way in
which we can be assured that we are getting the biggest value for our dollar?
         I had a personal experience that really scared me in terms of the way things were done. I'd
been on the board, I think two years, no more than that, maybe a year and a half, and Michigan State
was playing in a basketball regional tournament in Tampa, Florida. I had contemplated going down
for that game, and I asked one of the secretaries at the board to make some flight reservations for
me. I looked at the reservations, I said, "This is crazy. What a weird schedule this is. I'm flying
                                                                                                      34


through Pittsburgh to go to Orlando? That don't make any sense." Especially when I was paying
$1,200 roundtrip. I said to her, "How does this get done? What is this?"
         And she said, "Well, it's made by our travel people."
         I said, "Oh, those preferred travel people, yeah."
         "They said there was no seats available on Northwest Airlines the way you wanted to go."
         I said, "Really?" I said, "That's incredible. Okay." So I called Northwest, because I've
always flown Northwest to and from Washington for almost twenty years, so I knew a little bit
about their booking system. So I just called them direct and said, "Look, I want to go to Orlando." I
looked at the timetable. I said, "Here are the flights I want. Tri-City Airport to Detroit, Detroit to
Orlando. Orlando back to Detroit and up to Tri-City. Here are the flight numbers."
         And she said, "Yes, sir, we got you plugged in."
         I said, "Very interesting." And it was the same fare.
         Now, generally speaking, if you have a layover, see, the way the travel agent was sending
me was Orlando to Pittsburgh, to Detroit, to Tri-City. Now, generally with that kind of a
roundabout you get the cheapest fare. The more stops you make, the cheaper it gets. It ought to.
We all know that. And I was very irritated because they were charging 1,200 bucks. I had a 1,200-
buck ticket. I thought, "Where is the difference going?" If the university is paying 1,200 either
way, and I knew that going through Pittsburgh was a cheaper ticket, who got the advantage on that?
 Well, of course, the travel agent. And I thought, "That's a hell of a way to run a railroad."
         So one of the things, over a period of several years, I was able to achieve was an agreement
on the part of the administration that they would do an RFP for travel. And I thought, "I've done it!
 I can't believe this. This is an incredible event. The first time, my God, a trustee has actually
proposed policy that the administration is buying," because out of hand they reject trustees' policy
initiatives. I mean, it's a dangerous precedent and you have to kill that sucker instantly before it
comes out of the nest because it could spread. It's kind of like a disease, and we can't allow trustees
to think that they have a role in policy. So I was utterly amazed.
                                                                                                      35


          And then we sat down at board meeting. Actually, it wasn't a board meeting, it was really
our every-other-month briefing session. We went over the request for a proposal. I got down in the
fine print and it said, "Local providers will be given preference."
          "Oh my God, this is incredible. What are you people doing? You take us for fools?"
          And so, immediately after I chastised them, the president said, "Well, we'll take that out."
          I said, "You know, it doesn't matter anymore. It's over. I know what you're going to do.
The same people that got it now are going to have it after the RFP, and they submit--
[Begin Tape 2, Side 2]
Traxler: And the same-o, same-o's got the contract. I felt pretty good about being a predictor, but I
felt very bad for the university because it wasn't served with this process at all. It couldn't. It's
ridiculous.
          I think one of the other issues I felt very strongly on was to establish a code of conduct for
the principal administrators. I wanted very much to put the board in that also. Well, I had
suggested to a couple of the administrators, "If we don't start working on this, it's going to be a
lengthy process. It's complicated. The board doesn't understand it, and we've got to get started on
it." It's something that I wanted to get done before I left the board.
          So we started the process. The first thing that became apparent to me was, there wasn't
going to be anything enacted if the board was included in it, because they said, "Look, we're elected
by the people and if you put us in this, what it means is, there will be a bunch of whistle-blowers
who will be trying to damage us politically. And, besides, we have a couple of board members who
are in conflict."
          So the first thing I had to do was assure my colleagues that they were not going to be part of
this ethical standard, and then we began to review different alternatives. I took it upon myself to
become involved in the drafting of this document. Now, that was unheard of, to have a trustee sit
                                                                                                       36


with administrators and prepare language. It happened that I'd been deeply involved in the
establishment of the conflicts-of-interest policy that the 1963 Constitution required that the
legislature do. So I had some familiarity with the issues that would be involved in when you're
dealing with conflicts.
        I worked with the general counsel for the university, [Robert A.] Bob Noto and also talked
with the vice president for finance and his years of experience as a dean in this area.
Charnley: This is Fred Poston?
Traxler: Yes. It was so distressful for these administrators to have a trustee again moving forward
on a policy question and intimately being involved in the design of the policy. It was so unheard of
for them, they simply could not adjust to it. Noto could. The others couldn't. They thought it was a
horrible precedent. The issues that I would talk with Noto, I said, "I want this in the proposal that
will come to the board as a beginning discussion draft." About half of those never showed up.
They got sabotaged along the way. The president had his cabinet sort of intervene in this. The
deans got very nervous. Other people in the administration got very nervous because of potential
conflicts that they were involved in, or, in one case, a spouse.
        The last meeting of the board that I attended was a retreat of the board in which we
discussed the issues here, and the question came up as to how we would proceed and whether we
would have votes to amend or change any of the proposed verbiage. I wanted votes because I
wanted to know where my colleagues stood on the issue, how these various issues as we raised
them, as we went through the draft. The draft was very benign. I said, "You know, there are going
to be several important questions here that what we should do is simply a member of the board puts
forth a proposal and it's voted up or down."
        The president didn't want that. He said, "I don't think we have to do that. We'll just work
from consensus."
                                                                                                     37


        I said, "This is kind of a miniature legislative body. We can't work from a consensus. We
don't know what the consensus is. So we have to explain what each amendment is, have a vote on
it, one way or the other and move forward, go right through the document."
        "No I don't think that's necessary. We've never done that before. There's no reason to do it."
        And I knew, looking around at my colleagues, that it was hopeless. Same old guy, friend of
mine said, "Well, you know," he told me afterwards, "well, if you'd have had four votes, I'd have
been there."
        "I always think of you as the guy that would have been there if I had the votes." [Laughter]
        Well, the bottom line is, we're a year later, no ethics policy has come out of the board. No
ethics policy will come out of the board. No conflict of interest, and the university is poorly served.
Charnley: How about Detroit College of Law? Were you on either board at the time when the
proposal--whose idea was it, anyway?
Traxler: I was on the MSU board, yes, and very supportive of it and encouraged the administration
to move forward. Weiss was very, very positive in that regard, very helpful. He really led the way
for DCL. I was very supportive.
        The president and I, it's fair to say, had such disagreement on the respective roles of a
president and a board that it was difficult for us to communicate. He would argue that the
Constitution didn't mean what it said, indeed, the board did not have final authority in terms of the
university finances and policy. I don't know who he thought did, but I assume he believed the
president. So we had a basic philosophical disagreement as to the respective roles of the parties.
        Sometimes the board, in a very informal way, was able to affect what was going on. Weiss
and myself were more proactive than the other board members, but at the same time, the other board
members, several of them, would privately speak with the president and say, "Don't just reject that
out of hand. Listen to what's being said. There's some value here."
                                                                                                     38


         He was very reluctant, initially, very reluctant to down the road of affiliation with DCL. He
moved off that as soon as he found a way to effectuate a management of all the issues, a control. He
really is a control person and he's not a collegial, work in a cooperative fashion. He's an old-
fashioned manager in many respects. Most, in fact. Given over to temper tantrums, sadly enough.
So, anyhow, that's the story.
Charnley: Were you aware of any of the previous attempts for Michigan State to get a law school?
Traxler: I think there'd been some conversations in the legislature going back a number of years.
The other law schools in the state were not sympathetic to that, and the legislature said, "We don't
need a new law school." And that's why it made some sense to affiliate with DCL. I think that in
order to get that accomplished, this merger, partnership, as it was then described, the university
agreed with the opponents of MSU in having a law school of any kind. That there would be no state
financing for the law school. I think that was a mistake. It was a terrible price to pay, and it's very
unfair to the students who are attending DCL and MSU, MSU and DCL are currently.
Charnley: Whatever. Name du jour. [Laughter]
Traxler: And there's no question that eventually the DCL part of this will fade away, and it will be
the law school at MSU, MSU Law School. But I think that without state financing, it's going to be a
marginal school, unfortunately. The tuition is excessive and they're doing well, but they would be
doing much better if they had [unclear] grant.
Charnley: Would you have been able to attend law school there without the G.I. Bill?
Traxler: No.
                                                                                                      39


Charnley: The G.I. Bill was critical in your case.
Traxler: Totally enabled me. Yes.
Charnley: You talked a little about the issue of agriculture. Having come from an agricultural
district, born on a farm, your own experience, how would you say that Michigan State, the focus on
agriculture has developed during your experience? Has it changed at all?
Traxler: I think that modern technology, especially communication, has made it much easier for the
university to relate to the producers, the farmers, and to the agribusiness people as well, but
principally to the farmers. The kinds of Internet opportunities to get the latest information and to
use the university programs for finance have been of immense assistance to most of the farmers who
take advantage of this, and ever-increasing numbers of them do. Then, of course, you've got the
research component of the university that I think has demonstrated that Michigan State is probably
the number one research agricultural university in the nation. Some great competitors out there.
Iowa State, Iowa.
Charnley: In Washington, was that recognized that we were a leader in many areas?
Traxler: I think that's the case. Yes, yes. And we do very well in the competitive area of research
in Department of Agriculture. In fact, I think we lead all other universities in that regard, all other
agriculture schools.
Charnley: The issue of technology, obviously, has been important in the last ten years in particular.
 Students now this fall are being required to either bring a computer or have a computer in class.
                                                                                                      40


With your experience on the board, what was your position about that?
Traxler: I supported it, but with caveat. The way the administration was doing was, every student
would be required to have a laptop. Laptops were expensive at that point. That the administration
was moving on the belief that since this would be an add-on to their student loans, finance, that, hey,
it's okay, but there were a lot of students who weren't participating in the loan program. The key
here, really, is to make them computer-literate. For some students I think it is a necessity to have a
portable, the engineering and science students, especially. But those students who are in a more
broad-based program, the social sciences, for instance, while they are helpful for notetaking, you
can make that case, I think the option should be left with the student, and if they've got a computer
at home that is functioning, it's a desktop, and they want to bring it and use it, I think it should be
their choice.
         I think as the university gets some experience in this area, I'm always ready to change my
mind. But the good news is, I don't have to worry about that now. [Laughter] I think that it was
just a common-sense approach, and rather than dictate that it had to be a portable, I got concerned-
there's another element here, too. My father taught me several things, and one of the things he
taught me was, "If you want to know what's going on, follow the money." Another thing he firmly
believed in, "Don't pay a hell of a lot of attention to what they're saying. Watch what they do." And
something else was that money is a factor that you can't ignore in decisions, what motivates people.
         So I thought, in this situation, what is it that motivates them? Well, the principal laptop
manufacturer at that point was Dell. Dell was very instrumental in getting the law specifically to
provide for computers, and they hoped to capture the market, because they do make a good product.
 It's awful expensive. And they have a good relationship with many of the universities around the
country, including MSU. So that was troublesome for me, you know, these vendors. People run
around damning government, but I'll tell you, when the Treasury is there, it's the first place people
go.
                                                                                                        41


        I always recall a guy in my home town, I was in the Congress, and I recall reading-this
was a number of years ago--reading in the newspaper that he was appealing his assessment by the
city assessor. He had a business and he thought they had over-evaluated him. So he marched into
the Equalization Board and got his assessment somewhat lowered. It was only a matter of within a
year, the city had decided to put a new bridge in, made that decision and located the new bridge
where they would have to take his property. His property went from his 200,000, at most, to 1
million. I wasn't aware of what the terms of the agreement was between he and the city until he
called me, and he said, "Look the money is in Lansing." There was federal money involved, and he
said, "They're just kind of sitting on it." He said, "Bob, that's my million bucks and every day it
costs me money that they're drawing interest on my money, and I want to get a deposit and I want to
draw the interest."
        Well, that makes some sense. And I started to laugh to myself about how when it was being
assessed, it wasn't worth spit, but when it came time to deal with the government, and the Treasury,
the government Treasury, it was worth five times what he had estimated.
        So that was a good illustration of how people look at government. They see an opportunity
there. The vendors are always looking for a sweetheart arrangement. Corporations have to deal
with that mentality with their purchasing agents. They have to deal with the fact that vendors are
always looking to get one leg up and make special friends among the purchasing. Most
corporations have a policy in which their purchasing agents be very careful in their relationship with
these vendors, and they're not permitted to accept any gifts or tokens of appreciation, lest it
influence their decisions.
Charnley: In looking at the money issue, the tuition guarantee, that phrase came to symbolize a lot
under President McPherson's administration. What was your position on that originally?
Traxler: I strongly supported it. I had been telling my colleagues on the board that the good times
                                                                                                    42


weren't going to roll forever and that we should begin to develop policies that would deal with a
situation where if we had an economic downturn and the university was cut right in the middle of
the school year, how are we going to deal with that? Nobody would approach that issue. Nobody.
I couldn't get them even think about it, let alone develop a policy.
         In fact, I actually amended the budget proposal that came to us from the administration and
said that they would develop and submit to the board, within a year, policies to deal with the process
of reducing expenditures in the event that the constitution mandated a reduction in the middle of the
school year.
         They were appalled. Nothing came of that, of course. They never went to the policy
question of how are we going to set in motion a process that will ensure careful review of programs,
what would go and what would stay. And [M.] Cecil Mackey went all through that, you know. It
cost him his presidency. He believes it. Some of the board members at that time told me that, no,
he made a misjudgment, he did have the support on the board, not for the policy, but for his
presidency. He assumed because they refused to abolish the School of Nursing and some other
initiatives that I don't recall now, that it was a rejection of him as a president and that he didn't have
the votes on the board. Well, he may not have had the votes to abolish the School of Nursing, but
that didn't mean that they were rejecting he as a president. I think there was a little confusion there
in his mind.
Charnley: Looking back at your career as a student and then even in Congress and then, later on the
board, your experience at Michigan State, is there anything that comes mind that you see as most
important?
Traxler: There are a lot of important things here. I think one can never lose sight of why the
institution is there, and that is as a mission that touches and affects everyone in the state of Michigan
as a land-grant institution, to bring knowledge of agriculture, of industrial skills, and of research to
                                                                                                        43


the people of the state, whether they're a student or a non-student. Secondly, the role of education,
of educating the masses.
Charnley: I think that's a good point to end.
Traxler: That's a good way to end. Thank you.
Charnley: I appreciate your time and especially sharing your insights for the project. Thank you.
Traxler: Thank you.
[End of interview]
                                                                                                    44


                                                Index
Adams, Walter, 5, 16
Boland, Eddie, 24
Breslin, Jack, 16, 17, 18
Cantlon, John, 24, 25
Detroit College of Law, 2, 12
DiBiaggio, John A., 26, 28
Ferguson, Joel, 31, 32
Fisher, _____, 4
Ford, Gerald, 23
Guyer, Gordon, 24, 25, 28
Hannah, John A., 4, 16, 19, 32
King, _____, 4
Mackey, M. Cecil, 43
McClellan, Richard, 30, 31
McPherson, M. Peter, 29, 30, 31, 43
Miller, Bruce, 28
MSU
   Board of Trustees, 27, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39
   campus in 1955, 8
   campus in 1958, 8
   campus in early 1950s, 4
   Cyclotron, 24
   Detroit College of Law, 2, 38, 39
   effect of Open Meetings Act, 29, 30
   Food Toxicology Building, 25
   presidential search committee, 29, 30
   Shaw Hall, 4
   student enrollment in early 1950s, 4
   Tuition guarantee, 43
   Water Carnival, 8, 9
Noto, Robert A., 37
Poston, Fred, 37
                                                      45


Romney, George W., 2, 14
Ryan, Bill, 14
Shamrye, Roger, 24
Traxler, Bob
  and M. Peter McPherson's appointment as president, 31
  and Open Meetings Act, 30
  appointed to Mackinaw Island State Park Committee, 2
  as assistant prosecutor, 12
  as student at MSU, 3, 10
  education of, 1, 2, 10, 12
  elected to MSU Board of Trustees, 2
  member of Kappa Sigma, 4, 9, 10
  military service of, 1, 6, 7
  political activity, 2, 11, 13, 19, 20, 22
University of Michigan, 32
Weiss, Robert E., 31, 32, 38, 39
Wharton, Clifton R. Jr., 16
                                                        2