Earl Lauer Butz was born on July 3, 1909 in Albion, Indiana. He grew up on a farm, and graduated in a high school class of seven students. He graduated from nearby Purdue University, married, and had 2 children. His nephew, Dave Butz, also went to Purdue, also went on to work in Washington, as a defensive tackle for the NFL's Washington Redskins.
In 1948, Butz became vice president of the American Agricultural Economics Association. In 1951, he became vice president of the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed him Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. In 1957, he returned to Purdue to teach. In 1968, he ran for the Republican nomination for Governor of Indiana.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed him Secretary of Agriculture. He was never connected to any of the crimes that fell under the umbrella term "Watergate," and continued to serve in the post after Nixon resigned the Presidency, and turned it over to Gerald Ford. At first, he seemed like an ordinary Republican: Pro-business, but not especially offensive.
That changed while he attended the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, seat of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI had made public his opposition to "population control," because it included increased birth control. A natural stand for a Pope to take.
Butz, using a fake Italian accent, made a veiled reference to the mandatory celibacy of priests, all the way up to the Pope, saying, "He no play-a the game, he no make-a the rules." Terence Cardinal Cooke, Archbishop of New York, for all intents and purposes the Papal Viceroy in America, demanded an apology. The White House ordered him to do so. He did, but weaseled his way into a typical "I got caught" response of being taken out of context.
But on October 4, 1976, with just 29 days before President Ford had to face the voters for re-election, against former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, Butz resigned. The newly-published October 7 issue of Rolling Stone magazine had published some remarks of his, remarks that meant that he could not continue as a member of the President's Cabinet.
The remarks were made on a commercial flight about TWA from Kansas City, where the Republican Convention had been held, to California. With Butz on the flight were singer Pat Boone, a known Republican; another singer, Sonny Bono, who would later be elected Mayor of Palm Springs, California, and then to Congress, in each case as a Republican; and John Dean, former White House Counsel to Nixon, who had gone to prison for his role in Watergate, and was reporting on the campaign for Rolling Stone.
Liquor was flowing, in spite of the presence of Boone, known as perhaps popular music's biggest goody-two-shoes. (A big star from 1955 to 1957, he hadn't had a hit record since 1963, but the TV networks knew he could still draw an audience.) And, according to Dean, Butz, always a country boy at heart, and a man who enjoyed what has been called "barnyard humor," told a dirty joke, about a dog and a skunk having sex. That, alone, wouldn't have forced his resignation, because it wouldn't have been worth reporting.
But then Boone asked a good question: Why couldn't the Republican Party, which had been the party of Abraham Lincoln, attract more black voters? Instead of giving an insightful answer, Butz gave one that Time magazine, in its October 18 issue, censored. Rolling Stone did not, and Dean was willing to go only so far, and no further, in covering it up: He said it came from "an unnamed Cabinet officer." But, for those who knew the people in the Cabinet, it was too easy to figure out it was Butz, and he was exposed.
At least he didn't use the N-word. No, at most, he didn't use the N-word: He said, "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit.” (The "loose shoes" was referring to assisting in dancing.)
Ford was furious. On the one hand, firing Butz would have angered Republicans in farm States that he needed to win. On the other hand, keeping him might have put other States, that were close, at risk. Making a speech at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Ford began a sentence with the words, "The greatest danger I see in America today," and someone in the crowd yelled out, "is tight shoes!"
With demonstrators with signs saying, "KICK BUTZ" outside the White House, Butz took the decision out of Ford's hands, and quit. The election was close, even closer than Carter's Electoral Vote victory made it look: 3 States were decided by less than 5,000 votes, and 19 were decided by less than 40,000. Any number of things could have shifted the necessary 30 Electoral Votes that would have given Ford a full term: The Butz remark, the Nixon pardon, the recession that began in late 1973 ending earlier, refusing to bail New York City out, then doing it, appointing Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President, then dumping him as such for Bob Dole, and debate gaffes by both Ford and Dole.
John Knebel served as Secretary of Agriculture for the rest of Butz's term. Butz returned to Purdue as a "professor emeritus." In 1981, he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges for having under-reported income he earned in 1978. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but all but 30 days of the term were suspended. He was one more member of the Nixon Administration to go to prison, although it had nothing to do with Watergate, or anything that happened while Nixon was in office.
He died in 2008, at the age of 98. At the time, he was the longest-lived former Cabinet member ever; he no longer holds that distinction.
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October 4, 1976 was a Monday. Actress Alicia Silverstone and soccer star Mauro Camoranesi were born.
Baseball was between the end of the regular season and the start of the Playoffs. The NBA, NHL and WHA seasons were about to start. On ABC Monday Night Football, the Minnesota Vikings beat the Pittsburgh Steelers, 17-6 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
Speaking of ABC: This was also the day that the network paired Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner as the anchor team for World News Tonight. I have a separate entry for that event.
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