New year's resolution

"I hereby resolve never to rely on my memory alone and to double-check the most minute of facts."

I made that solemn New Year's resolution to my editors, with the hope that I will never again have to open an article with an "Oops!" or "Sorry-my mistake."

Nonetheless, some minor misstatements I made that led to the resolution that must be cleared up.

In my report on former California Gov. Jerry Brown's attempting a political comeback by running for mayor of Oakland this year (see "Politics '97 ' December 5), I stated that former Massachusetts Gov. and Boston Mayor "James Michael Curley is just about the last politician to go from being governor to occupying the seemingly less prestigious office of big-city mayor"

"Just about" saved me from the totally "el wrongo" department. One post-Curley and pre-Brown pol who went from statehouse to City Hall was conservative Republican firebreather J. Bracken Lee, governor of Utah from 1948-56 and then mayor of Salt Lake City from 195971. That was pointed out by eagle-eyed subscriber Wes Vernon, recently retired as a CBS correspondent, who launched his distinguished broadcasting career in Utah (where he met the legendary Lee).

In reporting on the restoration of 12 years of seniority to Republican Rep. Bob Smith (Ore.) when he returned to Congress in 1996 after a two-year absence, I said that this was unprecedented in the history of Congress. I noted that in Allen Drury's novel Come Ninevah, Come Tyre, when Speaker of the House Bill Abbott succeeds to the presidency and then returns to his beloved House, his seniority is restored and he is again made speaker. All true-except that Abbott made his comeback to the House in The Promise of Joy, Drury's alternative novel to Come Ninevah Come Tyre.

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Jan 23, 1998
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