First we have:
Presidential candidate Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) likes to tell audiences that his father drove a milk truck.
“He was a Teamster,” Gephardt said in a speech last January to kick off his campaign in Iowa. “He told me every time … we were at the dinner table that we had food on the table and clothes on our back because he was represented by a union that could bargain and get him fair wages for his work.”
Gephardt’s father, Louis, who died in 1984, had a variety of jobs, among them selling real estate and life insurance. Even so, his nine years on a milk route have given Gephardt the most mileage with organized labor.
But according to Gephardt’s brother, Don, their father hated driving a milk truck. “My father was in the Teamsters, but that’s because he had to be to get the job,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“I don’t recall him talking much about the union, how great it was. He prided himself on being a Republican. He hated Harry Truman. He had the feeling you had to make it on your own, that any kind of welfare program would just raise taxes.”
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And during the last presidential election:
Gore had told the story Monday night in Las Vegas, in accepting the Teamsters’ endorsement. “I still remember the lullabies I heard as a child,” Gore said, singing a bit to the delight of his audience.
The Republicans jumped on that, saying the song, “Look for the Union Label” hadn’t been written when he was a child. More evidence, they said, that he can’t be trusted, along with his recently revised story about his mother-in-law having to pay more than his dog for the same arthritis medicine.
I wonder if this is part of the checklist for being a democrat and running for president. Step 1. Make up some homey sounding lie about unions and relate it to your parents.
