Democracy's arctic edge

12 October 2008

By Victor S. Navasky

Speaking as one who spent almost two years in Alaska, even though it was more than 50 years ago, even though I was only in the peacetime U.S. Army, even though I merely rose to the rank of private first class (53rd Infantry Regiment, Fort Richardson, just outside Anchorage), even though as a member of headquarters company I was issued snowshoes, whereas most Arctic Frontiersman (as our regimental insignia identified us) were issued skis, and even though Alaska was not yet a state, I believe I speak with authority when I say that at least in those years, Governor Sarah Palin's much-mocked claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives one a leg up on matters of national security was, in effect, official U.S. policy.

Consider Operation Moosehorn. It was the winter of 1956 when the whistle blew and we dutifully packed our rucksacks and moved from the heated comfort of our Fort Richardson barracks to the snows of Big Delta, a few hundred miles to the north, where we set up our tents in temperatures, believe it or not, as low as minus 70 degrees, Fahrenheit.

The reason for our maneuvers? As our commander explained it: When the Russians invade the United States they will cross over from the Soviet island of Big Diomede to the Alaskan island of Little Diomede ("You can literally see Russia from Little Diomede," he told us - I kid you not), and then they will invade the Lower 48 by way of Alaska through Canada. "You," he assured us, "are our first line of defense." As the editor of "The Moose Hornblower," the mimeographed paper officially charged with covering these maneuvers, I can attest that these were his very words. (I can also attest that our headline on the final day was "Moosehorn Blows at Midnight.")

Such an invasion never took place, but that, I like to think, may have been precisely because the specter of taking on us Arctic Frontiersmen was too frightening for the Soviets to contemplate. Be that as it may, Palin can take solace in knowing that she is not the first to identify Alaska as foremost to U.S. national security.

Palin also may find a lesson in a civilian event I was lucky enough to witness during my Alaskan tour of duty. It began on Nov. 8, 1955, when 55 elected delegates from across Alaska (a number chosen to match the 55 in attendance at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787) descended on the University of Alaska in Fairbanks for their constitutional convention. It lasted for 76 days, long enough for me to take a furlough and hitch a ride to Fairbanks. The idea was to adopt a constitution, elect a Washington delegation (two senators, one representative) and then knock on the door of Congress, applying for admission, which happened on Jan. 3, 1959.

At the time, I thought the high point of the convention came after testimony from representatives of the National Municipal League and the American Political Science Association advising that constitutions should be short and general, and deal with fundamental principles; whereupon a fisherman-delegate from Ketchikan, which then billed itself as "The Salmon Capital of the World," rose to make a motion that the constitution include a provision banning fish traps.

When another delegate explained that while that might be a proper subject for legislation, a constitution should deal only with matters of principle, life-and-death matters as it were, the man from Ketchikan responded, "In Ketchikan, fish traps are a life-and-death matter."

The result was a document half the size of most state constitutions - and that included a provision for a ballot measure outlawing the use of fish traps in commercial salmon fishing, to be voted upon along with the constitution itself. (And as soon as the constitution was ratified, the ordinance abolishing salmon fish traps was passed.)

I was later to discover that the issue had special significance for Alaska, where fish traps were usually operated and owned by people from "the Outside," as Alaskans say, and seen by the fleets of Alaska's independent fishermen as a symbol of exploitation by absentee commercial interests. Where Washington was long unwilling to ban "Public Enemy No. 1," as the fish traps were known back then, the drafters stepped in - perhaps, Governor Palin, tough government regulation hasn't always been such a terrible thing for Alaska.

By the way, fishermen weren't the only ones whose rights were secured. Written at the tail end of the McCarthy period, the constitution even protects political smear victims, a timely reminder at a moment when our own national presidential campaign threatens to take a dirty turn.

Although I spent only a brief time in Alaska, and too many of my non-military hours were devoted to consuming more than my share of mooseburgers and whooping it up with the boys at Anchorage's latter-day Malamute saloon, which stayed open until the sun set, and in summer the sun never seemed to set, as you can see, Alaska made a deep impression on me.

Odd as it may sound, what I miss most (other than the multicolored northern lights zinging around the firmament) is the weather, mainly because of the way in which the fierce Alaskan winters functioned to unite the populace against it. Parka-clad Sourdoughs and Cheechakos, rich and poor, would huddle and joke and complain together; there's nothing like an Alaskan ice storm to get democratic camaraderie going.

One freezing night, William A. Egan of Valdez, the convention president (who like me had hitched a ride on a truck to get to Fairbanks), interrupted a contentious floor debate to announce that "the temperature is now about 40 below and if the delegates have their cars out there, they probably should start them in order that they will start."

I'm not sure that this story holds any moral for the Republican candidate for vice president of the United States, who has her own views on the limits of what we can do about climate change, but she should know that by the time the delegates returned, tempers had cooled, and the spirit of compromise that enabled this convention of, yes, mavericks to agree on what many political scientists now regard as a model document, prevailed.

Now that I think about it, Palin could do worse than take a refresher course in her own extraordinary state's extraordinary constitution. The document is, after all, a short one.

Victor S. Navasky, the chairman of The Columbia Journalism Review and publisher emeritus of The Nation, is the co-author of "Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq: The Experts Speak."