BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

They called him Al the Pal.

He had a smile as wide as the Mississippi is long and a boisterous voice that left no doubt Al the Pal was in the room. He was an honest politician; a real man of the people. The kind you felt comfortable around, like a close relative or the owner of the gas station where you took your car for repairs.

He was a great guy.

Alan J. Dixon, former Democratic Senator from Illinois died over the weekend at his home one day shy of age 87.

I knew him professionally for many years. I first met him when I was the political reporter and later the editor-in-chief of the small daily newspaper in Galesburg, a downstate hamlet in the Western part of the state. People in Galesburg liked Al because he was a downstater, like them. Unlike Al, most Democrats were form Chicago. They were Daley Democrats who had no time for anyone outside Windy City limits, and we had no time for them, except when we needed to fix the sewer system or widen a local farm-to-market highway.

Ironically, when I lived in Galesburg, the site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate and once a booming railroad town, people there were solidly conservative Republican punctuated by a core of libertarian Republicans. They reluctantly accepted money from the state, but wanted no handouts from the Federal government. They wanted no Federal government, period. They made the tea party look like a bunch of pansies. Not exactly Al the Pal’s political fraternity brothers.

So it was somewhat of a shock to the community when the young, new editor, with the blessing of a far-sighted publisher, endorsed a Democrat for the first time in the hundred-year history of the newspaper: a carefully chosen Democrat, the Secretary of State, a guy named Paul Powell, who had a spotless reputation and a winning personality. Powell died not too long after that and they found shoeboxes full of cash stuffed in every seat cushion and closet in his home. It was a huge scandal, even for Illinois, and needless to say the young editor got tarred and feathered but fortunately not driven out of town on a rail. They let me stay, so we endorsed another Democrat. This time we got it right–Alan Dixon. Al the Pal was the genuine article.

Dixon was among a legion of Democratic giants in Illinois back then. There was Mayor Richard J. Daley, of course, and Senator Paul Douglas, Senator Adlai Stevenson, Governor Otto Kerner, and Congressmen Dan Rostenkowski and Sid Yates. There was also the younger generation, the bow-tied Lieutenant Governor and later Senator Paul Simon and another Lt. Gov., Neil Hartigan, who tried to recruit me as a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly, and of course, Dixon. He, Hartigan, Simon and others were a new breed of new politicians in a new era. They introduced transparency, straight talk, pragmatism, and, when tough choices had to be made, governance over gridlock. Imagine what it would be like had their vision and belief in governance survived. This would be a better country and we would be a better people for it.

It was in part because of them that counties such as Knox became purple and eventually Democratic strongholds. These political entrepreneurs could talk as easily to a Warren County farmer as they could a ward boss in Chicago. In some respects they were probably more comfortable with the farmer dumping his corn off at the Monmouth feed mill. They got the middle class thing. They got how people lived. They remembered your name.

Illinois’ senior senator today, Dick Durbin, often exhibits some of the political character of his predecessors. Durbin was a young parliamentarian in the Illinois General Assembly when Dixon, Hartigan, and Simon were planting their giant footprint all over the state. I suspect he benefited from their example and their friendship.

Some Republicans of the era also left a sizable footprint. Everett Dirksen, Gov. Dick Ogilvie, a World War II tank commander; Bob Michel, another World War II hero; Senator Chuck Percy, Congressman Ed Derwinski, Independent Presidential candidate John Anderson, and Congressman Paul Findley, whom Durbin defeated. I mention the Republicans because Dixon was a proponent of bipartisanship and I believe those Republicans respected him. When Dixon got the Illinois delegation together it was the entire delegation and they worked as a group, not as Republicans or Democrats.

Dixon died just a week later than another giant, Howard Baker of Tennessee, senator, ambassador, White House chief of staff. Baker, a southern Republican, and Dixon a rust belt Democrat, had a lot in common. They were honest. They were partisan believers but they were pragmatists, too. They understood what made the country they served an exceptional, maybe unique, experiment in republican governance. I was fortunate enough to get to know both Baker and Dixon while I served as an aide to Michel, who used to remind us constantly that our system of government is built on trust. Without it you have nothing. Baker and Dixon were of the same ilk and believed in the same values, making them politicians in whom the people had the utmost trust.

They also had other essentials. They were intelligent. They were skilled negotiators. They were open and responsive. They were pragmatic consensus builders. They were humble. They were leaders who understood that the best leaders are sometimes, in the end, followers. They gave of themselves, not always expecting something in return.

It is sad to see such public servants slip off the mortal coil. You always wonder if our political system will ever reproduce them. Because of breathtaking displays of political ineptitude, the country is producing some monumental problems that are growing exponentially into crises of unsolvable proportions. You need look no further than the nuclear time bomb in the Middle East or the dissolution of our southern border.

Dirksen used to say that everything is decided on the margins. The problem is that there are too few politicians like Dixon and Baker who know how to operate on the margins, with the courage to cross to the other side to win and the smarts to do it.

Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff.   He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.