Dan Sewell: Retirement didn't quite suit this old reporter, so let's talk politics

Back to the future.

I was supposed to be retired. But the end last year of a career in daily journalism that spanned 44 years didn’t leave me satisfied that my writing days were over.

Having spent most of my life with the Associated Press, the global news organization committed to covering the news without fear or favor or expressing personal opinions, and with The Enquirer in editing roles, I enjoyed the new freedom of deciding what I thought about things and writing about my personal views.

Not always a good thing, especially on Twitter (find me @dansewell), where it’s too easy to quickly get locked into an argument with strangers or even friends.

So I’ve been dabbling with more thoughtful column-writing as an Enquirer contributor, and that has now grown into this weekly political column.

And I hope you will offer me your ideas, tips and feedback.

While it takes some ego to expect people to want to read my opinions, it’s also helpful to have some humility and admit that I don’t have all the answers.

Growing up in Butler County

A quick personal rundown: born in Middletown and grew up on a small farm near the tiny Butler County village of Jacksonburg. I fed livestock mornings and evenings and baled hay on long summer days. My father, from Jackson in the Appalachian Kentucky area recently hard hit by flooding,  was a steelworker, and I spent a summer laboring in the Armco Steel mill.

We got The Enquirer at home in the morning and the now-defunct Middletown Journal in the afternoons. I thought journalism was exciting and maybe even glamorous, and set my sights on it.

I interned for both those newspapers, reported and edited at the student-run Post at Ohio University, then began my full-time career as the AP sports writer in Buffalo, New York. From there, Miami to write sports, but crossing over into news reporting; Caribbean correspondent in San Juan, roving Florida correspondent, Southeast regional reporter. I covered hurricanes, tornados, floods, droughts, mass shootings, a terrible bombing and a U.S. invasion. So much death and suffering.

Then home to The Enquirer as editor for Butler and Warren counties, then back to AP in Chicago, back to The Enquirer as suburban editor, and then back to AP as Cincinnati correspondent.

So this makes it Enquirer 4, AP 3.

Politics: Dark Arts or Art of the Possible

What do I know about politics? Too much.

One of the first politicians I got to know was Donald “Buz” Lukens, a rising Republican star in my youth in Middletown whose career eventually crashed under the weight of sex and bribery scandals. As a reporter for the college Post, I interviewed the youngest legislator in the Ohio Statehouse, a curly haired Democrat named Sherrod Brown. His career has gone considerably better than Buz’s.

Brown’s Republican counterpart, Sen. Rob Portman, has been another I’ve had a good relationship with over the years, and the same with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and his Democratic challenger, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley.

What I’m getting at is that you’re going to find me hard to pigeonhole as far as partisanship.

Think I lean Democratic? Ask people who worked for the Clintons when I was digging through their Arkansas dirt for months at a time. Or staffers for the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, when I was writing embarrassing stories about his behavior around the rape allegations in Palm Beach. Florida, against his nephew, who was acquitted.

There’s no secret about my disdain for Donald Trump, but I don’t consider him a real Republican. I hope the party will break free of his grip before he gets another chance to overthrow U.S. democracy. But we have enough pundits to hold forth about Trump on cable TV and in national columns.

I want to learn and talk more about Greater Cincinnati politicians such as Mayor Aftab Pureval, whom I met when he was campaigning for Congress with that “Aftab!” duck commercial, and councilwoman Liz Keating, whose grandfather William J. Keating’s signature was on my first Enquirer paycheck as publisher when I interned in 1976.

Labels? I thought conservatives believed in freedom from government, not having politicians want to force 10-year-old rape victims to carry that spawn, or deciding who can or can’t get married, or telling teachers what they can teach.

I’ve known some skilled practitioners of the political dark arts, such as a Republican strategist in Florida who described the need for candidates to be willing to “work in close with a short knife” against their opponents. Or the late Lee Atwater, who used the ancient Chinese book “The Art of War” as his political bible.

My issue is that there should be more to politics than winning and then staying in power.

Let’s hope we can get beyond that. Politics are supposed to be the art of the possible.

Political columnist Dan Sewell can be reached at dsewellrojos@gmail.com; just don’t interfere there with his quest to finally win The Enquirer Fantasy Football trophy. 

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Dan Sewell: Retirement didn't quite suit me, so let's talk politics