Personal pressures of the governorship
Holshouser describes the strain politics places on a politician's marriage. The job "just goes on and on and on," but couples can manage by focusing on the end of an officeholder's tenure, perhaps easier for North Carolina's term-limited governor than for others, and there are strategies for managing the workload. He remembers that one-time Secretary of Agriculture Lauch Faircloth did not seem as pressed for time as Holshouser.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with James E. Holshouser Jr., May 9, 1998. Interview C-0328-3. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
You mentioned it was the demands on the time. Were there other
aspects of it that made it difficult?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Well, you really don't have a personal life during that
stretch of time and I think that is one of those things that I may have
said before. I learned during the campaign that I could push myself
beyond the limits that I thought I could go once as
long as I knew that it was going to end. That it was a short-term
thing. You could see the light at the end of the tunnel whether it was a
train or whatever. That win or lose on election day that pace was going
to stop and I think that is how we both felt about the four years. That
we had to give our best for four solid years because you
couldn't run for reelection. You didn't have to
worry about that. We were both figuring on going back to Boone. Turned
out we didn't. I believe that is what makes that manageable.
I think the lack of that is what makes so many marriages go bad in
Congress because that just goes on and on and on. I think there are a
lot of marriages that would survive had they not had that strain on them
in Congress. A lot of marriages have survived but it is because
somewhere a long the line I think the couples make a pact that this is
something that they are going to agree to do forever.
- JACK FLEER:
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You in a sense were on call for twenty four hours as governor.
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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That is right.
- JACK FLEER:
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and in a sense your wife and probably not your daughter since she was so
young. Is there anything that can be done about that to make being
governor somewhat more possible?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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I don't think so. I mean you don't have but one guy
who is head of the national guard, head of the highway patrol, so to
speak, if something is to happen. That is the reason that it never
bothered me much about taking a state plane or the highway patrol
wherever I was going even if it was for a political event. You
can't do that anymore I don't think because people
fuss at you. But they didn't fuss then. Jim Martin over did
it. He said if there were any politics involved in any part of the trip,
the campaign fund had to apy for all of it. Where I didn't
even stop at the other extreme of saying that if any part
of it was government then government could pay for it. No
part of it was government I still had to pay for it and I still
don't think that was wrong. But I know I would get some
disagreement on that today.
- JACK FLEER:
-
So the job just has this sort of full time expectations and
necessity.
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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That is right. There are things that you can do. There are times you
would have appointments in the afternoons. Somebody would call in and
say they had gotten tied up. All of sudden your afternoon opens up and
you say lets run down to Pinehurst and play eighteen holes. And there
was always something on the desk; the desk was never empty. But you do
have the flexibility to get up and do that. And there is nothing says
that you have to go to the office at all. It is not in the constitution.
Lauch Faircloth when he was secretary of transportation swore you could
do the job working three days a week.
- JACK FLEER:
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I didn't realize that. His job or the
governor's?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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I said transportation. It was when he was in commerce he said that, that
the secretary's job only took three days a week. And of
course Lauch had been sort of a unique kind of individual all the time
any way because he is always, he sort of knew what he could do and what
he couldn't do and he just did it.
- JACK FLEER:
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Would the addition of staff to the governor's office help in
making it a more manageable responsibility?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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I'm probably speaking out of ignorance now. It is hard to know
how much is coming into the Governor's office that has to get
into a funnel somehow and then come back out at the other end. When I
was there, Phil Kirk had all the mail sit on his desk that came in there
everyday. Some of it just needed an automatic response that
worked out to a mail processing thing, word processing.
Some had to be sent over to a cabinet secretary. He would just sort it
out. Then eventually some of it would have to have a letter from me back
that he would draft. Most of the time we would just talk through and I
didn't even sign it. I had a couple of gals who were good
forgers. You know the White House has always had machines. We never
signed, I mean I always signed executive orders and things like that. I
don't believe more staff is the answer. I think more staff
has more potential for games for people to play and other
people's agenda to get involved. You have more pull and tug
between personalities. I think you need to keep that staff pretty lean
and mean. Now the budget office has been added to that staff which makes
it look a lot bigger than it is right now as opposed to what it was.
That could have been a mistake rather than having it in the Department
of Administration.
- JACK FLEER:
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Moving it over to the Governor's office?
- JAMES E. HOLSHOUSER, JR.:
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Yes. The Department of Administration always had the reputation of being
sort of professional and insulated from politics. When they moved it to
the governor's office I think it became the
governor's tool in the minds of the legislature and made it,
not less effective is the wrong word, it just changed how people
perceived it.