Lynn Coleman changed how Washington works
WASHINGTON — A canny Texas lawyer named Lynn Coleman died last month at 81. He was not widely known outside his profession and circle of friends, but he’s worth a mention for a simple reason: He was part of a surge of talent that arrived in Washington from the heartland a generation ago and transformed how the capital works.
Power seemed to speak with a Texas accent back in those days, in the aftermath of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. LBJ and his friends had seeded Congress, the regulatory agencies, the news media and the great law firms with talented people who had won their spurs in the Lone Star State.
The new arrivals hailed from the Texas Hill Country like LBJ, or the Red River Valley like Coleman, or the more genteel Houston like James A. Baker and the Bush clan. They shattered the Yankee elite, which has never recovered. Whether Democrats or Republicans, these folks were recognizably Texans.
In a eulogy at Coleman’s funeral this month, I joked that Coleman held on to his rich Texas twang nearly as long as Henry Kissinger kept his German accent. The secret of these country boys (and girls — Coleman’s widow Sylvia de Leon from South Texas was as formidable a lawyer as he) was their sardonic, self-effacing ability to disguise the fact that they were usually the smartest people in the room.
Coleman was an energy lawyer. He served as deputy energy secretary under President Jimmy Carter and then for decades as a senior partner at Skadden Arps. But at a deeper level, he became part of the permanent Washington of dealmakers, lobbyists, advisers and occasional fixers who made things work until recent years, when the machine got rusty and parts began to wear out.
Coleman knew everything about politics and the law. He had a storyteller’s gift for detail, nuance and personality. His accounts of political horse-trading were a Texas version of Damon Runyon stories, with improbable characters and con artists who were always bumbling in and out of scandal. The era of Democratic Party governance may have created a swamp in D.C., as Trump supporters allege, but it left behind some hilarious tales.
Coleman’s own story was improbable enough. He was born in Vernon, Texas, in 1939 to a local grocer. He sold Bibles as a boy to make his way through Abilene Christian college. He was uncannily smart from the first, and he became a championship debater. As editor of the college newspaper, he was threatened with expulsion in 1960 for endorsing the liberal Catholic John F. Kennedy, a sin in the Bible Belt.
He went on to the University of Texas Law School and dazzled his professors with his raw brilliance. He was an editor of the law review, finished third in his class and was mentored by the toughest, smartest judges and lawyers in the state. For a time, his patron was the legendary John Connally, a gifted but flawed politician who, as governor of Texas, was seated in front of JFK in the motorcade on the day he was shot in 1963.
Coleman recounted his tales of old-time politics in Texas and Washington with a wry, biting wit and an unforgettable laugh that was somewhere between a cackle and a guffaw. Robert Caro has done a pretty good job narrating Texas politics in his biographies of LBJ, but he doesn’t come close to what you heard in a late-night conversation with Coleman.
Coleman was one of those rocket ships that launched from the heartland carrying brilliance, ambition and humor — the gifts of life that set the country aglow with new energy. Like so many of his generation from rural America, he was instinctively an internationalist. Think of Sen. J. William Fulbright from Arkansas, Sen. Mike Mansfield from Montana, Sen. Howard Baker from Tennessee, Rep. Jim Clyburn from South Carolina, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas — all people from what we now call “red” states who looked outward and cherished an America that embraced the world.
In Coleman’s case, that internationalism took him to the Middle East, China and many other places where his expertise on energy was invaluable. When he would talk about the “America First” Trump acolytes in the Texas delegation these days, he would just laugh. Most of them wouldn’t have lasted long selling Bibles in the Red River Valley.
Coleman was an American original: a small-town kid from an obscure college who always maintained his flamboyance and his passion for truth. He made you remember that brainpower and big game hunting (something he loved to do with his son William) didn’t necessarily conflict. He could outsmart almost anyone with a sly joke, a quiet but well-crafted legal strategy and unbending loyalty to the people and principles he cared about.
Coleman was a rare man — an emblem of a heartland that never lost its heart.