Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,164

This is the grave of Drew Lewis.

Born in 1931 in Broomall, Pennsylvania, Lewis grew up well off–the Depression doesn’t seem to have affected his wealthy Philadelphia-area family. He went to Haverford and then did an MBA at Harvard. Have I yet mentioned that I am profiling a Republican? Maybe I didn’t need to with the Harvard MBA. He became a corporate executive, being named assistant chairman of National Gypsum in 1969. He was then named CEO of a company called Snelling and Snelling in 1971, which I think was some kind of temp agency like Manpower. By this time he was already at the senior executive level, the kind of guy who gets appointed to run the Reading Railroad through bankruptcy proceedings, even though he was just in his early 40s. Then in 1974, he started his own consulting firm.

Lewis was a more than active Republican. He managed Richard Schweiker’s campaigns for the House and Senate in Pennsylvania and decided that he could do more himself. So he became a big time insider and power player. He never held office (though his wife did serve a couple of terms in the state legislature) but he loved being on those key committees. He was convinced to run for governor in 1974, but lost to Milton Shapp. 74 was a bad year for Republicans anyway. But he was chairman of the state’s delegation to the RNC in 76 and he became deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Now, 1976 was the year that Ronald Reagan wanted to oust Gerald Ford. Reagan needed Pennsylvania to follow him to make that happen. So he said he’s name Schweiker as his VP. But Lewis was a big Ford guy and given Ford his word. So that pretty much doomed Reagan’s plot. That actually would pay off down the road for both of them. Reagan appreciated a man of his word, so long as his word helped Republicans.

So Reagan hired Lewis to run his campaign in 1980. Then he paid Lewis back. He named him Secretary of Transportation. Now, this is not usually a very sexy position. We don’t think a lot about who the Secretary of Transportation is. In fact, I couldn’t name who it is off the top of my head right now, or under Biden for that matter. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. It just means they are never in the news and, in my case, their policy areas are not my personal policies area. Others would no doubt say the same about the Secretary of the Interior or Secretary of Labor, but of course I always know who those people are.

Anyway, the tenure of Lewis was a big exception. That’s because the air traffic controllers went on strike in 1981 and Reagan fired them all. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization had good reason to be angry. Supervisors in the FAA treated them like garbage, the job was incredibly stressful due to the fact that you were trying and sometimes failing to stop planes from crashing into each other with the limited technology of the time, and the Carter administration had been overtly hostile to helping them. That led PATCO to endorse Reagan, a very stupid idea. Now, PATCO really screwed up by striking. The rest of the labor movement urged them not to do this. It had no interest in solidarity with the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, or other unionized workforces. They were angry and they were going to strike, illegal or not. And to be clear, the fact that it was illegal wasn’t as big of a worry as you’d think because ever since the postal workers brought the Nixon administration to its knees in 1970 due to its own strike, public sector workers weren’t too worried about it.

Now, it doesn’t seem as if Lewis was really the one who urged the firings. But he also had no problem with it. Reagan wanted the workers gone if they struck and refused to return to the job and he was going to have it. Lewis was happy to do that work. Reagan led most of the press conferences about it but Lewis was right there and he confirmed that the government would give PATCO nothing that was not already on the table. In fact, Lewis had proposed the deal before the strike that in the modern context wasn’t too bad–higher pay and reduced hours being the biggest offers. With the support of Ed Meese and David Stockman (both still living!), Reagan agreed to it. But once the strike started, Lewis was happy to see them gone. In his magisterial study of the PATCO strike, the great labor historian Joseph McCartin largely spoke well of Lewis, saying that while he thought the PATCO claims were wildly outrageous, he wanted a deal and was a pragmatist above all. There wasn’t going to be anyone better in the Reagan administration for PATCO to negotiate with. But it went as it went and Lewis did what he was told.

After the firings, which the FAA got through with surprising ease and which gave Reagan’s approval ratings a huge boost, Lewis’ other big policy win was getting the Surface Transportation Act of 1982 through Congress, which raised the gas tax by 5 percent. I can’t imagine a Republican administration supporting a gas tax increase today. Hell, Democrats are turning against it for short-term policy gains, though admittedly, realizing that the American voter is a fucking moron is not a bad instinct to have. The money was mostly used to improve highways and bridges.

Lewis resigned in 1983. No particular reason–Reagan still liked him, but he wanted to leave government. Because he handled the PATCO strike so effectively and the FAA had no real problems after firing them–and because the media was so deeply anti-worker and so approved of the action–Lewis received tons of praise upon his resignation, being called the most competent person in the administration.

He did receive some pushback finally when Haverford–his alma mater–gave him a honorary degree. The faculty went nuts because of his role in firing the controllers. So he declined the offer to avoid controversy. At least he faced some consequence I guess. He spent his later years in the business and lobbying world. He ran the Union Pacific Railroad for awhile in the late 80s. After Don Regan resigned as Chief of Staff in 1987, Reagan asked Lewis to come back and take that critically important job. But he turned Reagan down. Howard Baker took the job instead. His last decades were spent being a rich guy and being on the boards of tons of corporations.

Lewis died in 2016, at the age of 84.

Drew Lewis is buried in Central Schwenkfelder Garden of Memories, Worcester, Pennsylvania.

If you would like this series to visit other Secretaries of Transportation–and what a hot group of folks this is!–you can donate to cover the required expenses here. He was replaced by Elizabeth Dole, who it turns out is still alive. His predecessor Neil Goldschmidt doesn’t presently have a known grave. William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr., is in Arlington and so is Claude Brinegar. All the heroic Transportation secretaries get a slot I guess. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.