Nicholson touts 4-H as important life experience

(Sentinel photo by Beverly Van Buskirk) A visit to the Plymouth County Fair in Le Mars Friday took Jim Nicholson to the swine barn, where he exhibited hogs as a 4-H member. [Click to enlarge]

A family reunion brought former Secretary of Veterans Affairs R. James Nicholson back to his hometown and an opportunity to visit the Plymouth County Fair last Friday.

"I can't believe how much its grown. It's spectacular," Nicholson said during an interview at the 4-H Food Stand, indicating his last visit to the fair was about 10 years ago.

Most of his fair memories are from when he was a 4-H exhibitor who had an early success at the fair.

(Photo/contributed) At the 1955 Plymouth County Fair, Jim Nicholson, a member of the Elgin Township 4-H Club, exhibited the grand champion swine and reserve grand champion swine, as well as the grand champion litter. He still displays the photo in his study today. [Click to enlarge]

In 1955, he exhibited the grand champion swine and the reserve grand champion swine at the Plymouth County Fair, as well as breeding the grand champion litter, a record at that time.

"That was to me such an important part of my formative years, living here and raising animals," he said.

The nine members of the Nicholson family lived in a five-room house on a small acreage in Struble with a small pasture and barn.

"We had great 4-H leaders, people who encouraged me, even though we were really poor, to get some hogs and show them, learn about them, and have that responsibility to do those chores every day," Nicholson said.

"I feel very grateful for that opportunity," he added.

The swine barn on the fairgrounds is the same as when Nicholson exhibited, right down to the numbers painted on the pens.

"When I was showing here, it was mostly major farm animals, cattle, hogs, sheep and horses," he said. "Now they show dogs, rabbits, ducks and so much more."

Nicholson left his post as Secretary of Veterans Affairs in October 2007, and now works as special counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, with a legal practice specializing in regulatory compliance, oil and gas, alternative energy, health care and other areas.

He is the former Ambassador to the Holy See and presented his diplomatic credentials to Pope John Paul II two days after the deadly terrorist attacks of 9-11. He also served chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Clinton Administration.

In addition, he serves on several corporation and foundation boards, and is a Fellow at the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Nicholson explained being a Fellow is an honorary but important position as an advisor to the United States Chamber in trying to protect and defend the further awareness and interest of the capitalistic system, the free enterprise system.

"The free enterprise system is under assault, as a result, in part, of the recession," Nicholson said. "That is unfortunate."

The basic tenants of the country's democratic, capitalistic system, are valid, he said.

"It's what has made this country great, the ability for people to take risks and develop their own small businesses and have the freedom to fail and the opportunity to succeed," Nicholson said.

He referenced an extensive polling research which he said indicated an alarming number of people in this country think socialism is better than capitalism.

Those views, he said, come from the excesses on Wall Street, the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the housing sectors of the economy, as well as the greed on the part of some people running big companies and big banks.

"The truth is, most of the business in this country and most of the people employed in this country are employed in small businesses, like here in Le Mars and around Iowa," Nicholson said.

"I lived in Italy for 3 1/2 years, and I experienced what became a very socialist economy," Nicholson said.

There young people don't aspire to own their own businesses and the country is in an economic stalemate, he said.

"That could happen in our country, too, if we're not careful," he said.

For Nicholson, that means keeping government from taking too much of the incentive out of the opportunity for people to want to start a business.

"We need to have a system where people can both succeed and fail," Nicholson said.

The government, he added, should not be expected to come in and bail everybody out. That not only costs taxpayers money, but also comes with additional control of the government.

"We're seeing that in the banking, housing and mortgage industries," he said.

Health care is another topic Nicholson touched on. He sees the lack of a vote by Congress before the August recess as good.

"Members are going to go home and hear from more of their constituents about these plans," Nicholson said. "It's not going to be a pretty picture. The plan is losing more support as people begin to realize how much it's going to cost."

He indicated information from the Congressional Budget office about how the costs will far exceed the debt expectations of the Obama administration and have a crippling impact on the economy is sinking in.

"We have the best health care system in the world," Nicholson said. "Yes, it has some flaws and they should be looked at and adjusted. But what we're talking about here is performing major surgery on something that isn't broke."

He points to England, Canada and Sweden, which have socialized universal medicine.

"They're going the other way, contracting with private providers now," Nicholson said "So why are we going to where they have been and it has not succeeded."

He feels more needs to be done to give incentives to people to get health insurance.

"If you buy it yourself, you have to buy it with after-tax dollars. We ought to give a break to people and an incentive to get them to buy health insurance," he said.

Nicholson also learned about health care when he ran the largest integrated health care system in the United States as Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

"We could make drastic improvements in the health delivery system of this country by instituting electronic medical records," Nicholson said. "I will give President Obama credit on this score because he does understand the value of that."

He also sees a need to reform the tort litigation system to cut down the cost of defensive medicine.

"Finally, we could save enormous amounts of money by tightening down the administration of Medicare and Medicaid and cut out the fraud and the abuse," he added.

"We're having a major, national debate about this and the issues are getting put on the table, which is probably good," Nicholson said.

In the end, however, he predicts most of the extremely expensive alterations to the system that the Obama administration is proposing will not be adopted.

Retirement isn't in this 1956 Le Mars High School graduate's vocabulary.

"I don't have any interest in retiring. I think it would be boring," he said.

He and his wife, Suzanne, live in the Washington, D.C., area, and have two grandchildren living nearby. Their daughter lives in Denver, Colo., and their son lives in New York.

"I just need to find more excuses to get to Iowa more often. It sure is beautiful here," he said. "It's a great place to grow up."

"That's what so good about smaller communities," he continued. "It's a great place to get involved and people care about you. That's not so in the urban area. There are no second chances there," he said.