‘I’m 84 and still doing things and never will retire until they throw me in the hole.” So said Alan Simpson to me in 2015, when we did a Q&A podcast. Earlier this month, he passed away at 93. I titled our podcast “A Wyoming Whip, and Wit.” For ten years — 1985 to 1995 — he served as the Republican whip in the U.S. Senate. Also, he was one of the funniest politicians in recent memory.

His middle initial was “K” — “Alan K. Simpson,” he was. The initial stood for “Kooi” — his mother’s maiden name (Dutch). His father was Milward Simpson, who was governor of Wyoming and then a U.S. senator. He was a Republican, as Alan would be.

Alan was born in 1931. Growing up (or not growing up), he was a hellion, as he said many times. He had the police record to prove it, too. But he straightened out, going to college and then law school. The University of Wyoming, in both cases.

He was elected to the Senate in 1978 — Carter was president, with Reagan coming in soon.

Simpson was a “fiscal hawk,” who frequently warned about the national debt and the federal budget deficit. He was also an “immigration hawk,” or an immigration restrictionist. There was not a hint of nativism about him, however. He thought there should be law and order. He also thought that many illegals were exploited, by unscrupulous employers.

As I see it, Simpson had a blind spot on abortion — he was “pro-choice.” That is a long argument, probably never-ending. In any case, Simpson was against public funding of abortion.

He retired from the Senate in 1997 (during the second term of Clinton). Later, he was at Harvard’s Kennedy School, serving as the director of its Institute of Politics. In 2010, President Obama asked him to co-chair a national commission on “fiscal responsibility and reform,” with Erskine Bowles. This became known as the “Simpson-Bowles Commission.”

(Erskine Bowles had been one of President Clinton’s chiefs of staff, and president of the University of North Carolina system.)

In the end, the commission’s recommendations were rejected, by Democrats and Republicans alike. Someday, somehow, someone will have to do something.

Simpson was a close friend of Bush the Elder — President George H. W. Bush — and eulogized him at his funeral.

So, that’s a little bio of Alan K. Simpson.

When I interviewed him in 2015 — October — he was in his hometown of Cody. We were talking by Skype. “It’s about 65 degrees,” he said, “high blue sky, mountains just feet away. Eat your heart out, Jay.”

At the time, Republicans on Capitol Hill were in chaos — as we understood “chaos,” back then. John Boehner had been forced out as Speaker of the House. Paul Ryan would soon be elected to replace him.

“It breaks your heart to see what’s going on there,” said Simpson. “Because I’ll tell you one thing: If the American people observing the Republican Party in this chaos have got it figured out that they can’t even govern themselves, they sure as hell aren’t going to let them govern the country.”

(This turned out not to be true, but we might talk about that another day.)

Simpson said that “40 or 50 people” had gone to Washington not to slow government but to stop it. Whatever their number — 35, 40, 45 — “they got the horses to screw things up, and they’re doing a magnificent job of it.”

We talked at some length about immigration. Simpson and his allies thought there ought to be a way of identifying citizens and non-citizens. But they were accused of wanting a national ID card. And the phrase “national ID card,” Simpson said, was a killer.

These days, however, “they’re talking about retina scans and fingerprints. I haven’t heard anybody bitching about that. This is a great day.”

I said to him that I was for legal immigration — and, of course, against illegal immigration. But I was not sure what to do about the millions already here illegally. I knew I was against amnesty. But I was not exactly sure what I was for. And “I’m pretty sure about a lot of things,” I said, “even when I’m wrong.”

Simpson said, “By God, that sounds like my life.” He then said, “You use a flash word, ‘amnesty.’ We didn’t use that. We use the word ‘legalization.’ Anytime you use the word ‘amnesty,’ you’re going to get your shorts ripped off.”

He further said,

You got to do something. Are you going to deport them? I mean, how would you like to be part of a country that’s deporting 11 million, 12 million, or however many million there are? I don’t want to be part of that.

Simpson was for a variety of measures to get a handle on the general problem. Eventually, he thought, illegals, or some of them, ought to have a chance to apply for citizenship. He was neither draconian nor a patsy.

We also talked at some length about our fiscal condition. And to talk about that, you have to talk about our entitlements. “First you have to admit that it is headed for insolvency,” said Simpson. We were on the subject of Social Security, in particular. “Nobody likes to do that.”

He had blunt words for the AARP.

Their magazine is tremendous. I enjoy it, I’m a member. The magazine has car insurance and life insurance and wheelchairs and things to alarm the neighbors. And erectile-dysfunction ads and everything else. It’s a magnificent thing. But they don’t say one damn word about what to do about the solvency of Social Security.

This, Simpson always kicked against. Every time you propose even a mild reform — a prudent, short step — “people will holler like a gut-shot panther.”

He said, “The myths of Social Security, perpetrated principally by the AARP and the senior groups — it’s disgusting.”

One of the things that we Social Security reformers always have to contend with is that demagogues convince senior citizens that we’re coming after their Social Security. But this is untrue. We think younger people ought to have options, because on our present course and speed, they will not have the protection they deserve.

“I get the nastiest letters from people over 60,” said Simpson. “They’re not even affected by anything we’re trying to do. I just say, ‘Well, how old are you?’ ‘Well, I’m 82, and I want everything back — everything I put in — you jerk, you fink . . .’”

(I think Simpson was cleaning it up for me.)

We further talked about military pensions and benefits. “Madness,” he said. (Simpson, by the way, was in the Army, from 1954 to 1956.)

Don’t forget, only 3 or 4 percent of us ever heard a live shot go past our head in combat. Get that. I know guys who served six months, never left Camp Beetle Bailey, don’t know a mortar tube from either end, and they get the same benefit as a combat veteran. This is stupefying.

Bear in mind, I am supplying brief excerpts from our conversation. That conversation in full, again, is here. In my excerpting, I am tidying up a little, but only a little: This is pretty much Simpson in the raw (the way he would want it).

I asked him about some major Democratic figures — starting with President Obama. “He bristles at criticism,” said Simpson. He recalled Obama’s broadsides against Paul Ryan, in a speech at George Washington University.

And Ryan was sitting right there. He got up and left, and ol’ Sperling leaped up like a prairie dog and ran after him and said, “No, no, we’re sorry,” and that’s when Paul said, “No, you’ve poisoned the well.”

“Sperling” was Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president.

And then we met with the president after that. Erskine was very honest with him. He said, “I thought you were quite harsh, and I don’t think that was necessary.” When it came my turn, I said, “That was like inviting a guy to his own hanging.” And he bristled at that.

And so on and so forth.

Here’s a dirty little secret — or maybe no secret at all: Republicans enjoyed dealing with Vice President Joe Biden. Knowing this, I said the following to Simpson:

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher famously said of Gorbachev, “He’s a man I can do business with.” Is Joe Biden a Democrat you can do business with?

“Let me tell you,” said Simpson, “I could do business with Joe day or night. I have the highest respect for him. Got to know him very well.” Simpson continued,

He’s a legislator, and it’s just too damn bad that Obama could never listen to him, because Joe knew the legislature and Obama did not and never has figured it out. Joe never broke his word with me.

Simpson had tender feelings toward Biden, in part because “he gets his foot in his mouth as much as I get mine in mine.”

At the time of our podcast, Hillary Clinton was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. “Do you think she’ll fall?” I asked Simpson, because the scandals were piling up.

“Oh, she may fall,” said Simpson, “but she woke up in the crib wanting to be president of the United States. And once you have that in your system, you can never get it out. The only way to get it out of there is with embalming fluid.”

At the end of our conversation, we talked about civic education, which I believe is sorely lacking. Simpson did as well.

We had courses in high school called “civics.” It sounds like strange word, but it has to do with how your country works: your school board, your city council, your state, your federal government . . . It may sound corny now, but . . .

It is not corny to me. I wish I could institute civics for Americans from 8 to 80.

Senator Simpson was tall and thin and frequently likened to a bird. He was a rare bird. An asset in our public life. I’m glad he came along.

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