Posted on 10/26/2002 9:03:32 PM PDT by fatguy
Godspeed, Happy Warrior Wellstone
By ROBERT D. NOVAK
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Last Wednesday morning as Sen. Paul Wellstone walked into a news conference room in the State Office Building, he spotted me seated in the rear. "Oh, no," Wellstone said in mock dismay. "Call off the press conference. Novak's here."
We had that kind of relationship: disagreeing about everything but good-naturedly with a sense of fun. He was the happy warrior of 21st-century politics. Arguably the U.S. senator furthest to the left, he was a throwback to a different time.
That posture was not always a political asset. Wellstone was fighting for his political life against former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, in what private polls of both parties showed to be a tossup. This was the country's purest Senate race, and one that could determine which party will control the chamber. Wellstone, a champion of the poor and an advocate of big government, was running against a pro-life, pro-tax cut Republican, and they were virtually even with each other.
When pollster John Zogby surveyed key Senate races several weeks ago, he found that Wellstone had higher negatives than any incumbent senator with the exception of New Hampshire's Republican Sen. Bob Smith (who lost in a September primary). That was partly because Wellstone had broken his promise to serve only two Senate terms, but also because his ideology was on the left fringe.
The decision by many endangered Democratic candidates this year to fudge on issues and even use the image of George W. Bush in their commercials was not for Wellstone. He was the only vulnerable Democratic senator to vote against President Bush's Iraq resolution, and he did not agonize about it.
In my many television interviews and occasional private conversations with Wellstone, he never hid his concern with the pragmatic leadership of the Democratic Party. He often stated that the party was losing its soul under Bill Clinton. When I told him he was my ideal Democratic candidate, Wellstone shot back that I was looking for a loser.
Kidding aside, he was sincere about a presidential bid in 2000 and would have tried had he been able to finance it. Laid-back Bill Bradley was not exactly the passionate Wellstone's kind of Democrat, but he was better than Al Gore in Wellstone's eyes. He could not tolerate the strategizing and hedging of the Gore candidacy.
When I chided Wellstone for breaking his two-term pledge, he told me he felt he was needed not only to counter Bush conservatism but also to avert the Democratic drift. Last year, he spoke out against his party's moderation in these words: "I think Democrats are without a politics if they're not bold and honest for the things they think are right."
Nevertheless, Wellstone had changed during his nearly dozen years as a senator. The fighting left-wing professor from Carleton College had not altered his views but did soften his style. Moreover, he came to love the political game and mastered its tricks -- as he showed in the last hours of his life.
Coleman had correctly pointed out that Wellstone sometimes found himself on the short side of 97 to 3 and 95 to 5 votes, particularly when it came to national defense issues. "I'm running against a guy who's been fighting everybody for years," Coleman told audiences. Wellstone was concerned about being labeled an ineffectual outsider, and tried to do something about it at the Wednesday morning press conference where I encountered him. He brought in eight executives from Minnesota's booming medical device industry to praise him for passage Oct. 17 of a bill to speed government approval of new products. In fact, he was at best a secondary figure in backing the bill, was not a sponsor and was not even on the Senate floor when the bill passed.
The businessmen looked uncomfortable. Wellstone came over to me before the press conference began. "This is counterintuitive," he told me, his eyes twinkling. Paul Wellstone was exaggerating his role, but he was delighted by his command performance for CEOs who had made maximum contributions to his Republican opponent. Paul Wellstone was enjoying the great game, with two more days to live.
PEGGY NOONAN
Paul Wellstone: An Appreciation A good guy dies an untimely death.
Friday, October 25, 2002 3:50 p.m.
Liberals don't appreciate conservatives enough. Conservatives don't appreciate liberals enough either. Here's an appreciation of Paul Wellstone, who died a few hours ago in the middle of a great battle in the heart of the great democracy.
I met him only once, in Washington, in 1996. I wish I'd taken notes and could refer to them now. We met in the halls of the Senate, introduced by a mutual acquaintance, and what I remember is Wellstone was funny and modest and shy, and I thought: Good guy. It was an instinctive response, an instinctive read, and I trusted it.
A few minutes ago on CNN, Candy Crowley, a reporter one of whose gifts is an obvious sense of humanity toward those she covers, said that Wellstone was "a pure liberal"--meaning he wasn't kidding; his liberalism wasn't a jacket he put on in the morning to fool the rubes and powers--he meant it. He seemed to be a politician who was not a cynic, who was not poll driven, who was not in it just for the enjoyments of power. He operated from belief. And as beliefs do, his sometimes cost him. It's possible, perhaps likely, that his belief that an American invasion of Iraq was wrong was costing him in Minnesota, his state, which he was furiously stumping, hop-scotching over the snow banks in a chartered plane, in an effort to hold on to his Senate seat.
It's good to have men and women of belief in Congress. It's tragic to lose one. It's amazing to live in a time when these Allen Drury-type "Advise and Consent" plot twists yank the drama of the coming election off its predictable tracks. And it seems to me more and more in our country that we're getting these dramatic and unpredictable and novelistic plot changes, whatever that means and for whatever it's worth.
But here's what I really want to say. Democracy requires warriors. It requires leaders. It requires people who will go out there and fight for their vision of a better country in a better world. It requires men and women who will go into politics, and who will, in going into politics, in a way lose their lives. Or lose the relaxed enjoyment of daily life.
Politicians live lives of constant movement and effort, lives in which days are broken up into pieces that don't always cohere--up at 5, first breakfast at 6:30, run all day, on the plane, on the bus, into the van, to the fund-raiser, to the speech, to the dinner for the union supporter, to the late-night meeting with reporters; and don't forget to sound confident, to have the facts, to seem engaged. The exhaustion of constant extroverting; the fatigue of the modern politician. The only good reason to live like that is the desire to pull forward and push into being your vision of How Things Ought to Be. Those who do it for other reasons--well, as George Orwell said, they wind up with the faces they deserve. It takes commitment and hunger to live a political life. But when the person living it brings other qualities--a sincerity, a seriousness of purpose, a respect for the meaning of things--and when it is accompanied by a personal style of natural modesty twinned with political confidence, well, it's a moving thing to see. It's inspiring. It reminds you that there are good people in politics. And modern democracies need all the reminders they can get.
When conservatives disagree with liberals, and they're certain the liberal they're disagreeing with is merely cynical, merely playing the numbers, merely playing politics, it's a souring experience. When liberals disagree with conservatives and they're sure the conservative they're disagreeing with is motivated by meanness or malice, it's an embittering experience. But when you disagree with someone on politics and you know the person you're disagreeing with isn't cynical or mean but well meaning and ardent and serious--well, that isn't souring or embittering. That's democracy, the best of democracy, what democracy ought to be about. Paul Wellstone was a good guy. His friend Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, spoke at some length this afternoon about his "caring and belief." When tough old Pat Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, spoke of Wellstone this afternoon on CNN, he began to weep. And when Pete Domenici, tough old Republican of New Mexico, followed Mr. Leahy on CNN, he too began to weep, and had to beg off the interview.
Senators ain't sissies. They can be one cold crew. But Wellstone touched them in a way that was special, and that I think had something to do with democracy, and those who grace it.
It's sad to lose a good man. Good for America for raising him; good for Minnesota for raising him to the Senate; good for Wellstone for being motivated by belief and the desire to make our country better.
As I said, when it comes to abortion, I'm pro-life. We're on the same side.
Which is more than you can say about the rest of the Senate. "R's" included.
And to be willing to lose is something else that wins elder statesmen respect. Wellstone, like McGovern or Jerry Brown or Goldwater or Taft, seems to have been willing to lose rather than to change his tune. Mondale couldn't have won in 1984. Possibly he might have taken any unfair advantages that he could, but those advantages just weren't there. Whether he was really tested, whether he had the temptation to lie or cheat and rejected it or the temptation just wasn't there is a complicated question. Maybe Mondale wanted to do anything to win, but just didn't have it in him either to win or to really go into dirt that wasn't there. So by default, he comes off looking like a noble Quixote or happy warrior.
When Washingtonians and prominent Republicans praise Wellstone or Mondale, you have to understand that there using a sliding scale. At one extreme are those who are hell to work with and who have screwed over everone they've ever known. At the other extreme are saints, who are rare in Washington. In between is a vast area of shades of grey.
Wellstone on abortion or Mondale on race may have been demagogues, liars, cheats, or manipulators, but they didn't fit into that first category of people who would do anything to win or advance themselves, so they win some praise in Washington. And it's not wholly the partisan praise for their positions and partisan passions, but respect for the path not taken. But if you feel strongly against some of those positions and some of their actions in the grey areas, it's inevitable that you'll be angry at them and resent the eulogies.
It may also be that Washington draws a line between attacks on the opposition in general, and actual dirty dealing to individuals. Of course, the Washington media does tend to deal more harshly with Republican attacks on Democrats than Democrat attacks on Republicans. So someone like Wellstone or Mondale does have an advantage with the media. But no one has yet tried to canonize Torricelli, so there are some distinctions made in behavior, rather than simply ideology.
I hope so.
Of course, the liberal agenda has always been to exempt themselves from the assaults and thefts they prescribe for the hoi poloi...
With the immediate family essentially wiped out his pile will fall to second tier relatives. I wonder if they'll fight over it?
He supported gun-control, which is in direct and flagrant violation of the Bill of Rights. At least one of the bills he supported would have sentenced Americans to 5 years in jail for simply exercising their 2nd amendment Rights at gun shows.
Yeah, a great man.
Well said. I would happily take 50 Paul Wellstones if it also meant 50 conservative counterparts. Wellstone seemed to truly believe his way was the best course for the country, as opposed to the vast majority of senators - whose political ambitions outweigh any consideration for the country.
Can you quote him? In his book, Tip O'Neill said that the election of Ronald Reagan was a "sinful." Tip O'Neill despised Ronald Reagan even if he might have found him personally amusing. Reagan rode herd over the Congress in his first term, and O'Neill was powerless to do anything about it. Reagan was also proved right in his "peace through strength" foreign policy, and proved the utter stupidity and anti-Americanism of O'Neill's "peace through concession" strategy in dealing with te Soviets.
I believe I read it in Chris Matthews book. I know from numerous sources that Tip O'Neill and Reagan used to play poker together.
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