[Speed Gibson,
Friday October 26, 2007 at 9:19pm]
The Wellstone Memorial - one more thought
I remember now what really upset me about the Wellstone Memorial that I wrote about yesterday. It was the repeated assertion by more than one speaker that the Senate seat up for election in a couple of weeks "belonged" to Paul Wellstone and whoever his political heir might be. It was so un-American and I again assert that Wellstone would not have approved.
To my way of thinking, titles are like money when your number's up: you can't take it with you. He stopped being our Senator the moment he died. Dean Barkley was soon appointed to fill the remaining few weeks of the term. Yet, the Memorial was fixated on nothing but that Senate seat, a seat he could never win again. We'll never know if he would have won another term had he lived as the polls were close, but that didn't matter now.
Rick Khan and others kept chanting "Senator" as if that were Paul's only redeeming quality or accomplishment. That's all that seemed to matter. Paul the professor was forgotten. Paul the wrestler was forgotten. Plucky Paul was forgotten. Paul the father and Paul the husband got some attention, but again largely in how his sons and his wife worked on his campaigns.
It was quite the reverse. It was Paul Wellstone who dignified the title of Senator, and we could use a lot more of that today. Did I agree with Wellstone? Almost never. Were his proposals and positions largely liberal fantasy? Of course. But our Constitution says nothing of which way a Senator should vote, merely the mechanics of election and procedure, and the increasingly ignored limits to power.
He wasn't perfect. He was human. He had promised to serve only two terms, for example. But like Kirby Puckett, Paul Wellstone respected the game. Sadly, that cannot be said of many currently serving in the U.S. Senate.
To my way of thinking, titles are like money when your number's up: you can't take it with you. He stopped being our Senator the moment he died. Dean Barkley was soon appointed to fill the remaining few weeks of the term. Yet, the Memorial was fixated on nothing but that Senate seat, a seat he could never win again. We'll never know if he would have won another term had he lived as the polls were close, but that didn't matter now.
Rick Khan and others kept chanting "Senator" as if that were Paul's only redeeming quality or accomplishment. That's all that seemed to matter. Paul the professor was forgotten. Paul the wrestler was forgotten. Plucky Paul was forgotten. Paul the father and Paul the husband got some attention, but again largely in how his sons and his wife worked on his campaigns.
It was quite the reverse. It was Paul Wellstone who dignified the title of Senator, and we could use a lot more of that today. Did I agree with Wellstone? Almost never. Were his proposals and positions largely liberal fantasy? Of course. But our Constitution says nothing of which way a Senator should vote, merely the mechanics of election and procedure, and the increasingly ignored limits to power.
He wasn't perfect. He was human. He had promised to serve only two terms, for example. But like Kirby Puckett, Paul Wellstone respected the game. Sadly, that cannot be said of many currently serving in the U.S. Senate.