Anti-Climacus

PAUL WELLSTONE: Mickey Kaus

Senator Paul Wellstone: They're probably already saying this on TV [and Noonan's already written it--ed .], but it was hard to dislike Paul Wellstone. He lacked the qualities that make a successful modern U.S. Senator: He wasn't a poser, a trimmer, a schemer, a dissembler, a self-aggrandizing egomaniac or a vicious infighter. He wasn't an a--hole.. Wellstone made his case -- usually with an emotional speech during which, when he got really excited, he'd bizarrely and charmingly start squatting up and down like a frog. Then he won or lost. Usually (but not always) lost.

You could be deeply annoyed by what he had to say -- in my case, his "compassionate" give-them-cash approach to welfare drove me up the wall. But that was what he thought. Wellstone didn't pretend to be for reforming welfare while secretly gutting reform in the statutory fine print, the traditional Washington "make-believe" approach. He didn't seek a middle ground that would offend the fewest number of people and guarantee his reelection. His openness and honesty constituted a temporary crack in the evolutionary laws, a quirk in which the proven Darwinian traits that make for success in the competition for national political prominence somehow didn't obtain. How the hell did this sincere lefty college professor get elected? If the culture of Washington power didn't value Wellstone, if the press whales considered him a bit cute and lacking in deal-making heft, that reflects more poorly on the culture of Washington power than on the senator.

The other reason for wishing Wellstone well -- my editors wanted me to write a piece making this point three weeks ago, which to my discredit I didn't get to -- was that he represented a political point of view that needed to be represented in the U.S, Senate and that, without him, probably won't be. It's not just that sometimes he might be right -- as with his annoying, unBeltwayish persistence in calling for universal health care after the flop of the 1994 Clinton plan. (Who knows, his vote against giving Bush authority to wage unilateral war against Iraq may also seem very right one day.) It's also that Wellstone forced everyone else to justify their positions in a new way, because he would come at them from a different angle of attack than, say, Tim Russert on Meet the Press. I wouldn't have wanted a Senate with 51 Paul Wellstones, simply because I don't agree with his views. But the Senate is supposed to be a deliberative body. Wellstone's views were and are important, and you wanted him around, as long as there was only one like him. There was.