Anti-Climacus

POLITICS AND HUMANITY: On Friday, sometime after 6:00 p.m., CNN showed footage of Sen. Tom Harkin making a statement about the death of Paul Wellstone. He walked up to the podium, took a look at the reporters, and broke down completely. After about 30 seconds, his wife had the sense to turn him around so he wouldn't be facing the cameras anymore. And he went on crying for several minutes, until, between his wife and his daughter, they talked him into composing himself. He turned around again, and faced the reporters. "Paul Wellstone..." he began, and then paused again. Here he was, about to talk about something publicly that he hadn't even finished dealing with privately.

He eventually regained his composure and finished his statement. But I think there was something telling in what he did.

Some other noteworthy things from this past weekend:

Norm Coleman, the Republican Senate candidate, announced he was suspending his campaign indefinitely, and would not resume until such a time as the Minnesota DFL had picked a replacement candidate

The Republican Party website (as well as that of the DFL) went dark

Talk of who would replace Wellstone began, I hesitate to say (and I hesitate because I think it reflects poorly on the people who were talking), in earnest not even hours after the plane crash. But the DFL wanted no part of it.

""We're just so deep in grief right now, we'll just have to worry about that tomorrow," said Bill Amberg, communications director for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party."

'People close to Mr. Mondale said he was not ready to rule out running but considered it unseemly to speak out so soon after Mr. Wellstone's death.

I think all of this is only right. Politics, even when it's about the most important issues in governance, is never the most important thing. I had someone remark to me on Friday afternoon that they were sad that Wellstone had died, but that Fritz Mondale might run as a replacement, and that'd be great, since it'd give the Democrats a good chance to win. This was vulgar and offensive, and I had no problem with saying so: the concern for the man was pro forma at best. My interlocutor responded that winning the election was the most important thing to Wellstone, and that moving as quickly as possible to pick a candidate was the best way to remember him.

But, as I said then and will say again now, if winning his election was the most important thing to Paul Wellstone, then he was a horrible, horrible man. There can be no doubt that his wife and his children were more important to him that any political office. The question, then, is what is it that every politician in Minnesota could see, that Tom Harkin and Jesse Helms saw, that all of the Democratic Party apparatchiks couldn't? Politics doesn't mean a damn thing if there isn't actual, meaningful human emotion behind it. And that emotion will be fused with a principle that may utilitize different methods and arguments, but will always be this: to do what is good and right for everyone. We ought to no more deny everyone connected with Paul Wellstone the time to know we are in solidarity with them in their pain, and to grieve, then we would have it be denied to us.

There is now an honest discussion going on over who will take Wellstone's place on the DFL ticket. That is as it should be: the election, while not the most important thing, was certainly an important thing to him, and we should know that the principles he believed in will never die, but will always require people willing to fight for them. But the people who talked of succession just hours after he died would do well to ask themselves what they are missing.