The New Yorker on Wellstone's Legacy...
COMMENT
PUBLIC LIFE
The New Yorker
Issue of 2002-11-11
Posted 2002-11-04
newyorker.com
The memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone, held last Tuesday evening in the Williams Arena, on the University of Minnesota campus, was overlong, excessively partisan, unpretentious, emotional (without being maudlin), and, above all, egalitarian—in sum, an accurate reflection of the man being memorialized. The hall was filled with political dignitaries, the sort of people who usually deliver the eulogies on such occasions, but only one politician, Senator Tom Harkin, of Iowa, was invited to speak. Much of the evening was devoted to remembrances of others who had died in the plane crash with Wellstone—his wife, Sheila, and his daughter, Marcia, and three campaign staff members—which were delivered by personal friends. There was none of the glitz and few of the easy tears that have come to mark such public events. The frankly political nature of the service was much debated afterward. But the most striking aspect of the evening was the crowd: an estimated twenty thousand people, who had come to pay their respects, and who responded aerobically to the oratory; every round of applause, and there were dozens upon dozens, seemed a standing ovation.
Such crowds—indeed, crowds of any sort—have almost disappeared from American public life. Most political events, particularly in this election year, consist of a candidate, a microphone, and a few television cameras. Often, there will be more people standing behind the candidate—police officers, students, veterans, anyone who might seem evocative or picturesque—than in front. One can travel about for days, watching politicians at work, without setting eye on a voter who has appeared voluntarily, out of curiosity, or merely out of a sense of citizenship. Politics has become a boutique trade; at times, it seems more private than public—democracy without people.
A common explanation for the withering of public life is the absence of "conviction" politicians, the current term of art for those who, like Paul Wellstone, have ideological beliefs, and there is some truth to that: bolder ideas make for bigger crowds. The examples of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan are often cited. But some of the most compelling American politicians come from the middle of the spectrum—Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and, most recently, John McCain—all of whom campaigned on strong, but ideologically indefinable, beliefs. The common thread is a robust sense of American destiny, a willingness to set ambitious goals and to sound important themes in a grand rhetorical style, and, notably, an intense desire to engage the idealism of young people. The absence of such appeals in recent elections has been striking, and it is no accident.
"We have tactical elections," the pollster Stanley Greenberg told the Washington Post last week. "We don't have big elections, because there is every prospect that you can win by thinking small." The formula is well known: mobilize your most avid supporters—the party "base"—without offending your financial backers, and then aim an appeal at the independent demographic slivers most likely to be voting. Passion is deemed too risky, and so are "larger" themes, like war and peace; environmental depredation; energy independence; the corruption, crudeness, and commercialization of many of our major institutions. It is better to keep turnout low, manageable, predictable.
And so the Democrats have tried to run a national campaign this year based upon three tiny, and mostly bogus, themes: scaring senior citizens about the imminent privatization of Social Security; pandering to senior citizens by proposing an expensive and ill-considered prescription-drug plan; and blaming George W. Bush—in vague terms, without offering an alternative—for the economic downturn. Two of the three, you may have noticed, are targeted at elderly voters. (And they wonder why young people aren't interested in politics!) The Republicans, for their part, have worked overtime trying to smudge their differences with Democrats on Social Security and prescription drugs, and dug out several reliable chestnuts of their own—the eternal plea for lower taxes and the implication that anyone who doesn't totally support the President overseas is unpatriotic.
There was a time, after the Cold War and before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when such inanity was, perhaps, more tolerable. But the nation now faces monumental issues, in its conduct overseas and in its need for disciplined governance at home. That the Democrats have chosen not to discuss the radical, unilateral torque in Bush's foreign policy—to say nothing of Iraq—is outrageous. (That they have delayed the homeland-security bill, and the important funding it provides to local police and fire departments, in order to please their labor-union base is not very pretty, either.) That George W. Bush has refused to revise his excessive tax cut, even though the money to pay for it has disappeared, is equally outrageous. That few politicians have chosen to defy the empty strategies laid down by their parties and their political consultants is most outrageous of all. Paul Wellstone was the only senator in a close bid for reëlection to vote against giving the President the power to use force against Iraq; his poll numbers rose after he did so. The emotions unleashed by his death—the tributes from even his staunchest political opponents—are certainly a consequence of Wellstone's, and his family's, bracing, unvarnished humanity; but, one senses, there is also a more general mourning for the politics of larger themes and for politicians willing to discuss them. It is, in any case, stunning that the death of one man has occasioned the only breath of life we've seen in this election year.
— Joe Klein |
