[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: The Wellstone Memorial - one more thought

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
The Wellstone Memorial - one more thought
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1193451587.shtml


   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.