Minnesota's senior U.S. senator is Democrat Paul Wellstone, who shares with California's Barbara Boxer the dual honor of most liberal and most irrelevant member of that body.
Wellstone was first elected in 1990, re-elected in 1996 and is running again this year against the former mayor of St. Paul, Norm Coleman. Here's an excerpt from Wellstone's biography at his official U.S. Senate website:
"In 1990, underdog Paul Wellstone rallied together a dedicated volunteer force and traversed the state in his trademark Green Bus to become the only Senate contender to unseat an incumbent. In 1996, Paul Wellstone promised Minnesotans that he would run a grass-roots campaign that would make them proud. He mobilized his volunteers and field organization to generate a massive participation in the political process, now a model for the nation."
This recount of Wellstone's political career neglects to mention his other promise – one he made in 1990 and repeated in 1996: That he would only serve two terms in the United States Senate. That's right, Mr. Populist took the Minnesota electorate for a ride, scammed them, played them for fools. So much for the Green Bus and the populist schtick. The question is, does Wellstone's brazen and unapologetic abandonment of a solemn pledge matter?
Last week I finally obtained some audio of Wellstone in 1996 laying out his agenda for his "second and last term." It is hard to come by as not many folks in the media with access to such tapes are in a hurry to provide the audio/video goods on the Left's poster child in D.C. But I got it, and I have pledged to play it 1,000 times between now and the November election. My radio program is carried live during afternoon drive in the Twin Cities on AM 1280. I think of this commitment as my public service to the Gopher State.
I doubt very much the broken promise and the deception will impact Wellstone's standing with the 35 percent of the state that is way left to begin with. The Democratic Party didn't abandon Clinton when he lied under oath, so it hardly seems likely that an unsworn lie will shock that crowd. And 45 percent will vote against Wellstone on his voting record alone – folks who pay taxes, for instance, or who are unnerved by his refusal to speak out in support of the war against terrorism. Wellstone is as close to a pacifist as the Senate has, and he's surviving the public's support for the war by maintaining a studied silence that is abetted by the Minneapolis Star Tribune which has yet to probe Wellstone on the most serious issue of the day – the use of force against Saddam.
But between the 35 percent in his camp, and the 45 percent that will never vote for him, there is the 20 percent that will decide this election. The hockey fans in that group are going to vote for Norm Coleman because he brought the NHL back to Minnesota, but beyond that there is no pressing issue other than the war, the war, the war, and Wellstone's dishonesty. So the question is: Does it matter?
I'd like to hear your opinion on the matter, and you can e-mail me at the address below. Even as you consider the issue, though, you may want to read Wellstone's take on it. Wellstone addressed the graduating seniors of Swarthmore College on May 31, 1998. Here is a part of what he said then:
"I've been thinking about the kind of advice, since you've given me this chance, that I'd like to give to you. I think that the best thing that I ever said to students at Carleton – and I taught over 20 years – was this: You will be more credible to yourselves and therefore more credible to others if you do not separate the lives that you live from the words that you speak."
You have to wonder whether Sen. Wellstone also made sure to counsel his Carleton College students on the art of breaking your word, and of doing so having lectured on the virtues of not breaking your word. Or perhaps he taught a seminar of "Rules for me, rules for you" in which the old advice to "Do as I say, not as I do" was repeated again and again. Whatever it taught them, they would be well advised to understand that that was then and this is now.
So Paul Wellstone, moralizing poser of the first order, is revealed as just another pol. Does it matter? If you think so, then contribute to Norm Coleman at ColemanForSenate.com. If you don't mind the gap between what Wellstone said and what Wellstone is doing, fine. But please, spare your neighbors and me any lectures that depend in whole or part on morality.
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