Viewpoint
Remembering a man of conviction
By COLMAN McCARTHY
In the many times I interviewed or
listened to Sen. Paul Wellstone, a question always hovered in the back of my
mind: Would I like him as much personally if his political views were the
opposite of mine, and not so similarly liberal? What if he were as far to the
right on the issues as he was far to the left?
My answer was always yes. His personal warmth, his lack of guile
or pompousness, the engaging wit and the delight he took in exploring new
ideas: These were human, not political, virtues. Anyone possessing them would
be likeable. Whether he was a two-term senator from Minnesota, a college
political science professor, or a husband and father devoted to his family,
Paul Wellstone taught one rarely learned lesson: So what if you don’t see
eye to eye with someone, you can always talk heart to heart.
An example of that philosophy was on display in his close
friendship with Sen. Jesse Helms. “He represents everything to me that is
ugly and wrong and awful about politics,” Wellstone said of the North
Carolina archconservative. But that blast came during Wellstone’s first
days in Washington, before he learned that fire-eating was not necessary for
fervor. Once he came to know Helms as a person, not as a political foe, a human
bonding took shape.
Wellstone had an immense appetite for people. I saw it up close on
a 1991 plane trip to Minneapolis, an early evening flight on Northwest Airlines
on which I had a back row aisle seat. Up front in the first row of coach was
Wellstone. When the plane leveled off at cruising altitude, he sprang from his
seat and began introducing himself, row by row, to everyone on the plane. A few
grouches waved him off, and he aggravated the peanut-dispensing flight
attendants who wanted the aisles cleared, but to everyone else he gave total
attention. He was a gifted listener, as anyone would have to be to work an
entire plane with 200 people on board.
Sheila Wellstone, his wife, had an independent life of her own. I
learned later that she and Paul had one of the happiest and most compatible
marriages in Washington. He was the child of Jewish immigrants; she the
daughter of a family with roots in the Kentucky coal mining area. Both grew up
knowing the high cost and high risk of making it.
As a Democrat, Wellstone was in the resolutely liberal wing of the
party that nourished great people of conscience. When despairing of politics --
or worse, giving in to the temptation of believing the lie that liberalism is
dying or dead -- think of all the men and women of the left who have brought
honor to national politics. Most have stood alone on issues that mattered.
Think of Paul Wellstone as among the most humane of them, with
both a dogged voting record that sided with the poor and the kicked around, and
with personal gifts for inspiring others to give full effort.
I remember leaving the plane that night in Minneapolis, after
having 15 minutes of Paul Wellstone to myself, thinking I must become a better
person.
Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist,
directs the Center for Teaching Peace. His recent book is I’d
Rather Teach Peace.
National Catholic Reporter, November 08,
2002
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