He was a professor in a politician’s world, a truth-teller in a liar’s world and a caring man in an uncaring world.
Now he’s gone.
Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., died last Friday in a plane crash in northeast Minnesota that also killed his wife, daughter, three campaign staffers and two pilots.
Now our nation must go forward without the most honorable, principled and decent politician of the last decade.
In an age of sound-bite politicians endlessly prepped for 30-second sparring sessions with TV pundits, Wellstone stood out because he cared. While President Bush played to our fears and insecurities, Wellstone appealed to our imaginations and made us want something better for all Americans.
Wellstone was the perpetual defender of the downtrodden, including those everyone else would rather forget, like drug addicts. In 1997, he introduced legislation to make private health insurance companies handle substance abuse treatment like treatment for other diseases.
“We have all seen terribly negative portrayals of alcoholics and addicts as less than human, as somehow unworthy of treatment,” Wellstone told the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources in 1998. “This only reinforces the biases against people who have this disease.”
Wellstone believed, in the true liberal tradition, that people don’t forfeit their right to be thought of as human because they make mistakes or have problems.
He also strove to rid politics of hatred and discrimination. When a coalition of senators blocked James Hormel’s nomination as ambassador to Luxembourg because he was gay, Wellstone stood up to their bigotry.
“We have to confront this poison politics and we have to end this kind of discrimination in our nation,” he told an audience at Swarthmore College in 1998.
The senator who led the campaign to block Hormel’s nomination was John Ashcroft. While Wellstone criss-crossed Minnesota in recent weeks trying to save his senate seat, Ashcroft held more power than ever, as attorney general in a nation that seems content to give away its civil liberties. That hardly seems fair.
The world has lost a legend and a hero. Our country has lost one of the few people who understood what it meant to be a patriot, to stand defiantly against conventional wisdom because you think it will make things better for everyone. It was precisely this instinct that led Wellstone to jeopardize his own re-election by voting against a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq.
There are two things we can and should do to honor Wellstone’s memory. First, Minnesota residents should vote for Wellstone’s replacement on the ballot, former Vice President Walter Mondale, to show this country wants and needs politicians with guts. Absentee votes already cast for Wellstone will not be counted. But those who still have a voice should use it.
And second, we must continue Wellstone’s legacy of demanding peace and fighting for equality.
The Left has lost another leader. But let us not lose our spirit. Let us rise up today and defeat those who would have us vote out of fear and hatred.
Let us lead our nation down the path Paul Wellstone walked, the path to freedom and justice and love.
Jesse Abrams-Morley is a Medill sophomore. He can be reached at j-abrams-morley @northwestern.edu.
