MINNEOTA, Minn. — Paul Wellstone was an unlikely politician in a place
like Minnesota — land of walleyes, cornfields and phlegmatic Scandinavians. He
was an urban Jew, son of immigrants, a college professor at the fanciest of Minnesota's
private colleges. And, probably worst of all for his non-talkative constituents,
he was a passionate orator, a skilled rouser of rabble over issues he loved and
an unapologetic populist liberal.
How did this man, who was killed yesterday in a plane crash in northern Minnesota,
ever manage a triumphantly successful political career in which even many Republicans
and conservative Christians quietly scribbled the Wellstone X on their ballots,
hoping their neighbors wouldn't catch them behaving like lefties?
When I gave readings of poetry and essays, I often shared a podium with Senator
Wellstone at various rural conventions and political gatherings. It was a remarkable
experience, and I learned very well to precede rather than follow him. He worked
a house as well as Hubert Humphrey ever did.
I remember a Farmers Union convention in St. Paul: Paul Wellstone, a pugnacious
5-foot-5, stood at the dais between the Farmers Union chairman and me, both 6-foot-5
Scandinavians.
"It's nice to join my Norwegian cousins here in St. Paul," he said. He then
proceeded in 20 minutes to bring the audience cheering to its feet. If this had
been a monarchy, the farmers would have crowned him.
I was next, with a few small and sensitive rural poems. I had a sinking feeling
that a master had bested me.
Whatever Paul's height, he was one of the largest men I ever met. He filled
rooms when he entered them. Size in a public man is an interior, not an exterior
quality. Paul charmed — and sometimes persuaded — even those hostile to his unashamed
liberal ideas by listening with great courtesy and attention to unfriendly questions.
He answered without dissembling, without backing down from his own principles,
but with a civil regard for the dignity of the questioner.
And he had the politician's great gift: an amazing memory for names. I saw
him once pluck a vote with this gift. He answered questions for 45 minutes in
a room full of ordinary citizens whom he'd never seen before. He began his last
answer this way: "Your question reminds me of Mary's concern." Mary, in the back
row, was 45 minutes ago. Mary, likely a rock-ribbed Republican, blushed a little
and smiled. One more vote.
Even those who continued to disagree with Paul did not question the sincerity
of his idealism. He was sometimes attacked for naïveté (as in his brave vote against
authorizing the president to go to war with Iraq), but never for dishonesty. He
voted, as he spoke, from the heart.
It's often forgotten that Paul, nearing 60 with a bad back and a respectable
batch of grandchildren whom he treasured, began his rise in the world with a college
wrestling scholarship. His working-class parents had no money for school, so wrestling
earned him a doctorate.
He preserved a wrestler's sensibility in both his academic and political life.
In 1998 I met Paul at a reception at the Governor's Mansion just before Jesse
Ventura, a professional wrestler by trade, first occupied that house. How curious,
I told Paul, that the two most interesting politicians in Minnesota at the moment
should both be wrestlers. He replied with a wry smile: "But I'm a real one."
He thought himself an athlete, not an entertainer, and I suspect he saw his
whole political life in that metaphor. He wrestled with the power of big money,
military adventurism and penny-pinching against the poor. He meant to fight fair,
but he meant to win.
Not only Minnesota, but the whole country will feel the absence of his voice
and his bravely combative spirit. We say with Walt Whitman: Salud, Camerado. We
look for you again under our boot-soles.
Bill Holm, a poet and essayist, teaches at Southwest State University.
His most recent book is "Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary.''
Copyright The New York Times Company
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