While several images burn brighter than others -- such as Wellstone's prescient speech on the Senate floor, risking his reelection by voting against the invasion of Iraq -- the lingering impression the film leaves is how quaintly old-fashioned Wellstone and his quixotic campaigns really were, in several ways.

First, of course, was the low-dollar campaign and the use of the lumbering green bus, its jury-rigged speaking platform reminiscent of the old whistle-stop campaigns conducted from the back of trains.

Second, detractors could find fault with Wellstone for his views and his votes, but he spoke his mind with refreshing clarity and passion, unfettered by pundits and polls.

And third, like Illinois' Democratic Senate shoo-in Barack Obama, he cared more about public morality (the policies that define a culture's decency) than private morality (the actions that determine an individual's character). Contrast that to today's mind-boggling millions being spent on everything from voter-registration (worth every dollar, if new voters turn out) to a panoply of mind-numbing TV ads.

The irony of the major networks -- those civic-minded corporations that preempted most of the national party conventions in favor of the usual sleaze and rot -- profiting from these ads would be delicious if it weren't so fundamentally undemocratic and wrong.

Then there's the dependence on polls, a drag on a healthy democracy as damaging as any addiction. Not only does it force candidates to tailor their views in ways that range from disingenuous to dishonest, it limits the excitement of live campaigning to a handful of key states. You'd think we'd reverted to 13 colonies for all the action the not-in-play states are seeing.

And then there's the morality thing. Though Wellstone's last campaign was only two years ago, his lack of moralizing makes it feel like a generation ago.

Compare that to the flap over Sen. John Kerry's debate reference to Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's openly lesbian daughter. Predictably, columnists soft on Republicans like William Safire and David Brooks cluck-cluck over this simple statement of fact and suggest Kerry should apologize. The pea-brained buzzards of right-wing talk radio are having a field day with it, saying it's evidence of Kerry's moral depravity. Excuse me? This woman is not a quivering invalid living in the shadows requesting anonymity. She's an adult, is openly lesbian, and also holds a post in the Bush/Cheney campaign.

Call it what you will -- crossing a boundary, invading family privacy, a calculated political move -- none of it would have mattered if, say during a discussion of middle-class families struggling to make it under a Bush-whacked economy, Kerry had referred to Cheney's other daughter, Liz, as a mom. Shame is the vicious undertow beneath this tsunami of criticism, and President Bush, so skilled at dividing the country he promised to unite, knows it. His Rovian goons pounced on the reference with the laughable ferocity of a lion smiting a mouse.

Bush and his evangelical army (now joined by a right-wing Catholic archbishop who thinks he has a moral leg to stand on) are so busy shaming everyone from gays to prochoice Catholics that they deflect the glare from Bush's own truly shameful ineptitude in office. In ancient Japan, samurai warriors (known as the Bushi, hmm) who failed in battle committed seppuku, disemboweling themselves, believing that an honorable death was better than a life of disgrace and shame.

The film "Wellstone!" reminds us of what an honorable life Paul and Sheila created together. They deserved a far better death. As for Bush and Cheney, their heads are so far in the sand that they no longer know disgrace from deceit. Luckily for them, in America we don't expect seppuku; we just vote our failed leaders out of office and give them a hefty pension to write their self-aggrandizing memoirs.

Susan Lenfestey (soolen@aol.com) is a Minneapolis writer. She was a contributor to the "Wellstone!" film.

© 2004 Star Tribune

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