Paul Wellstone

Paul Wellstone

amongst the many sincere tributes paid to the late senator paul wellstone were interspersed various short clips of his remarks over the years showing his passion and committment to the issues he believed in. in one of those clips he reiterated his intent to stand alone in the senate if voting in the majority meant going against his convictions. in the other he expressed his gratitude to the many of his constituents who he said had come up to him after his nay vote on the iraq resolution to pledge their support for his independence of judgment even as they disagreed with that particular vote.

the image of senator wellstone held here is the one he celebrated in those remarks, that of the, sometimes lone, dissenter speaking on c-span in the senate well, empty except for him and the stenographer. it is an image shared by others as well. platitudinous euolgies aside, it apparently was hard to dislike wellstone, his convictions being so obviously and sincerely held and his personality so generous of spirit. his opponent, former st.paul mayor norm coleman, decided on what here seemed a brilliant, and the only potentially successful, strategy to unseat him. our virtues are our vices and wellstone's principled virtue had the concommitant of ineffectiveness if not irrelevance.

this race, already closely watched for it's effect on control of the senate, shone a spotlight more than most on the politician's existential dilemma, the ancient dialectic in representative politics between voting one's independent judgment and voting one's constituency's desires. these are often short-handed as being "principled" and "pandering" which is why coleman's campaign slogan probably wasn't "to get along, i'll go along," but that view is short-sighted as well as short-handed. there is no formula that tells politicians when to do one and when to do the other.

the case for the "principled" position was most famously laid out by edmund burke in his "speech to the electors of bristol" in 1774 when he was campaiging for a seat in parliament. he offered in himself:

"unbiased opinion, mature judgement, and enlightened conscience. parliament is a DELIBERATIVE
assembly of ONE nation, with ONE interest, that of the whole, where, not local purposes, not
local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole."
[emphasis in original]

courageous. wise. principled. would that we had leaders like him today. the electors of bristol could have had him but there weren't enough of wellstone's selfless norwegians about and they decided against it. burke lost, presumably to someone more biased, less mature and less enlightened, but guided more by local prejudices.

the countervailing view is the realpolitik of harold lasswell, the title of his most important work perfectly expressing his view of where the emphasis in politics should be.: "politics, who gets what, when, how." why is this considered a crass view compared to that of burke? if england had wanted a parliament of m.p.'s elected nationally it could have had it. it chose instead to have representatives run from different geographical units. why shouldn't they vote "local prejudices?"

wellstone's minnesota twin, hubert humphrey, had no difficulty explaining his preference for lasswell over burke when he said, contrasting himself with michael dukakis, "dukakis doesn't care if shit come out of the pipes so long as the pipes are nice and shiny. i don't care what the pipes look like so long as the right thing comes out."

but if one only votes one's constituency's desires then another kind of irrelevance is produced, that of the non-thinking scribe who simply records his masters wishes. there's a name for that too, it's called direct democracy and it's mechanism is not the election but the referendum.

our founding fathers had deep misgivings about too much democracy. the electoral college was to be a serious buffer between popular preference and selection of the president. wellstone's senate was to be exclusively appointive, the better to ensure a critical mass of "unbiased opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience," or, to provide a sinecure for those who couldn't get elected to the mean house of representatives.

these then are the politician's scylla and charybdis. for most, there's a "heads i win tails you lose" quality to their approach to the problem. agricultural subsidies for example, are not pandering; they're "preserving the family farm," true if the families involved are named archer, daniels or midland, while the REAL pork is that which exists in other members public works projects.

for some politicians though, predominantly those of the fevered brow on right and left alike, there's "courage" in tilting at windmills and statesmanship in 99-1 votes. that is proof of their burkean independence. what it is also proof of is their subconscious desire to avoid the responsibility of power. take extreme enough positions and you'll never be in a position to make a tough decision, call it what you will.

wellstone was a smart man and a professor of politics. he recognized the collegial if not deliberative nature of the senate early in his first term and toned down his personal criticisms of his political foes, like jesse helms. but coleman's campaign strategy still had traction as the polls say. the point is not that wellstone was right or wrong on all those lopsided votes but whether a senator so out of the maistream can be effective in representing his constituents interests.

how to resolve this conundrum? obviously it can't be resolved and the position advanced here is that there is no disquiet in that realization. everyone is confronted with important decisions in life, to marry, to procreate, to choose a career path. these are vexing moments but their cumulative effect is to sculpt out of an amorphous granite slab of potentiality the individual character of each of us. sometims we regret the decisions we have made but we come to realize that we are the sum of those choices. if we have put sincere effort into making the decisions that is enough. we learn that often there is no one right answer, no one person who is to be our soulmate, no one career. there are many. there are many truths.

most admirable are those who constantly reach higher even if their grasp is sometimes exceeded. politicians do that, as do police officers, judges, proecutors and fire-rescue personel. they put themselves in positions to extend the existential dilemmas that are thrust on them in their personal lives to decisions involving the lives of other people. not many of us have the courage to do that.


-benjamin harris