WHERE'S WELLSTONE?:

Chickens[ca]t, Interrupted: No one calls Paul Wellstone an outsider any more (David Schimke, 9/18/02, City Pages)

Preemptive military actions in a region where vast hordes of people already believe the worst of U.S. motives are bound to haunt us. At the very least, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (not exactly a dove) argued in an op-ed piece last week, the U.S. should slow down long enough to broaden support, fine-tune military planning, develop a coherent blueprint for the post-Saddam era, and conduct diplomacy aimed at cooling tension in the Middle East.

So where's Wellstone? After all, this is the guy who told the New York Times a year after he was elected that "life is sacred, and my standard is to do everything you can to avoid loss of life, regardless of who the people are and the country they live in."

According to Star Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant, who chimed in last week with a piece entitled "Paul Wellstone is not an outsider anymore," it is simply a matter of maturity. Our senator, Sturdevant concludes approvingly, "appears to have concluded that playing the respectfully skeptical seeker of truth is more, well, senatorial."

No kidding. At any rate that's one way to put it, agrees a Democratic insider turned Green strategist I talked to last week. Especially if your definition of "senatorial" squares with the centrists who run the Democratic Party, fund campaigns, and convince candidates that public opinion polls are more important than principle: "The guy has a messianic complex. The party has convinced him that the future of the U.S. Senate rests on his shoulders. What does that mean? It means don't rock the boat. And yeah, that kind of makes you wonder: What's the point?"

At least losing will give him plenty of free time to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 28, 2002 2:25 PM