Get On the Bus

In honor of Wellstone World Music Day (and the sixth anniversary of Paul and Sheila's death), I want to tell my favorite Wellstone story:

He was up for re-election when I was a sophomore in college. One fall weekend, supporters were doing a blitz of fundraisers, and Paul and Sheila were trying to actually be present at a fair number of them. Of course, it was a no-brainer that they would be at the Northfield event. The St. Olaf College Democrats had worked our tushies off and registered over 1,000 students to vote, so we were invited to the event for free, as a thank-you for our efforts.

I got to meet Paul for like, two seconds, at the event itself. But he and his staff happened to be leaving around the same time that our group was. It was raining, and we had a long walk up the hill to get back on campus. Paul looked at us and asked "Are you all going back to Olaf?" We nodded our heads. "Get on the bus," he waved us over, "I'll give you a ride."

We were all in 7th heaven, of course, to be riding the green bus with Senator Wellstone! But then what happened next was even cooler, and affirmed in my mind why I was so proud to have this man represent us in Washington. This was right around the time that Bob Dole (who was running for president against Clinton) had fallen off a platform in Iowa, and somebody among our college group started ripping on Dole and specifically brought that incident up as evidence why he shouldn't be president. Senator Wellstone shut them down right away, and said "Hey, that's not cool. That podium was unstable, and that could have happened to any one of us - Senator Dole is a good man, and he could have been seriously hurt. That's nothing to joke around about."

I supported Wellstone all those years because he was a man who stood up for what he believed in, even if it made him unpopular. He was a man who stood up for what was just and fair, a man who gave a voice to the voiceless, who defended the defenseless, a man who deeply respected and reached out to those who disagreed with him. I loved and respected him because he asked us to be better people, as individuals and as a nation; he held us to a high standard of involvement in our country and our shared future, and an equally high standard of compassion and care for the most vulnerable and struggling among us.

In that moment, on that bus, he was all of those things - he was surrounded by his own staff and a group of college kids who adored him - no one was going to tell the press if he had let those comments about Dole fly or had even joined in on them. But instead he shut down his own supporters and spoke up for a man who was his ideological opposite and often his enemy on the Senate floor, a man who had recently been publicly humiliated through no fault of his own. He asked us that day to be better than the partisan politics and ad hominum attacks so typical in most (if not all) elections, asked us to remember that Senator Dole was first and foremost a fellow human being who deserved our compassion, not our mockery.

That's who the Senate, and the world, have been missing these last six years. And that, more than anything, is why I've been such an ardent supporter of Senator Obama since he first entered the race for president (and really, since I became aware of him in 2004). Because I see in him the same qualities as I saw in Senator Wellstone - that same passion for justice and fairness, that same voice for the most vulnerable, that same conviction to stand strong for what he believes, that same respect and engagement of those who think differently than him, that same invitation to participate in our shared life and future together, that same expectation to act in accordance with the better angels of our nature. . .

It's twelve years later, and I'm still on the bus, Senator Wellstone. And for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling really encouraged because there's so many other folks now riding it with me, and we're driving down a road called HOPE.

Keeping the faith,
C.