Sarah Janecek is a republician moderate. She's responding to an commentary piece that Katherine Kersten did on the Wellstone service. Kersten's article is below Janecek's.
Sarah Janecek: Wellstone service saw grief, not exploitation
Instead of obsessing over what happened that night, the right and left should move on.
Sarah Janecek
http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/5709281.html
Last update: November 4, 2005 at 5:05 PM
Shame on Katherine Kersten. The Wellstone service was not a "miscalculation."
Not only does she get her interpretation wrong, she also cheaply fans partisan flames that some of us -- both Republicans and Democrats -- have worked very hard to try to extinguish since the 2002 election.
Writes Kersten in her Oct. 30 column, "some Wellstone supporters were cynically willing to exploit what is best in human nature -- the unifying empathy for personal tragedy -- and subvert it to partisan political ends."
That's not what happened.
I went to the Wellstone memorial. One of Minnesota's finest civic traditions unbeknownst to many people is that Republicans go to Democrats' funerals and vice versa. It's about honor, respect and thanks for public service.
Upon entering Williams Arena, what I encountered was a full frontal assault on all my political senses. About a dozen bands were interspersed among the crowd. One section of assigned seating was for Sheila Wellstone's domestic violence people, another for former staff of Sen. Paul Wellstone. One for national VIPs, one for all the students from the high school where Marcia Wellstone taught.
All those different seas of green. All that hooting and hollering and swaying and singing to songs like "Love Train."
Never in my life had I experienced a crowd where you felt you could physically reach out and touch the different strings of grief, joy, passion, resentment and rage that together made the symphony that is raw and real human emotion.
Never mind Norm Coleman. I thought every Republican on the ticket that year was going to be toast.
Then came the eulogies, some of which became political speeches, culminating in longtime Wellstone friend Rick Kahn's grief-stricken battle cry, "We can redeem the promise of his life if you help us win this election for Paul Wellstone!" The memorial became a rally.
But despite what Kersten wrote, there was no preplanned "cynic exploitation." Incredibly, in all that beautiful pageantry that was so beautifully scripted, no one had vetted the speeches. The collective human error in not vetting the speeches boggles the mind. But political fact usually is stranger than conspiracy fiction.
And grief is grief. In that moment, Kahn and the 20,000 Democrats in the arena were in one of the five generally accepted stages of grief: anger (the stages were first identified by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her book "On Death and Dying").
About a year after the memorial that turned into a rally, I saw Rick Kahn at -- where else? -- a Republican funeral. I had heard he was still beating himself up over what happened, that he felt he had dishonored his dear friend Paul Wellstone and perhaps cost Democrats the election.
So I called Kahn. I think we were both surprised at how easily we fell into a civil, almost restorative, conversation. I told him I understood what happened; I hoped he forgave himself so that he could move on. He was gracious.
Kahn seemed to forgive me, too, for the too-much-publicized inelegant comments I made about closed captioning at the service. The myth that I don't understand how closed captioning works made me one of Al Franken's "Lying Liars." What a sorry waste of my 15 minutes of fame, but I digress.
The point I was trying to make is right there on page 192 of his book. Like everyone else, part of the reason I assumed the speeches were vetted was because, as is common practice, speeches are given in advance to the people entering the closed captions to make their "live" work easier.
The beginning of Paul Wellstone's first term in the U.S. Senate was also inelegant. He thrust a cassette tape of Minnesotans expressing opposition to the Gulf War into the hands of then-Vice President Dan Quayle. Wellstone held an antiwar press conference at the sacred ground that is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
But he learned from his mistakes. Wellstone curbed his combativeness and learned to argue respectfully with his political adversaries. He became one of the Senate's most elegant and passionate members, admired and respected by friends and foes alike. Paul Wellstone moved on.
To Kersten -- and others from both the right and the left -- who still obsess over what happened that night, do Minnesotans hungry for civility in our politics a favor. Accept what happened. Take that final step in the grieving process. Move on.
As the bumper sticker says, "What would Wellstone do?"
_______________________________________________________________________
Event was proof that the personal isn't always political
The Wellstone memorial backfired when it exploited grief for political ends.
Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune
Last update: October 28, 2005 at 9:37 PM
http://www.startribune.com/stories/191/5696342.html
Katherine Kersten
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Paul Wellstone's death was a tragedy that united all Minnesotans in grief. But as we remember the sorrow, it's also important to remember the "memorial service"--three years ago Saturday -- that went notoriously awry.
At the time of his death, Wellstone was locked in a close Senate race against Norm Coleman. As grief seized the nation, there was a widespread impulse to set aside politics as usual. Walter Mondale was anointed Wellstone's successor, and some Democratic leaders warned that criticizing him would amount to showing disrespect for the dead. Democrats began to talk of the "Wellstone factor," and to frame campaigns across the country as sympathy elections.
As Coleman sat paralyzed on the sidelines, Mondale appeared poised to glide to an easy victory.
Wellstone's memorial service on Oct. 29, 2002, was billed as the nonpartisan culmination of shared public grief. People around the country were glued to TV coverage of the four-hour event. What they saw was not a solemn ceremony mourning a human being, but at times a raucous political rally. Gov. Jesse Ventura walked out in disgust, as fist-pumping speakers urged victory at the polls in Wellstone's name.
Overnight, public sentiment changed, with sympathy turning to indignation. A week later, Coleman won the election. The Democrats lost the Senate, in what may in part have been a ripple effect from public reaction to the memorial.
What explains the average voter's outrage? It was resentment that some Wellstone supporters were cynically willing to exploit what is best in human nature -- the unifying empathy for personal tragedy --and subvert it to partisan political ends. Their action was consistent with the '60s battle cry: "The personal is political." That world view holds that nothing human is higher than politics, or too private or sacred to be turned to political purposes.
The Wellstone rally was a huge miscalculation. <snip>
In this age of frenzied partisanship, is there a space set aside for basic human decency, where politics is off-limits? The Wellstone memorial's lesson is that there is such a space, and those who violate it for political ends may pay dearly.