The Wellstone Moment
By Mitch Berg
When inaugurated to Congress in 1991, Paul Wellstone took the occasion of his first meeting with President George “41” Bush to harangue the president on the buildup for the Gulf War. The President responded with the immortal aside “Who is this chickensh*t?”
The ongoing lesson of the moment, of course, had nothing to do with Wellstone’s courage (it was irrelevant); it related to his propensity to take a tradition that was there for the institution of the Senate, and make it all all about Paul Paul Paul Paul Paul.
Yesterday we saw our first Keith Keith Keith Keith Keith moment:
While his fellow incoming freshman were attending a private White House reception with President Bush Monday night, Rep.-elect Keith Ellison had what he considered a more important appointment to keep.
“I went to the AFL-CIO reception, because I wanted to meet and greet leaders of labor, and get to know them,” Ellison, D-Minn., said in an interview during a break from freshman orientation Tuesday. “Those are the people who I came here to support.”
“It wasn’t even a close call,” added Ellison, who is replacing the retiring Rep. Martin Sabo, a Democrat. “Maybe one day I’ll get to meet the president. He’s the president, and I respect him in his role as the president, but I have exceedingly sharp differences with him on a policy level.”
But the event, and the moment, weren’t about your policies, or the President’s, Ellison. It was about the institution of the relationship between the Congress and the Executive – something much, much bigger, if you care about this nation’s history and future, than you, your policies or your party.
Perhaps it’s a way to show his constituents he’s not been seduced by the Beltway. But a better time to show that would be in, say, a couple of years.
I’m betting “against”.
November 16th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Maybe what Ellison picked up on is the fact that GWB is, with the results of the last election, largely “irrelevant”.