|
|
|
|
Not Eudora
Click
your Ruby Slippers There it was on the second page of the Tribune. It was an insignificant six column inch story announcing the start of the most dangerous two-week period I face every year. The filings had opened for the fall election and a few early birds were already signed up. If I had been a werewolf it would have been just like looking at a full moon. It wasn’t
always this way. When I was a kid I didn’t want to be the President of the Even before Kuder I was unwittingly gravitating towards politics. Maybe it was my Grandfather’s study of the Civil War, or my Dad’s political button collection, or my Mother’s assurance that I wasn’t really ugly, just Lincolnesque. Whatever it was, my ambitions began to change. Debate helped. I joined the team in high school after I was stopped cold during an oral book report by a panic attack. I was so desperate to avoid another bout of humiliation that I asked my Dad how I could overcome this disability. He suggested Debate. When my Grandfather Robb, heard this he gave me the only compliment I ever heard him give a person who was still living. He thought it a valuable skill. Eventually I managed to get up in front of people again. I was even nominated to represent my homeroom on the Student Council. As the only candidate to joke during his campaign speech I won - hands down. The following year I didn’t joke around so Mary Wildason won the seat back. I should have abandoned politics while I was ahead but getting votes is like winning an occasional slot machine payout. Random victories fuel addiction. Today I'm the Harold Stassen of Duluth politics. Few, local pols have filed for public office more often than I have. Oh, the old war-horses in the legislature are a little ahead of me but they don’t count. They always win. The charming difference between us is that, like Stassen, I rarely win. After eleven elections my record is two victories to nine losses.* One of my Dad’s pleasantest memories was sitting beside Harold Stassen on a cross country flight during the old man’s twilight years. Harold wasn’t always a byword for political futility. He came close to catching the brass ring and my Dad followed his early campaigns with intense interest. In 1948 Stassen narrowly lost the Republican Presidential nomination to New York’s Governor Thomas Dewey. The only Minnesotans to get closer to the Oval Office than Stassen were Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.
Stassen was
the “Boy Wonder” of When the war
was over Harry Truman asked the Internationalist Stassen to help draft the
Charter for the new United Nations. Truman wasn’t going to make the same
mistake Woodrow Wilson had made when he denied Republicans some say in the
formation of the After coming so close to the nomination Harold Stassen just couldn’t quit. He kept running every four years until 1992 when he was 85 years old. That gives me the willies. OK! For the
next two weeks I must remember Harold Stassen and stay far away from the County
I want all seven of you to close your eyes and click your ruby slippers together while repeating after me: “Don’t file for office, Harry!” “Don’t file for office!” Welty is a small time politician who lets it all hang out at: www.snowbizz.com P.S. I was
wrong two weeks ago when I complained that
*Heck, I've lost so many its hard to keep track of them all. Originally I wrote that I'd run in nine elections not eleven.
|
By Harry Welty