Saturday, October 26, 2002
It looks more and more as if the Democrats are going to task Walter Mondale to replace the late Paul Wellstone as their candidate for the US Senate in Minnesota. There are two reasons that Mondale is the choice. First, Democrats think that he'll win. Second, unlike younger, more independent minded pols like Tim Penny, Mondale is reliably liberal. And therein lies the problem.
While Wellstone's liberalism stemmed from the radical politics of the 1960s, Mondale's brand stems from more ancient roots, dating back to the New Deal. It is not too much to say that Mondale is a dinosaur whose ideas have very little relevence in the 21st Century. Indeed, Mondale was a dinosaur in 1984, when President Reagan whipped him from one end of the country to the other. He has not been a Senator from Minnesota since 1977, a quarter of a century ago.
The worse thing about Mondale is his unrelenting, unbending opposition to the exploration of space. This opposition was dramatized in the wonderful HBO series on the Apollo Program when Mondale pops up as a charector making political hay after the Apollo Fire. While he did not openly oppose the Apollo Program, it being a done deal by the time he entered the Senate, Mondale's views on human space flight were no secret, even then. After Apollo 11 he helped to lead fights against any and all efforts to expand human presence in space. The crippling of the human space program can in part be laid at his door.
Why such opposition? An analysis of Mondale's speaches and writings would lead one to believe that the once and possibly future Senator believes that federal funds spent on space exploration should better be spent on social programs. Indeed this is the view which had largely pervailed until recently, despite clear evidence of the utter failure of the sort of welfare spending which Mondale has championed and the utility of space exploration to improve the human condition here on Earth. How much Mondale's stated beliefs stemmed from personal conviction and how much stemmed from political calculation can be examined in an incident described in a book about the Challenger disaster, Prescription for Disaster by Joseph Trento published in 1987.The book describes an incident which took place during the Congressional hearings in the wake of the Apollo Fire when then Senator Mondale was accusing then NASA Administrator James Webb of covering up the findings of a document on the Fire called the Phillips Report, which at the time of the accusation Webb had never heard of. Webb went to Mondale's office for a meeting.
A Webb aid remembers him (Webb) asking Mondale, "In all due humility, Senator, what have we done wrong? Why are you so down on us?" Webb wanted to know why Mondale was upset and what he could do to rectify the situation. He and other visitors from NASA were standing in front of Mondale's desk. The Senator leaned back in his chair and instructed Webb, "I intend to ride this for every nickle's worth of political power I can get out of it. I don't give a hoot in hell about the space program or your future," a NASA official with Webb recalls Mondale saying.
It is amazing to me that a United States Senator would use the tragic deaths of three astronaut heroes as a means to enhance his own political position. It is beyond belief that the same Senator would boast openly about this cynical and cold blooded act of political expediency. It is bad enough that Mondale would stand in the way of human expansion into space and cry halt. It is horrible that he would do so out of a quest for political power.
This is the man Minnesota Democrats propose to chose to be their candidate for the Senate.
posted by Mark at 10:09 PM
Friday, October 25, 2002
In another tragedy unsullied by political considerations, Richard Harris has died. This will make seeing Harry Potter next month a bitter sweet experience indeed. posted by Mark at 1:46 PM
Senator Paul Wellstone is dead. The best that can be said of him is that his ideas stemmed from deeply held princibles, unsullied by political strategy or any kind of personal quirk. Unfortunately those princibles were at best pernicious, at worse dangerous. He advocated socialism at home and appeasement abroad. His death is surely a tragedy for the man and his friends, however.
Now, of course, arises the question of what happens next. Here's my scenario. The Democrats decline to choose a new candidate, hoping that a big sympathy win for the dead Wellstone will persuade Governor Jesse "the body" Ventura to choose a good liberal Democrat to serve out his term; a Humphrey or a Mondale kid for instance. Instead Governor Ventura picks his soul mate (presuming that he is not elected governor) Tim Penny, a former Democrat and fiscal conservative. Then let the howling begin.
Update: Fox is raising the name of one Walter F. Mondale as a replacement for Wellstone. This is a possibility which fills me with fear and loathing. Mondale has been one of the most virulent opponents of space exploration in the history of the United States.
posted by Mark at 1:07 PM