[Newspoetry] [Fwd: Fwd: Keilor on Norm Coleman]

[Robert Porter]

Empty Victory for a Hollow Man:

How Norm Coleman sold his soul for a Senate seat.

By Garrison Keillor

Nov. 7, 2002 | Norm Coleman won Minnesota because he was 
well-financed and well-packaged. Norm is a slick retail campaigner, 
the grabbiest and touchingest and feelingest politician in Minnesota 
history, a hugger and baby-kisser, and he's a genuine boomer 
candidate who reinvents himself at will. The guy is a Brooklyn boy 
who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with 
hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile 
things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law 
school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's 
office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate 
Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side. There 
was no dazzling light on the road to Damascus, no soul-searching: 
Norm switched parties as you'd change sport coats.

Norm is glib. I once organized a dinner at the Minnesota Club to 
celebrate F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday and Norm came, at the 
suggestion of his office, and spoke, at some length and with quite 
some fervor, about how much Fitzgerald means to all of us in St. 
Paul, and it was soon clear to anyone who has ever graded 9th grade 
book reports that the mayor  had never read Fitzgerald. Nonetheless, 
he spoke at great length, with great feeling.

Last month, when Bush came to sprinkle water on his campaign, Norm 
introduced him by saying, "God bless America is a prayer, and I 
believe that this man is God's answer to that prayer." Same guy.

(Jesse Ventura, of course, wouldn't have been caught dead blathering 
at an F. Scott Fitzgerald dinner about how proud we are of the Great 
Whoever-He-Was and his vision and his dream blah-blah-blah, and that 
was the refreshing thing about Jesse. The sort of unctuous hooey that 
comes naturally and easily to Norm Coleman Jesse would be ashamed to 
utter in public. Give the man his due. He spoke English. He didn't 
open his mouth and emit soap bubbles. He was no suck up. He had more 
dignity than to kiss the president's shoe.)

Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and 
anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's 
habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, 
very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all 
the religious people in
the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. 
So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good 
candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the 
president.  He was 9 points down to Wellstone when the senator's 
plane went down.
But the tide was swinging toward the president in those last 10 days. 
And Norm rode the tide. Mondale took a little while to get a campaign 
going. And Norm finessed Wellstone's death beautifully. The Democrats 
stood up in raw grief and yelled and shook their fists and offended 
people. Norm played his violin. He sorrowed well in public, he was 
expertly nuanced. The mostly
negative campaign he ran against Wellstone was forgotten immediately. 
He backpedalled in the one debate, cruised home a victor. It was a 
dreadful low moment for the Minnesota voters. To choose Coleman over 
Walter Mondale is one of those dumb low-rent mistakes, like going to 
a great steakhouse and ordering the tuna sandwich. But I don't envy 
someone who's sold his soul.

He's condemned to a life of small arrangements. There will be no 
passion, no joy, no heroism, for him. He is a hollow man. The next 
six years are not going to be kind to Norm.