Outposts from the Small of America: The Junior Senator
Is it the weather, the tedious summer wither? Or is it simply time: a reminder that our days are numbered? The sun, like candlewax drooling from a rutted old cottonwood, puddles of its seeds clotted in prairie wilds, is melting away.
Regardless limbs of yawning trees threaten to assimilate the flagpole I strategically planted among lilies-of-the-valley next to Big Rock, a garrulous long-tooth of bitter spar missing from the outcrop smiling down the bluff behind my house. Unless the wind really blusters like a blathering politician, Old Glory – the Stars and Stripes, the Red-White-and-Blue – why, you can’t even see the Star Sprinkled Banter from the street any more.
Last week, the last day of June, the last chance to make a tax-refundable political contribution before Governor Tim Pawlenty eliminated Minnesota’s campaign-funding incentive, the State Supreme Court declared Al Franken winner of last November’s U.S. Senate election. On the sidewalk outside his Minneapolis home, Franken told reporters, “I know there’s been a lot of talk about the fact that when I’m sworn in, I’ll be the 60th member of the Democratic caucus. That’s not how I view it. I’m going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota.”
I interviewed Franken 15-months ago during primary season, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer his main challenger then. Franken, who had early-on supported the Bush-decision to invade Iraq, told me he advocated “beginning the process of bringing our troops home [from Iraq].”
In a separate interview, Nelson-Pallmeyer shot back, “Al says he thinks he would have voted for the war. But he’s against it now.”
“One Senator can do stuff,” Franken would say, “but a lot of Senators can do a lot of stuff.”
That is true. So good luck, Al Franken, because in October-2002, 49 Senate Republicans and 29 Senate Democrats voted to give George Bush the authority to invade Iraq. You could have been among them, feeling as you did then, had you been one of two Senators from Minnesota. By the way, Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone, Minnesota’s two Senators in 2002, joined 19 other Democrats, one Republican and one Independent to oppose the invasion plan that has cost more than $1.5-trillion, more than 4,300 U.S. troops, more than 31,100 wounded, uncountable tens-of-thousands of civilian deaths, and has tortured America’s reputation until our flag dangled windless, limp in the July wither.
Minnesota writer Tom Driscoll reports on politics, economic development and life in rural America at The Small of America.

Recent Comments