Recently, I visited the graves of Paul and Sheila Wellstone in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis. It seemed the right place to be in these turbulent times. The wind on this gray, wintry day blew snowflakes off of Bde Maka Ska, the lake once named for the architect of the Southern nullification that brought us to civil war.
I dedicated my 2006 book, “The Strange Death of Liberal America,” to Paul, Sheila and the others who died in that tragic 2002 plane crash because they epitomized America’s core idea that government exists to keep the playing field level. Paul often referred to it as “the American justice tradition.” My father, a refugee from Nazi Germany who lived in Ely, told me that Paul was the only politician he would donate to because he was the only one who fought for justice and equality.
Fewer people have visited the graves since 2004, when I ate lunch there listening to John Kerry’s concession speech on my car radio. Then, the boulder marking the graves overflowed with agates, pine cones, birch bark slivers, a bus token, a union matchbook and “I voted” stickers. Amid white daisies, red and pink roses and multicolored mums lay a poem whose last lines read, “This day will always belong to tears … to despair … to brokeness [sic].”…