Paul Tsongas
Let’s take a break for a moment from all the bad sex I’ve been having with people who don’t like me, and consider the 1992 presidential campaign. My support in the earliest days of that contest was for Paul Tsongas, former Democratic senator from Massachusetts. I’m bringing this up now because I witnessed things at a Tsongas rally that have never been reported, as far as I know, by anyone, and at the time I didn’t have a blog. Here is the unbelievable story.
I had only been to a few political rallies up to that point, for other candidates in other races. When I arrived at this one, Tsongas’s first appearance since Super Tuesday the day before, it seemed in the same mold. There were balloons everywhere. There were teenaged staffers everywhere, who were white males. There was a podium. There was some press. I was just a kid, but I hit on the blonde taking photographs. She was hot.
So more and more people showed up, and it was getting crowded, and I was pushed to the front. Eventually, Tsongas came out to uproarious cheering. He was a little guy, of course, and generally had the air of someone who wouldn’t be cheered under a lot of circumstances. He stepped to the podium. In his sane, soft voice, this is what he said:
“Good evening, everyone. Friends, supporters. I want to thank you all for coming tonight. And I want to congratulate you all for how far we’ve come in this campaign. I know we’ve got the momentum that can take us all the way!”
Okay, so I’m making up the details, but you get the idea. There was incredible hooray-for-us cheering at this line. Tsongas continued:
“I also want to congratulate Bill Clinton on his victories in last night’s primaries.”
At this there was sarcastic laughter and even a boo, which the young staffers were trying to promote. Tsongas looked perplexed. It wasn’t a laugh line.
“It’s the American democratic system in action, and of course I support it,” he said.
There was a noticeable pause in the room.
“Whenever someone does something well, you should congratulate them,” he reminded us.
Staffers, supporters, and press looked at each other nervously, shifting on their feet, and coughing. No cheering. No one knew what to do. This wasn’t what they expected.
But I loved it. Here was a guy so reasonable that he praised his rivals. Here was a guy who didn’t compromise his view of right and wrong just because it might benefit him!
So you may be surprised to know it, because I’m a big asshole and often quote people in my life telling me that, but I don’t support big assholes for public office. I figure the big assholes are getting enough of what they want already. I want the sincere, rational, humane people like Paul Tsongas to be in charge. God knows we could learn something from them. Anyway, Tsongas is dead, and there are a lot of assholes left.
In another shocking turn, I’m going to make a political endorsement for this Tuesday’s elections. If you live in the City of New York, please vote against Bloomberg’s proposed charter revision to eliminate partisan local elections (Question 3 on the ballot).
I know that “partisan” is always used to mean “bad,” but as usual, when they use it that way it’s just another partisan trick. The idea is, if no one has labels of Democrat or Republican, they could sneak some very conservative candidates past the very liberal electorate now and then, especially if they were from minority groups not generally associated with conservatism. As long as they have to call themselves Democrats or Republicans, we have a general idea of what they’re going to do to us.
It’s a trick, folks. Vote no.
Paul Tsongas R.I.P.
by Jack, November 2, 2003 12:45 PM | More from The Damned Human Race
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Not too much doing in the swing states in yesterday's elections. The loss of the gubernatorial elections in KY & MS is disappointing, but neither is a swing state, even though KY went for Clinton twice. I recognize of course Read More
So you were thirteen or so when Tsongas was running for President? That means your current age is... not old enough to know jack shit. The fact that you happen to be right about Question 3 is probably just sheer luck. On the other hand, the fact that I forgot to get an absentee ballot is just plain stupid. So please, vote twice in my stead.
I think I was about 17. My age has nothing to do with my ignorance. However, due, no doubt, to the turnout of Trouble Sells supporters, we have defeated Question 3, just as I asked. No thanks to you.
Your notes on Sen. Tsongas actually brought tears to my eyes. I, like you, vigorously supported this intelligent, rational, gentle man for his Presidential bid. There is almost no one in the current Dem race I can really rally behind, because that type of person is basically extinct in politics - that realization probably as much the cause of the lump in my throat as the passing of such a great man. Thanks for yet another reminder that I did the right thing in 1992.
Tsongas was the first presidental candidate I ever supported. I was only 17 at the time. Now twelve years down the road, I have always thought about him and what he would stand for in every election. Watching the debt skyrocket again, I made out a check to Tsongas's old group, the Concord Coalition, and said a prayer for the American politics version of St. Paul.
I'm a 15 year old Republican activist from Methuen, MA (10 minutes from Lowell, Paul Tsongas' city). Paul is my hero. I was only 3 when he ran in 1992, and I feel that he was the best guy this country has ever seen run for the Presidency. I visited his old house earlier today (80 Mansur St., Lowell), and I felt his prescense all around me. It was amazing. I support Republicans, but (DON'T TELL ANYBODY) I am a member of the Concord Coalition. Paul should have run as a Republican, but Bush couldn've been beaten for the Rep. nomination in '92.
- DJ
It's been years since I even thought of Senator Tsongas. He was an amazing man. I worked briefly out of his Presidential campaign office on Hanover Street in Manchester. What I remember most, is how passionate his young supporters were at that time. I'll never forget, there was this one staffer from UNH who introduced him at the NH Democratic convention, and I swear I thought I was looking at a young JFK. He had the crowd in a frenzy. I often wonder whatever happened to that inspiring young man. That's the kind of young person Tsongas was able to attract. His passing was a great, great loss.
On the day after this supposed election we just had, depressed and depleted, I watched some old video tapes of people in politics that I'd grown to admire over the years, people like Robert Kennedy and Pierre Trudeau and Barbara Jordan... and Paul Tsongas. And I wept. I'm originally from Massachusetts and worked in Jesse Jackson's New Hamsphire campaign in 88. Two years later I found myself introduced to Senator Tsongas before a play in Lowell, and quite by accident ended up sitting next to him during the show. During intermission we talked for a good ten minutes, in a very relaxed manner, about the upcoming presidential campaign, just two guys sitting in their seats avoiding the crush of people in the lobby. This was such a good guy, such an ego free, natural man, totally unlike any poltician I'd been around. You can tell a great deal about a man by the woman he shares his life with, and Mrs. Tsongas was the kind of person that made you feel like you'd been her friend forever. Paul Tsongas was a man who was caricatured by the media as being boring, as being slightly bookish and dour, a short, unexciting, grey little man, having no pizzaz when surrounded by rock stars like Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown (both of whom I also think very highly of.) I'll tell you as someone who was so lucky to have met him that night at the play, and two other times very briefly, that this was a very funny, very charming, very quick and clever guy who could have been a fine, fine president. This was a man who cared. He was a wonderful guy and I miss him. This country, thanks to the snails that live under rocks who title themselves journalists, will never know what it missed, and when I compare him to the..to the... pseudo president we're now stuck with, it breaks my heart. Thank you Paul.
" but Bush couldn’ve been beaten for the Rep. nomination in ‘92."
Oh yes he could've. In fact, Pat Buchanan came very close to doing it. What went wrong with Buchanan's campaign was the fact that he was a devisive candidate who was just about the biggest racist you'll ever meet.
Paul Tsongas, had he run against Bush, had the righ stuff to beat him. Unfortunately, Tsongas didn't have the personnell that knew how to raise the money he would need to sustain a long campaign, and Bill Clinton was raising record amounts (half of it came from Arkansas in the early days... at one event in AK, his supporters raised $800,000, simply unheard of back then).
The Democrats had two great candidates that year. Fortunately, the correct man was nominated at the right time to fix the downfalls of the Reagan-Bush years.