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Show ID ENTERPRISE m PRAGMATIC DOGMATICS ! For instance. Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-Va.) on Jan. 15 speculated via nationwide television that Humphreys posthumous charisma well could secure passage of portions of the Carter program previously in trouble. As if on cue, the Minnesotan's corpse was transported for public view first East, then home, before being put to rest. Somehow, it seems, Humphreys Democratic colleagues judged him more persuasive dead then he had been when alive. This is not to claim that the deceased would As a lifelong Democratic have objected. loyalist, he no doubt, if asked, would have willed his body to his party, as others will their s to science. Communist leaders often are mummified. Why not Americans? It is to say that only the simple minded amongst us would alter our prior disagreements with Humphrey because he has died. Humphrey, death and politics by Kent Shearer is dead Sen. Hubert Humphrey at 65 and, as goes the latin maxim, has joined the majority. By all accounts everybody who knew him personally mourns his passage. This alone is a considerable, if not unprecedented, tribute to anyone who has engaged in the (D-Min- n.) rough and tumble of American politics. One always is hesitant to speak ill of the character of a person recently departed. Hence, it is convenient that, in the case of Humphrey, there is so little of that type of criticism that the gracious now must forego. It is altogether another matter, however, to expect the fact of death to enhance viewpoints held by the dead man. Amazingly enough, to a considerable extent todays Democrats hope for that in Humphreys case. Why should one who was (1 ) in favor of right to work before, (2) against railroad featherbedding before, (3) in favor of right to life before, or (4) against the Panama gratuity before, now abandon those convictions because, in life, the spirit that inhabited the Humphrey body would have had him do so? ago, Sen. Robert A. Taft passed on. Like Humphrey after him, Taft was a leader of his party. Like Humphrey, he was a man of great and controversial Like Humphrey, he ideological conviction. never achieved the Presidency he had relentlessly pursued. When Taft died, nobody asked those who differed with him in life to adhere to his causes in death. Why would this years Democrats have it otherwise with Humphrey? A quarter-centur- y (R-Ohi- o) i i ft y id rm m h wctfe MOW vim cm&Amau w flm iwu6 I'M A i& m Wti. i i m ITS HP m&bkd RAP5C7. I f i ? ft zz-- ymz pm awp awi7 m a U' p&mur wm ro. mu uv Burr mm CMT AFF0RP AM Agoe- - l m) ;1 WITH n OUT m f r, i HAW 90 1 (MO W m MvrWMww m W0 , m i k i HHH V o i h j ft CL C - LU .. I- o o moves on to immortality by Parker M. Nielson The year was 1948. Harry Truman was alive and scoring the political upset of the century as he defeated Tom Dewey for the Presidency. Ike had yet to return from the wars and the country was glutting itself in the orgy of prosperity that followed World War II. The rights of little people, minorities and the downtrodden were not what America wanted to hear about. The scene was the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Hubert Humphrey talked a lot at that convention and told us to get out of the shadow of states rights and walk forthrightly in the bright sunshine of human rights." It was at that convention that the young mayor of Minneapolis pricked the conscience of America. The destiny of the Democratic Party for the next 30 years was in leading the movement for equal opportunity in jobs, housing and education. It still remained for Ike to call out the National Guard at Little Rock. Martin Luther Kings Birmingham bus boycotts were yet in the future. John Kennedy would crush the happy warrior in West Virginia, only to make national policy the ideas Hubert Humphrey would talk about in his losing effort. It remained for Lyndon Johnson to implement many of those same policies after Kennedy was struck down by the assassins bullet. But it was Hubert Humphrey, long before any of these, who had the courage to stand up when it was not popular to do so and announce to American that its greatness would lie in correcting the wrongs to its minorities - and purpose ways to attain those goals. And civil rights was not the only thing Hubert Humphrey talked about. He talked about disarmament, jobs, economic help for the poor, and most of the other issues which concerned society over the past 30 years. It was not just talk, either, for he originated more of the programs to solve the problems he talked about than perhaps any other person in public life. Despite all his contributions, despite his proven leadership the Presidency -sability, the ultinatc position of leadership omehow eluded Humphrey. But even that he accepted with the good humor which in the end led those who agreed with what he talked about, and those who did not, to pay him their heartfelt tributes. There are few who walk the face of this planet who deserve to be called great. Hubert H. Humphrey was one of them. - |