More Wellstone

What a sad day this is. David Hogberg, the nicest Republican policy freak you’d ever want to meet, met the uber-liberal Paul Wellstone a few years ago. His gracious remembrance can be found here:

I met Senator Wellstone while I was still in graduate school at the University of Iowa. It was probably in the fall of 1997. One of the professors there knew him personally, I believe, and got him to hold an open meeting with students. He came off as kind and gracious, patiently fielding many questions.

After he talked about raising the minimum wage, I asked him about a Wall Street Journal article that had reported Labor Department data showing that the recent increase had hit small businesses adversely. He seemed a bit thrown by the question, as though he wasn’t expecting it. Hey, these were a bunch of college students, not usually the most well versed in policy. But he handled the answer very well. First, he was honest: he hadn’t seen the article. Second, he suggested that some exception for smaller businesses might be necessary.

After the question and answer period, I went up to him, introduced myself, and jokingly said that I was the “token-conservative” columnist for the student paper, the Daily Iowan. He smiled and talked a bit about one of his conservative friends in the Senate – I think it was Dick Lugar – and about some of his ideas that he found intriguing….

There is more and it’s very moving.