2006-09-15 - 8:37 a.m.

R.I.P., Ann Richards

My heart sincerely sank when I heard the news yesterday morning on NPR. It's not as if she had been on the scene in recent years, but my memories of her are somehow so fond that I felt her passing to be a Big Event.

She exuded the sweetness of your grandma with the hard-as-nails demeanor of a tough-talking truck stop waitress. She seemed, in a word, theatrical, but not contrived. Who really knows how much of her public face was artifice (there's a degree of it in all public faces) and how much of it was genuine.

I say it doesn't matter: she made me feel as if she got it and understood.

People who say "all politicians are the same" are just plain wrong.

When I read the last bit of the following quote, I feel patriotic again. I do feel like we all really belong, that this country really can accommodate all of us, and we are not castoffs or detritus. For a moment, I believe it. At least for a moment, I'm optimistic...

... When they belittle us for demanding clean air and clean water for trying to save the oceans and the ozone layer, that�s wrong.

No wonder we feel isolated and confused. We want answers and their answer is that "something is wrong with you." Well nothing's wrong with you. Nothing�s wrong with you that you can�t fix in November!

We�ve been told -- We�ve been told that the interests of the South and the Southwest are not the same interests as the North and the Northeast. They pit one group against the other. They've divided this country and in our isolation we think government isn�t gonna help us, and we're alone in our feelings. We feel forgotten. Well, the fact is that we are not an isolated piece of their puzzle. We are one nation. We are the United States of America.

~ Keynote Address excerpt
1988 Democratic National Convention, Atlanta