“Nought man could do, have I left undone.”
The line from Robert Browning’s poem “The Patriot” springs to
mind as Pennsylvania’s Senator Rick Santorum talks quietly but
passionately during a last swing through the heart of Pennsylvania.
The crowd in Carlisle, the county seat of vote-rich Cumberland
County, is filled with a decided mix of seniors, mullet-wearing
young men, parents with squirming kids (including Santorum’s six),
and enthusiastic twenty-somethings.
They are witnesses to one of the most remarkable Senate
candidates in the country as well as in Pennsylvania’s long
history, and they clearly know it. While Santorum has long-since
emerged as the rare politician unafraid to speak his mind, his
depth as a Senator continually on display, it is his refusal to
buckle on the issue of national security in the face of defeat that
has drawn such extraordinary notice within the state.
“In every other issue that concerned the Union, the voice which
spoke in most potent tones was that of Pennsylvania,” wrote Henry
Adams in his history of the United States. Adams would have loved
Rick Santorum, whose insistence on giving voice to what he and many
others believe is the central issue of our time is potent, sobering
— and far from a guaranteed election-winner. Which hasn’t stopped
the Senator from returning to the subject again and again in a
series of speeches across the state he titled, with a nod to
Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm.”
It is a cool, late autumn afternoon, the sun setting over the
nearby United States Army War College. It is lost on no one here
that the famous military institution, whose graduates include a
veritable encyclopedia of famous generals from Pershing to Patton,
Eisenhower, Bradley, Schwarzkopf and Tommy Franks has been saved
from the chopping block by Santorum’s aggressive efforts on its
behalf. It is also lost on no one that Santorum has run
consistently behind in the polls, his absolute refusal to abandon a
tough stance on the war being used to bludgeon him politically.
With an array of local and national Republican stars arrayed
behind him as he begins to speak, Santorum’s attention is drawn to
the parents with the squirming kids, his speech more a free-flowing
stream of consciousness than formal talk.
“I look around and I see these children and all of the kids
here…” he says, his head shaking almost imperceptibly, “…we are
faced with a great enemy and we have a burden before us….Because
the way the Democrats are talking, it’s pretty clear what their
agenda will be.” He pauses. “Let me tell you what it means. It
means whether we are going to be able to confront the evil that is
in front of us… as opposed to giving Iran, North Korea and
others…to give them the time to develop the weapons of mass
destruction…and project devastation across the world. That’s what
we have in store for us if we do not act now and stop them
now….The Democrats want to retreat, they want to play
politics.”
Except for a child’s cry the room is completely still. “Look,”
he says, “I voted for this war. There’s nothing that bothers me
more, that…that…” — here Santorum stumbles, a tremor of
emotion in his voice a moment before he plows on — “…that makes
me suffer more than seeing the men and women in uniform dying…and
civilians dying…But I remind you that while it’s a great
price…a great price, it’s small in comparison to the price that
would be wreaked on the civilian population of this country and
around the world if terrorists are given the time to arm…”
A shout goes up from the crowd, a man’s voice. “That’s right!”
Murmurs of agreement and assent ripple through the room, heads nod,
the mothers along with the mullets. Applause erupts.
“The fact that we have been safe for over five years is not an
accident.” Santorum turns and gestures to former Attorney General
John Ashcroft, the Missourian having taken time from Missouri’s own
heated Senate race to pitch for the Pennsylvanian. “It is because
great men like John Ashcroft put the Patriot Act together…it’s
because courageous people were willing to stand up and take on the
enemy where they are instead of waiting for them to attack here. We
have been on offense, and what the Democrats want us to do is go on
defense….That’s what this race is about. Ultimately it is about
the security of your family….”
The drama is interrupted as Santorum’s five-year old son Patrick
squiggles and distracts the audience as well as his father.
“Including Pat,” Santorum says, the audience breaking out into
laughter, the tension in the room released as the little boy grins.
“This race,” Pat’s father resumes, “this race will make a
difference to the future of our country….This election cycle,
John Ashcroft said, will be one that history will look back on and
say we either made the right call, did the right thing, stood up
and confronted evil before it became too late. Or…or we made a
mistake that could cost our country dearly… This decision is in
the hands of a handful of people…the security of our
country…the lives of your children and grandchildren, their
safety and security, not just your children and grandchildren but
your lives are on the line…So I’m asking you to work as if your
lives depended on it…because they very well may.”
There is a return to humor. “The Democrats are energized. I
don’t know why anyone would be energized for Bob Casey. Bob Casey
isn’t energized for Bob Casey!” Howls of laughter, followed by
applause at what has become a standard Santorum charge: his
opponent’s sheer laziness, whether it comes to his candidacy, doing
his intellectual homework or his job performance as State
Treasurer. Even as Santorum speaks his campaign has opened a
startling line of attack in this area: Casey, it seems, was so
inattentive to the management of funds in the State Treasury he has
wound up investing pension fund money in companies tied to states
sponsoring terrorism. On television screens across the state an
indignant veteran of the Iraq War takes note.
When Santorum is done the audience cheers, surrounding him,
standing in line to shake his hand, to tell him they agree.
IT IS A POIGNANT VIGNETTE from the campaign of a man who is
frequently typecast by the Pennsylvania media as brash, aggressive
or, in one wildly inaccurate description, heartless. If Santorum
has a problem as Senator and candidate it is precisely the
opposite. In a Washington filled with the coldly calculating he is
nothing but heart, winning accolades from no less than the rock
star-turned-humanitarian Bono as “the defender of the most
vulnerable.”
But while Santorum has a considerably substantive record of
accomplishment on what might be termed issues of the heart such as
welfare reform, flextime for parents, the global AIDS epidemic,
Third World debt relief, and autism research, it is his relentless
warnings about the dangers of Islamic fascism and his refusal to
back away from George Bush that have hurt him. Warnings that he
refuses to stop making and which have in fact become a center piece
of his campaign.
“I couldn’t live with myself,” he says about his refusal to stop
talking of what he sees as the dangers that lie ahead.
Neither could Winston Churchill in the 1930s as he watched the
ominous rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. For almost a decade
Churchill poured out speeches, articles, and letters warning again
and again of the disaster that lay ahead if the British people did
not act to defeat Hitler before it was too late. It is striking to
go back and see the extent to which Churchill quite willingly put
his own career on the line to warn his fellow Englishmen of what
was coming, only to be pilloried for his efforts. Yet no one
listened, the predicted devastation coming to Britain and to the
rest of the world as well. “The Unnecessary War” Churchill called
it years later, painfully recalling the unwillingness of millions
to listen to his repeated alarms. In America, over 400,000
soldiers, sailors and airmen died, including over 10,000 dead,
missing and wounded from Santorum’s Pennsylvania.
As Santorum and his tired family leave to climb back into a
small motorcade of supporters taking him to his next stop, the
current total of Islamic terror attacks around the world since 9/11
stands at 17. Hundreds have been killed in violent attacks that
have spread outward from Pennsylvania itself (the downing of United
93), New York and Washington to a list that includes but is
certainly not limited to London, Madrid, Casablanca, Istanbul,
Amman, Bali, Moscow and Cairo.
The next day a poll shows Santorum has drawn within four points
of his opponent. It comes as Casey not only reaffirms his support
for Senator John Kerry after Kerry’s much ballyhooed “botched joke”
about the lack of smarts of American soldiers. Casey has gone the
extra-step to show his contempt for Santorum’s views by bringing in
anti-war San Francisco Representative and Speaker of the
House-hopeful Nancy Pelosi to campaign for him.
WILL SANTORUM, FAMOUS FOR BEING a good closer, really win? No one
knows, while the skeptics abound. Certainly it is safe to say it
doesn’t look good.
But there is one thing that has been established without
doubt.
At the very real risk of losing his Senate seat Rick Santorum
has made his stand. He has made it with heart and with incredible
political courage. The irony, however unintended, is not unlike
Abraham Lincoln’s tenacious refusal to back away from his
anti-slavery stance in his famous losing 1858 Senate race against
Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. (Although Casey is certainly no
Stephen Douglas.)
Whether Rick Santorum’s race ends in a win, a loss or an
unlikely draw, his conduct in this election will ensure him of a
leading role in national politics for years to come. In the spirit
of Browning’s line from “The Patriot,” the Pennsylvania Senator has
left nothing undone in his fight to awaken Americans to the danger
he sees ahead. Churchill-like, he refuses to yield.
Whatever else his immediate audience thinks as they walk out
into the darkness gathering over Carlisle, they know with certainty
they have just seen that rarity in American politics.
Leadership.
