By Garrison Keillor

Nov. 7, 2002 |

Norm Coleman won Minnesota because he was well-financed and well-packaged. Norm is a slick retail campaigner, the grabbiest and touchingest and feelingest politician in Minnesota history, a hugger and baby-kisser, and he's a genuine boomer candidate who reinvents himself at will. The guy is a Brooklyn boy who became a left-wing student radical at Hofstra University with hair down to his shoulders, organized antiwar marches, said vile things about Richard Nixon, etc. Then he came west, went to law school, changed his look, went to work in the attorney general's office in Minnesota. Was elected mayor of St. Paul as a moderate Democrat, then swung comfortably over to the Republican side. There was no dazzling light on the road to Damascus, no soul-searching: Norm switched parties as you'd change sport coats.

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

Answers

Hell, I had hair long enough to sit on, beads almost as long, worked for Eugene McCarthy for free, had a real job in the War on Poverty for several years--so what? I'm a hollow woman? I sold my soul? Eff you, Garrison!

-- Anonymous, November 08, 2002

he does point out an interesting thing. coleman switched parties while in office.

what if he does it again?

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2002

Sounds to me as if he slowly morphed. I'd trust that sooner than a radical change, a sudden epiphany. I changed slowly too. It wasn't as if I woke up one day and said, "Holy Reagan, I'm a Republican!"

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2002