Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 20, 1991 TAG: 9104200028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DONALD M. ROTHBERG/ ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short
A longtime denizen of a city known for taking itself too seriously, Mo Udall once wrote: "I am often accused of having a sense of humor. And I always say, `It's better to have a sense of humor than no sense at all.' "
Now, Udall, his health broken by Parkinson's disease and the effects of a serious fall last year, is bowing out of Washington after a 30-year House career, including a 1976 run at the White House, fashioned as an unabashed liberal from rock-ribbed Arizona.
Udall leaves an enormous legislative legacy, but he will be remembered most by his friends and political opponents - often one and the same - for that humility and wry humor in times of turbulence.
Like the night he saw his presidential dream shattered by a key 1976 primary loss to Jimmy Carter.
"The voters have spoken, the bastards," he told reporters. It was a line he swiped from political prankster Dick Tuck, but fair, Udall said, under the rule that any good line over 24 hours old is in the public domain.
Udall gets credit for a vast expansion of the lands protected as wilderness and for imposing federal controls on strip mining, as well as for updating civil service and reforming campaign finance laws.
His book, a treatise on political humor, was titled "Too Funny to be President."
by CNB