THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 28, 1997 TAG: 9701280390
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 53 lines
Seldom does a candidate for the presidency as unprepossessing as Paul Tsongas run and, losing, leave an imprint in history and our hearts. When he died at 55, encomiums rang coast to coast for him.
With a cipher of a face, wispy hair, bulging eyes and a seeming twist to a wide mouth, he looked like E.T. The highly mobile, quirky features resembled from long ago the rubbery fist-sized red toy face that, when squeezed, contorted.
A hint of an impediment touched his soft, slightly slurred voice as if he were laboring to get out what was on his mind.
He entered the primary in April 1991 when major Democrats hung back, fearful of President Bush's 91-point ratings after Desert Storm.
Tsongas grew up in Lowell, Mass., and he led in reversing its decline. He had two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and one in the Senate.
Out of a sense of redemption from a bout with cancer, aiming to remake America for children, he roamed the land with a Spartan message. In late January 1992, he amassed 28 points in the polls, second behind Bill Clinton at 35.
Until then, even some businessmen flinched at his plea to energize business with a capital gains break and then go back and deal with a fair tax code and remedy social ills.
He advocated a 5-cent increase in the gas tax each year for 10 years.
``A liberal,'' he said, ``is someone who expands the economic pie.''
A lack of charisma became charismatic. Appealing to voters were his hard granitic integrity; his wry humor; his ideas, stark, direct; his eyes, dark, imploring, a dog's asking to be let in from the cold. People came to believe in him.
Hugging his wife, Niki, after he finished first in New Hampshire, he said, ``My attitude about charisma is, if you don't have it, marry it.''
Lack of funds forced Tsongas out of the race in Connecticut where exit polls showed he'd have won. He and former Warren Rudman formed the nonpartisan Concord Coalition to encourage courage.
Director Martha Phillips said Monday: ``He had a moral leadership to explain to people it was immoral for one generation to enjoy more than what they were willing to pay for it and do it at the expense of those coming afterward.''
He was grateful for anything done for him, ``which is one reason people worked so hard for him.''
Withdrawing, Tsongas told his backers: ``The message must endure. That is what I want you to take away.'' It had been a great venture, he said. ``This is the way you affect your country. In this one year and 12 days, I think we have done more than all the other years I've put into public service, and I'm proud to have been an American.''
Maybe in 1997 we will catch up with his vision and grit.