I mentioned something about Tom Daschle to Our Man in South Dakota today, and he told me that he was in a small town in South Dakota (Asheville, I think) on the Fourth of July this year. The small town had an Independence Day parade, in which maybe half the town took part. As O.M. in S.D. describes it, it was the sort of parade in which the people in front, when they get to the end of the parade route, run back along the side street to be able to see the back half of the parade.
O.M. said that Senator Daschle marched in the parade. The crowd was cheering the other paraders, but when Senator Daschle walked by and waved, the crowd fell silent. They didn’t cheer; they didn’t boo; they were silent. It proves the truth of George Bernard Shaw’s saying that the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.