Sen. Paul Wellstone remembered

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minnesota, died in a plane crash Friday along with his wife, daughter, three campaign staffers and two pilots. CNN senior political correspondent Candy Crowley, CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield and CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider joined "Crossfire" hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala to discuss their fondest memories of the senator.

CARLSON: Jeff Greenfield, within the last year, Senator Wellstone was attacked from the left, something I didn't think would be possible, by "Mother Jones" magazine, which implied he was a sellout. Do you think that's fair? Did he just get more sociable in his time in Washington, or why did they say that?

GREENFIELD: Well, I think first of all, it's kind of par for the course that among people on the outer edges of any movement, nobody is pure enough. I mean, to get elected is proof that you're corrupt. There was a Green Party candidate in the race against Paul Wellstone. He was not drawing at all, under 1 percent of the vote, and I don't think would have been a factor.

Paul Wellstone told me in a interview I did with him on Monday, "Yes, I've learned some things about Washington, but I've learned the right things, and I haven't stopped for what I believe in." So I think that was, of all the problems that he would have had going in this last 11 days of the campaign, being attacked from the left was probably the least of them.

BEGALA: In fact, Bill Schneider, during the commercial break, you were saying to me, he was the authentic heir of the 1960's, and yet effective in the 21st century in the Senate.

SCHNEIDER: That is right. He, I think, was the great voice for the '60's cultural liberals, the anti-war liberals, the civil rights movement, and the pro-women's rights movement. He was the voice of that constituency.

Even more authentic than Bill Clinton, who some of them regarded as a sellout, he would regard himself as having made compromises to be more effective. But Paul Wellstone, I think, that voice is lost. He reproduced the march that Robert Kennedy had made in the South in 1967. In 1997, Paul Wellstone went to Tunica, Mississippi, and visited some of the same places that RFK had visited in the 1960's to say, "The poverty is still here. The problems are still here." He was trying to pick up the mantle of that progressive movement.

CARLSON: Candy Crowley, I read recently that he was, in fact, the least bipartisan member of the Senate. Which I found, I guess, since I work on "Crossfire," amazingly refreshing, someone who didn't have to pretend to be bipartisan.

CROWLEY: Well, absolutely... Paul Wellstone would go bam, and he knew exactly what he thought, and he would say it with no smoothing out the edges. Just, "This is what I feel."

So it makes him a favorite up there when everybody else sort of blends into the middle.

BEGALA: Jeff Greenfield, Bill Schneider mentioned Senator Bobby Kennedy, for whom you worked. He was, of course, murdered during his presidential campaign, and also John Hinds, probably the most popular senator Pennsylvania ever had, killed in an air accident as well, in a helicopter. Mel Carnahan, two years ago, the governor then of Missouri -- running for office, these politicians actually have a fairly hazardous life, don't they?

GREENFIELD: Yes, you can add to that list Hale Boggs, the former majority leader and father of Cokie Roberts, who died with Congressman Nick Begich in Alaska. You can also add Jerry Litton of Missouri who 26 years ago won a primary, flew to the victory party with his family, never made it.

But what happens is in a campaign, you kind of believe that you are invulnerable. I remember, in various campaigns when I was involved in that line of work, flying in small planes in bad weather, and I really remember Robert Kennedy looking up once in the middle of a terrible storm, and saying, I think he cribbed the line from his brother to the press, "I want to say in all modesty, if we don't make it, your names will be in very small print."

So there was a kind of fatalism when you are in politics. I mean, few people really believe you are going to risk your life in the literal sense, but as we've seen, it happens -- for a noncombatant job, it can be very dangerous.

CARLSON: Candy Crowley, we're almost out of time, but I don't think I know a single person who has flown on more campaigns than you have, on little planes in bad weather, I am sure, all the time.

Do you get worried about it?

CROWLEY: I do, but you don't want to be the chicken, going, "OK, I think I won't go." ... There's a lot of pressure on these guys to go shake the next hand. You don't want a rally, even 15 people sitting in Duluth, say he can't come because [of] the plane. You don't want to not have those 15 people on your side or disappointed and say, "Yes, well, he didn't even bother to show up." There's a huge, enormous pressure on the politicians, and I think on the pilots who fly them.

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