Before reading, in the NY Times, historian Rick Perlstein's piece remembering and honoring Hubert Humphrey -- "America's Forgotten Liberal" -- my own remembrance was about how savagely Humphrey had been treated in print by Hunter S. Thompson, in his otherwise remarkable work of political journalism, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
Here was a man, Humphrey, who, as Perlstein notes, had launched human and civil rights as a Democratic Party staple and had labored tirelessly on behalf on socioeconomic justice. Yet by 1972, "progressives" such as Thompson were deriding him thus:
There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey really is until you've followed him around for a while on the Campaign Trail.
I doubted that progressive Perlstein would care to recall in his near hagiographic remembrance just how brutally the progressive regime of the early 1970s had blackened the name of this truly progressive man, but I'll give Perlstein credit: for there it was, well within his op-ed, Perstein's notation that "In the book by which many would remember that election, Hunter S. Thompson’s 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72,' each mention of Humphrey drips with mocking vituperation."
My point? There is more to be historically pondered here than just the memory of Hubert "The Happy Warrior" Humphrey, and it is this: During their tenure, authentically progressive pols are rarely honored by progressive activists, for authentically progressive pols cut deals, make compromises, play politics, and engage the opposition -- whenever possible -- with respect. To this behavior, activists react with disgust. They did it to FDR, they did it to Humphrey, and now they're doing it to ...