R.I.P. Ann Richards

Remember when Ann Richards, impeccably dressed in a blue suit with her equally impeccable silver coif, drawled her way through the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic Convention that was equal parts homespun charm and ascerbic wit? Was there anyone watching who didn't immediately wish she was their grandma?

Richards, who died yesterday at the age of 73, was the kind of colorful character that the Democratic Party has been sorely lacking in recent years. From her shoot-from-the-hip style of speaking to her passion for motorcycles to her straightforward and honest discussion of the alcoholism she battled during the 1980's, Richards was the kind of genuine article that we just don't see anymore.

Richards was ousted as Texas governor by George W. Bush in 1994, after a campaign which featured Karl Rove floating a rumor that she was a lesbian and one of Bush's operatives criticizing Richards for appointing "homosexual activists" for state jobs.

The loss of Ann Richards, who unfortunately hadn't been seem much in recent years, may mark the last breath of the larger-than-life Democratic character, leaving us in a wasteland of DLC operatives, who have forgotten that speech nearly 20 years ago:

Now, I'm going to tell you, I'm really glad that our young people missed the Depression, and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders that I knew.

Leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we would have to sacrifice, and these difficulties might last awhile.

They didn't tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

They gave us Social Security. And they told us we're setting up a system where we could pay our own money in and when the time came for our retirement, we could take the money out.

People in rural areas were told that we deserved to have electric lights, and they were going to harness the energy that was necessary to give us electricity so my grandmama didn't have to carry that old coal oil lamp around.

And they told us that they were going to guarantee that when we put our money in the bank, that the money was going to be there, and it was going to be insured.

They did not lie to us.

[snip]

And as I look at Lily, I know that it is within families that we learn both the need to respect individual human dignity and to work together for our common good. Within our families, within our nation, it is the same.

As we sit there, I wonder if she'll ever grasp the changes I've seen in my life. If she'll ever believe that there was a time when blacks could not drink from public water fountains, when Hispanic children were punished for speaking Spanish in the public schools, and women couldn't vote.

I think of all the political fights I've fought, and all the compromises I've had to accept as part payment.

And I think of all the small victories that have added up to national triumphs. And all the things that never would have happened and all the people who would have been left behind if we had not reasoned, and fought, and won those battles together.

And I will tell Lily that those triumphs were Democratic Party triumphs.

Yes, Ann, they were. Somehow the craven, move-to-the-right Democratic Party of today has forgotten this.