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Politicians always avow their passion for feeling the public pulse.
By and large, however, the passion fades long before they get down to the actual business of asking people for advice. Paul Wellstone is the exception. In Wisconsin over the weekend to aid the gubernatorial campaign of his friend and ally Ed Garvey, and to promote his own prospects at a labor event in Milwaukee, a small fund-raiser in Madison and then a state Democratic Party picnic, Wellstone never stopped asking Democratic activists for their input. For Wellstone, who came up from the political grass roots as a veteran of Minnesota's bitter farm and labor struggles of the 1980s, these are genuine questions. Yes, he is interested in running for president.