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Thomas Eagleton was a very good man, who was a very good Senator. At some point in his life he suffered from depression and had the then standard treatment. The problems with Palin involve abuse of power - not an illness. I assume that he is just referring to the nominee being unpleasantly surprised about something in the VP's history.
At this point, I know little of Palin, but from what I do know - she is not Senator Eagleton. Here is what Senator Kerry said in the Senate at the time of his death. As you can see, many here would love a current Senator who did those things. That he is most remembered because he had a bout of depression is pathetic.
From the Senate record:
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, Missouri's own Harry Truman once said:
A politician is a man who understands government. A statesman is a politician who has been dead for 10 years.
Somehow, another son of Missouri, Senator Tom Eagleton , managed to be both a keen master of government and a statesman in his own lifetime, as well as a dear friend of many in this Chamber. On this past Sunday, Tom passed away at age 77.
Tom Eagleton was a man who radiated wit, warmth, and a brand of intellectual and moral seriousness that
commanded respect, even as he won the affection of all those around him. A Senator and a statesman, a humanitarian and a humorist, Tom left his indelible mark on the issues that mattered most to him. His proudest accomplishment in a superb career in public life, and in the Senate particularly, was an amendment to cut off funds for America's disastrous bombing of Cambodia. He was also a principal author of the Senate's War Powers Resolution, which sought to dramatically limit the President's ability to commit forces abroad without the consent of Congress.
Ever true to his principles, Tom voted against the version that was reported by the conference committee, which he believed the executive would ultimately exploit as a 60-day blank check to use armed force. Over President Nixon's veto, and without Senator Eagleton's vote, the bill was passed. As usual, Tom Eagleton's concerns proved only too prescient.
Senator Eagleton was a fierce and passionate critic of the Vietnam war, and he worked tirelessly to end that conflict. In 1971 he made a statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one that I remember. It came about 3 weeks or so after I had been privileged to testify to that committee. He made an argument that resonates as clearly today as it did at the time he made it. He spoke of the need to set a firm date for withdrawal.
In an essay he wrote entitled ``Whose Power Is War Power,'' he quoted Justice Story:
In a Republic, it should be difficult to make war and easy to make peace.
And yet, he said:
In Vietnam, war came easy and peace comes hard.
His words ring equally true of the war in Iraq, a war he fervently opposed from the outset.
For a brief period of time, for the 2 years our careers overlapped in the Senate, I had the privilege of working closely with Tom. He was as decent and as humble as he was passionate. I remember, when I first came to the Senate in 1985, Tom and I were unlikely seatmates, the two most recent additions to the Foreign Relations Committee. He wrote a letter, spontaneously, to Senator Pell, then the committee chair. If there was an opportunity for him to serve as a ranking minority Democrat on a subcommittee, he said: ``I would prefer to forego in favor of Senator Kerry.''
It was a magnanimous gesture that impressed me enormously, and also made a difference to my early involvement in the Foreign Relations Committee. In a place where seniority counts--then a lot more than even today, where prerogatives matter--and sometimes far too much, it was unusual to defer to a freshman Senator as he did. But that was Tom Eagleton .
Tom's collegiality didn't stop at the aisle. One of his great friends in the Senate was his junior Senator, his colleague from Missouri, Republican Senator John Danforth. He championed Jack's nomination to become U.N. Ambassador and the two cooperated on countless issues, most recently as ex-Senators, cochairing Missouri's stem cell initiative to protect all forms of stem cell research allowed under Federal law. They were friends for 40 years, and colleagues in the Senate for 10. They showed a spirit of bipartisan cooperation too often missing from today's politics.
On so many issues, Tom Eagleton was a trailblazer and a visionary. He helped to write the Clear Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972, foundations of today's environmental protection regime.
He was among the few in the Senate to oppose the Reagan tax cuts as he said: ``Once again, once again,'' shouting in his famous baritone, ``largesse to the rich.''
As he left Washington 20 years ago, he sounded an early warning that there was too much money in American politics, and he was a staunch critic of the Iraq war, from its initial walkup to the present.
Tom Eagleton blazed other trails as well. In 1956 he became the youngest circuit attorney in the history of St. Louis, a record that still stands. And in 1960, when he ran for Missouri attorney general on the same ticket as another Catholic, John F. Kennedy, he held his ground when anti-Catholic bigots scrawled graffiti over his campaign posters. Tom Eagleton , in all of his career, never lost a Missouri election in his entire life.
Tom's pre-Senate career took him from the Navy to the district attorney's office to the lieutenant governorship. I might add, parenthetically, it happens to be the exact same course I followed. He was the youngest Lieutenant Governor in Missouri's history. I empathized personally with his quip that Missouri's No. 2 spot was good for standing at the window and ``watching the Missouri River flow by.''
Tom Eagleton was a quick wit, but he was also a man fully committed to living by his conscience, whether it led him to take conservative positions on social issues or even to censure a colleague from his own side of the aisle after ethical lapses. As the Senate debated ousting a Democratic Senator who had been convicted of bribery and conspiracy, Senator Eagleton was firm. He said, ``We should not perpetrate our own disgrace by asking him to remain.'' He loved justice, and it is fitting that the Federal courthouse in downtown St. Louis now bears his name.
In 1968, his commitment to reform led him to challenge a sitting Democratic Senator whose record, many believed, was tarnished by corruption. After the race, his defeated opponent said bitterly:
The man who builds a house on public service builds it of straw and on sand.
But Tom Eagleton proved that wrong. He retired in 1987 with the love and admiration of millions in his home State of Missouri and across the country. When he announced in 1984 that he would not seek reelection to a fourth term, his statement was full of the same personal humility that had led him to hand over his seniority to a freshman Senator. He declared that ``public offices should not be held in perpetuity'' and added that he had enjoyed ``a full and complete career.''
As his colleague Dale Bumpers of Arkansas said:
Tom's goal was never to be carried out of the Senate in a pine box. He chose his career in politics because he considered it the best place from which to promote justice, nobility, freedom and dignity.
When Tom announced he would not seek reelection, the Kansas City Star summed up the legacy he was leaving behind:
Senator Thomas F. Eagleton is the kind of politician the system is supposed to produce but so rarely does. He has elevated the job of politics because he does not accept the conventional denigration of politics. He believes it is a noble profession, and in the hands of such as himself, it is exactly that.
In the two decades since he left the Senate, Tom never let go of his indefatigable sense of justice, his unique sense of humor, his taste for politics, or his love of Missouri. Once, after a ``Meet the Press'' appearance a few years ago that I was on, Tom sent me a handwritten note afterward. He said that while he thought I ``demolished'' my Republican counterpart, I really ``should have knocked his toupee off his head.'' That was Tom Eagleton , always seeing the humorous or absurd, and he sent a lot of Senators personal notes such as that over the years that made us laugh. He was the point man for the effort that wooed the Rams football team from Los Angeles to St. Louis, and even Tom was stunned by the affection that football fans showed him on the streets of St. Louis--particularly after the Rams' Super Bowl victory in 2000.
After a plane crash killed Governor Mel Carnahan, the Missouri Democratic nominee for the Senate in October 2000, it was Senator Eagleton who took the lead in knocking down spurious claims that it would be illegal to keep Carnahan's name on the November ballot.
In addition to his three books, Tom wrote over 50 op-eds for his hometown newspaper after leaving the Senate at age 57. He truly believed in the word ``citizenship.''
In the last of those op-eds, published November 3, 2005, Senator Eagleton was candid in his analysis of the current disaster in Iraq. He wrote:
Hubris is always the sword upon which the mighty have fallen.
And:
From here on, any President will have to level with the American people before going to war.
Tom Eagleton loved the Senate. He loved this institution. He was an expert in its rules and procedures and he believed in the constitutional power to make decisions of war and peace. In addition to his most famous book, ``War and Presidential Power: A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender,'' he also coauthored a textbook for high school students called ``Our Constitution and What It Means.'' Most of all, you could see the pleasure he took from simply being here.
Above all, Tom Eagleton loved his family, his home State of Missouri, and the St. Louis Cardinals. At one point he even considered applying to become the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, but he couldn't give up his Senate seat as long as Missouri had a Republican Governor to appoint his successor.
This January, Tom celebrated his 50-year anniversary with his wonderful wife Barbara. Together they raised two children, Terence and Christy, and three grandchildren. Tom Eagleton was the quintessential family man. He never stopped giving. He gave his life to serving his State and his country, and when he died he left instructions that his body was to be given to Washington University for medical research.
Senator Tom Eagleton lived a full and remarkable life, and all of his colleagues and all the country will miss him dearly. He died with no regrets. ``My ambition,'' he said, ``since my senior year in high school was to be a Senator.''
Not everybody achieves their ambition. Tom Eagleton actually did a lot more than that. He achieved his own ambitions and earned the love and enduring respect of millions. Along the way, he inspired so many of us, not least of all the no-longer-freshman Senator from Massachusetts who, 23 years later, rises sadly and proudly to pay tribute to the man who once gave up his seniority but never gave up his principles.
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