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Very sad news, via Indiana political writer @hwypol — Richard Lugar has died. Being right on policy substance isn’t everything in politics. But Lugar was right on substance, for longer and in more areas of policy, than any politician in the country.
Midwest commentator @adamwren wrote this Lugar retrospective as he prepared to retire from the Senate in 2012: indianapolismonthly.com/arts-and-cultu…
Richard Lugar’s last blog post, put up on @TheLugarCenter site a few days ago. Given the nature of his illness, I don’t know how much of this he was able to type himself, but the content is 100% characteristically Lugar. It’s about agricultural research. thelugarcenter.org/blog-for-farme…
Lugar talks here about how Americans shouldn’t take publicly-funded agricultural research for granted; why it’s important to take down barriers to collaboration between researchers; why we need more international agricultural research cooperation.
Lugar excelled throughout his public career in recognizing the necessary work done by people who neither have nor seek celebrity, letting them know a powerful Senator understood and valued what they did and sought to give them the tools they needed to do it better.
This, to Lugar, was what politics was for, what politics enabled someone in public life to do. It was also something he was really good at, and one reason he was so popular in Indiana and so respected elsewhere for so long.
