5.31.00
Bob Casey, R.I.P.

5.31.00
Texas Two-Step?

5.29.00
"Art & Ideas" at The New York Times

5.29.00
Tune Out, Light Up

5.25.00
Patsy Get Your Gun: Rosie Needs It

5.25.00
We Are Alone in the Universe

5.25.00
Who's Responsible for Columbine?

5.24.00
The Political Prosecution of Linda Tripp

5.24.00
The Rehnquist Court vs. The New Deal

5.24.00
The Luckiest Politician In America?

5.23.00
The Wacky, Left Coast Campaign

5.23.00
Applying the Standard To Clinton

5.23.00
Oust Clinton From the Legal Profession

5.23.00
Judge-Made Taxes

5.23.00
Scalia & Thomas: Leaders of the Court

5/31/00 7:15 p.m.
Bob Casey, R.I.P.
A Pennsylvania Democrat's quiet heroism.

By Michael Schwartz, Pennsylvania native and author of The Persistent Prejudice

fter Bob Casey's landslide reelection as governor of Pennsylvania in 1990, a pundit remarked, "If he wasn't a pro-life Catholic, he would be on everyone's short list for president." As it happened, Casey was distinctly unwelcome at his party's next national convention because of his insistence that Democrats live up to their tradition as "protectors of the powerless" by taking up the cause of the unborn.

Over the next few years he became immensely popular, especially among his fellow Catholics who yearned for a Democrat they could admire in good conscience. But he pulled the plug on a Casey for President boomlet in the spring of 1995 because he realized he was not physically up to the rigors of a national campaign.

Casey did not set out to be a hero or a prophet. He was just a neighborhood politician, a conventional labor Democrat, elected to the state senate at the age of 31. Three times in the 1960s and 1970s he vied unsuccessfully for his party's nomination for governor. Between tries at the state's top job, he served eight years as auditor general and acquired a reputation for — of all things — personal integrity.

Finally, in 1986, Casey came out on top in a three-way primary, then achieved his dream by narrowly defeating William W. Scranton IV. That victory was doubly sweet because, as Casey liked to point out, "My home town was named after his great-grandfather."

His 1990 re-election was a record-breaking landslide as he carried 66 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties, 68% of the vote, and piled up a plurality of more than a million votes against a pro-abortion Republican who served as the prototype for Whitman, Ridge, and company.

Familial amyloidosis nearly brought Casey's career and life to a premature close during his second term in office. A highly experimental heart-liver transplant in 1993 gave Casey seven extra years of life, enough time to see two of his eight children follow him into elective politics.

Casey died on May 30, just a few weeks after the death of his friend John Cardinal O'Connor, who had served briefly as Bishop of Scranton before assuming the See of New York. Like O'Connor, Casey did not go looking for confrontations on the abortion issue, but neither did he back down from the convictions that he had sustained throughout his life. Under some circumstances, simply not running away is a kind of heroism.

Columns / Current Issue / Goldberg File / Nota Bene
Washington Bulletin / Subscribe / Ad Info / Home