Mansfield, guns and statesmanship

I think the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the people believe a statesman will do what he or she believes is the right thing regardless of the political consequences. When it gets down to it, a statesman would rather be right than reelected.

It is generally accepted that Mike Mansfield was Montana’s greatest statesman. In my younger years I had two wonderful opportunities to have extended conversations with Mansfield. He was “as common as an old shoe” as the saying goes. When he passed in 2001, national newspaper columnist David Broder wrote that we had just lost the g...