[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Page 3796]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             LITTLE BIG MAN

  Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, 46 years ago the South Dakota Democratic 
Party was hardly more than George McGovern, George Cunning-
ham, and a beat up old station wagon. I was eight. Little did I know I 
would one day owe a career to those two men and that car.
  One of those men is now world-famous, his name a synonym for 
political courage and common decency. The other, George Cunningham, is 
unknown to most.
  But George Cunningham is known to me.
  I know him as the man who flew quietly to South Dakota to rescue a 
political newborn from a life-threatening recount in 1978. I know him 
for his wise counsel during a testing challenge from Congressman Clint 
Roberts, and through the other muddles of my political adolescence. I 
know George as the man from whom my own George Cunningham, Pete 
Stavrianos, says he learned both his trade and his passion for that 
trade. And I know George Cunningham as the diabolical practical joker 
whose powers to disarm and confuse with his wit remain to this day the 
most powerful antidote to self-importance I have ever witnessed.
  ``GVC,'' as he was known to those familiar with his smoking IBM 
Selectric, is a man who has never taken himself too seriously, but has 
always fiercely insisted his lifetime profession be taken seriously.
  I will never forget hearing about George Cunningham telling a 
reporter who asked about his polls during his campaign against Larry 
Pressler that his numbers were, ``in the toilet.'' The stunned newsman 
had expected a deer in the headlights lie from a scared politician 
facing defeat. What he got was an honest admission from a strong man 
who was still teaching, even through his hurt, how to laugh honestly in 
the face of adversity, and in so doing, respect what one was about.
  What George Vinton Cunningham was about, and what he is still about, 
is service to the public.
  From his first campaign with George McGovern while still a law 
student at USD, through his service to Governor Herseth in 1959, his 20 
years beside George McGovern in Washington, his return to his hometown 
of Watertown, SD, as a candidate for U.S. Senate, and his tenure as 
lawyer and party activist, George Cunningham has taught us all what it 
means to serve.
  Cunningham is a short, non-descript man who, while chief of staff to 
a candidate for President of the United States, used to send friends 
unflattering pictures of himself in safari garb holding a rifle in one 
hand and his trademark pipe in the other. I always thought it was to 
remind folks you didn't have to be Redford handsome or Kennedy strong 
to go after big game.
  What you do have to be, though, is committed to the idea that we are 
put here for something more than just serving ourselves.
  I like to think I am committed to that idea. I hope when I am through 
I will be judged to have been half as committed to it as one of the 
biggest little men I have been privileged to know, George Cunningham.

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