Even back before You Tube and Tweets, the UK's Labour Party must have realized, in their hearts of hearts, they'd come a cropper electing Michael Foot as their leader in 1980. Nearly 70 and suffering from all kinds of ailments, he was widely compared to a TV scarecrow, Worzel Gummidge.
With two of his brothers who went into politics (they were known, collectively, as "the three left feet") Foot was a back-bencher forever who worked to keep Labour liberal but then, as leader, had to try and pull it back to the center. Alex Massie, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, as a thoughtful obit including a Foot speech from World War II.
Among the things that endear English politicians to Waldo is that they do other things. Foot was one of them. He was a journalist and author; his book, Debts of Honour, was a series of remembrances of the great and the good he'd known in a very long career. Much like another extreme left-winger, Tony Benn, Foot was known for being unfailingly gracious in his personal relationships, even with MPs he traded shouts with across the aisle.
Michael Foot died today. He was 96 years old.
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