Anyone who has spent time driving on the various expressways in Europe — Italy and Germany, in particular — has had the experience: You're cruising along in the "speed lane" on the left at a breathtaking 85 or 90 miles per hour. In the rearview mirror, you catch a glance of a low gray streak with headlights gaining on you, maybe a quarter mile back. You look to the right to get into the next lane, signal, and, in what seems like less than a second, look back again to see a grey sedan thirty feet behind you, impatiently flashing its lights, waiting to get by. You get out of the way and a grey streak with a "Beamer" logo blasts by you and, in another moment, is off on the horizon — probably doing a hundred and thirty.
Here in Minnesota, where our left "passing" lane is regularly policed by what I call "SLDs" (Sanctimonious Liberal Democrats), who are going "just fast enough, thank you, and certainly faster than YOU should be going," this is the kind of driving experience reserved for TV commercials.
But in Minnesota politics, where most of us who have been, or are in, elected politics plod along in the political equivalent of the right lane, the population of those that have soared past us on the left lane, seemingly from out of nowhere, is a source of endless interest and, even, envy.
The most obvious example, of course, is Jesse Ventura. But Dave Durenberger, who went from a private practice to the United States Senate in the astonishing 1978 election would certainly qualify. So would a young Walter Mondale, in the early '60s, who went from a bright political appointee to the AG's office, to the Senate and beyond. ("Fritz who?")
More recently, Amy Klobuchar's meteoric rise, although preceded by local office, would seem to qualify.
The most obvious example, though, and the one on whom all eyes should be fixed, is Attorney General Lori Swanson. Laboring in obscurity under the shadows of her former boss, Mike Hatch, she learned the ins and outs of the office of Attorney General. It's a position that certainly has catapulted others upward: United States District Judge Jack Tunheim and Senator Norm Coleman come to mind. But the strange twists and turns of the last election, and her last minute decision to run, make her appearance on the scene seem especially sudden.
Attractive, very articulate and suburban, she brings to the plate a lot of assets without the usual burden of a political history in elective office with the attached opponents or enemies. Her experience makes her somewhat less likely to commit the kind of newby political mistakes that would cost serious consideration for other offices. And, most importantly, she has, in the Attorney General office, a platform to get her regularly before the public on "feel good" public policy issues and actions.
As a Republican who regularly scans the horizon for what may be coming at us soon, right now, Lori Swanson is looking like that Beamer in the mirror. The Democrats, at this, admittedly, very early stage, don't have anyone obvious yet to run for Governor beside her. A lot can happen between now and 2010 in the world of politics, but Republicans need to be very aware of where they are driving while she's on the road.