“It’s something worse,” said Tsongas. “I want to run for president.”
The answer was classic Tsongas. A wry, self-deprecating man, Tsongas, who died last week at 55, nonetheless saw himself on a mission. He called it “the obligation of my survival.” As a congressman and senator from 1975 to 1984, Tsongas had been one of the first Democrats to really question the Big Government credo of liberalism. Now, plunging into the 1992 Democratic primaries, he warned America that it had to face up to the crippling national debt.
Tsongas could be preachy. Dubbed “Saint Paul” by the press, he seemed to want to cleanse politics of lying. He was given to rumpled suits, baggy eyes and too brief swim trunks, worn while swimming laps for the cameras. But Tson-gas’s anti-style was appealing. He made a serious run at the nomination before being overwhelmed by Bill Clinton.
Three weeks after Election Day 1992, Tsongas’s cancer returned. But he was still able to fight for his cause, helping found the Concord Coalition to push for fiscal responsibility. In some ways, Tsongas, the son of Greek immigrants, really was too good for politics. After his successful Senate campaign against Ed Brooke in 1978, Tsongas said, with a rueful smile and a wink, “I tried to dislike him, but I couldn’t.”
