On Meeting Max Cleland

Had other humans acted more humane today’s embrace of this human may not have been so special. Of course, any meeting with a Vietnam veteran who overcomes severe wounds to become a successful public servant is significant.

But meeting Max Cleland was altogether different. On April 8, 1968, during the siege of Khe Sanh, he stepped off a helicopter and saw a grenade at his feet, which he assumed he had dropped. Turned out another soldier had dropped it. When he reached down to pick it up, it exploded, ripping off both legs and his right hand.

Imagine what he must have felt during the ensuing months of recovery. No legs, one arm, his JFK-inspired dreams to better the world blasted beyond comprehension. Yet he overcame the improbable and in 1970, at 28 became the youngest person ever elected to the Georgia state senate.

In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed him to head the Veterans Administration. In 1982 he was elected as Georgia's secretary of state. In 1996 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating businessman Guy Millner in a very close race.

In the senate he was a moderate, generally conservative on fiscal matters and liberal on social ones. He was a reliable vote for military spending and bucked his party by supporting the Bush tax cuts in 2001.

During his 2002 senate race another explosion shook his life. But this one was deliberately and carefully planted to exact the maximum harm by the most vicious combatant: his Republican machine-run opponent, Saxby Chambliss.

The GOP attack ads against Max were the cruelest and most untruthful frauds in what is typically routine for today’s Republican party. The ads opened with pictures of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, then Max. "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators," said a narrator, "Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times!"

In fact, Max supported the Democratic version of the Patriot Act, so he joined most other democrats in opposing the blank check GOP version.

Two Republican senators, John McCain and Chuck Hagel, both of them Vietnam veterans, immediately denounced the ads. "I've never seen anything like that ad," says McCain. "Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to a picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible."

"Max Cleland has given as much to this country as any living human being," Hagel says. "To say he is in some way connected to people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein was beyond offensive to me. It made me recoil, quite honestly."

Those ads portrayed the utterly decrepit, evil nature of the GOP propaganda machine. No lie to great, no means too vile. Max Cleland became for me a key inspiration to change this corrupt system—yea, dare I dream, even to save our democracy from the rot within.

So it was that when I met him today Max looked at me as though he KNEW me, he instantly reached his big left arm out to hug me close, as he does everybody. “God bless you brother, keep the faith,” he told me. It was incredibly moving.

Max has overcome it all--with love, with hope, with purpose. He is, whether he realizes it or not, leading me onwards. Thank you, Max.


Rfd 9/18/05