Despite his 36 years of seniority, and the power of the committees he sat on, it was said increasingly of Sen. Claiborne Pell that he was no longer a player these last years.
Part of it was his age. He is 77, the kind of 77-year-old who sometimes misses spots shaving. His suits remained dependably rumpled, and he never stopped wearing his father's belt, the one that wrapped around his slight frame almost twice.None of that worked well in a time when public figures groom both appearance and ideology by the blow-dried commandments of image consultants.
Although Pell continued official missions to the world's Cubas and Bosnias, he was never asked to be a guest on "Crossfire" or other Washington shoutfests that make stars of those who bark the best sound-bites.
You need to be a player to be on such shows.
Pat Buchanan - there's a player. Clinton, too. The list is long: Kemp, Kennedy, Carville. Limbaugh and Gingrich. Masters all of spin. And clout.
Few would put Claiborne Pell on such a list.
But you can perhaps say something of him more important.
He was that rare thing in politics, a man.
We've come to define that concept, manhood, by power of one kind or another. Who is the toughest? The most charismatic? Who gives the most commanding speech? Gets the highest ratings? Who consistently wins his battles, then has the panache to spike the football in the end zone?
In one sense, that's a fine definition of an important category of man.
But we've lost sight of a quieter kind of manhood, the kind you can't cultivate or fake. Most who have it are by definition not in the spotlight because their nature is not to seek it.
It's a concept Tom Wolfe wrote about in "The Right Stuff." The first astronauts were his symbol: Men who achieved in anonymity, never caring about fame because achievement was enough. After Wolfe's book became a best seller, one of the astronauts was asked on TV if he felt gratified by his new celebrity.
"I guess I don't care," he said. "I didn't need a book to tell me what I was."
Claiborne Pell is too well-mannered to ever voice such a thought so bluntly, but throughout his life, that is who he's been.
Most know him for Pell grants, and perhaps his founding of the Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, which for any politician is a proud legacy. But he did much more, and few know about it because his interest was to do something rather than be someone.
He played a role in founding the United Nations. He conceived and steered through many treaties, including a ban of nuclear tests on the ocean floor. He has done more than any politician to further the study of oceanography, with a 1960s bill that still puts $40 million a year into university programs.
Barbara Boxer, U.S. senator from California, captured it, and him, eloquently:
"We live in a time and a place," she said, "where certain qualities of character - courtesy and gentility, decency and kindness, honesty and integrity - are all too rare, in public life and in public. But with Claiborne Pell, these qualities are ingrained and innate. He is an honorable gentleman."
It is hard to think of other public figures, be they politicians, actors, or athletes, who model that kind of manhood anymore. Perhaps it's because those who do model it aren't colorful enough to rate the cover of People. They are squeezed out by the new breed of player who understands that a triumph no longer counts unless it's on television.
But you have to wonder what happens to that kind of person when the cameras turn away.
I doubt that those who know Claiborne Pell are concerned about how he'll fare outside the arena. He never needed a billet on "Crossfire" to tell him what he was. He preferred to do it rather than talk about it.
I don't mean to overplay him as a hero. I'm sure I've embarrassed him enough already. So let it be said: He was no John Wayne, no Jack Kennedy; he was never destined to be an inspiring, dynamic leader.
But as he heads into retirement, I find myself thinking of a line adapted from Shakespeare by Isak Dinesan that speaks to Claiborne Pell's gentle, honorable life in politics:
He was a man. Take him for all and all. We shall not see his like again.