Democrats ride wave of excitement

Inter Lake editorial

Packed gymnasiums, cheering crowds, dedicated fans turning out to support their favorites.

The NCAA Final Four?

Not quite, but last weekend's outpouring of Montanans for the Democrats' Final Two had all the fervor of the basketball tournament going on the same weekend far from Montana.

At packed events from Missoula to Butte (and back to Missoula) on Saturday and Sunday, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton put on quite a show, bringing their high-flying campaigns to the people.

Usually it takes a big rock concert or a Griz football game to bring so many Montanans together. It's somewhat refreshing that this time the community gatherings were about the future and who should lead this country through what promise to be, at the very least, challenging times.

By all accounts, few people who attended the weekend events came away unfavorably impressed by the candidates. Fewer still probably were not amazed at the emotional response, and at some locales the nearly religious fervor, that greeted the Democratic candidates.

Both Clinton and Obama gave Montanans plenty to cheer about.

Their visits emphatically underscore what we've said before - that Montanans matter in the national election picture this year as never before.

Charlton Heston, who died Saturday night at age 84, was probably best known in recent years for his iconoclastic role as president of the National Rifle Association, but he will be remembered for years to come as an iconic actor who portrayed characters larger than life until he became one himself.

From Michelangelo in "The Agony and the Ecstacy" to Moses in "The Ten Commandments" and John the Baptist in "The Greatest Story Ever Told," Heston was asked to inhabit heroes on screen so many times that it was inevitable he became one himself.

People will argue for years to come about what his greatest roles were, but certainly his Oscar-winning performance as the Roman Jew Ben-Hur is among them. Strength, sadness, joy and weakness combined in this character in ways that were not uncommon in Heston's acting work. He often allowed frailty and doubt to penetrate his characters, only to be overcome later through strength of will.

In addition to his work as a gun-rights advocate in his later years, Heston should also be remembered for his role in the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. He was not a simple partisan, but rather someone who spoke out for that which he believed.