What is an "Ed Muskie moment"?

Question

Tony Snow referred to getting emotional at the podium as having an "Ed Muskie moment". To whom is he referring?

Answer 1

Before the 1972 election, Muskie was viewed as a front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

The collapse of Muskie's momentum early in the 1972 campaign is also attributed to his response to campaign attacks. Prior to the New Hampshire primary, the so-called "Canuck Letter" was published in conservative New Hampshire newspaper, the Manchester Union-Leader. The letter claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians – a remark likely to injure Muskie's support among the French-Canadian population in northern New England. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie's wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper's offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reports that Muskie broke down and cried were to shatter the candidate's image as calm and reasoned.

Answer 2

Ed Muskie made it national policy to protect human health by protecting the air, the water, the land. And that policy, that philosophy, has spread across the geopolitical surface of the planet.

Edmund Sixtus Muskie (March 28, 1914 – March 26, 1996) was an American Democratic politician from Maine. He served as Governor of Maine, a U.S. Senator, as U.S. Secretary of State, and ran as a candidate for Vice President of the United States.


The Democratic presidential front-runner back then, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, afraid of being branded a radical, had originally proposed instead a nonbinding sense-of-the-Senate resolution recommending “effort” toward the withdrawal of American forces within 18 months. He found himself caught up in a swarm: the greatest popular lobbying campaign ever. Haverford College, which was not atypical, saw 90 percent of its student body and 57 percent of its faculty come to Washington to demonstrate for McGovern-Hatfield. A half-hour TV special in which congressmen argued for the bill was underwritten by 60,000 separate 50-cent contributions. The proposal received the largest volume of mail in Senate history. Muskie withdrew his own bill, and became the 19th cosponsor of McGovern-Hatfield.

Answer 3

Filled with emotion.Ed Muskie: His greatest moment was know as His Days of Tears. He was the govener of Maine and work in other political fields.