Q&A: Max Cleland discusses war, politics

[Ardent15]

Max Cleland is back in the city that brought him so much joy and so much heartache.

Sitting at a scratched-up table at a bookstore coffee shop, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar and his favorite timepiece — a Mickey Mouse watch — on his only wrist, he seems anything but senatorial.

Less than a decade ago Cleland was just that, at the pinnacle of his political career as a U.S. senator representing his native Georgia. Following stints in Georgia’s state Senate, as secretary of state and as head of the U.S. Veterans Administration under President Jimmy Carter, being a U.S. senator was a job of a lifetime for Cleland, and a job he never wanted to leave.

So when he lost his Senate seat in 2002 to Republican Saxby Chambliss, it did as much damage to him emotionally as the grenade that blew off both his legs and one of his arms as an Army captain in Vietnam.

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<http://www.ajc.com/news/q-a-cleland-discusses-165750.html>

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. K&R

[horseshoecrab]

2. K&R for Max Cleland! n/t