WASHINGTON -- If ridicule is the worst enemy of pompous politicians, then humor must be the best friend of successful ones. Otherwise, how could anyone ever explain Mo Udall?
After a 14-year struggle against Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder that robs even the sharpest minds and shrinks the most stalwart physiques, Morris K. Udall resigned yesterday after representing Arizona in the House of Representatives for 30 years.
"It is one of the saddest days I've known," said Representative David R. Obey, D-Wis., one of Mr. Udall's longtime allies.
But sadness is not the kind of emotion the 68-year-old Mr. Udall would recommend. His life, often lashed by adversity, has been one of unswerving optimism, self-targeted humor and good cheer.
He lost an eye in a childhood accident but later inveigled his way into the Army Air Corps in World War II and went on to play professional basketball with the Denver Nuggets before entering politics.
In troubled times, the 6-foot-5-inch Mr. Udall has invariably found a beacon of humor -- turning it on himself and basking in the light of his own travail.
In 1970, vying against the late Representative Hale Boggs, D-La., for the post of House majority leader, Mr. Udall and his supporters sported "MO" lapel pins as they entered the Democratic caucus. But when the tables turned in favor of Mr. Boggs, Mr. Udall gave a gracious concession speech and turned his pin upside down, to read "OW." Exit laughing.
He has even made light of the insidious and incurable disease that slowly but surely brought him down.
After he had been diagnosed as having Parkinson's, a scandal erupted in Congress over the purported romantic liaisons between some prominent House members and a lobbyist, Paula Parkinson.
"There are some similarities between my affliction and those affairs," Mr. Udall mused. "They both cause you to lose sleep, and they both give you the shakes."
As the chief architect of the independent U.S. Postal Service, Mr. Udall later came to rue his role in severing the agency from congressional control. During a debate one day over the federal budget deficit, Mr. Udall rose on the House floor and suggested that the problem be turned over to the Postal Service.
"That way," he said, "we'll slow it down and probably never see it again."
Spurning ardent supporters who wanted him to challenge President Jimmy Carter in the party primaries in 1980, Mr. Udall wistfully recalled his vainglorious effort four years earlier to best Mr. Carter in the 1976 primaries.
