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Monday 6 September 2010

Who will succeed Kennedy as Master of the Senate?

Wednesday, 26th August 2009

Patty Murray, Herb Kohl, Johnny Isakson, Michael Enzi, Mike Crapo, Jeff Bingaman, Tom Carper, Daniel Inouy, Thad Cochrane, Blanche Lincoln...

You need to be a pretty keen political junkie to know that each of these men and women are current members of the United States Senate. Nor have I cheated by including recent arrivals such as Roger Wicker who are still freshmen and, consequently, justifiably unknown to the rest of the country, never mind internationally. Still, its remarkable how many Senators make no impression whatsoever upon Washington. (Of course, one often has cause to regret the impression made by those that do insist upon making waves, news and bad legislation. But still...)

Doubtless the Senate has never been as classy a joint as its members like to think it. Nor has it always been well-stocked with genuinely impressive figures, far less the kind of politicians who might, even if only on their best days, be worthy of the garland "statesman". Rarely, however, can it have seemed so much like a first-rate club with a third-rate membership as it does now.

Whatever else one thinks of him - and his life and record is justly controversial - Teddy Kennedy was a genuine star who, especially once his own Presidential aspirations had faded, came to be the biggest man in the Senate. This wasn't just because of the range of causes he adopted, nor even because his liberalism and his name gave him room to compromise with Republicans (though all this helped) but because he helped make the Senate seem like the kind of institution it desperately wants to be.

Most of the time, however, the "world's greatest deliberative body" is also the world's worst. Now that Kennedy has died, the Senate is still further denuded of genuine talent. Who steps forward now to be the kind of Senator who can actually expect to be listened to respectfully, regardless of the matter under discussion? Who, in short, will lead the Senate?

There aren't too many contenders. Robert Byrd is too old, too odd a figure and, anyway, more interested in Senate procedure and opening Robert C Byrd Memorial highways in West Virginia. (Also, of course, there is the unfortunate KKK membership. Long renounced, but still...) So who else now that Clinton and Obama and Kennedy have all left, stripping the Senate of much of its star quality.

Richard Lugar (R-IN) commands respect, not least for his work on proliferation. But a leader of the Senate? Only maybe. Jim Webb (D-VA) has stature, certainly and a welcome, cussed, independent streak. But he's also only a freshman even if his bearing might suggest otherwise.

Which leaves a pair of failed Presidential candidates. John McCain's been in Washington a long time and he's the darling of the Sunday morning TV shows. But outside foreign policy - where his instincts invariably favour the most reckless course of action - his actual interest in politics sometimes seems lacking and not just because his signature domestic achievement (campaign finance reform) was a dreadful bill. Does McCain really want to lead or does he like the idea of leading more than the reality? Sometimes it's hard to say and McCain tends to be at his best in defeat, not victory.

Which leaves a surprising candidate: John Kerry. Might the mantle of leadership pass from one Massachussetts Senator to another? It seems an unlikely thing to say but it's not impossible. Kerry has a wide range of legislative interests and, like Kennedy, is much better suited, temperamentally, to the legislative than the executive branch.

Like Kennedy, it has taken Kerry 20 years to reach the point at which he could stand and bear the stature he desperately seeks. Now, freed from being overshadowed by Kennedy, Kerry could perhaps, if he wanted it, become the Democratic party's senior statesman. Such a notion might once have seemed strange, given the gawd-help-usness of his Presidential campaign, but much stranger things have happened.

Perhaps it won't happen, but it wouldn't surprise me if John Kerry eventually succeeded - albeit with less fanfare or expectation - Teddy Kennedy as the great Democratic champion in the Senate.

The bigger question, of course, is how a country of 300m can find so few worthwhile people to join a club that only has 100 members.

UPDATE: Tom Schaller makes the point that it wasn't always like this. The Senate Kennedy joined as a freshman in 1963 contained members of the calibre of, among others, Barry Goldwater, Richard Russell, Everett Dirksen, Hubert Humphrey, William Fulbright, Eugene McCarthy and Carl Hayden. Today's crop? Not so impressive.

Filed under: Americana (300 more articles) , Kennedy (4 more articles) , Kerry (1 more articles) , Washington (126 more articles)

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ndm

August 26th, 2009 8:01pm Report this comment

-- The bigger question, of course, is how a country of 300m can find so few worthwhile people to join a club that only has 100 members.

One reason is that so many of them are elected from small states. 29 states have smaller populations than Scotland, some of them much smaller. That is not to imply that small states are inherently less worthy but just, as Scottish sports fans rue, that it is harder to achieve a statistical outlier of a superstar.

And it is a very undemocratic institution in that the 36 million California residents are represented by the same number of senators as are the 620 thousand in Vermont.

sarang

August 26th, 2009 8:14pm Report this comment

If only Ted Stevens hadn't been unseated...

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:04pm Report this comment

Diane Feinstein, but she's probably running for Governor.

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:05pm Report this comment

Patrick Leahy?

livingboyinny

August 26th, 2009 9:08pm Report this comment

schumer?

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:09pm Report this comment

Max Baucus?

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:10pm Report this comment

Ron Wyden?

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:11pm Report this comment

John Kyl?

Craig Strachan

August 26th, 2009 9:12pm Report this comment

Al Franken?

Luftmensch

August 26th, 2009 9:45pm Report this comment

I'm one of those who watched John Kerry's 2004 campaign as the Democratic candidate and found it damned impressive. Against a sitting president in wartime and addressing a sharply divided, propagandized, terrified and confused voting public, with little to no media coverage except of his convention, debates, and concession speech, he came *this close* to winning. There are not many who could do that -- look at your list of unmemorable Senators and try to imagine one of them having a prayer in that situation.

Kerry fought hard, had a fantastic platform (borrowed almost in full by most 2008 candidates) and made his case passionately and tirelessly all across the country. You saw none of those rallies, except if you scanned the C-SPAN schedule and made an effort to catch them.

Our media (and even some of our "liberals" who were resentful that their darling, either Dean or Nader hadn't gotten the nomination) parroted all the GOP memes, but those of us watching the huge rallies Kerry commanded and the fire that flashed from his eyes and inspired those crowds, know that he was anything but wooden, and that he was speaking the truth that needed to be heard that year.

Bruised and shunned, almost especially by his own party, he picked himself up and went back to work in the Senate after the election was over. He was a leader on the need to get out of Iraq, he was a leader on trying to get a fair shake for small businesses -- with special care for minorities, women and veterans -- and their owners and employees, their livelihoods destroyed by Katrina and threatened by an out-of-control financial industry, he fought against all the excesses of the Bush administration, the tax cuts for the rich, the threats to social security, the appointment of right-wing activist Supreme Court justices, the unfunded No Child Left Behind program and the threats to defund SCHIP and health care for children. He campaigned across the country, again unnoticed by the media, in 2006 and was one of those most instrumental in restoring the Democratic majority in Congress. His perfectly-timed endorsement of Barack Obama and again tireless cross-country campaigning for the Obama candidacy did as much as anything to persuade voters to elect our first African-American president.

As Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has put his lifelong commitment to saving our planet from environmental collapse on the front burner and wedded it to all the other international issues on which he is both expert and visionary. Largely unheralded, he has been instrumental in doing the same kinds of things our Teddy did -- working with Senators on the other side of the aisle, forging compromises that move us forward. You are quite right that he is a prime candidate to take Kennedy's place. I believe time will bestow that mantle on him.

I know this is an insanely long comment, but I will leave you with a quote from a Daily Kos diary Senator Kerry wrote not too long ago -- this was a hurried update, so not written in formal language:

"update: storms up North today -- plane was delayed a long time so I've had a chance to read through the comments and
noticed lots of comments on health care, so quickly two things: first, you're preaching to the converted (or rather the
baptized) on the importance of a public option. I've been working for one for a long time, and I'm not backing off. But
how we end up where we need to go - Ted Kennedy taught me a long time ago - often has a lot of twists and turns which
brings me to: second, there's still a lot more time in this fight. We have to get a bill out of the Finance Committee,
and it's obviously a difficult committee ideologically speaking -- but then we can work with it on the floor of the
Senate, marrying up the best of the Finance bill to the best of Teddy and Chris's HELP bill -- and again reconciling the
Senate bill with whatever the House comes up with. In other words, getting the best possible bill outof Finance is a
necessary but not sufiicient step for getting the product we need. So, look, I'm going to be fighting every step of the
way to get us to a public option in this country, and also to get us to things like progress on long term care and kids'
health which clearly should be universal and a few other huge priorities -- and I wouldn't expect any of you to give up
working for that, either."

MAWC

August 27th, 2009 5:38am Report this comment

I think Senator Kerry is a fine choice to lead the Democrats in the Senate.He is smart, passionate and dedicated to the people of this country. Just don't tell the media- let him surprise them. They try so hard to ignore him and fawn over others. They already have their favorites and it wouldn't surprise me if they pushed McCain.
As for the quality of many of our senators now, you don't have to go any further then looking at and electorate who believe every lie that is flung at them, allow others to think for them and vote on the basis of one or two personal issues without considering the bigger picture.

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