When The Scrapbook suggests that the election of Scott Brown to Edward Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate appears to have rendered the left unhinged, it isn’t telling readers anything they don’t know. The evidence is all around us, whether in the pages of our daily newspapers, on the Internet, or glowing from the screens of America’s TV sets. Indeed, some of the more marginal inhabitants of the fever swamp (Joe Klein, Keith Olbermann, Jonathan Chait, et al.) seem to have gone entirely around the bend—which, admittedly in their cases, was not too far.
So The Scrapbook chooses to consider two homely examples from the state of Rhode Island. To be sure, Rhode Island is not very representative of America—it’s even smaller than Joe Biden’s Delaware—but its historic habit of sending conscientious, conciliatory, even mildly eccentric, representatives to Washington (John Chafee, Claiborne Pell) has fallen on hard times. During the Christmas season, for example, the state’s junior senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, an excitable freshman who always votes at his party’s call, unleashed a now-historic attack on critics of Obamacare: “They are desperate to break the president!” he exclaimed on the Senate floor. “The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups! It is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist!”
Who would have imagined that one of Senator Whitehouse’s Ocean State colleagues could exceed this lunacy? Well, anyone familiar with Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, younger son of the late Massachusetts senator, whose—ahem!—temperamental instability, tendency to mistreat women, and world-class malapropisms have made him the laughingstock of political Washington.
But there was no laughter in Congressman Kennedy’s voice last week as he diagnosed the illness that elected Scott Brown: Americans are crazy and violent. Voters are “out for blood,” he told reporters, and want a “whipping boy” to relieve their uncontrollable fury. “It’s like in the Roman times,” he continued. “They’d be trotted out to the Coliseum. They’re wanting blood, and you can’t blame them!”
As is often the case with Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, it’s difficult to distinguish between the “they” who are being trotted out to the Coliseum for sacrifice and the “they” who want blood. But you get the picture. A Republican electoral victory may be explained only by the irrational bloodlust of a fulminating mob. And decent Democrats, like Martha Coakley and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, get crushed in the maelstrom.
Of course, it’s difficult to imagine that a Senate seat held by Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s father was invulnerable to bloodthirsty voters for 47 years. It’s even more painful to consider that the Democrats’ nationalization of health care seems to have been scuttled by Aryan support groups and right-wing militia. But that’s the view from Rhode Island’s delegation to Congress—and as Rhode Island goes, so goes The Nation.
Obama Rewrites History
In an interview with Time’s Joe Klein last week, President Obama endorsed a mythical version of the early days of his own administration:
I came in expressing a strong spirit of bipartisanship, and what was clear was that even in the midst of crisis, there were those who made decisions based on a quick political calculus rather than on what the country needed. The classic example being me heading over to meet with the House Republican caucus to discuss the stimulus and finding out that [House minority leader John] Boehner had already released a statement saying, We’re going to vote against the bill before we’ve even had a chance to exchange ideas.
We’ve heard this story before, many times, from Robert Gibbs, the Obama flack. But it’s phony, as Obama himself must know.
What really happened is this: Obama spoke to the House Republican conference on the morning of January 27, 2009. The night before, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had already introduced the stimulus bill that she and David Obey drafted with no input from Republicans at all. It was a totally partisan bill. Boehner didn’t put out a statement, but what he told Republicans leaked. What he said was that Republicans would oppose this bill, and he said Obama should override it and work with Republicans on a bipartisan stimulus. Republicans weren’t opposing an Obama bill. They were opposing a partisan bill drafted by House Democrats (which Obama embraced soon afterwards).
When Obama spoke to the Republican conference he was given a list of Republican ideas for the stimulus. After that meeting, Eric Cantor put out a statement saying this:
This is the third time we have met with President Obama and we appreciate his openness to Republican solutions. Unfortunately, congressional Democrats have not shown the same willingness for bipartisan compromise—and that is reflected in their bill, which they will force a vote on tomorrow.
Indeed, the House voted the next day—January 28—for a stimulus bill that Republicans had played no part in drafting. All House Republicans voted no.
Obama is right about one thing: There were those who made decisions based on a quick political calculus. But they were in his White House and his party. And they continue to pay a price at the polls for their high-handedness.
A Blow for Democracy
Mainstream media of the liberal persuasion (but we repeat ourselves) have long supported the federal law prohibiting corporations and unions from spending freely to support or oppose candidates for president or Congress. Not surprisingly, more than a few of the (liberal) mainstreamers expressed their deep unhappiness last week when the Supreme Court struck down that law, finding it a violation of the Constitution’s free speech guarantee. “The Court’s Blow to Democracy” said the headline on the editorial in the New York Times, while the Washington Post editorialists chose a headline for theirs that accused the Court of nothing less than judicial activism.
Interestingly, the Court discussed media corporations and the exemption they have enjoyed from the ban on corporate expenditures. Congress legislated this exemption a few years ago—not incidentally affording media corporations an obvious political speech advantage over nonmedia corporations. But, as the Court pointed out, “there is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be exempt as media corporations and those which are not.”
The Court, moreover, said: “With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media . . . the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred.” In other words, we Americans—however we define ourselves, traditional journos, bloggers, whatever—are all, or potentially all, commentators.
So there: By rejecting any distinction between media corporations and nonmedia corporations and acknowledging that all corporations may exercise their speech rights in the run-up to an election—aware that the distinction “between the media and others” is also crumbling—the Court has struck a blow for democracy. Just as our headline says.
Department of Perfect Timing
Tired of being hounded by the media? Can’t leave home without the paparazzi flashing their cameras in your face? What better time to head to Haiti.
Last week former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards finally confessed that he is, in fact, the father of a love child, Frances Quinn, daughter of Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom Edwards had an affair. But as ABC News noted: “Edwards was in Haiti [that same day] working on earthquake relief and said only, ‘I’ve said what I have to say for now and I’m here to help people.’ ”
Edwards’s timing was impeccable. Admit to fathering a child out of wedlock while providing assistance to the victims of a terrible earthquake. How could anyone question him about such tawdry matters when he is engaged in humanitarian activities?
The Scrapbook fully expects Gilbert Arenas and Tiger Woods (if he decides to check himself out of sex rehab) will shortly join the former senator in pursuing such noble efforts—at least until things quiet down back home.
Sentences We Didn’t Finish
Mr. Obama “could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks. But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth —if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, . . . ” (Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 18).
More Sentences We Didn’t Finish
"The most fundamental question—who is the real Obama?—is the one I think has been most clearly answered. The Rush Limbaugh cartoon of Obama-as-socialist notwithstanding, Obama’s inclinations toward centrist pragmatism have . . . ” (Ruth Marcus, Washington Post, January 20).
The Last Word
"You know, it’s hard to believe President Obama has now been in office for a year. And you know, it’s incredible. He took something that was in terrible, terrible shape, and he brought it back from the brink of disaster: The Republican party” (Jay Leno, January 20).