Sen. Evan Bayh (D, Ind.), son of the late Sen. Birch Bayh (D, Ind.) has written an op-ed in the New York Times today, giving his reasons for leaving the U.S. Senate at the end of his term next January. Appropriately enough, it’s entitled, “Why I’m Leaving the Senate.”
And, I have to give props to his ghostwriter: it’s well-written, interesting and reasonable. In fact, I utterly agree with it. Insanely partisan politics have stratified our government into Capulets and Montagues, and woe betide the poor schmuck who crosses party lines. Consider the fate of poor Mercutio, who tried to remain friends with both sides and got shish-kabob’d for his troubles.
Wm. Seward as Romeo, A. Johnson as Mercutio,
Harpers Magazine, February 1, 1868
But it isn’t just the Senate, or the House, or Washington, D.C.
Take a look at the commentary on both sides of the issue and you’ll see, they really ARE representing us, in all of our passive-aggressive, angry, stupid, ill-informed and reactionary glory.
Viz:
Evan Bayh / New York Times:
Why I’m Leaving the Senate — BASEBALL may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials…Big Tent Democrat / TalkLeft: The Bygone Days: When Ideas Did Not Matter
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly: BAYH EYES A MORE FUNCTIONAL SENATE…. I’ve occasionally had less …
Kathy Kiely / USA Today: Bayh calls for Senate to change filibuster rules
Alan Colmes’ Liberaland: Instead Of Complaining About It, Why Doesn’t Even Bayh Stay And Help Fix It?
Ann Althouse / Althouse: Slogging through Evan Bayh’s NYT op-ed “Why I’m Leaving the Senate”…
Drew Grant / Mediaite: Evan Bayh Imparts Final Advice To Senate In New York Times
Michael O’Brien / The Hill: Bayh lists reforms he says would reduce Senate partisanship
Michael J.W. Stickings / The Reaction: Evan Bayh on the Senate, campaign financing, and the filibuster
TBogg: The Long Goodbayh — Dull ineffective colors-inside …
James Fallows: Let me say again: Good for Evan Bayh
The Page: “Why I’m Leaving” — Bayh criticizes Congress for …
Foster Kamer / Gawker: Evan Bayh’s NYT Op-Ed Moves “Quit Senate to Manage Pencil Factory” …
Some are reasonable, but most — both right and left — are just ignorant, snooty, snotty snark. More sympathy seems to attend the anti-tax nut who played suicide bomber with his Cessna in Austin, Texas, than to a man who has been raised in, and honorably labored in public service for most of his life.
When someone chooses to leave the most exclusive club in the world, and says it’s because there is something profoundly and elementally wrong with our government in the midst of a crisis of Brobdingnagian proportions, the thoughtful citizen takes the time to listen.
Alas, the thoughtful citizen has become an endangered species.
Believe me, I sympathize with Senator Bayh’s decision. I’m tempted to emulate it myself. I have labored long and without recompense here, had thousands of readers, literally hundreds of thousands of views, and NOBODY SAYS A GODDAM WORD.
It’s just another mindless entertainment, evidently, as you sit, mute, unmoved, unspeaking, uncaring, unthinking — or so it seems from this vantage point.
A government of the people, by the people and for the people SHALL perish from the Earth, unless YOU, the people, get off your fat, lazy asses and do something about it.
Barack Obama was elected President in November 2008, and the only thing that the citizenry has done since was try to get tickets to be at the inaugural. Then they went home and figured that George would do it.
But that ain’t gonna happen.
I got news for yas, kiddies: George DID do it, and he did it to YOU. And you thought that winning one election would undo all the horror visited upon us?
(In your dreams.)
And, if Obama doesn’t do what you like, you snark, but you don’t DO anything.
Only angry, borderline racists come out on the streets with their vicious, foul signs, and a brain-damaged media (the same one that ignored the anti-war protests) claims it’s a “movement.”
Gravitas for the dumbitass
Sarah Palin gives a speech to 600 idiots in Nashville and TWO HUNDRED journalists, who then act as though it were the State of the Union … and you do NOTHING.
Don’t worry about it: nothing is a vote, whether you realize it or not. It’s a vote for bankruptcy and tyranny.
And, when it comes, the “man on a white horse” will probably do what Augustus did, when he ascended to the emperor’s throne and ended the Roman Republic once and for all: he proclaimed the restoration of the republic. He restored the senators, and it looked enough like it that the people never noticed that the republic was over. Period.
Don’t feel bad, though:
I don’t write this blog for you. I write it for those that will come after us, who will wonder what the hell happened that the richest, most powerful, most advanced nation in human history sank into the ooze with nary a whimper, and never even noticed until their remote control batteries went dead.
Even Niccolo Machiavelli noted “the trite proverb,” in The Prince:
“He who builds on the people, builds on mud …”
After, of course, stating the bumper-sticker philosophy of the Modern GOP and its attendant, demonic media; the prophecy of what is to come, and what has become of our “democracy” in these dark and loathsome times:
For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are….
Courage. (You’re gonna need it.)
Thank you very much for your help, this has been a great relief from the books,