Hatch on Kennedy

I won't be coy here; I have often found it hard to love Orrin Hatch. It's not just a matter of substance; it's the buttoned-up, oily, smarmy and snide manner (did I miss anything important here?). But I'll have to forgive him a lot for the eulogy he delivered at the Ted Kennedy funeral. It was gracious; it was generous; it was kind; and it sounded entirely heartfelt. You got the sense that they really were great friends--and, what is perhaps less obvious but more important, that they knew how to be friends, however much politics may have divided them. I think I'd be a better man if I could treat my enemies with such courtesy and respect.

We all--well, a good many of us--regret the increasing bellicosity of politics of late and harken back, inter alia, to the time when the Senate was more of a gentlemen's club (sic, was it because, aside from Margaret Chase Smith, there were essentially no ladies?). The gentlemen's club is probably a mixed blessing: one's mind is not always put at ease by the thought of Lyndon Johnson chumming up with the likes of Richard Russell and Robert Kerr. I suppose I've quoted somewhere before the old French adage that there is more difference between two socialists, one of whom is a deputy and the other of whom is not, than there is between two deputies, one of whom is a socialist and the other is not. But civility has its claims.

I suppose part of what was going on here is that both Kennedy and Hatch, by reputation at lest, were hard workers. And heaven knows the job of a Senator, properly understood, can be very hard work: slow boring of hard boards, in Max Weber's imperishable phrase. If you are willing to do the work, you probably come to understand and respect those who work as hard as you do--I think it was Michael Barone who coined the distinction between "show horses" and "work horses." Barry Goldwater was a show horse in the Senate; come to think of it, so was Jack Kennedy. It appears that Teddy and Orrin were both workhorses and came to appreciate each other for it.

I never thought I'd hear myself say it: we need more Senators like Orrin Hatch. But then, we could use a few more like Ted Kennedy.

Afterthought: My friend Michael, who was at one time a Washington insider, liked to tell an anecdote about Kennedy as workhorse. The mantra here is "the bag is closing!" Evidently Kennedy carried a big thick work-bag, which he took home every night. If your briefing paper made it into the bag by closing time, then you could be confident that the Senator would have read the paper by the next morning. One delights in the picture of Teddy in his wet tee-shirt, drinking, womanizing and generally misbehaving, all the time with one hand on a briefing paper, fondling the bag.

Joe Biden Don't Get No Respect

It appears to have been Michael Kinsley who first said that a gaffe in politics is when you tell the truth. Senator Joe Biden seems to have committed a major gaffe yesterday with his remorseless assessment of the Democratic Presidential candidates, in an inverview the The New York Sun link. Greg Sargent at TPM gets the money shots:

Here's Biden on Edwards: "I don’t think John Edwards knows what the heck he is talking about." And here's Biden on Hillary's Iraq plan: "nothing but disaster."

[On Obama:] “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

But—and the “but” was clearly inevitable—he doubts whether American voters are going to elect “a one-term, a guy who has served for four years in the Senate,” and added: “I don’t recall hearing a word from Barack about a plan or a tactic.”

There is already a kerfuffle over the meaning of the first sentence about Obama (link), but that’s my topic here. What fascinates me is what you might call the “Senator/President” theme. Did we mention that Biden is running for President himself? You hadn’t noticed? No wonder, because for all his flailing and arm-waving, Biden’s campaign seems to be going exactly nowhere.

Which brings me to my point: seems like every year we have (at least) one (or more) senator(s) who think: I’m smarter, more competent, better equipped in every way, to be President, than the rest of these dingbats--why not me? Think Bob Graham in 2004 (link). Think Orrin Hatch in 2000 (link). Think Bob Dole over and over and over again.

You can hardly blame these guys. It’s hard work being a good senator: long days poring over detail, long nights with a full briefcase—the slow boring of hard boards (link [$]), three yards and a cloud of dust (link). It takes patience and stamina and a bladder the size of Toledo. Graham and Dole were good at it. It hurts me to say so, but apparently Orrin Hatch is good at it too (but still a creep, okay?). FWIW, apparently Hillary is pretty good at it too, and perhaps getting better.

Thing is, these skills don’t translate. Partly it is a matter of audience appeal: most voters don’t know and don’t care why it is that Graham and Dole get so much respect for what they do. But it’s more than that: the senate and the presidency are two different jobs. The job of a senator is to claw your way through a heap of semi-colons; the job of a president is to lead. Think of the most successful modern presidents: Reagan and Roosevelt. They were both lousy detail men, but they had that knack for crystallizing and clarifying (or, if you prefer, caricaturing) that makes leadership what it is. Jack Kennedy only proves my point: he was a lousy senator but dandy at crystallizing. Lyndon Johnson doesn’t contradict it: he got to the presidency without election.

Biden is the ultimate I-don't-get-no-respect guy. Something about him—the smile, or the adenoids, or the hairplugs—just make it hard for voters to take him seriously. But follow him carefully and you have to recognize that he is serious, and hard working, and mostly on the side of the angels. Also a shrewd judge of political talent. More’s the pity.