Tag: ted kennedy
Senate Collegiality Should Be Praised, Not Condemned

Senate Collegiality Should Be Praised, Not Condemned

Mo Udall, the legendary Democratic congressman from Arizona, was brutally candid about his party’s bad habit of succumbing to intramural recriminations that became the political equivalent of a civil war in the leper colony. “When Democrats organize a firing squad, they form a circle,” Udall wisely observed.

Politics, let it be noted, is a matter of addition, not subtraction. Putting together a majority to pass legislation to aid widows and orphans or a majority to win elections requires winning converts to your side rather than hunting down and banishing heretics to the Outer Darkness. Nobody understood this principle better or practiced it more successfully than the late “liberal lion of the Senate,” Massachusetts eight-term senator Ted Kennedy.

When Kennedy died, he was universally praised for his effectiveness:

“His greatest strength as a legislator was his ability to reach across the aisle, to compromise and get important work done.”

“Kennedy represented an increasingly, and sadly, rare Washington collegiality and practicality.”

“This Democrat’s true effectiveness was in his ability to compromise with Republicans to get his initiatives enacted into law.”

Those Kennedy initiatives included, to name a few, Children’s Health Insurance Program for children of working parents who did not get health insurance from their employers, mental health parity in coverage, immigration reform, AIDS research, ending apartheid, the Americans with Disabilities Act, voting rights and special education funding. Among the Republican senators he worked closely with to write laws were Mike Enzi and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Nancy Kassebaum and Bob Dole of Kansas, John McCain of Arizona and Warren Rudman and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. Kennedy was able to do all that by seeking common ground, by never demonizing his Senate opponents, by never making the perfect the enemy of the good.

But now we’re in a different political era. The president of the United States regularly demonizes his political opponents, labeling Democrats as “evil.” The Democratic Party, he told a rally, is “the party of crime.” Make no mistake: More than a few Democrats have responded the same way, censuring Donald Trump in similar rhetoric.

For me to call my political opponent mistaken or misguided on a particular controversy is acceptable and does not preclude her and me working together constructively in the future on a different issue. But when I call you, or you call me, “evil” or “immoral” or “irredeemable,” we have foreclosed any possibility of future collaboration. Who in good conscience can collaborate with someone who is “evil,” “immoral,” and worse?

So now we have Democratic presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bill de Blasio, all of whom have criticized — in some cases, condemned — Joe Biden for speaking positively of the Senate in which he served alongside Southern segregationist colleagues Herman Talmadge of Georgia and Jim Eastland of Mississippi. Biden refuses to demonize those who disagreed with him, because he knows that demonizing your opponent makes almost inevitable a response in kind and debases the public debate. To show decency to those with whom you disagree is not a weakness but rather a strength. It helps create a climate of trust and respect in which compromise and consensus can exist.

On this one — and it’s a big one — Joe Biden is right, and his critics are not just wrong, but their thinking is damaging to Democratic chances of winning the White House and uniting the country in 2020.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: Vice President Joe Biden gives two thumbs up following a Senate Democratic caucus meeting about the fiscal cliff on Capitol Hill on Monday, Dec. 31, 2012 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Obama’s Lonesome Ride To The Supreme Court

Obama’s Lonesome Ride To The Supreme Court

Shoot. Me. Now.

Senator Barack Obama scribbled that note to an aide in a committee hearing. The rising star never liked listening to other people give speeches, which is what the Senate is about. The freshman from Illinois was restless to move up Pennsylvania Avenue already.

Three simple words may foretell how well Obama’s Supreme Court legacy ends. In the shocking wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the president has a plum chance to leave his writing on history’s wall by changing the balance of the high Court. That chance seldom comes around. It’s the luck of the Irish that may have a curse on it in rough seas — with a bitter presidential maelstrom brewing.

Irony abounds, since only the Senate has the power to approve or deny Obama’s pick. The Southern-accented place once known as “The Plantation” often moved like molasses. It’s now a place he has to study all over again. That’s a problem in the Oval.

There’s no love lost between President Obama and the Senate. His personal — or impersonal — history with that proud body will come home to haunt him in filling the seat that belonged to arch conservative Scalia for 30 years. When he worked in the Capitol, Obama spent little time cultivating allies in the Senate. Instead, he was on a national best-selling book tour.

Sadly, this style earned antagonism from the Republican caucus, led by the crafty Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and indifference from many Democrats. Obama was too cool for their school. McConnell, who declared early his goal of making Obama a one-term president, is determined to deny Obama a hearing for his nomination, because he thinks he can. McConnell fights hard. He and his band of Republicans are Southern without the charm.

In younger days, Obama’s mentor was the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the master of reaching across to Republicans to pass laws. But even now, in his final year in office, Obama has no special pals in the Senate to shoot the breeze or talk strategy with. It’s no secret that he sees himself as the best strategist and speechwriter in Washington.

Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy were senators who belonged to the institution, which helped them get things done as president.

The hardheaded Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid, supported Obama in 2008, over another senator, Hillary Clinton, but has been coolly rebuffed over the years when he visits the Oval Office to give advice. Something that rubbed Reid the wrong way: Obama giving Republicans an extension of the Bush tax cuts. Too often on deals, the president seemed to be playing solo, as one does on a campaign. Governing, however, is usually a contact team sport.

Obama had best be prepared to do something he hates — old-fashioned politicking, turning on the charm he likes to save for large gatherings. Senators like to be cajoled and courted, appealed to for their help in saving the day. They like presidents to know the stories of their states. Horse-trading could happen over the phone — if President Bill Clinton was on the line. He knew House members, too.

That’s because politics is still sometimes measured in camaraderie, even in days of poisoned public dis-coarse. A major moment of meaning brings out the best and the worst in people. The contentious Clarence Thomas nomination back in November 1991 became a tragic circus under Senator Joe Biden’s gavel.

No matter whom he names as his nominee, Obama needs more than 50 votes in a Republican majority. No matter whom he names, it will be close to 50-50 if he can pick off a few Republicans, better team players than Democrats.

As the president takes on the gauntlet thrown down by McConnell — head on — Obama has right on his side. A confirmation hearing 10 months before he leaves office is plenty of time. Didn’t Thomas nab his seat (52-48) a year before his benefactor, President George H. W. Bush, faced voters?

In the Senate, Obama was seen as a showhorse, not a workhorse. This is his last chance to change that.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit Creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2016 CREATORS.COM

Photo: President Obama carries a binder containing material on potential Supreme Court nominees as he walks towards the residence of the White House in Washington in this February 19, 2016 file photo.  REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Files

The Lost Art Of Tough Liberalism

The Lost Art Of Tough Liberalism

WASHINGTON — Can you be a tough liberal who also knows how to work with the other side? Can you be unwavering in trying to lift the wages of the low-paid, bring health coverage to the uninsured, equalize educational opportunities and protect the environment — and still compromise enough to get all these things done?

These words could be about the late Edward M. Kennedy. But they also describe Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who announced his retirement this week. If the House has a Ted Kennedy, he’s it.

Characteristically, Miller did not signal his impending departure with some whining, nostalgic proclamation pining for a lost Golden Age of civility. He loves a lively legislative scrap and is in a robustly good mood about the long-term possibilities of progressive politics. Congress, he insists, could still get around to increasing the minimum wage, extending unemployment benefits, reforming immigration and expanding pre-kindergarten programs. And far from running away from the Affordable Care Act, Miller sees it as one of the crowning achievements of his time in Congress.

Miller, 68, was first elected to Congress in 1974 as part of the reformist Democratic class swept in by a reaction to Richard Nixon’s scandals. He’s one of only two continuously serving “Watergate babies” left in the House, though this 6-foot-3 bear of a man laughs that this is “not my preferred title.”

Miller hails from a time when liberals didn’t apologize for trying to make the country fairer and notes that he won his first race on the basis of only two promises: “to end the Vietnam War and to enact single-payer health care.” He thus sees Obamacare as a giant step, “the biggest gift to economic security for families since Social Security.”

But if Miller does not whine, he’s a realist about how much has changed during his four decades in Congress. He reveres Kennedy and worked closely with him, along with Rep. John Boehner, former Republican Sen. Judd Gregg and President George W. Bush, to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. Yet Miller observed that if Kennedy came back to life, he “would have a hard time recognizing this legislative process.”

Like Kennedy, Miller is an unabashed champion of the labor movement. “You can chart the decline of the wage base and middle-class family incomes with the decline of unions,” he told me on Wednesday. “It doesn’t mean the unions were always right, but it does mean they were very effective on behalf of the middle class.”

Yet he and Kennedy helped craft an education bill not entirely to the teachers unions’ liking because they saw a liberal principle at stake in the need to raise the performance of low-income and minority children. Two liberals and a group of conservatives could agree on this: “Let’s find out what we’re getting for the dollars we’re spending.”

Miller offers an astringent analysis of what is keeping Republicans, including Boehner, now the House Speaker, from engaging in this sort of give-and-take today. Above all, he highlights the role of “dark money” in politics — “and it really is dark.”

“Unlimited, anonymous money,” he says, is now regularly deployed from the right against any Republican with the nerve to sit down with Democrats. “There are forces in the Republican Party that won’t let you walk into the room.” Dark money threatens incumbents with primaries spearheaded by Tea Party activists increasingly uneasy with social and demographic changes in the country.

Abetting obstruction, he says, is the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate. This has turned Minority Leader Mitch McConnell into “the choreographer” of President Obama’s time in office as long delays on a few bills prevent action on others.

For all that, Miller is confident about the future because he sees conservatives as having to resort to voter suppression efforts and procedural shenanigans to block a strong national tide in favor of economic justice. Support for the minimum wage is high, he says, because so many Americans are tired of companies counting on government subsidies to the poor to make up for low pay.

As for those who challenge the effectiveness of pre-K programs, Miller provides a ready response: “Why is it that rich people struggle and fight and stand in line to get their children into the best early learning programs they can?” Why, indeed?

Congress could use more liberals who can brawl and negotiate at the same time. Perhaps Miller will now open a school for progressive legislators. He can name it after Ted Kennedy.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne

Photo: President Barack Obama meets with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and House Education and Labor Committee Chair Rep. George Miller, in the Oval Office (Official White House Photo/Pete Souza)