You Have Me To Kick Around Some More
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
The Politico recently profiled John McCain’s efforts to “remake” the GOP in a more “moderate” image. Leaving aside that half the article is devoted to the truly frightening warmonger Mark Kirk, the money quote is from the McCain adviser who insists that “McCain is not going to be like Hubert Humphrey or Ed Muskie and quietly pass the scene.”
But the Humphrey analogy is quite apt in fact, with McCain determined beyond reason to save the Republican Party from the Palin phenomenon he was indispensable to unleashing, and at the sight of her or Mike Huckabee’s nomination will be, just as Humphrey with his whole world collapsing around him at the sight of McGovern in ‘72, “a shallow, contemptible, and hopelessly dishonest old hack” in the words of Hunter Thompson.
But the much bigger problem is that, whereas The Politico would have us believe McCain’s determination to stay in the fray is a virtue, now everyone wants to be a Senator for 50 years like Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy. The painful sight of 80-year old Arlen Specter trying to reinvent himself as a Democrat, of the Liebermanesque Frank Lautenberg in New Jersey who will be 90 when his current term ends, indeed, the very idea that John McCain should be running for re-election at all, makes one pine for the cornpone panaceas of the 90s like term limits.
Filed under: Uncategorized
David Lindsay’s chance to make a real impact on our politics is now! With his genius for applying archaic British phenomena to American political realities, he is perhaps the only one who can help us Institute a House of Lords and an Honors List.
This British institution is the royal road (pardon the pun) to disposing of our many useless, senile and silly old characters from the Senate and House. Lord McCain sitting in chamber with Lords Lautenberg, Byrd, Spector, is surely preferable to having his grasping, palsied old hands on the levers of power. An honors system would be advisable as well. I’m sure that Senator Rockefeller would rather be Baron Rockefeller than a mere Senator.
David are you listening?
I have to defend the Happy Warrior. “Whole world collapsing around him”? ‘72 wasn’t even his biggest set-back. And his world didn’t collapse. He was a US Senator at the time and would be reelected in 1976, after refusing to be drafted for the presidential nomination. He ran for Senate Majority Leader after that election. h/t Wikipedia.
New to me, Humphrey authored the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act, which was passed in 1978. It set employment and inflation goals and required the Fed to try to reach them. It called for 0% inflation in 1988! Apparently this law is still on the books, although it probably never had much bite. Interesting, though.
Don’t rely on a quote from HST to damn Humphrey post 1972. That’s a low blow – I mean HST was on blow when he wrote it.
The Happy Warrior also promised that the Civil Rights Act would never create a regime of racial preferences.