What’s wrong with the Democrats

I’ve had some harsh things to say about the caliber of intestinal fortitude displayed by the Democrats in Washington. And with my current series about Nuclear Power, there will be more.

Ezra Klein has a devastating takedown of everything that’s wrong with Washington, in a nice tight package tied up with the headline/bow “The sad, hypocritical retirement of Evan Bayh.”

What’s wrong with Washington?

When Bayh announced he would not run for re-election last year, he stomped around to all the network political shows to bloviate at length about how broken the Senate was. How broken the process was. How money had warped the system.

He talked about feeling the need to do some “real world” work. Go back to Indiana, work with real people, maybe teach.

But a funny thing happened on the way back home… Bayh didn’t do any of those things.

I’ll let Ezra pick up the sorry tale:

…Bayh did not return to Indiana to teach. He did not, as he said he was thinking of doing, join a foundation. Rather, he went to the massive law firm McGuire Woods.

And who does McGuire Woods work for? “Principal clients served from our Washington office include national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses,” reads the company’s Web site.

He followed that up by signing on as a senior adviser to Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm.

And, finally, this week, he joined Fox News as a contributor. It’s as if he’s systematically ticking off every poison he identified in the body politic and rushing to dump more of it into the water supply.

The “corrosive system of campaign financing” that Bayh considered such a threat? He’s being paid by both McGuire Woods and Apollo Global Management to act as a corroding agent on their behalf.
The “strident partisanship” and “unyielding ideology” he complained was ruining the Senate? At Fox News, he’ll be right there on set while it gets cooked up.
His warning that “what is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest” sounds, in retrospect, like a joke… Exactly which of these new positions would Bayh say is against his self-interest, or in promotion of the general welfare?

HE’S what’s wrong with Washington

His father, Senator Birch Bayh, was a great public servant, a leading progressive, advocate of women’s rights (responsible for both Title IX legislation and the Equal Rights Amendment) and a credible Presidential candidate.

Evan, on the other hand, served a couple of terms in the Senate, attached his name to no major legislation, demonstrated no visible belief in the things his party stood for (in his last year he voted 60 percent of the time with the GOP, according to the National Journal rankings), quit at the worst time possible if he wanted to keep his seat in the hands of his party and people who believe in the things he theoretically believes in – and then decided to grab a big payout.

“In our last interview,” Klien concludes, “Bayh complained of the poor opinion the public had of him and his colleagues. ‘They look at us like we’re worse than used-car salesmen.’ Yes. They do. And this is why.”

More on the trouble in Washington from Red Green and Blue: