Congress: The Long Goodbye

Has the lame-duck died yet? Is there a pulse? The news media are too busy speculating about the new Democratic 110th Congress to pay much attention to the final throes of the do-nothing 109th.

I figure the first hundred hours of the Pelosi-Reid regime will accomplish more than these guys did in two years. The 109th was 0-for-`05 and `06.

After all this Congressional dysfunction, voters can’t wait for Democrats to fire up their “first 100 hours” agenda. Sure—Republicans can play an obstructionist role, but do they dare? The GOP doesn’t need pollsters to tell them that beyond the beltway the “100 hour agenda” is going to be wildly popular, with such winners as a minimum wage increase, stem cell research, allowing the government to negotiate for lower drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries and repealing tax benefits for oil companies.

Democrats are still waiting for the Bush promise of bi-partisanship to show itself. His first offer of cooperation was to resubmit five or six right-wing judicial nominees along with John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador. Bush couldn’t get these guys confirmed when his own party ran the Congress. Bolton, with his Yosemite Sam wild mustache and eyes to match, is a 21st century Col. Blimp with fewer diplomatic skills than Dennis Rodman. Bush sure knows how to stick it to the UN for refusing to accompany him in Iraq.

(The President can be excused for not paying too much attention to the UN or The Hill – after all, he still has Iraq to worry about and how to raise $500 million for his presidential library. Seems like a lot of money to house My Pet Goat.)

The media are having much more fun with Democrats back on center stage. For Fox News and Wall Street Journal editorial writers, Democrats are a blessing. Bashing Democrats gets the editorial juices flowing. For years they’ve had to defend the gaffes and policy disasters of the Bushies and the Frists and you can imagine how tiring that gets. There’s already new life in columnist George Will who recently attacked newly elected Virginia Sen. Jim Webb for blowing off Bush at a White House reception, calling Webb an “insufferable boor.” Defeated Sen. George Allen not only lost an election but his title as “insufferable boor.”

National Journal’s William Powers reported on the excitement among journalists for having Democrats back in control. “Democrats are always on the edge of comedy,” opined Powers. “There’s a madcap, Marx Brothers quality to this party.” He went on to observe (brilliantly, I thought) that “a divided government is full of the tensions that produce headlines. But a Democratic Congress is also anthropologically different from a Republican Congress—messier, louder, looser-lipped, more colorful, newsier, and, for the media class’s purposes, more fun.”

What a tribute. Makes you feel good to be a Democrat.