Mark Schmitt

Wishing for Wellstone

The saturation coverage of Howard Dean's manic post-caucus speech has made me think of the sad end to the 2002 Senate race in Minnesota, when a little bit of the lively partisanship that characterized Paul Wellstone's life snuck into his funeral, which then itself became an "issue" that poisoned the last four days of Walter Mondale's nine-day return to electoral politics.

The Wellstone funeral was one of those completely contrived issues that show just how cynically brilliant the Republicans can be. I assume they could foresee -- as who could not -- that there would be some anti-Bush enthusiasm at Wellstone's funeral, and that they had the press release denouncing it ready to go that afternoon. Dean's speech, on the other hand, is actually just a trivial thing -- a tired man attempting to rouse a frustrated crowd, or vice versa -- but he has the misfortune that it will create a strong first impression among many voters, and it reinforces what they've been told about him. It's really just bizarre that one little thing could have such an impact.

Ironically, for a week or two before the Iowa caucuses, when it still seemed likely that Dean would be the nominee, I'd been thinking about Wellstone, and wishing that Dean had a little more Wellstone in him. Wellstone was an unbelievable speaker for political rallies, often treating the Senate floor as if it were one. I remember once seeing him speak about campaign finance reform in a cheap hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina, in a meeting room with about 50 people and at most an eight-foot ceiling. I told someone at the time that it reminded me of a contest in the early days of MTV, where the prize was "Motley Crue will play a concert in YOUR living room!" He never modulated the volume, but he almost always got the tone just right.

It was a tone of passionate outrage, but combined with a real sense of the possibilities of change, and a sense that those possibilities were embodied in the people he was speaking to. It was a plain-spoken Midwestern passion, rather like I imagine Hubert Humphrey's was, pre-Vietnam. Wellstone didn't have to talk about connecting to people who weren't like him; it came naturally to him. When speaking in the Senate, he always seemed to be speaking directly to the 51 or 60 or 90 Senators who didn't agree with him, as if he could persuade them, rather than performing for C-SPAN. It took a while, but eventually that heartfelt tone helped him connect to his colleagues, and form alliances like his pairing with conservative New Mexico senator Pete Domenici on behalf of coverage for mental health. And it helped that he was, by experience and temperament, a community organizer. He'd been accustomed to organizing movements that didn't center around him, and it's no accident that his field organization delivered vote turnouts for him that were 6-10 points ahead of the polls. Dean, on the other hand, was and is a fairly traditional politician who found himself in the role of organizing a movement.

I don't mean to dis Dean here, partly because I've done so enough already, but really because saying that he's no Paul Wellstone should be no insult. There was only one Wellstone. But I do think part of what happened to Dean was that he stepped into a role -- the rally speaker, the community organizer -- for which he was not all that well suited. And although Wellstone was unlikely to have run for president, one can't help but feel that the role Dean has played in the campaign was really the Wellstone role. I find it easy to imagine Wellstone on that stage with Dean on Monday, speaking before him, setting the tone, and whispering to him to cool it. I didn't agree with Wellstone on everything; I'm considerably more moderate. But I can't help wishing he were part of this.

Items worth reading on Labor and Dem establishment

As supplement to the two items I posted after the Iowa caucuses, I recommend Harold Meyerson's columun in this morning's Washington Post, "Labor's Iowa Implosion" He knows a lot more about labor movement politics than I do, and basically takes the same view but adds a hugely important point:

The irony is that the candidates who stole the show in Iowa, John Kerry and John Edwards, have surged in part by embracing, in the words of one union leader, "a populist-progressive message that labor's been promoting, and that few Democrats this side of Paul Wellstone were saying just a few years ago." On Monday night Kerry spoke of the "imbalance of power in the American workplace" and Edwards condemned the denigration of workers in George W. Bush's America. Labor's message still resonates, but its ability to pick a messenger clearly needs some work.

I should also agree with the person who in the comments noted that organized labor had done a good job of bringing voters to the polls, even if they didn't vote for Dean or Gephardt. Meyerson confirms this. That is a good sign for labor's ability to do the same thing in November, and, for a change, not exclusively for union members.

Second, in the post in which I argued that the insider/outsider distinction among Democrats was less important, I should have linked to Nicholas Confessore's great piece in the newest Washington Monthly, "The Myth of the Democratic Establishment."

Why is the President Determined to Destroy the Private Health Insurance System?

(slightly updated from last night)

I have to confess, I didn't watch all of the State of the Union address. Reading Madlenka's Dog to my daughter for the 40th time seemed like a better use of my time, and certainly easier on the ol' ticker.

So I just heard pieces here and there. But this jumped out: "tonight I propose that individuals who buy catastrophic health care coverage, as part of our new health savings accounts, be allowed to deduct 100 percent of the premiums from their taxes."

The health section of the speech was eyes-glaze-over stuff. And judging from Frank Luntz's focus group on MSNBC, voters were perfectly happy that he was talking about health costs at all. But what he actually said is hugely important.

It makes you wonder if Bush has a secret plan to bring about socialist revolution. What would you do if you wanted to create a public uprising that would demand single-payer health care? First, you would destroy the private health insurance system. And the way to do that is with exactly the policy Bush just proposed: make catastrophic insurance fully tax-deductible, and couple it with health savings accounts.

Any system of insurance depends on a balance of risk. In comprehensive health insurance, that means balancing healthy people who pay more into the system than they cost, against people who need the insurance more, and, in some years, cost more than they put in. And in the United States today, health and wealth are remarkably correlated, so you have to keep healthy, wealthy and young people in the system. That's one reason why requiring individuals to have health insurance is such a good idea, and would lower costs for everyone.

Catastrophic care insurance is a completely separate system. In exchange for a very high deductible, sometimes as high as $5,000, you pay a fraction of the premium in a comprehensive plan. In effect, you agree to pay out of pocket for all the normal, reasonable costs -- check-ups, outpatient procedures, minor emergencies -- that are the bread and butter of standard health care, but if you're hospitalized or have some major problem, insurance will kick in. As long as you're well off, healthy and relatively young, don't have and aren't planning to have small children, and don't spend much on ordinary doctor stuff, a catastrophic plan could be a very sweet deal. Health savings accounts, as passed in the Medicare bill, make it an even better deal. If I had a catastrophic plan, whatever costs I did incur under the deductible, I would pay for with pre-tax money from the account, which in a high tax bracket is the equivalent of a 35% discount. Plus, investment earnings in the account accumulate tax-free, so if I had doubled my money in the account, as long as I spent the money on health care, that would also be, in effect, free money. I could even spend it on plastic surgery. (Get that chin implant so I look more presidential.) Now this is starting to look like an irresistible deal.

And then, if on top of that, the premium on the catastrophic plan became 100% tax-deductible, the combination would be an even better deal. Now, if I'm in the 35% bracket, I'm paying that much less for my premium, plus anything I pay under the deductible is coming from tax-exempt funds. I'd have to be crazy not to go for this deal, especially because premiums for ordinary self-employed health insurance are not fully tax-deductible, and out-of-pocket costs are not tax-deductible unless you itemize and the costs exceed 4.5% of income.

If I were an employer, I'd figure out a way to start offering this deal to my higher-paid employees. It could be as simple as giving them $5,000 cash instead of health insurance. I'd get my costs under control, and they'd get a chunk of money tax-free to put straight into their health savings account and pay the premiums on the catastrophic plan.

But what if I'm not in the 35% bracket? If I'm in the 10% bracket, then both the deductibility of the premium and the health savings account are worth a lot less to me. But much, much more important: I can't deal with the risk of a catastrophic plan. If I'm making $25,000 a year, I can't handle the risk of $5,000 in health care costs. That would be a disaster. And I probably can't put that much away in a health savings account. The catastrophic plan combined with a health savings account simply isn't an option for poor and middle-class people, even if healthy.

Health savings accounts, combined with deductible premiums, are really just a giant bribe to better-off people to OPT OUT of the comprehensive health insurance system. What the administration is doing, first with health savings accounts, which are now the law, and then with this proposal, is to confer enormous tax advantages on a type of insurance that is already advantageous, but only for the relatively wealthy. But the consequence of it would be that, as young and healthy people withdraw from the standard, low-deductible insurance market, premiums in that market would go through the roof, insurers would desperately try to find ways to deny coverage to higher-risk people, and the whole delicate balance would surely collapse.

See this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last year on the risks to the insurance system from HSAs alone. The report cites other studies showing that the HSAs as passed in the Medicare bill could pull so many healthy people over to catastrophic that it would cause premiums for those left behind to double. And that's before adding the benefit of full tax deductibility.

Do Bush's advisors understand any of this? Are they just so profoundly opposed to any kind of communal pooling of risk, even outside of government, that they don't care? Is it just another way to funnel wealth to the rich, and to the politically connected insurance company that first offered HSAs, Golden Rule? Are they entirely indifferent to consequences that will occur a few years down the road? I suppose the answer is, All of the above, but the cause doesn't really matter. This is just something that must be stopped, now. I'm guessing that if I'd listened to more of the speech, I might find even more things like this.

Dean: The Outsider as Insider? No

The emerging conventional wisdom about Dean's fade seems to be that, as he began to collect big-name endorsements, he lost the appeal that drove his campaign in the first place, which was his outsider status.

Terry Neal made this point in the Washington Post this morning:

Dean was running a somewhat contradictory campaign, one based partly on inevitability and partly on insurgency. At campaign events, Dean spoke passionately about being an outsider, while being introduced by Hollywood millionaires like Martin Sheen and Rob Reiner, and by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a consummate Washington insider. To some extent, tonight's loss could be good news for Dean because it may make him reassess how he's run his campaign. It allows him to play the underdog role again, which is where he seems to be at his strongest.

Josh Marshall and Taegen Goddard of the Political Wire made similar points last night. Political Wire says "the 'outsider' campaign had trouble assimilating insiders."

I'm just going with my instincts here, and will defer to anyone who spent a lot of time talking to Iowa voters or dissecting the exit polls to reach this conclusion, but I don't buy it. I think that the basic trajectory of the Dean campaign, which was to build up some enthusiasm around his voice and his issues, and then consolidate it by picking up credible support from established (tho not necessarily "establishment") figures was very smart, and could have sent both the messages that the campaign wants to send: first, that Dean is passionate about fixing what's gone wrong in this country, and second, that he's not nutty or marginal, but is a serious, respected guy. It is impressive that these were endorsements that he earned, through hard work and an impressive campaign, not the normal pro forma endorsements such as some Kerry's very early backing.

The problem with the theory is that the whole insider/outsider distinction as it applies within the Democratic party is kind of contrived, and is almost certainly the farthest thing from the minds of most voters. Right now, we're all outsiders to the power structure of the United States. What makes Tom Harkin a "consumate insider" right now? He's as powerless as me. (Not really, but hey, my endorsement doesn't matter either.) What makes Martin Sheen an insider, besides the fact that he plays one, sort of, on TV? Are Bradley and Gore insiders? If so, isn't the six-term moderate governor of Vermont, former vice-chair of the National Governors Association and cautious supporter of welfare reform, equally an insider? And why does it matter?

I think one of Dean's mistakes -- though not his biggest -- was in trying to draw some insider/outsider distinction within the Democratic Party itself, exemplified by his attack on Clinton. I sort of understand the two camps within the Democratic Party, although I've lost interest in it, but that's because I've spent a lot of my life thinking about it, and sometimes even get paid to think about it. But the average voter -- by which I mean simply the voter who's got a life, and doesn't really have time to focus on who he or she is going to vote for until a week or two before the event -- doesn't think about this distinction at all, ever, and doesn't want to have to choose sides.

Again, this is pure speculation, but I think the only thing that happened to Dean was that the intense, almost obsessive nature of his campaign was kind of a turnoff to those later voters. Thirty-five hundred identically dressed kids from places like Evergreen State College filled with messianic certainty can be cool, or it can be a nightmare in a state like Iowa. The thing that always turned me off about the Dean campaign was its self-absorbtion, the idea that the campaign itself somehow transcended ordinary politics. Joe Trippi often says that Dean is unique in that he doesn't talk about himself, doesn't say, "vote for me, and I'll do the following..." Instead, he talks about the people. It's People-Powered Howard.

That's sort of true. But it kind of reminds me of Senator Dale Bumpers, in his great defense of Bill Clinton in the impeachment trial, when he said, "When they tell you it's not about sex, it's about sex." When they tell you it's not about Me, but about The People, it's usually about Me. By talking about his campaign as if he were merely the corporeal representative of some mystical communal force, Dean neglected to do the more basic work of politics, which is to talk about himself, what kind of president he would be, and what he would do. It's been about process. It's been about talking about reaching voters instead of just speaking to them.

In noting that late-deciding voters overwhelmingly went to Kerry and Edwards, most analysts have assumed that this meant that Dean had a bad last few weeks, suggesting that perhaps those late endorsements such as Harkin's hurt him. I don't think that's the case at all. Dean could have had a terrific last few weeks, and still failed to get the late-deciders. That's because late-deciders are fundamentally different people than people who decided early on. They are less deeply engaged with politics, they dislike Bush but can probably go days without thinking about him (wish I could do that), and they want to participate just as citizens, picking a candidate that appeals to them, voting, and going home. The Dean campaign probably seemed like too much of a big commitment -- you have to either join the orange hats or not. And Americans don't generally want to join anyone's orange-hatted Perfect Storm. (Who wears orange unless they're hunting?) Obviously, the voters that a Democrat will have to reach in November are even more like that.

If the Outsider-as-Insider analysis is right, then Dean's task isn't that hard. He just sheds the insider trappings and goes back to the outsider role, which is what I think he'll try to do. (Although I heard last night that he's taken the opposite tack in New Hampshire, running an ad that portrays him as the moderate governor of a neighboring state.) If I'm right, I'm not sure what his best move is.

But I've learned over the years to beware candidates that seem to Transcend the Rules of Politics. Just as in the economy, the normal rules have a way of roaring back, and transcendent politics will break your heart.

The Angriest Man in America

Quiz: Who's probably the most pissed-off guy in America tonight, looking at the Iowa caucus results? No, it's not Howard Dean or Joe Trippi. ("Angry? Moi?") Or Dick Gephardt or his campaign staff. Not that they're not mad, and sad.

The person who I suspect is steaming, raving, "who-got-me-into-this-f--'ing-mess" mad is...

Gerald McEntee of AFSCME. If you recall, back in November, McEntee joined SEIU's Andy Stern to provide the one-two punch of union endorsements to Dean, with the press noting that "AFSCME is the largest union in Iowa, SEIU the largest in New Hampshire." The two unions compete for public-sector members, and their leaders are fierce personal rivals also at odds over the direction of the labor movement. That they would team up to endorse Dean was, far more than Bradley, Gore or Tom Harkin, the signal that Dean had really accomplished something. It was certainly the moment when I started thinking about How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Howard Dean.

Yet McEntee was about as reluctant and cynical a Dean endorser as could be. From everything I know (mostly public info), all he wanted was a winner. He didn't think labor owed Gephardt an automatic endorsement unless Gephardt could show that he was likely to win the nomination and the election. First he wanted to endorse John Kerry. Then he wanted to endorse Wesley Clark. But at the end of the day, between pressure from his members, the fact that he couldn't really make the case for electability of any of the others, some mistakes by Clark in asking for the endorsement, Dean's persistence in asking, and the tactical value of the two largest unions representing public employees and health care workers endorsing together rather than splitting, he had nowhere to go but Dean.

The logic was fairly transparent. It was, "OK, it looks like Dean is the guy, and if he's the guy, we get behind him and hope for the best."

Every year, the labor movement tries to play its endorsements to the greatest advantage. It's the only sure hand labor has left in national politics. They understand that the greatest political clout would come from being united, and then, at the most critical time, endorsing a candidate who is good on all their issues, but above all can win the nomination and the election. A friend in the White House. And do it in a way that specifically can showcase the strength of labor in some key states, on behalf of that nominee. There are some differences of opinion about the relative weight to put on ideological compatibility vs. electability -- which is the essence of the difference between SEIU/Stern and AFSCME/McEntee -- but they all basically want to get as much bang out of their endorsement as possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Iowa was a huge setback for the way these two unions played their hand. Kerry won despite labor, not because of it, and the labor-backed candidates put together got fewer votes than Edwards. I have to confess, that's the biggest surprise to me. What I thought I learned about Iowa in 2000 was that it's not a farm state; it's a labor state. (Among Democrats, anyway.) And that people don't just show up at caucuses and vote for who they like; they are delivered to caucuses by an organized group, and labor has the greatest capacity of all organized groups. But when the two labor-backed candidates get only 28% combined, less than Edwards, that's a huge setback -- even if Dean can come back and win the nomination. It glaringly shows labor's weakness, even within the Democratic Party -- or, the failure of organized labor to be organized, since even union members went for Kerry.

The real cause of this, though, is probably the level of interest and enthusiasm in Iowa, which made the caucuses seem a little more like a primary. Had turnout been the same as in 2000, the share of the vote that was brought to the caucuses by organized labor would have been good for a lot more than 28%.

McEntee's got to be going crazy that he didn't go with his first instinct (Kerry) or his second instinct (Clark). Even if he'd endorsed Gephardt, it would have been fine -- Gephardt's the labor candidate, but once he's out, labor is free to endorse again, and pick a winner from the rest. One has to wonder whether AFSCME will put its full energy behind Dean in states like New York.

Other than that thought, I don't have a lot of insight into the Iowa results. As I said in my last post, I'm gratified that Edwards at least has a chance to be heard, and while I'm never going to be a gleeful Kerry supporter, hey, if he can get it together and fight back to win the nomination, then he'll be as good a candidate as anyone.

I'm very excited about all this. Glad to see that the State of the Union will be overshadowed by two sort-of-new faces on the Democratic side. And very glad that it feels like we're kind of back to normal rules. Whoever wins will be tested and proven. I'm not worried about negative attacks. Whoever is nominated will face the fiercest barrage in the fall, and I want to see someone who can handle it, not jump off message or start whining, but stand, fight, and make the case against Bush and for a different future.

New Year/New Election

Without getting caught up in all the twists and turns of the Iowa and New Hampshire tracking polls, I have to say, the last two weeks have been a perfect illustration of my point that a presidential race before New Year's Day, and the race after New Year's Day are two completely different things. And the reason that reporters and bloggers and campaign staffs can miss that is simply that they've all been paying close attention for at least a year now, and so they forget that most people haven't The vast majority of people who are going to vote in the primaries and caucuses, not to mention the general election, are only just now beginning to pay attention.

It's amazing how sure political pundits seem of their predictions, and then how much they think it's news when their predictions -- which are almost always a straight line from the present -- turn out not to be true. "Crystal Ball Gets Cloudy" is the headline on today's Times story -- but doesn't that just mean that the crystal ball was cloudy all along? That's like saying, "I used to know exactly what was going to happen in 2004, but now I don't." In fact, you never did.

I think Jeff Jarvis's analysis, which is basically that the voters coming into the game now are not as motivated by hatred of Bush, but want a more substantive message, is basically right. (Which is not to say they don't hate Bush or that the Democrat should hold back on criticizing Bush -- it's just that their feelings about Bush are not strong enough by themselves to motivate them out of their La-z-boys the year before the election.)

I think there's a little more to Dean's apparent decline than just that. Dean set himself a huge challenge, which I don't think he and Joe Trippi really understood. Having a candidacy based on intense enthusiasm requires keeping that enthusiasm going, against all other temptations and distractions, for a long time, from last summer through at least January 27. That was always going to be hard to do, and as enthusiasm wanes, the little tactics like "bringing out the bat" lose their effectiveness. This was a bubble, in the classic sense. It was like one of those NASDAQ companies in the late 1990s whose stock price was driven by its stock price. . As long as you could keep it going, and bring in new buyers for the stock, it works, but the minute the new buyers fall away, it evaporates very quickly. It's not just that Dean was subject to a lot of attacks, but that he actually didn't have enough substance -- both policy and larger vision of the country's future -- to his candidacy. He was a pre-New Year's candidate. And yet, he had an enormous impact on the race, and on how Democrats think about the importance of firing up the base as well as marginal voters, which will be mostly for the good. (Yes, I'm using the past tense advisedly. I don't think Dean will be the nominee.)

The most salutary thing about the recent polls is the rise, at last, of John Edwards. It was always a mystery why Edwards didn't seem to be catching on. He's an appealing person, good biography, he speaks English, his economic policy and his way of talking about taxes has been the smartest and most creative in the race, and he has certainly stood up to Bush. Edwards is well-organized. For example, in New York, only he and Dean have pulled off the difficult task of fielding full delegate slates in all jurisdictions, which is probably also a tribute to his state co-chair, Bill DeBlasio, who happens to be my city councilman but also ran Senator Clinton's campaign in 2000. And if he can generate the enthusiasm to be the nominee, there's no doubt he could pick off a few key states, especially Florida, from Bush. I supported Edwards early, but got sucked into the early prediction game that he was going nowhere and moved to Clark.

What I particularly admire now about Edwards is how he didn't flinch in the face of the Dean bubble and his own struggle. He just kept at it, and stuck to his message, which is really about economic opportunity for those left behind, while Kerry became obsessed with attacking Dean, and other candidates tried to emulate him. I still think Clark's clarity of vision, on both economic and foreign policy, is enormously powerful. But the recent dust-up over his plainly ambivalent position on the Iraq war, while almost totally contrived by the White House, nonetheless makes me wish that Clark had also not flinched. Trying to establish himself as just as firmly anti-war as Dean -- when in fact, his perfectly reasonable position was not as unsubtle as Dean's -- he got himself a little twisted up, and not just on the first day. As Josh Marshall has written, "the slices of the electorate that will decide this election will, I think, share [Clark's} ambivalence" about the war. I agree, and I certainly share it.

Clark's run a superb campaign, especially for having never done anything like it before. But it has been a little spooked by Dean and by the preposterous idea among lefties that he's "really a Republican," or, to recycle a quote I've used before, "another Arianna," which has led him to say things he doesn't quite mean about Iraq or about abortion rights. I don't think it's really hurt him yet, especially if he can consolidate his gains in New Hampshire and do as well with independents as I expect. Like Edwards, he'll make a great general election candidate and a fine president.

Kerry's reemergence I don't really get at all. I don't think he has a message, he's never seemed to have any driving passion, and I think he's showed sides of his character -- such as gratuitously insulting fired former staffers who had been devoting 18-hour days to his ambition -- that are enormously unappealing. But others obviously see him in other ways.

I think we're heading into a period where it will become apparent that there are a number of strong and appealing Democratic candidates in the race -- it's a far stronger field than in 1988 or even 1992 -- and their competition will, up to a point, be to the benefit of the eventual nominee.

Evil Senators Are Nothing New

Brad DeLong makes several very good points in response to my post about Senator Rick Santorum. Of course he is right that it is silly to treat Santorum's vileness as some sort of aberration in an institution that brought us Joe McCarthy. And there is never a shortage in the Senate of members whose political trade is in hate (e.g., all the signers of the "Southern Manifesto" of 1956), as well as a few at any given time whose moral sense or critical judgment are, shall we say, underdeveloped.

Further, the respect and decorum of the Senate can sometimes hold people back from saying things that need to be said. For example, in the confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft to be Attorney General, even while 43 Senators did the unimaginable thing and opposed him, even his opponents, in commenting on Ashcroft's blocking Ronnie White's nomination to be a judge, were careful to say, "Ashcroft's not a racist," while in fact, I'm pretty sure that a good many of them had ample reason to believe that Ashcroft was and is very much a racist.

Still, Joe McCarthy was not in the leadership of the Senate, and what paralyzed his colleagues from acting against him was their fear that he had some connection to the American people, and they couldn't stand up to him until someone else had, in this case Army counsel Joseph Welch. Santorum, on the other hand, has been chosen by his party and shapes the culture of the Senate itself.

I also agree with DeLong that the big change is in the alignment of ideological interests with party. Liberals who whine about Zell Miller fail to recognize that he's now basically the one and only Southern Democrat who might as well be a Republican. Even a couple decades ago, there were many more: Richard Shelby was a Democrat until 1994, for example. That did make for much more complicated cross-party alliances, such as the "Conservative Coalition" of Southern Dems and Northern and Western Republicans that could generally control Congress through the 1970s.

But it was a heady experience in the mid-90s to sit in the staff seats behind the dais of the Senate Finance Committee, and watch Senators Moynihan, Chafee, Pryor, Danforth, Bradley, Durenberger, Rockefeller, and others work together, sometimes with fierce disagreements, and in ever-shifting coalitions, but always with enormous respect for one another's views. I don't think sitting behind Max Baucus, Chuck Grassley and Don Nickles today is quite the same experience, even where they sometimes agree. And I think Santorum's attitude is both cause and symptom of that changed culture.

The Decline of the Senate

I worked in the U.S. Senate from 1990 to 1997 -- not long ago. But sometimes I feel like I might as well be a hundred years old, talking about some forgotten Golden Age -- "back in my day" -- and muttering about the greatness of Senator Douglas or Dirksen or Mansfield.

This interview from the Manchester Union-Leader of Senator Rick Santorum is one of those things that made me feel my experience in government is hopelessly out of date. Speaking of Senator John Edwards, Santorum said

"The basic perception in the Republican caucus was that this guy is just an empty suit, that he just simply doesn't understand," Santorum continued. "My feeling is that he's a nice guy, he makes a very nice appearance, but I don't think he has the understanding, and the depth of understanding, of how government works and how these kinds of things affects the everyday person. I think the people in New Hampshire will probably figure that one out."

Now, back in my day (six years ago), the idea that a U.S. Senator would give an interview in which he called another elected member of the Senate an "empty suit," and accuse him of not being smart enough to understand how government works -- well, it just wouldn't happen. (But then, this is the same Senator who six months ago compared same-sex relationships to "man-dog," and seemed obsessed with the latter.) Senators are not even permitted to refer to each other by name on the Senate floor, to discourage personal attacks. There's no need for all the vacuous, over-the-top pseudo-bipartisan flattery -- "My dear friend, the Senator from North Carolina," when referring to Jesse Helms, and so forth -- but the Senate depends on a basic level of cordiality and respect to the others who've also been elected by the people of their state. Everyone in that body knows that no party or temporary majority can rule the Senate single-handedly, and the colleague you disagree with fiercely today might be the one you need to form an alliance with tomorrow. Or they should know that.

The Senate can be a great institution. It's not without its flaws, and of course, its very makeup is undemocratic. But the fact that any member can introduce any amendment at almost any time, or speak on any subject as long as he can hold the floor, makes it one of the most open, loose and non-hierarchical legislative bodies in the world. Ideas that the President and majority party don't want to entertain, like raising the minimum wage, can be introduced by a single Senator, who can force a vote. But that openness depends on the respect and decorum, even if it's sometimes phony, that the institution had developed over two centuries. And which has been lost in a few years.

Santorum is the third-ranking member of the Republican leadership of the Senate. Just as he says here that he is representing the views of "the Republican caucus," he speaks for his party. And as long as his party keeps him in its leadership, it bears responsibility for what's been done to the institutions of our democracy.

How Many Independents Vote in New Hampshire?

I've been in San Francisco (nice city) for two days, and never found a moment to post anything. But I've had a few small questions and observations bubbling up.

A couple times I've mentioned the role of independents in the New Hampshire primary, and how they could actually be causing Clark's support to be underestimated in the tracking polls. But I was curious: just how many independents could one expect to vote in this primary? Here's what I figured out from the 2000 results, and the exit polls.

In 2000, 147,000 votes were cast in the Democratic primary. According to exit polls, 65% of those voters said they were registered Democrats. So assume about 51,000 were not registered in a party. They voted about 60-40 for Bradley over Gore.

In the Republican primary, 230,000 votes were cast. The exit polls found 63% were Republicans, so figure about 85,000 votes in that primary were cast by independents, who voted 3:1 for McCain.

There is no Republican primary this year. So, potentially, all 135,000 independents who voted in the two primaries four years ago might vote in the Democratic primary, which would be a fairly overwhelming force. That's unlikely to happen. But let's say a candidate such as Clark were to tap the energy that motivated independents to vote for McCain. Even if just 40,000 of the independents who previously voted in the GOP primary -- less than half -- and another half of the independents who had voted in the Democratic primary in the past came in again and voted for Clark, that's 65,000 votes even before he gets a single vote from a Democrat. Adding the 40,000 ex-McCain independents to the Democratic total, that would be good for 34% right there.

So why does anyone think attacking Clark as "not a real Democrat" is a good idea, at least in New Hampshire? It's exactly what these independents, who want less partisanship, want to hear.

Cheese Factory on the Moon

I don't know anything about space exploration or NASA, so I'm dependent on people like Gregg Easterbrook, who do. But my first question about Bush's proposal for a moon base was, what would it do? And Easterbrook answers that question: "NASA has not so much as sent a robot probe to the Moon in 30 years, because as far as space-exploration advocates can tell, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, of value to do on the Moon."

But then I remembered an old riff of former Senator Phil Gramm, by which he would justify his efforts to grab billions in pork-barrel spending for his state, while nonetheless claiming to oppose wasteful government spending.

if the Senate voted this afternoon on building a cheese factory on the Moon, I would no doubt vote against it. But if the Senate decided, in its collective lack of wisdom, to build a cheese factory on the Moon, I would want engineers from Texas to design that cheese factory. I would want a construction company from Texas, since we have the best construction companies in the world, to build that cheese factory. If we were going to use milk from earthly cows, I would want milk from Texas cows to be used to make the cheese in the factory on the Moon, and I would want the celestial headquarters for it in Texas. But am I for a cheese factory on the Moon? No.

So perhaps that's what's going on here. And with Gramm gone, there might not even be any Republicans who'll still vote against it. Maybe Bush will take care of two urgent national priorities at once: start making that Brie and Camembert on the moon, and we can really stick it to the French!