http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=11334Here Beginneth the Lesson
What does Russ Feingold have in common with Jack Abramoff? Not much. And that’s exactly the Democrats’ problem.
By Charles P. Pierce
Web Exclusive: 03.21.06
....
See the point, though? The Republicans didn’t start ignoring Jack Abramoff until they’d ALREADY GOT THE GOODIES! They’d financed their political machines, won their elections, played their 18 holes. They didn’t start ignoring Jack Abramoff until he’d done them all the good he could do for them. That is how you ignore people. You don’t start ignoring someone until a federal prosecutor makes it easy for you to do so. Compare that to how the Democratic party has chosen to ignore Russ Feingold. A couple of weeks back, Feingold got up in the Senate and proposed that the legislature inform the president in no uncertain terms that he sort of, maybe, ought to obey the law. This gave many influential Democrats the public vapors. (Note to Evan Bayh -- IKEA called. Your spine came in.) It was hard to figure out why.
The president’s approval ratings are in the low thirties. The vice president’s approval ratings are in a Level Four biohazard facility at the CDC. The administration’s primary domestic policies are lying in the road waiting for the Department of Public Works to scrape them up with a shovel. Its primary foreign policy initiative is most popular these days in Teheran. The generic congressional polling numbers seem to favor the Democratic candidates. Now, I’m no Bob Shrum, certainly, but this seems to me a good time to roll up the Constitution and give these incumbent lads a good whack across the nose while they’re down.
Instead, the most prominent Democratic politicians -- to wit, everyone in the party who looks in the mirror and hears “Hail To The Chief,” which is most of them, God knows – have embarked on a strategy of Ignoring Russ Feingold.
“Who? Where’s he from? Wisconsin? Is that a state? Oh, where the Packers play? I know that place. Harumph. Ahem. When am I on with Imus again?”
Ladies and gents, what you do is sign on, milk it for all the advantages during the upcoming elections that the polls say you can, and THEN, afterwards, that’s when you ignore Russ Feingold, probably when he decides to run for president. As a great man once said, if I can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, and then vote against them anyway, what’s the point of being in politics? All principled politics are essentially exercises in ingratitude.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer at The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also is heard regularly on National Public Radio.
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