Dodd Prepares to Depart in Triumph
WASHINGTON — As Senator Christopher J. Dodd completed what might be the capstone of his legislative career last week by shepherding a major banking overhaul through the Senate, the guest book in his office offered a glimpse of why he is not seeking re-election. It includes these recent greetings from visitors who stopped by to pay their disrespects:
Mr. Dodd said in January that he was in the “toughest political shape” of his career and would not seek re-election.
“Good bye and good riddance to you,” wrote one guest on May 16. “I know it’s tough, but I expected better,” said another (April 15). “Thank you for being corrupt” (March 26).
Mr. Dodd, 65, is often described as a prototypical creature of the Senate. He looks and sounds almost like a caricature of one — with a silvery helmet of hair, stentorian voice and back-slapping manner that make it seem like he was delivered straight from kindergarten to cloakroom. This is a bad time to project such an image.
It hardly matters that most of the guest book entries were gracious, or that you could find similar invective in correspondence to any senator, or that colleagues of both parties view Mr. Dodd fondly.
“A natural, intuitive legislator,” Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire, calls him. “Easily one of the best-liked members here,” said Senator Robert F. Bennett, Republican of Utah. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said Mr. Dodd embodied “everything that is good about this place.”
Given the yin-and-yang dynamic that governs today’s political landscape, Mr. Dodd offers a basic object lesson: the more entrenched someone is in Washington, the less popular he is at home. That lesson applies to a growing number of incumbents on Capitol Hill — the latest being Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who was defeated in a Democratic primary last Tuesday. (“We came in the same day,” Mr. Dodd said with some wistfulness.)
The Senate has become a regal nesting ground of lame ducks, some by their own choosing, some by the voters’ choosing and some by both — members who faced tough re-election prospects and are leaving on their own.
Mr. Dodd joined the latter category in January when he concluded he was in “the toughest political shape” of his career and announced he would not seek re-election. Connecticut voters had apparently soured on him after a disastrous run for president in 2008, a perception that he had grown too cozy with Wall Street and a Senate ethics inquiry into whether he had received favored treatment on a home mortgage (he was cleared of any wrongdoing).
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/us/politics/25dodd.html?ref=us
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