Evan Bayh (Senator-Indiana) Will Not Seek Reelection

GladiatoRowdy · Feb 16, 2010

A_3PO said:

IMO, one way to dimish the cycle of influence is to have public financing. That will never happen for a lot of reasons. If the idea ever got legs, interest groups would explode and scorch the Earth to stop it because it would be a real threat to their control of the parties.
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This I would support over term limits, but it would take a constitutional amendment to do it the way I would want.

SamFisher · Feb 17, 2010

Good excerpt from an essay on fivethirtyeight.com on this:

Which brings me to my point: From a representation and government accountability standpoint, party government—and yes, even very ideological party government—has its value. Whether you think rule under George W. Bush and the Republican Congress last decade was the best or worst thing to happen to America, at least you know who was responsible for it. And whether you like the direction Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are taking the country now, again, you know who is in charge. Elections, as the sagacious Dick Cheney reminded us, have consequences.

Or they should have. But Bayh and people like him think elections don’t have consequences because, well, he’s in Washington. And Sen. Bayh's sensibilities trump policy progress. Not to dismiss entirely the Scott Brown victory, but the Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 cycles combined flipped the White House by about 10 popular-vote percentage points, picked up 16 net Senate seats (16 percent of that chamber), and 61 House seats (14 percent). Yet policy is not supposed to respond at all to these shifts, but instead hew closely to whatever happens to catch the fancy of senators like Bayh, Lieberman, McCain or Specter as they ride in the town car to the Meet The Press studios any given Sunday morning? This makes no sense.

Here’s the role that moderates should play in American politics:

1. They should lay down markers now and again, and occasionally be a holdout when the policy process is insufficiently transparent or the national deliberation insufficiently substantive. Majority-party moderates needn't rubberstamp every item of their majority’s agenda, nor should minority-party moderates be co-opted tools. However, they shouldn’t expect their ideal policy preference to be the outcome produced by the majority party caucus for which they serve as either an in-party outlier or an out-party critic. This is policy hostage-taking, and it is more dangerous and corrosive to democracy than the ideological, one-party rule moderates so often carp about.

2. Then, after they have negotiated for some concessions or refinements, and precisely because those concessions and refinements were made to accommodate their rhetorical or literal opposition, their role at that point is to wholeheartedly back the compromise. They are fully entitled to clarify their vote for the constituents, saying something like, “Look, this is not the legislation that a chamber full of people like me would produce, but this is a good and good-faith effort by the majority party to solve this national problem.” But what they shouldn’t be allowed to do is hold the process hostage and extract certain policy concessions and still complain about both the process and the outcome. It would be more intellectually honest to just vote against the legislation and criticize it--or even vote for it and criticize it.

As for Bayh’s particular strain of moderation, his is even more distressing because the guy's hardly a legislative titan. On the workhorse-showhorse continuum, he’s far closer to the latter than the former end of the horse, so to speak. Say what you want about somebody like McCain, but at least his name is on some major pieces of legislation that took years and tons of political capital to force through Congress. What are Bayh’s legislative achievements after nearly two terms in the Senate? Please tell me. And if the holes in Bayh's legislative resume can be partially explained by the fact that he spent most of his Senate career in the minority, then heck: Now’s your chance, Senator. You finally became part of the majority without the White House in 2006, and then became part of an even larger chamber majority plus the Oval Office in 2008. Now’s the moment to make your mark, to leave an impression beyond that of a white flag-waving politician whining that the Senate has become a politically inhospital environment for a senator’s son.
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SamFisher · Jun 7, 2011

glynch said: ↑

Yeah, his final act as a reputed Democrat. He sticks it to the Dems. I predict big bucks in lobbying for corporate causes for Bayh.
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Nice call, via gawker:

At this time," as he said in his powerful resignation speech, "I simply believe I can best contribute to society in another way: creating jobs by helping grow a business, helping guide an institution of higher learning, or helping run a worthy charitable endeavor."

***

He is a partner at the corporate lobbying firm McGuire Woods LLP.

He is a Senior Advisor to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

He is the token punching-bag Democrat for Fox News.

And now, he has been hired by the omnipotent Chamber of Commerce, where, along with former George W. Bush chief of staff Andy Card, he will be "part of the Chamber's anti-regulation messaging team, doing 'speeches, events, and media appearances at local venues.'"
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Quite the humanitarian!

thadeus · Jun 7, 2011

What a piece of ****.

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Evan Bayh (Senator-Indiana) Will Not Seek Reelection

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