Mario Piperni dot Com

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There will be many words spoken in both praise and criticism of Robert Byrd.  His early days in the KKK, his skill as an orator and his fifty plus years as a U.S. senator will all be mentioned.  From all that I’ve read this morning on this man’s life and career, this is the part that struck me.

A lifelong autodidact and a firm believer in continuing education — vocational schools, community colleges, adult education — Mr. Byrd practiced what he preached. While in the U.S. House from 1953 to 1959, he took night classes at law schools. He received a law degree from American University in 1963 and is the only member of Congress to put himself through law school while in office.

As one who returned to university while married with three young children, I can appreciate the amount of effort involved in accomplishing that task.  Good for him.

As for his KKK stint and his initial opposition to the Civil Rights Act, I can understand that Southern upbringing and tradition had much to do with his views on segregation.  Yet, it’s one that taints his record no matter how repentant he might have been in his later years.

UPDATE:

Newsy.com put together a brief video on the senator’s career.

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So how is chicken-bartering Sue Lowden doing in her Nevada Senate bid?  Not good.

Pre chicken:  45% of the vote in the GOP primary.

Post chicken:  26% of the vote.

Ouch.  For Lowden’s sake, we can only hope she didn’t count her chickens before they hatched.

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Blogger Michael Chase looks at the new Senate dynamics in the event of a Charlie Crist victory.

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Charlie Crist (I) Florida. This very interesting notion may become a reality. A lock to replace Mel Martinez in the Senate just last fall, the rise of Marco Rubio has left the Governor of Florida in a tight spot. He can stay in the Republican primary and lose, ending his political career. He can turn the race into a three-way affair by running as an independent and lose, ending his political career. Or, he can drop out of the race and preserve his Republican credentials by throwing his support behind Rubio.

Oh how are the mighty fallen….of course Crist could win as an independent, and wouldn’t that be intriguing? The Republican Party, at every level, has made it clear that a Crist bid as an independent would make him a non-starter with the Party in the future. But the old saying, politics makes for strange bedfellows, needs to be clearly understood in this case. If Charlie Crist were to run and win as an independent, and do it with the full weight of Grover Norquist, Freedom Works, and the Republican National Committee against him, he would step into the Senate as an instant heavyweight.

This is the Republican Party’s great fear. His election might be worse for their party than Kendrick Meeks’ (the Dem’s longshot). Charlie Crist is an old-fashioned moderate Republican. He believes less in social services and more in supply side economics. But Crist the moderate is not anathema to the Democratic agenda; he would be willing to work with that party because he understands that in doing so, he can impart legislation with a conservative sensibility. Environmental legislation that found its first Oval Office supporter in the person of Richard Nixon would see an active legislative participant in Crist. That of course, is just the tip of the quickly melting iceberg.

The G.O.P. fear of Crist in the Senate is well-founded. As an independent Republican elected despite the resistance of the Party, he would be immune to the Party whip and free to open the door to other Republicans more interested in legislating from their point of view than obstructing the Democratic agenda. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and, most recently, Scott Brown (of all people) appear to be amenable to reason across a number of issues. They recognize that participation across party lines leads to legislation driven less by ideology and more by purpose.

Senator Charlie Crist, were he to step in with a small block of rational conservatives, would water down the influence of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson (something this country desperately needs), in a way that the election of Kendrick Meeks never could. More than just a vote, Crist could become a leader and a lever, working towards centrist legislation.

Of course, a Meeks election might only happen in a Democrat wave election, which is possible (however unlikely). In that case, Meeks would be one of 62 Democrats in the Senate, and Scott Brown and the Maine twins would lose all of their luster. Both of these scenarios pivot on the effects of a radicalized G.O.P forced to turn right. Like many races around the country this fall, the presence of a Tea Party darling in Florida gives cause for hope to progressives of all stripes.

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Michael Chase publishes The Rational Middle

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.This piece by Matt Yglesias needs to be read in its entirety.

Here’s some abject nonsense from Judd Gregg as he tries to foster the misperception that the de facto supermajority created by routine filibustering is part of the Framer’s vision of the constitution:

Why did they choose that bill called reconciliation to do this? Or why will they? Because under the Senate rules, anything that comes across the floor of the Senate requires 60 votes to pass. It’s called the filibuster. That’s the way the Senate was structured. The Senate was structured to be the place where bills which rushed through the House because they have a lot of rules that limit debate and allow people to pass bills quickly, but they don’t have any rule in the House called the filibuster which allows people to slow things down.

The Founding Fathers realized when they structured this they wanted checks and balances. They didn’t want things rushed through. They saw the parliamentary system. They knew it didn’t work. So they set up the place, as George Washington described it, where you take the hot coffee out of the cup and you pour it into the saucer and you let it cool a little bit and you let people look at it and make sure it’s done correctly. That’s why we have the 60-vote situation over here in the Senate to require that things get full consideration.

It’s true that the Founding Fathers wanted checks and balances, but this is why we have bicameralism and presidential veto power. Those are the checks. The filibuster rule is not in the constitution. But since the Founding Fathers did specify supermajorities to override a Presidential veto and to ratify a treaty, presumably there would have written a supermajority rule into the ordinary legislative process if that’s what they’d wanted to do. I don’t think “the Founders wanted it this way” should carry a ton of weight in our arguments, but it’s very clear that the Founders didn’t intend the Senate to vote by supermajority; if they’d wanted that, they would have written the constitution that way.

Meanwhile, just to point out that Gregg is an idiot, where on earth has he gotten the idea that the Founding Fathers “saw the parliamentary system” and “knew it didn’t work?” There were no countries operating on a modern parliamentary system when the constitution was written. And why doesn’t it work? It seems to work in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, etc.

Arguably what history has shown is that the “strong president” system used in the United States doesn’t work. It’s worked out okay for us (despite that Civil War business) so far, but the vast majority of enduring stable democracies go parliamentary or semi-presidential systems.

Pure presidential systems … tend to be associated with periodic collapse into dictatorship. Considerable disagreement exists, however, as to whether this is a causal relationship or not. Certainly I think it’s noteworthy that US occupation forces in postwar Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan left parliamentary systems behind and that we urged parliamentary systems on postwar Iraq and Afghanistan (though in Afghanistan Pashto elites ultimately forced a presidential system). In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised.

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