Harry Reid's Unhappy New Year
By: Chris Stirewalt
Political Editor
January 1, 2009
Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush said that those upset about Rod Blagojevich¹s
audacious U.S. Senate appointment “need to take a chill pill.”
The biggest dose of Rush¹s prescription should be reserved for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is now facing the possibility of ordering his Sergeant-at-Arms to bar a
71-year-old black man from the Senate floor, as the white folks inside talk about the “taint” of his appointment.
Reid knows that scene would be followed by Rep. Shelia Jackson Lee, D-TX, and the most aggressive members of the Congressional Black Caucus denouncing him as the
new Orval Faubus.
That¹s a thought that would quite rightly terrify a man worried about his hold on leadership and his own re-election next year.
After all, the recipient of Governor Blago¹s Hail Mary appointment, Roland Burris, is a practitioner of the same politics of victimology and entitlement favored by Lee and so many others in the caucus.
As Burris himself explained, his Illinois state contracts are not minority set-asides. He actually certifies the minority status of set aside contractors to the state. That’s like having a doctorate in the politics of race.
Reid hails from Nevada, where black politics take a far back seat to the public policy interests of the quarter of the population that is Hispanic. He is not ready to play racial grievance games with the gang from Chicago. Jesse Jackson¹s hometown takes a back seat to nobody in the grievance profession.
Reid may hope to get some help in making the Senate “look more like America”
with the appointments to the seats vacated by those departing for Barack Obama¹s administration.
Joe Biden’s seat is being kept warm for his son by the noticeably white Biden family retainer, Ted Kaufman, but the places held by Hillary Clinton from New York and Ken Salazar from Colorado could give Reid a little breathing room.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, though, will likely need to appoint another Hispanic to keep senators Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., company, but perhaps New York Gov. David Patterson will oblige.
Patterson could get out of the, you know, debacle with, you know, Caroline Kennedy by tapping a fellow black politician for the Senate. There are three black members of Congress from New York other than House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel and a bevy of other African-Americans from Gotham who might pass muster, at
least as an interim senator.
Patterson, who is proving to be quite a cool character, has already said that he will wait until after Hillary Clinton is confirmed as secretary of state to name her replacement. A prudent move while waiting for Kennedy¹s candidacy to peter out, but it doesn’t help Reid much.
Reid has promised to get Clinton confirmed fast, but Republicans on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and elsewhere have indicated they need time to work through the former first lady¹s voluminous paper trail.
Clinton will likely be confirmed only shortly before Obama takes the oath of office on January 20, more than two weeks after the Senate has come back into session.
Unless Patterson is moved to break his vow, which would no doubt anger Kennedy’s considerable supporters, that means Reid will have to keep Burris, Jackson Lee, et al. at bay for quite a while.
Obama, who was the only black member of the Senate, has probably done all he can to back up Reid. Additional involvement in the legislative branch would not only be unseemly for a president, but Obama needs to stay as far away from this scandal as possible.
Hopes for a speedy resolution in Illinois also seem to be dimming, since Blago is fighting back, an impeachment is shaping up as a two-month ordeal, and Springfield¹s equivalent of the Congressional Black Caucus is swinging into action.
The state¹s lieutenant governor can¹t say who he would hypothetically appoint if he can knock the governor out of power. So as it stands, it¹s a well-liked, older black guy versus the presumptively white unknown.
If Blago decides to stick it to Obama and everybody else by actually sending Burris to Washington, he can make the first few weeks of the year a brutal bout for the former Boys’ Club boxer, Reid.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at cstirewalt@dcexaminer.com
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