Lobbying Boondoggle

Yesterday the Senate passed an essentially toothless lobbying "reform" bill. If you doubt that it's a fraud, listen to this from Sen. Rick Sanctimonious, quoted in The New York Times: "Congress stepped up in a big way. This is a much tougher bill than anyone would have anticipated when we started this process." Well, maybe it's tougher than anyone with truly boundless cynicism would have expected. Let's face it, when you get Sen. Sanctimonious' enthusiastic support for political reform, you know it's a fake.

So who were the eight senators with the backbone to stand up against this boondoggle? An interesting group. You might have expected John McCain and Russell Feingold, who have consistently understood that it helps if the voters can have some faith that the public's business is actually being done. Barack Obama--whom some have accused of being too low-key since his breakthrough at the Democratic Convention in 2004--was out front on this issue. The only other Democrat to vote no was....surprise....John Kerry, of my home state of Massachusetts. Where was Ted Kennedy? one might ask. Where, indeed: voting for the measure. The other Republicans who voted "no" hailed from two states that have long been bastions of political probity, Oklahoma and South Carolina. That's right, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn (who really are to the right of Attila the Hun) of the Sooner State, along with Lindsay Graham (who's shown some spine from time to time) and James DeMint of South Carolina. Sen. Coburn may have voted as he did on practical grounds: according to The Times, he said that officeholders will suffer at the polls if they don't cut back on lobbyists' influence. Let's hope he's right. (And there's nothing wrong with practical politics, especially when it reaches the right result.)