Goldwater, Kennedy, Church, Fulbright, Dirksen, Proxmire Vs. McCain, Kerry, Crapo, Lincoln, Durbin, Feingold

Glenn Thrush in Politico:

There is no shortage of politicians hoping to take Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but there’s no real candidate to fill Kennedy’s role as leader of the Senate liberals.

A handful of well-known and ambitious progressives in the upper chamber are eager to carry on Kennedy’s legacy — including his fellow Massachusetts native John Kerry, his best friend Chris Dodd of Connecticut, plus Tom Harkin of Iowa, Dick Durbin of lllinois and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

But none possesses the alchemical mixture of celebrity, seniority, personal charm, legislative savvy and ideological zeal that made Kennedy the most effective liberal in a generation — and one of the most accomplished legislative yeomen in Congressional history.

“There will never be anyone like him again — he truly is irreplaceable,’ said former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who worked elbow-to-elbow with Kennedy on family leave and minimum wage bills in the early 1990s.

“There is no personality that as soon as you see them you say, ‘There’s the leader of the progressives’ — Kennedy was it,” says Bill Cunningham, a former top aide to the late New York Sen. Pat Moynihan, a longtime Kennedy friend who worked closely with him on health care reform.

Bruce Reed in Slate:

The question now isn’t who in the Senate can fill Kennedy’s shoes but who will choose to follow in his footsteps. In the spirit of getting things done, Democrats would like to honor Sen. Kennedy’s memory by passing health reform. It will be a shame if Republicans are in no rush to lend a hand. Ted Kennedy was as steadfast a champion of his beliefs as the Senate has ever seen, but he always understood what too many in Washington forget: Every cause is better served when principle takes a seat at the table, and no cause moves forward when its champions walk away.

In the end, it’s not the roar that makes a lion. The sign of a courageous life is having so much to show for it.

Chris Good at The Atlantic:

It’s a question for all levels of the GOP: can the staffers, pundits, activists and regular voters “lionize,” as Reed puts it, a legislator who works with Democrats? It’s probably unfair to ask this of Republicans, exclusively: President Obama campaigned on coalition-building postpartisanship as a governing strategy, and Democrats are still working to get a handful of Republicans on board with a mutually agreeable health care bill.

But there’s an impulse among liberals to say: forget the Republicans–we’ve got 60 votes. Don’t bother to work with the other side–they didn’t work with us. And Kennedy was an institution; if the Senate has become more partisan and toxic in recent times as Reed suggests, Kennedy built his bipartisan name before that happened. So Republicans may not be able to elevate a lawmaker known for bipartisanship, but in an age of Democratic supermajority, now that Kennedy is gone, can Democrats?

Cynthia Tucker at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Over the last 24 hours, many other observers have noted Kennedy’s reputation for reaching across the aisle. Interestingly, the same used to be said about McCain.

When he ran for president, McCain’s reputation for a principled bipartisanship was intact. But since his defeat, he has bowed to the harsh nihilism that seems to be all that Republicans represent these days. They just want to defeat Obama and his policies. They don’t care about getting anything done.

If McCain really has such “personal affection” for Kennedy — or if he has a shred of concern left for his country — he ought to quit listening to the cynics of his party and start seriously negotiating on health care reform.

Teddy Kennedy earned his reputation for pragmatism when Democrats were out of power. The GOP needs the same sort of pragmatism now that they are out of power.

Even if few other Republicans follow McCain’s lead, he has little to lose with the party’s base, who never cared much for him anyhow. McCain might as well accomplish something worthwhile in his remaining years in the Senate.

Steve Benen:

The political media establishment has long adored McCain. Many wondered, after McCain’s offensive conduct on the campaign trail last year, whether that same political media establishment would welcome him back with open arms once the presidential race ended. The answer now seems obvious. McCain hasn’t done anything to earn their love, but that apparently doesn’t matter.

As for the comparison itself, Kennedy was among the most accomplished lawmakers in the history of the United States Senate. McCain has an impressive personal background, but very few accomplishments to his name. Kennedy was principled, brilliant, and knowledgeable. McCain is inconsistent, easily confused, and has no patience for details. Kennedy was widely admired and respected by those who worked with him. McCain is known for screaming at his colleagues, even Republicans, who dare to disagree with him.

We knew Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was a friend of ours. John McCain is no Ted Kennedy.

Chris Good:

Maybe McCain will become the next Kennedy…especially if he dedicates himself, as Kennedy did, to moving bills through the Senate–a diligence to go along with his ideals that’s been praised as Kennedy’s utmost value. McCain has been burned, more or less, by the fires of his party’s partisanship, possibly re-vulcanized against pressure to fight the Dems no matter what. Things got crazy in ’08, and many wondered if McCain really wanted to be courting Evangelicals and saying Obama hung out with a terrorist. If Kennedy teaches us anything, it’s that a politician can be born again into a new life of effectiveness and work…for McCain, that could mean being reborn, post-2008, as his old self.

Eli at Firedoglake:

Face it: there is no “new Ted Kennedy.”  There was only the one Ted Kennedy, and now he’s gone.  It’s Max Baucus’s Senate now, and God help us all.

Alex Massie:

Most of the time, however, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” is also the world’s worst. Now that Kennedy has died, the Senate is still further denuded of genuine talent. Who steps forward now to be the kind of Senator who can actually expect to be listened to respectfully, regardless of the matter under discussion? Who, in short, will lead the Senate?

There aren’t too many contenders. Robert Byrd is too old, too odd a figure and, anyway, more interested in Senate procedure and opening Robert C Byrd Memorial highways in West Virginia. (Also, of course, there is the unfortunate KKK membership. Long renounced, but still…) So who else now that Clinton and Obama and Kennedy have all left, stripping the Senate of much of its star quality.

Richard Lugar (R-IN) commands respect, not least for his work on proliferation. But a leader of the Senate? Only maybe. Jim Webb (D-VA) has stature, certainly and a welcome, cussed, independent streak. But he’s also only a freshman even if his bearing might suggest otherwise.

Which leaves a pair of failed Presidential candidates. John McCain’s been in Washington a long time and he’s the darling of the Sunday morning TV shows. But outside foreign policy – where his instincts invariably favour the most reckless course of action – his actual interest in politics sometimes seems lacking and not just because his signature domestic achievement (campaign finance reform) was a dreadful bill. Does McCain really want to lead or does he like the idea of leading more than the reality? Sometimes it’s hard to say and McCain tends to be at his best in defeat, not victory.

Which leaves a surprising candidate: John Kerry. Might the mantle of leadership pass from one Massachussetts Senator to another? It seems an unlikely thing to say but it’s not impossible. Kerry has a wide range of legislative interests and, like Kennedy, is much better suited, temperamentally, to the legislative than the executive branch.

Tom Schaller

Chris Dodd joked today during an impromptu press conference that Ted Kennedy had “the burden of serving with me and my father” in the Senate. There’s so much talk, rightly, about what happens now that Kennedy is gone: who can replace him, literally and spiritually; the bitter irony of him not being around to negotiate the final language for and vote upon President Obama’s health care package.

But Dodd’s quip got me to thinking about what the Senate looked like when Ted Kennedy arrived. Though Kennedy took office by special election in late 1962, his first full Congress was the 88th, seated soon thereafter in January 1963. Here’s a short list of some of the tall Senate names from that Congress:

Alabama’s John Sparkman; Arizona’s Barry Goldwater and Carl Hayden; Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright; Connecticut’s Abe Ribicoff and Thomas Dodd; Georgia’s Richard Russell; Idaho’s Frank F. Church; Illinois’ Everett Dirksen; Indiana’s Birch Bayh; Louisiana’s Russell Long; Maine’s Edmund Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith; Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy (and later, Walter Mondale, who filled Humphrey’s seat at the end of that Congress); Mississippi’s John Stennis; Montana’s Michael J. Mansfield; Nebraska’s Roman Hruska; New York’s Jacob Javits; North Carolina’s Sam Ervin; Rhode Island’s Claiborne Pell; South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond; South Dakota’s George McGovern; Tennessee’s Al Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver; Texas’ Ralph Yarborough and John Tower; Virginia’s Harry Byrd; Washington’s Scoop Jackson; West Virginia’s Robert Byrd; and Wisconsin’s William Proxmire.Wow.

Not all are lions, but thate’s a safari’s worth of talent right there. The abbreviated list above includes titanic and long-serving senators (R. Byrd), including the man who has served in Congress longer than anyone else (Hayden); past and future presidential nominees and vice presidential nominees (Sparkman, Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Thurmond, H. Byrd); leaders of key, historical congressional committees or commissions (Church, Ervin, Kefauver); memorable party leaders of the chamber (Mansfield); the first woman to ever serve in both the House and Senate (Chase Smith); not only Dodd’s father, but a southern civil rights pioneer who fathered a certain vice president who later won the national popular vote in 2000 (Gore); and two senators whose surnames are synonymous with landmark education law (Fulbright, Pell).

Heck, two of the three Senate office buildings on Capitol Hill—Dirksen and Russell—are named for senators who were part of that 88th Congress.

We Continue With “A Governor Is Resigning (No, Not That One)”

Sarah Palin resigning gets two posts. Maybe three, depending on what happens into the next week.

Andrew Sullivan has a round-up. John Cole, Digby, Ezra Klein, etc…

Mark Steyn at The Corner:

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.

Victor Davis Hanson at The Corner

Charles Johnson at LGF

John Dickerson in Slate:

Maybe she’s just being mavericky? Perhaps. That’s certainly how she framed her departure. To stay in office as a lame duck would have been to do the predictable thing, she said. But the challenge for Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign and again now is persuading voters that her maverick instinct isn’t just unpredictability and erratic behavior—qualities that can turn maverick-ness into a liability. Only dead fish go with the flow, she said, in what was a welcome addition to the political phrase book. But if you’re not swimming with the current, your options are still tough ones: Either you’re swimming upstream, or you’re flapping around on the dock.

Bruce Reed in Slate

Jennifer Rubin in Commentary

Dave Noon:

Seriously, what sort of “creative extremism” is Palin supposed to practice now that she’s gone Galt on Alaska and thrown off the gubernatorial shackles? Will she ride a unicycle? Wander the land holding a giant puppet? I must confess that I don’t understand why folks are straining to find some sort of credible motive or strategy in Palin’s resignation, as if she actually still possessed a political future, much less a chance of running the country. Though we have a tradition in the US of electing Presidents who have lost previous campaigns for lower office, there’s no precedent for advancing quitters to the White House.

Mark Kleiman

Jon Henke:

There’s no doubt that Gov. Palin and her family have been through a very difficult year, and I sympathize with a desire to get out of the public spotlight. I hope that is what’s happening here, because it’s just not plausible that quitting the only significant political accomplishment on her resume would help Sarah Palin in a Presidential run.  It’s awfully hard to go from “Alaska is better off if I am not Governor” to “Who wants to elect me President?”

On the other hand, Lefties can spare me their wailing and gnashing of teeth over just how irresponsible it is to quit in the middle of your first term.  Take it up with the President first.

Paul Krugman

Ed Kilgore in TNR

Matthew Continetti in TWS

Palin’s surprise announcement was another reminder of how impulsive a politician she is. She zig-zags from office to office, from Republican Revolutionary to bipartisan champion of clean government, with nary a second thought. She resigned from the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission suddenly to make a point about self-dealing. She entered the race to unseat Frank Murkowski in October 2005, months before the primary. She accepted John McCain’s offer to be his vice presidential nominee without hesitation.

Indeed, Palin’s surprise move yesterday was another reminder of how she and McCain are so similar (remember McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign?). They are both spontaneous and unpredictable. They are both known for their attitudes rather than their policies. They are both political gamblers, and they both have been extremely lucky. But sometimes luck runs out.

And sometimes it doesn’t. “She is a lot of things,” another Alaska Republican wrote me in an email. “But NOT stupid …”

EARLIER: A Governor Is Resigning (No, Not That One)

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey with a video clip

Andrew Sullivan

Josh Marshall at TPM

Chris Dierkes at The League

UPDATE #2: Three posts at Hot Air, one from Robert Stacy McCain, one from Karl and Ed Morrissey

John Podhoretz in Commentary

Ta-Nehisi Coates