Global Warming in the Senate
I just finished reading As The World Burns, an article portraying the efforts of Senators Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham to get climate change legislation through the senate. The portrait Ryan Lizza paints of the three senators is so damning that it sparks a contrarian perspective from me: they can’t really be that bad.
Lizza hits all the cliches of our three senators beginning with each being more interested in the legislation’s effect on their legacies than on its effect on global warming and the nation’s economy. Our journalist goes on to describe Kerry delivering monologues at the start of each meeting, Lieberman demanding whatever made him look good, Graham unable to face up to either his colleagues or constituents, and special guest appearances by McCain - flip-flopping - and President Obama - as a feckless Carter clone.
Perhaps Lizza is giving the audience what it wants, but these guys would never get elected if this was the actual level of their political skill. I would love to put a political article down feeling that I had learned something about the difficultly in reconciling divergent political and philosophical perspectives amongst the governing and the governed in this country, but alas, that isn’t this article.
