Matt Yglesias

Al Franken Talks to Constituents

Very interesting video of Senator Al Franken talking to some upset constituents at a state fair:

Al Franken, Policy Wonk

Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) welcomed her new colleague Al Franken to the Senate with a fairly rude remark: “It’s important he go against the grain of his past career and really get to know the issues.” As Jon Chait says:

A couple things here. I don’t know anything about Klobuchar in particular. But Senators, in general, are wildly egotistical and deem themselves to be far smarter and better-informed about policy than they actually are.

Second, as I’ve written, and which Norm Ornstein attested on the Diane Rehm show yesterday, Franken is a policy wonk. Anybody who’s spoken with him or read his books (as opposed to just read the titles) knows this. He probably knows more about public policy than 90% of his colleagues. I’ve never met Franken, but the inability of people to understand that somebody can have a career in comedy and satire and also knows a lot of public policy galls me.

I have met Franken, years ago, and have also been friendly with a number of people who’ve worked with Franken over the years and will likewise attest that he’s very serious about policy. After all, the salient thing about Franken isn’t that he used to be a satirist. It’s that he used to be a satirist who was so interested in politics that he transitioned to becoming a political satirist and then a candidate for office. All because he was really interested in the issues and wanted to make a difference. Most comedians probably aren’t very well-informed about policy issues, but comedians do have both the time and the means to inform themselves if they’re so inclined, and Franken very much was and is so inclined.

By contrast, the culture on Capitol Hill is actually quite hostile to consideration of policy questions on the merits. Senators and members of congress have extremely time-consuming jobs, and the job is basically to fundraise, to travel a lot, and to hustle on behalf of the interests of donors and parochial local interests. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for policy. And it’s also not good for one’s mental health. You want to “understand the issues” in the sense of understanding the interest group politics surrounding the issue, the leadership’s view of the issue, how the issue plays in your district, etc. But if you really understand the issue then awkward burdens of conscience may arise “should I really jeopardize the lives of millions of people around the world in order to advance the interests of agribusiness?” That’s not a question people want to ask themselves, so it’s better to just stay fuzzy on the policy matters.

Why 60 Won’t Mean Much

Al Franken campaign photo

In a new Daily Beast column, I note that just because there’s sixty votes in the Senate doesn’t mean there’s sixty votes for any given progressive bill:

For example, considerably more people live in the Bronx than live in Montana. But while the Bronx’s 1.4 million people need to share Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand with 18 million other residents of the Empire State, Montana’s cozy crew of 960,000 people has Max Baucus all to themselves. And not only does Baucus’ vote count as much as Schumer’s or Gillibrand’s, he actually has dramatically more power than the senators from New York (or, for that matter, California) because as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, all health-care legislation absolutely must meet with his approval. The fact that Obama only secured the support of 47 percent of Montana’s voters is the kind of thing that must weigh on Baucus’ mind. Similarly with Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and Obama’s 45 percent of North Dakota’s 641,000 residents.

Nor are Baucus and Conrad alone. Byron Dorgan, Jon Tester, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, Tim Johnson, Mark Begich, Claire McCaskill, and Ben Nelson are all representing states that went for John McCain last fall. Collectively, the states represented by these fine ladies and gentlemen contain about as many people as New York, but their votes are the difference between a majority and a filibuster-breaking supermajority. Meanwhile, among the senators representing states Obama did carry, several—but most notably Indiana’s Evan Bayh—have made no bones about their willingness to defy the president and the party leadership on key votes. And of course Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman went so far as to endorse McCain in the election and is now opposing a key element of Obama’s health-reform agenda.

As I wrote yesterday, to an extent it should be possible to counteract this trend by bringing pressure to bare on Republicans who represent Obama states, but so far that hasn’t been very effective. And there’s my basic point from over the past year which is that normally big-time substantive reform needs to go along to some extent with reform of the political process. The two are intimately related.