The title was somewhat unluckily chosen. At the end of the day nobody here knows what his real reasons for leaving the Senate are - the negative atmosphere doubtlessly plays a role, but how much of one, who knows. Bayh is a moderate Democrat and well-liked in Indiana, it's definitely not like he was doomed to lose his seat whatever he did.



You do the article a major injustice by focusing on the paragraphs about Birch Bayh in the sixties, and ignoring the paragraph right here, in which he points out the many factors that ARE different from the past, because those are the most important parts of the article even if he only touches on them briefly. We've all heard the story about that senator from South Carolina who beat up a colleague with his walking stick on the Senate floor back in the nineteenth century - yeah, it was vicious. But it wasn't like this. They didn't have the technology to be like this. It took irresponsible 24/7 mass-media, cable news, a soundbite culture, "Read my lips" television ads, and an internet where everybody can go find likeminded blogs or post his opinion on a newspaper website, to get like this.


They are elected to legislate for the benefit of the country. And when they are increasingly less capable of doing that, it's more than valid to do what Senator Bayh did and say, guys, we're on the wrong track. It's not a new message, and he may not have phrased it in the best way. But it's an important message and it has to be repeated until things change. I posted Lindsey's Graham statement on Sotomayor's confirmation, last year, because he had a similar message - mostly he was just talking about confirmations of judges, but here and there he indicated it was broader than that. Allow me to quote the most relevant part of that statement:

"What am I trying to do today? I am trying to start over. The political "golden rule" is: Do unto others as they did unto you. The actual Golden Rule is: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I hope we can get back to the more traditional sense of what the Senate has been all about."

It was far harder for Graham to do that, than for Bayh to complain now from his position as a member of the majority (and his statement on Sotomayor makes for far more interesting reading than Bayh's column here, as well), and he deserves more credit for it. He (and Lamar Alexander, who also voted to confirm and explained his reasons along similar lines) did his part in trying to reverse the trend of polarization, trying to get back to a Senate and an America where bipartisanship and consensus were easier to reach - not because the ideas of the different parties were further apart, but because the atmosphere wasn't so poisoned.



"Because of the incessant need to raise campaign cash, we now have perpetual campaigns. If fund-raising is constantly on members’ minds, it’s difficult for policy compromise to trump political calculation."

Again with the massively important points that you ignore. There used to be a time that election campaigns were something happening once every two years - for between six months and a year prior to the elections, depending on how important they were. Now, that is a lot of time spent on campaigning and posturing and generally doing other things than governing. But in recent years, we've gotten to what Bayh quite rightly calls a perpetual campaign. The Democrats and the media spent close to all of Bush's time in office raging against him, with rather little breathing time. And from the 2006 Democratic victory in the Congressional elections, things went straight to the 2008 presidential campaign - it just didn't stop at all anymore. And it hasn't really stopped after Obama's victory, either.
We (as in, the younger generation, I guess, though a lot of older Democrats seem to be in this group too) thought that Bush was special. We thought he was so divisive, so polarizing, and things would get better when he was out of office. Now that it's becoming very clear that things are not getting better at all, we can't kid ourselves anymore - it wasn't just Bush, it's going to be every president and every Congress if things don't change. Republicans may be fooling themselves in precisely the same way now, thinking that it's only about Obama, it's only about the stimulus bill, it's only about the mess made of health care, and once there is a new president and a Republican majority in Congress, everything will go better. But you'd be just as wrong as we were.
I'll be coming back to the money issue further below.



The essential point is in your first sentence: "you want people's money". No, someone running for Congress does not want people's money - it's not money he or she wants. It's getting elected, which *requires* money. And is requiring more and more money at a scarily increasing pace. Which absolutely is an obstacle to good government. Not only because politicians lose time better spent elsewhere on having to raise funds, not only because politicians find a number of avenues for possible compromises blocked, but also because it's not in a constituency's best interest to have a Congressman or -woman who is forced or at least heavily pressured into promoting the agenda of a limited number of groups and corporations. Particularly when a fair number of said groups and corporations are exclusively or mostly interested in a handful of issues that eat up enormous amounts of political capital, actual money and time, without doing much for the average citizen of the country, or helping much against the problems the country as a whole faces.



What he's trying to imply is that a politician who needs unreasonable amounts of money to get elected - amounts that aren't obtainable through use of own funds and donations from supporters and party members - will have to sell his vote to various special interests, and that this does not help with achieving good government. And he's entirely right about that.


Badly chosen example, since "we support him" is precisely the kind of endorsement that they want to make a requirement for corporation-funded ads. As for the rest of your point, for the reason explained above - because having polititicans further endebted and obligated towards corporations is not something America needs, quite on the contrary.


What matching funds really is is independence from corporations - not having to sell one's vote in order to get elected. Yes, it's a cost, and I can see why small government advocates would be against it, but it's a cost of the democratic system, not a cost of government. It's a cost that makes it easier for people to elect the polititicans they want - small government advocates, or perhaps not.


His father is completely irrelevant as the filibuster wasn't massively abused back then. Evan, yeah, it's hypocrisy, he admits as much. He's still right about it, though. Hypocritical doesn't have to mean wrong.


Uh, yeah. See the part about how it would be smart if the Republicans didn't fool themselves the way the Democrats did for all that time under Bush.

And remember that the filibuster is being used at a rate of more than 100 times a year now. This is not about the health care bill and the stimulus bill. It's about dozens of bills. You are, if I may say so, missing the point entirely if you think that filibusters are used more now just because those stupid Democrats are passing stupid bills that the smart Republican-leaning Americans don't want. Besides, if you think that, I'm not sure how you would explain the fact that the Democrats are responsible for probably most of the exacerbation of filibuster use, back when they were in the opposition under Bush (and oh, they didn't lose elections for doing that, either).


When should they change the rules, then? It's always going to be midgame. It's always going to be more in one party's interest than in the other's. Should they just never change them and let the system go to hell, then? Lindsey Graham has the right of it - this mess is not something one gets out of by playing politics as usual and only doing things in one's own benefit. It takes people going directly against their own interests for the benefit of all, the way he did himself.


Absolutely. Graham has had the guts to do that. The Democrats haven't yet, although I suspect if the Republicans win this November, there'll be a few of the Dems doing it too.


Bollocks. Bayh is chastising both parties, not just the Republicans. It should be obvious to anyone by now that Obama is going to have to surrender on tort reform if bipartisan health care reform is ever going to happen, and probably on a lot more besides. He may not do it even so, in this kind of political climate. And yet it would obviously be in the public interest if he did. There IS room for consensus and compromise on health care, and on other important topics. But both parties have to be allowed to go find it - and that's difficult in this atmosphere.



I see I have no right to call you long-winded after this post... as you can tell, this is a topic I feel strongly about. I'm obviously not American, so it doesn't directly concern me, but then my own country's politics are such a mess that I don't see a clear path towards making them workable again like the one I see in America (I did say clear, not easy). There are things about America that are wonderful or at least remarkable, including elements of the political system, and it would be a shame if those went to waste.