The American Spectator

Eminentoes

Silly Jim

By Sean Higgins on 4.25.05 @ 12:09AM

WASHINGTON -- In case you hadn't noticed it, Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords announced last Wednesday that he won't seek re-election. After 17 years in the Senate, he's packing up and going home.

Don't feel bad if you did miss it. Few in the media thought it was a big deal. The Washington Post reported it on page A-7 and the New York Times on page A-15.

The Wall Street Journal devoted exactly one sentence to it. The Journal must have needed the space for "Hotel Industry Begins to Wake Up to Bedbug Problem."

It was a stark change from four years ago. Back then, Jeffords was the most important person in Congress. His 2001 decision to abandon the GOP and deliver control to the Democrats was -- rightly -- called a political earthquake. Pundits fawned all over him, some even comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.

The moment proved to be fleeting, though, and Jeffords soon returned to his prior obscurity. His moment of fame and adoration will almost certainly be remembered as an odd blip in an otherwise thoroughly unremarkable career -- if he's lucky. In reality, it was just about the dumbest thing he ever did.

Granted, it didn't seem that way at the time. In fact, it looked like pretty savvy maneuver. He was able to dump his own party for political gain and yet get the media to cast it as a matter of the highest, noblest principle.

But if was a matter of principle, why exactly did Jeffords wait until 2001? After all, he had long been a liberal uncomfortable inside his own party.

He was, to cite just one example, the only Republican House member to vote against Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in 1981. Yet he never seriously thought about leaving the GOP until after the 2000 election.

The key factor in 2001 was that the Senate was split 50-50. If he switched Senate Democrats would owe him big time for bringing them to power.

Democrats Harry Reid and Tom Daschle sweetened the deal by promising him the chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which Jeffords wanted badly.

He also had to know that if he waited any longer, Daschle and Reid might not be so generous. South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, then 98, had recently been the subject of a series of ghoulish stories alleging he could drop dead at any minute, tilting Senate control to the Democrats all by himself.

So, on May 24, 2001, he made the jump. Overnight Jeffords became a political superstar, a hero to Democrats still smarting over the Florida recount. Senator John Kerry was reported to have literally skipped through the Senate halls.

The media meanwhile regurgitated the Democrats' spin.

Jeffords' "unassuming demeanor draws comparisons to Jimmy Stewart in 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'" said the Washington Post. E.J. Dionne argued, with no apparent irony, "Jeffords's departure may have been a profound act of loyalty toward his fellow embattled moderates."

The New York Times engaged in some particularly naked schadenfreude. "The Mean Strategy Backfires" said columnist Bob Herbert, arguing the Republican extremists had forced Jeffords to do it.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, John McCain, Harry Reid, Environment, NATO