Beware of any pol with an airport named after him. Will Ted
Stevens Anchorage International Airport now have to be renamed? As
the Alaska senator flies into it with seven graft-related
indictments trailing him, his old nemesis, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma,
emerges from this week looking better than ever.
Truth is the best policy and the best politics, Coburn’s example
reminds his pork-bloated colleagues. Where their power rests on
hoarding government money, his power is based upon refusing it —
and that has proven much more potent.
Stevens, shrieking on the Senate floor in anger at Coburn for
opposing his “Bridge to Nowhere,” threatened to resign if he didn’t
get it. Had the Republican leadership displayed some sense, they
would have let him go. But instead of choosing Coburn as their
brand, they embraced big government, making the scandals of Randy
Cunningham and Ted Stevens inevitable.
Coburn now receives some opportunistic support from fellow
Republicans who see that he is useful in fumigating the Republican
image. Coburn single-handedly won a victory for them by drawing
Harry Reid into his ill-advised “Tomnibus” bill, which aimed to
dislodge Coburn’s hold on 34 Senate pork bills.
Reid’s legislation failed, exposing the Dems’ purported distaste
for excessive spending under President Bush as a sham and
publicizing ludicrous expenditures with which Congress routinely
saddles the American taxpayer.
“You go home and explain to your folks [voters] about stroke
legislation,” Reid blubbered on the Senate floor, draping one of
his pork bills in the most tired demagoguery.
“You go home and tell people…in a wheelchair you voted against
moving forward on something that could get them out of their
wheelchair.”
COBURN’S OBSTRUCTIONISM might cost his graft-ridden colleagues a
Viking gas grill or two, but that’s about the extent of the damage.
He has saved the American taxpayer millions of dollars that would
normally slosh down special-interest corridors.
John McCain, if he wanted to challenge Obama’s pretensions as a
reformer and “change” agent, wouldn’t bother with any of the
business-as-usual Republicans on his VP shortlist; he would select
Coburn. The only change in Washington not rattling around pols’
pockets comes from Coburn’s office.
By asking simple questions like Why exactly does the federal
government need to spend millions of dollars on a Battle of 1812
commemoration commission? Coburn has done more to challenge
the ethos of Capitol Hill than Obama ever will. Dr. No would expose
Obama’s “yes, we can” mantra as nothing more than the continuation
of corruption.
Obama bemoans the corrupt culture of Washington while planning
to deepen its cause, the size of the federal government. If
Congress is avarice writ large, that’s because corruption grows in
proportion to the size of government spending. No Oklahoman fat cat
would even bother to bribe Coburn, because he has no federal money
to give him.
Even the crock Senate “ethics” investigation into Coburn is
edifying. While Ted Stevens is investigated for among other things
his suspiciously funded “wraparound deck” at his Alaska chalet,
Coburn is investigated for…delivering babies.
According to Harry Reid and company, who are applying Senate
rules with comic pettiness in retaliation for his obstructionism,
Coburn’s baby deliveries at a private hospital pose a “conflict of
interest.”
“In May, Coburn received a strongly worded ‘final determination’
memo threatening him with a Senate censure if he did not stop
delivering babies for free,” according to the Hill.
What is the conflict of interest? That the babies might grow up
and vote for a self-term-limiting senator?
IT IS NOT clear, but this is apparently the radical “ethics reform”
the Democrats had in mind after winning in 2006 and promising to
sweep away the “culture of corruption.” Coburn’s conception of
ethics reform is a little different: that senators actually take
their oaths seriously.
One of the ironies of history is that the politicians most
well-remembered by it are the least political ones. Ted Stevens got
an airport named after him for delivering pork to his state; he may
also lose that honor for the same.
Whatever is named after Coburn is likely to be more secure. If
there is ever a Tom Coburn Airport, it will be because he didn’t
bring home the bacon.
