Why I left the Senate

Evan Bayh, the former governor of Indiana and a U.S. senator since 1999, announced his retirement from the Senate this week, and penned an extremely thoughtful piece on why in last weekend's New York Times. The piece was about what ails the U.S. Congress, but its echoes reverberate up here, at least if one believes what one reads about Parliament these days. Concerned Canadians should read this piece.

Bayh comes from a political family. His father was a senator from Indiana too, and he remembers his family maintaining active friendships with colleagues across the aisle. Families visited each others homes, and shared meals together. That never happens anymore.

Now, he says, members routinely force votes on trivial amendments to provide fodder for negative attack ads. It's pretty hard to work with people who are "actively plotting your demise."

He also observed that only twice in his 12 years in Washington have the senators all gathered for a non-ceremonial purpose. The first was to sort out how to conduct Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, and the second was just after 9/11, when they met to discuss the American response. Bayh writes,

"There were no Republicans or Democrats in the room that day, just Americans. The spirit of patriotism and togetherness was palpable. That atmosphere prevailed for only two or three weeks before politics once again intervened."

He then suggests a load of practical-sounding reforms that would improve things (campaign reform, changes to filibustering), and pledges to spend his final 11 months advancing those proposals.

I particularly liked one of his concluding paragraphs:

"Our most strident partisans must learn to occasionally sacrifice short-term tactical political advantage for the sake of the nation. Otherwise, Congress will remain stuck in an endless cycle of recrimination and revenge. The minority seeks to frustrate the majority, and when the majority is displaced it returns the favor. Power is constantly sought through the use of means which render its effective use, once acquired, impossible."

I hope he updates us in 11 months time.