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Harry Reid, Prince of Sleeves
Who is this guy? Morman son of an alcoholic rock miner and a whore house laundry lady ... pro-life former chairman of the Nevada gaming commission ... Married, five children, wife once found a bomb attached to the car ... won first Senate term in ’86 in the mining state campaigning as an environmentalist against a guy called “Mr. Minerals” ... Protested a 30-hour, tag-team GOP filibuster with a 9-hour, one-man filibuster ... inspired Dick Smother’s role in Scorcese’s Casino ... tried to strangle LaToya Jackson’s future husband. For most of this stuff, see a great Reid profile in Slate.
The Republican reaction to Harry Reid’s Tuesday afternoon parlor trick -- pulling Rule 21 from behind the Majority Leader’s ear and making the Senate vanish for a couple of hours -- offers a Petri-dish explanation for Harriet Miers, FEMA, Social Security reform, the Great Bloody Boondoggle in Iraq and the fatal flaw of the Reagan/Gingrich/Rove Revolution in general:
These guys are great at toppling statues. But they’re for absolute shite in a crisis.
Who knew, Senate rules allow for a single distinguished gentleman to step up to the mic and, with a solitary second-that-motion, shut the place down? Sleepy-eyed Harry knew.
So he did, banishing all the reporters and staffers and gawkers, silencing the Razrs and Blackberries, leaving only the one-hundred men and women Constitutionally charged to check unbridled Executive power to face themselves, and the fact that they let a proud nation conjure a war out of 9/11-smoke and Murdoch’s murderous mirrors.
The other side instantly called it a stunt. Brian Knowlton’s account for the the International Herald Tribune is the best (although, strangely, the full version appears only on the NYT site), capturing not just what was said, but how. Bill Frist in his best wild-eyed twitchiness:
“To resort to this, this, this stunt, this political stunt -- this scare tactic -- is really disappointing. But if they want to get in the gutter, I guess that’s what they’ll do.”
In the end, the Democrats got what they wanted: half a roomful of shell-shocked Loyal Sycophancy and the creation of a bipartisan committee to investigate why the Republican-led committee to investigate how facts were fixed to start a war shows no signs issuing any findings until, oh, sometime after the 2006 mid-term elections.
The Republicans are right, of course, it was a stunt. Pure High-Hokum Robert’s Rules Kabuki of the Highest Order, in fact. And one very small stroke of genius.
You can be forgiven for not having noticed. In this, the Jackson Pollock Era of political discourse -- all bloody reds and treacherous yellows, deathly blacks, white noise and endless, indecipherable smears across the news pages -- Harry Reid harkens the old school. He’s an Impressionist:
Howls Delay, CRIMINALIZING CONSERVATIVES! Screams Dean, I HATE REPUBLICANS AND EVERTHING THEY STAND FOR! Kennedy, RESIST ANY NEANDERTHAL! Santorum, DAMNATION AND DESTRUCION! Cornyn, VIOLENCE AGAINST JUDGES IS UNDERSTANDABLE! Zell, SPITBALLS! Condi, MUSHROOM CLOUD! Cheney, FUCK YOURSELF! O’Reilly, SHUT UP!
Meanwhile, back at the Senate... the Desert Fox of Nevada quietly dines on elephant steak for déjeuner sur l’herbe.
Which of Manet’s is the masterstroke? That’s the funny thing. You know it’s there, but you just can’t tell.
Outgunned 55-45, with a caucus that’s never known winding it’s ass from watching it’s watch, Reid has run a political clinic since assuming the Minority Leadership in November, 2004:
- Social Security Reform-scam engineered to implode Social Security? Dead.
- Killing the Death Tax on the landed gentry? Dead.
- Permanent tax cuts for the landed gentry? Permanent vegetative state (Only Dr. Frist still diagnoses 'em as alive).
- ANWR corporate welfare project? Sharp, shooting chest pains.
- Harriet Miers? Dead. Remember, though, it was Reid who recommended her to the president, and kept his own guys from shooting their mouths off about her.
- Nuclear option? Condition still critical. But while the Majority Leader preached to the choir on Justice Sunday, Reid kept his hand on the pulse of the Gang of Fourteen. Sure, the other side got three out of five of the judges they wanted out of the deal, and the Republicans may drop the bomb yet. But what if they’d succeeded in dropping the bomb in September? There would be no need to even hold Alito hearings. Moreover, stepping to the brink is even harder the next time around -- the way the Cuban Missile Crisis made it harder for us and the Russians to blow each other up. Although, the thinking here is, Frist doesn’t seem quite as stable as Kruschev....
- Landslide repudiation of torturing people? Gearing up for the Boston Marathon, thanks. Sure, it was a McCain sponsored measure, but the he was actually tortured -- he had to sponsor it. But it was Reid who first brought the issue to national attention in January, putting the screws to Alberto Gonzalez during the AG confirmation hearings for being the guy that drafted the administration's pro-torture white paper.
- And Reid himself? Never there, always around. Look for him standing behind Chuck Schumer’s shoulder, making the “I’d rather be blending into a mesa” face.
Even Tuesday, when the Senior Senator from the Silver State took a rare turn in spotlight, it was vintage Reid: He made his point by kicking the cameras out, not leaping in front of them. The opposition was completely flummoxed by it, “Say it Loud, Say it Ugly, Say it on TV” being the classic play in their book. Compare: evicting the press to Gingrich’s, 1980s, late-nite, C-SPAN harangues to an empty House gallery. You can’t.
The timing was impeccable. Reid didn’t just hijack the Senate, he hijacked half the day’s news. It had begun with all eyes and mouths on Judge Sam Alito, and for the White House -- still roiling amid a fiasco of debacles -- there shone the silver light of sunnier seas in the fawning praises of it’s political base. The day ended under the gun-metal cloud of a war with 2,000 heroes dead, 15,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands more thirsting for home in the desert, and the untruths that put them there.
But more than that, the words Reid spoke in their honor, behind those strangely locked doors of democracy, were perfect. Because without any record of what he said, Reid said what every American who is appalled by the war; guilty as hell it’s being fought in our names with our paychecks; and more than a little bit scared by the brazenness of the lies, the willingness to believe them, and the naked thirst for power that caused it; wishes he said.
You know where you are???!!! You’re in the Rumble in the Jungle, Bay-be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*
* Punctuation on loan from the Harriet Miers collection.
On Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 2, underdog Harry Reid threw an Ali-worthy right-hand lead, landing out of nowhere, in a startling departure from his usual rope-a-dope style of Parliamentary brawling. The official line of response on Wednesday morning was derision. But at the time the Republicans looked dazed, positively Foreman-esque. Or -- if there’s a difference -- maybe it was Brett-esque after the Pine Tar Game.
Frist fumed in Reuters, “Never have I been slapped in the face with such an affront to the leadership of this grand institution.” He fumed in the Post, “For the next year and a half, I can’t trust Senator Reid.”
Bill Frist: Squawky, second-chair violin who landed the big graduation solo after the first-chair got busted for smoking pot with the guys from the chess club, when he could’ve lied to cover for him. You can count on Bill to barely make all the right noises, except when it counts.
In The Boston Globe: “There was no discussion with Senator Reid before he offered the resolution … Zero.”
Hint: It ain’t about you, Bill. Even the people who hate him are half-hearted about it. Paraphrasing President Jeff Bridges in The Contender, Senator Frist is the future of the Republican Party and he always will be.
AP reported that while Reid spoke, Frist huddled in the back of his room with a half dozen lieutenants. When a man capable of thought without consulting opinion polls -- or a creature with instinct -- would’ve either stalked from the chamber or got up and hit back. Exiting briefly to explain his side of things to the press pack, Frist concluded his remarks by saying “I’ve got to go figure out what we’re going to do.”
When you do, Harry and his boys and girls’ll be there waiting.
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