Because the Washington media loves those like Bayh who position themselves as bipartisan or centrist (especially when it comes to the issue of the deficit), progressives derided his so-called “centrism” as mere political positioning that helped Republicans obstruct Democratic initiatives, and met his exit with a flurry of blog posts with titles like “Bye, Bayh” or “Bayh Low” (“Bayh” is pronounced “Bye” or “Buy” – thus explaining my overly complicated attempt at a joke in my blog title). Ezra Klein called him an “ordinary politician” and a “minor deficit hypocrite”. Jonathan Chait goes farther, and notes that “If Bayh’s loss is a “brain drain,” then the Senate is in even worse shape than I thought.”

I once had the chance, along with numerous other reporters and editors, to speak with Bayh in an off-the-record context. I’d say the group was quite favorably disposed toward him going into the discussion — here was a young, popular, telegenic moderate Democrat everybody could see on a presidential ticket soon. As far as I could tell, everybody came away thoroughly unimpressed. He said nothing especially disagreeable, it was just that he seemed so mediocre. He expressed himself entirely in terms of platitudes. Not a single interesting thought escaped his lips.

He had no better luck appealing to the other side. The allure of centrism is that it is at the edge between the left-most Republicans and the right-most Democrats, and thus the deals are made and the power is held in the center. Bayh (and Max Baucus, and most Senate Democrats, and even President Obama) have learned the hard way that there is no reason to be centrist if the other side – even at its left-most reaches – refuses to do anything but obstruct. But Bayh wasn’t close to right-wing enough for any Republicans on any key issues, as Ross Douthat says:

His big issue was supposed to be deficit reduction, but you wouldn’t catch him dead proposing anything remotely like Paul Ryan’s fiscal roadmap, with its detailed list of programs to be reshaped and reduced.  (Bayh preferred the “bravery” of punting the issue to a commission.) On foreign policy, he was a liberal hawk on every vote except the hard ones: He backed the Iraq invasion in 2003 and takes a hard line on Iran today, but in the debate over the surge, when being hawkish was suddenly costly, he sided with the doves. Wherever the Beltway conventional wisdom settled, there was Evan Bayh — and he was rewarded for it with endless presidential and vice-presidential chatter, which has followed him, absurdly, even now that he’s announced his retirement.

The incredible thing, however, is what Bayh has done since announcing his retirement.  A two-faced politician of average intelligence to the left and too far left for todays right, Bayh has grabbed the issue of Senate disfunction with both hands. He penned an op-ed for the New York Times on Feb. 20th that outlined his reasons for leaving the Senate, and decrying the “institutional inertia gripping Congress” and the fact that “Congress must be reformed”. Its a remarkably thoughtful document (I would urge everyone to read it through), and one that (in addition to Bayh’s media tour since announcing his retirement) has brought the issue of Senate reform and filibuster reform into the Washington Conventional Wisdom (yes, the CW does need to be capitalized). Bayh’s most important ideas are these:

Filibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Filibusters should also be limited to no more than one for any piece of legislation. Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt.

What’s more, the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster should be reduced to 55 from 60.

It is not so surprising that many of those voices decrying Bayh’s legislative record and subsequent retirement are now singing his praises. Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein are the most prominent, with Klein bemoaning the fact that Bayh decided to make Senate reform an issue after he decided to leave the Senate instead of staying in the Senate to fight for those reforms. I’m not sure I agree. I believe the whole saga speaks to my personal view of the Senate, which is that those on the inside of the Senate are unable to see the dysfunctions that cripple the institution. Bayh is probably smarter than I gave him credit for before this weekend – I think his op-ed proves that – but something about being in the Senate, whether it was the constant campaign or the hunt for legislative power, hurt his ability to see the Senate as it really is. The moment he decided to leave the Senate he saw the dysfunction, and despite the jokes about his involvement in the dysfunction he insisted on using that as his reason for leaving. I don’t want you to stay in the Senate, Mr. Bayh. You’re much better off as a living, breathing example of why the Senate needs to reform itself.

As someone who constantly (compulsively?) checks Twitter, RSS, the Huffington Post iPhone App, or anything else that will give me news about the political happenings of the moment, I can easily see the draw of a program like Netvibes. Netvibes is an online portal (a sort of advanced RSS reader with widgets) that can combine all the information you have, sort it into categories, and even – with some nifty programming – filter out the unless crap that comes with inhabiting this wonderful invention we called the “Internets”.

For my Netvibes page, I created pages for all the topics that interest me, but obviously put much more effort into my Comm217 beat: politics and the Senate. Thus, my politics page is organized especially well. I combined the mainstays of any political RSS I will ever create (Andrew Sullivan, Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Spencer Ackerman, etc), added a few more that I found via Delicious, and then created RSS feeds for Twitter searches and Google News searches of “senate filibuster”. Add in the New York Times politics widget and I felt like I was good to go.

More Senate learning, here I come!

The comparisons always come fast and hard. Since the popular music industry was first, it must always be the industry that all others are judged against when the Internet catches up with old business models. After popular music went down movies, TV shows, newspapers, and even bicycles followed soon after. Yes, even the bicycle industry is being hit hard, since local bike shops can only stock so many different kinds parts and EBay can stock an infinite number, cutting heavily into revenue for local bicycle shops. The common denominator in all of these situations is the Internet breaking old business models. Music and newspapers, for instance, have both come to find themselves in a place where the cost of producing content remains pretty high, but the cost of distribution and reproduction has gone to basically zero. Thus, money cannot be made in the distribution of music or newspapers in the quantity that it was made before by record companies and newspapers. But while there are similarities between the situations that these institutions find themselves in, there are major differences as well. Thus, the modest success those certain industries have had in tweaking their business models to fit this new Internet age cannot necessarily be transferred to another industry. There have, for example, been many words written about the need for newspapers to create their own iTunes, or their own Hulu, when many problems with these comparisons arise with some scrutiny. First, iTunes and Hulu are not exactly successes for their respective industries (both are successes for technology companies, however). Hulu may not survive without a paywall (which will eventually kill it), and iTunes has not come close to replacing the revenues that CDs used to bring in. Secondly, it is incredibly difficult to imagine exactly what a Hulu for newspapers would look like. There is no single model that the newspapers have rallied behind, but if (or when) it comes, it will not look like iTunes (unless the Apple iPad really is the savior of newspapers) or Hulu. It will look completely different, and the newspaper industry will wonder why it didn’t think of whatever that model is earlier.

The music industry is definitely the industry that has experienced decline for the longest, and has done the most to combat it. The business models are much different, though they are still based on the assumptions that got them into trouble in the first place. Consumer patterns changed with the technology, and the music industry has coped reasonably well. None of the major record companies have gone under, they have simply changed how they get their money. While digital music sales have risen, they have not been able fill the void left by drops in CD sales. In 2008, we discovered that “The latest recording industry statistics show digital music sales are rapidly increasing as a percentage of total industry sales, but not by enough to offset a dramatic fall in compact disc sales.”[1] So, digital sales have not been the reason that the music industry has coped with the Internet age, despite all the press that Apple gets for iTunes saving the music industry. No, instead, revenues from live music has actually increased substantially since recorded music revenues began to peak. Since 2006, recorded music revenue (from CDs, tapes, vinyl, and digital sales) has stayed stagnant at $12.6 billion (which is considered a drop adjusting for inflation), while live concert revenues have jumped from $7.3 billion to $9.1 billion in 2009.[2] And most importantly, the growth in live music revenue has happened in a way that is consistent with the social norms of the Internet age: the Top 100 tours have produced less revenue, but underneath the Top 100 there has been huge growth in smaller shows and in the festival market (lots of acts getting together to put on one big event). You can see the makings of a business model starting to take shape with these statistics: the money comes not from the sale of a single piece of music that can be copied a million times for free. Instead the money comes from live touring and merchandise like t-shirts. Thus, the recorded music becomes simply a marketing tool. Play a hit single on the radio not so the listener will like that song and buys the album, but so that the listener likes the song and attends a concert. The Internet is simply allowing the music industry to grow from the bottom up. There are more music choices, more ways to listen to them, and more ways for more artists to make more music available now than there ever has been. Thus the consumer has more of an ability to become attached to music that he or she will enjoy, and thus artists that aren’t backed by giant record companies have a better ability to make a living making music by recording on their own, giving away their recordings (or selling them through iTunes independently, which allows them to take a bigger percentage of each sale than if they had a record deal), and making money off ticket sales and merchandise. Thus more people listen to more kinds of music, go to more concerts, and spend more money – the industry does fine. The stories you hear about music’s slow death are from the record companies themselves, since they are the ones who will become irrelevant as this trend continues.

Unlike their partners in the newspaper industry, however, record companies have begun to change their ways somewhat. It may be too little, too late, but they have made enough moves into the live music arena that revenues can begin to trickle back in. The biggest moves, however, have come from live music promotion companies, such as LiveNation (which is a part of ClearChannel, a radio conglomerate). LiveNation has begun signing artists like Madonna to deals that replace and expand on what is traditionally a “record deal”. “This unique business model will address all of Madonna’s music ventures as a total entity for the first time in her career”[3]. The equivalent for the newspaper industry would be if a newspaper helped pay for journalists’ speaking tours but also took a cut of those engagements. This is something that one can’t really see with newspapers or journalists because journalists do not tend to become famous in the same way that musicians and entertainers do.

This is the first place where the music industry and the newspaper industry parallels diverge. The music industry’s failing are all in the inability to sell discreet creations (recordings), but unlike newspapers they have another product that they can sell in a different way: the artist/musician/entertainer. Newspapers do not really have this luxury. There is no backup plan after selling content. Unlike their media partners in TV – especially at Fox News – they don’t have personalities that they can sell. On TV the personalities, who these days are simply opinion personalities instead of straight news gatherers or reporters, get face time with an audience and usually can sell themselves in a way that newspaper writers (even opinion writers) can’t. They can’t at least in a way that allows their parent company to cash in on their personal image.

Thus, we come to the reason why newspapers cannot weather the Internet age storm the same way that music did – the only business model from the music industry’s experience that they can copy is the model that music now has for recorded music. In other words, the only option newspapers have (unless we completely rethink the idea of a newspaper or news organization) is the option that the music industry has shown doesn’t really work very well. Pay barriers for newspaper content has a very shaky track record, and those are only being considered because of lost ad revenue from both print and online newspaper ads. In the 1^st quarter of 2009, Internet advertising dropped across the board. “The biggest drop was in real-life newspaper ads with a 29.7 percent decline to $5.9 billion. Online newspapers ad sales also declined by 13.4 percent to just $696.3 million in the same period”[4]. So how can newspapers begin to make some of the money back?

There are a few answers to that question, and all of them have to work in conjunction with each other. First, no one disputes that newspapers were incredibly slow on the uptake when it came to taking advantage of the Internet, and thus still lag behind even many blogs when it comes to integration with new and emerging technologies like Twitter, social bookmarks, and the like. Newspapers have not taken a good hard look at what it means to be a newspaper in the 21^st century, and until they do publicly they will be seen as stuck in the glory days. Secondly, they need to start working together. Perhaps, as the argument of this paper goes, there is no clear correlation between the newspaper industry’s crisis now and the music industry’s crisis a few years ago, but perhaps there are better parallels when we look at the music industry of 50-60 years ago. Instead of looking at how the music industry has dealt with distribution problems, newspapers could look to how the music industry dealt with licensing and publishing issues. “Under the music industry model, a venue or media outlet that wants to use a songwriter’s work can purchase a yearly blanket license from the organizations that control the public performance rights to the compositions. The two largest organizations, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Incorporated, together represent the writers of millions of songs. ASCAP and BMI distribute the money to songwriters and music publishers based on a complicated formula designed to ensure that a major television network pays a higher fee than a bar in Texarkana”[5]. This model could absolutely work for articles in blogs the way that it works for the music industry and plays on the radio. This would make it cheaper for articles used in small blogs, but more expensive if a major newspaper quoted from a blog. The questions remain very big. Are there anti-trust implications? Since there is already a model with songwriters then an arrangement like this may hold muster in the courts. Should it be newspapers that band together or journalists themselves? After all, it was the songwriters, not record companies, who banded together to form ASCAP and BMI. If journalists banded together to form a similar situation then newspapers could still benefit – they have the famous names that will draw the best journalists who will get read the most, thus bringing in more money to the newspaper when those journalists’ articles get linked to or quoted in other websites. The technological and logistical hurdles would be immense, but so are all other options.

If one looks hard enough, parallels can be found between any media industry. Newspapers and the music industry are simply two of the simple parallels that people use. Pick two of music, the news, TV, and feature films, and contrast them with each other. There are lessons to be learned in every story, and some lessons can be applied to the situations facing other industries. But they are not analogous, and trying to save the newspaper industry by copying the music industry is basing your strategy on a failed premise. What is clear, however, is that the old way for all of these industries is over, and that new business models have to be in place. Some are farther along than others in the race to revamp themselves for the 21^st century. Time will only tell how far they get.

[1] Stein, Mark. Daily Brief. Porfolio.com. April 28^th, 2008.

[2] Grabstats.com, Music Industry Stats. Source: eMarketer

[3] “Madonna Joins Forces With LiveNation in Revolutionary Global Music Partnership”. PR Newswire. October 16, 2007.

[4] Parfeni, Lucian. “Internet Advertising Revenue Down in Q1 2009”. Softpedia News. June 5^th, 2009.

[5] Jones, Ashby. “Come Together! On Newspapers’ Big Antitrust Hurdle”. Wall Street Journal Law Blog. June 4, 2009. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/04/come-together-on-newspapers-big-antitrust-hurdle/

What the Senate is not allowed to do, however, is tell future senators what rules must apply to their proceedings. Because Reichelderfer prohibits a previous Congress from tying the hands of a future Congress, the rules governing Senate procedure in 2010 cannot bind a newly elected Senate in 2011. The old Senate rules essentially cease to exist until the new Senate ratifies them, so a determined bloc of 51 senators could eliminate the filibuster altogether by demanding a rules change at the beginning of a new session. Once the new Senate begins to operate under the old rules, however, this can function as a ratification of the old rules — essentially locking those rules in place for another two years.

Millhiser is basically arguing that two Supreme Court decisions, Newton v. Commissioners in 1879 and Reichelderfer v. Quinn in 1932, make it possible for each new Senate to eliminate the filibuster, since the new Senate (the next one beginning in January 2011) isn’t beholden to any Senate procedures from previous Senates.

Practically, from the Democrats’ point of view, I do how this helps anything. First of all, Millhiser does not mention the procedures with which each new Senate, after swearing in any new members, ratifies the new rules that the body functions under. If the Senate begins to proceed without changing anything, then that acts as a ratification, but how procedurally difficult is it for 51 Senators to push through a new set of rules when a functioning Senate (oh my goodness what an oxymoron) is all that it takes to not eliminate the filibuster?

Secondly, I can’t imagine the Democrats having the political will or ability to do something like this next January. They are almost certain to lose seats in November, and due to the specific seats that are up for grabs this year the seats the Dems are most likely to lose aren’t the most conservative Democrats (for a good roundup of next November, check out Nate Silver’s analysis. His most recent update is here). Thus, while there may be 51 or 50 Senators in this Congress willing to eliminate the filibuster, the median Senator next January is most likely going to be too far to the right to want to mess with Senate procedures in a way that would benefit the Democrats.

Finally, I can only imagine that this sort of uprising, if it took place, would need the approval and cooperation of Majority Leader Harry Reid, who I cannot imagine approving of something like this. It tends to be the longest tenured Senators who are the most likely to defend arcane Senate procedures like the filibuster, and I doubt Reid is any different.

Basically, liberals have been frustrated by uniform Republican opposition and the super-majority requirement since President Obama took office, and this is the first I have heard of this proposal. It is a very interesting idea, but I can’t imagine that it is anything more than a very intriguing shot in the dark.

Sure, in recent years, threats of filibuster have become more and more common — and getting 60 votes for key pieces of legislation has seemed to become evermore necessary. But at the same time, we rarely actually see senators filibustering, at least not like Jimmy Stewart’s character did in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Why?

The whole piece is worth a close read – though the title of the article gets to the gist of the matter: “How 41 Senators Control The Country Without Filibustering”. There currently are very few actual filibusters – the mere threat of one is enough to derail legislation (as we are currently seeing with the Health Care Reform legislation that has already passed both Chambers of Congress). This occurred, according to Senate historian Donald A. Richie, because:

…leaders — from Democrats Mike Mansfield and Robert Byrd to Republicans Bob Dole and Bill Frist — informally adopted the custom of no longer actually filibustering — mainly, Ritchie said, because filibustering was seen as a waste of time that only provided the filibustering minority an excess of attention.

It turns out that only one Senator from the filibustering group needs to be present to prevent cloture from occurring, but leadership needs 60 votes for cloture present on the Senate floor. Unfortunately, this busts the myth, heard from Republicans from 2004 to 2006 and currently heard from Democrats the country over, that the majority should just let the minority filibuster away until they are blue in the face. I’ve definitely voiced the opinion that Harry Reid should let Health Care Reform be filibustered, then go on camera comparing Republican filibusters to Strom Thurmond filibustering Civil Rights legislation in 1957 by reading his grandmother’s biscuit recipe (fun fact: Thurmond’s filibuster is on record as the longest ever by a single Senator at 24 hours and 18 minutes). Obviously, thats my flaming liberal side mixing with my (very dubious) political tactician side to come to an incorrect conclusion – letting Republicans filibuster would not be a good PR move for Harry Reid and the Democrats!

Once again, I would suggest that everyone read the TPM piece I linked to above, or Ryan Grim’s piece in the Huffington Post last February (during the stimulus package debate). The money quote:

“Delay in the Senate is not difficult and, frankly, the only way to end it is through cloture.”

Yes, delay is the Senate’s middle name.

And somehow I suspect that at that nadir for Reagan, commentators like Krauthammer and Gerson and Brooks would not be advising him to heed public opinion, give up on his agenda, and recognize that it’s madness to push through policies that were broadly unpopular. Au contraire. Fight, Mr President. Fight. In the end, even the conservatives – perhaps especially the conservatives – will respect you for it.

Today, he quotes the President’s speech in Ohio. He is fighting:

… So if I was trying to take the path of least resistance, I would have done something a lot easier. But I’m trying to solve the problems that folks here in Ohio and across this country face every day. And I’m not going to walk away just because it’s hard. We are going to keep on working to get this done — with Democrats, I hope with Republicans — anybody who’s willing to step up. Because I’m not going to watch more people get crushed by costs or denied care they need by insurance company bureaucrats. I’m not going to have insurance companies click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket because once again there’s no control on what they do. So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you.

From watching the President all year – not to mention the 18 months before the November 2008 Election – I find myself surprised that other people are surprised that it has taken Obama this long to take a confrontational tone. That has never been his style. He has been inspirational, yes, and I believe that there are a lot of confrontational liberals who projected that personality onto him, but those who pay attention know that Obama shows a distaste for this kind of politics. Unfortunately, being the only sane person in a city-full of crazy people doesn’t get any results, and the President has, I think, finally figured that out.

The President is a really smart man, and unlike the last President we had, is ok with admitting mistakes. From Obama’s interview with George Stephanopoulos:

And, you know, If there’s one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here –

STEPHANOPOULOS: That people would get it.

OBAMA: That people will get it. And I think that, you know, what they’ve ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there’s these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions.

He believed that if he just ran the country competently (which he undoubtedly has), then people would appreciate him for it and he wouldn’t have to play the ugly side of politics. Too bad he is still the single sane man in the crazy town of Washington. Or maybe its a good thing for him. Massachusetts can be a wake-up call. The silver-lining. He now has an incentive to fight. Not just for health care reform, but for his presidency and what he wants it to represent. In the words of Sullivan: “Fight, Mr. President. Fight”.

Overall, while I would probably take Coakley’s side of a 3:1 wager, her situation looks to be increasingly difficult. She is basically relying upon getting solid turnout from a “silent majority” of voters who have done little to make themselves seen and heard. We know that there are a huge number of potential such voters in Massachusetts, which remains a very blue state and which until the past three weeks had not behaved unusually in any obvious way. But the pollsters are no longer seeing and hearing from them.

So the question on everyones mind is: what does the result of tomorrows election say about the chances for health care reform? On the one hand, a win by Coakley would basically ensure the passage of a compromise bill, as negotiations between the Senate and the House have proceeded basically as expected, and both could pass the final bill in the next two weeks. However, if Brown wins, what happens? The Democrats would lose their “supermajority” of 60 seats in the Senate, and thus would be unable to break a Republican filibuster in the Senate. So, considering the stakes for not only the Democrats politically, but also more than 30 million uninsured Americans, what can we expect the Senate to do if Coakley cannot hold on?

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic has outlined the options for Congressional Democrats and the President:

1. Finish up the House-Senate negotiations quickly and hold a vote before Scott Brown is seated. Republicans will scream, but how could they scream any louder? It’s a process argument of murky merits that will be long forgotten by November.

2. Get the House to pass the Senate bill, and maybe use a reconciliation bill (which only needs a Senate majority to pass) to implement as many House-Senate compromises as possible.

3. Go back to Olympia Snowe. I have not seen any persuasive reporting, or even conjecture, about what Snowe is actually thinking. Her substantive demands have been met. By the end of the process, her only demand was to delay the bill by some unspecified time period, which is such a vacuous demand that it’s hard to believe it represents her actual beliefs. Did she turn against the bill completely? Did she decide that she couldn’t take the heat for voting yes? Or did she figure that, with sixty Democrats, her voted wouldn’t really be needed so there was no reason for her to take the heat? If options 1 and 2 fail, we may find out about Snowe.

Obviously, the alternative is option 4: Crawl into a hole and die

Setting aside the insanity of requiring 60% of a chamber to make something a law, as the Senate does with the filibuster, this incredibly unavoidable and very peculiar situation shows us another side of the insanity of Washington. It isn’t just the lawmakers. Its the Washington media. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is, every political situation must be explained by who won and who lost. Thus, the election tomorrow is only going to be discussed as a referendum on President Obama and the health care bill. If Coakley wins, it will most likely be by a narrow margin, which in the blue state of Massachusetts will be seen as a loss for Obama. If Brown wins, Democrats will more than likely still pass a bill by one of the methods that Chait described, and the Republicans and the media (who love a racket) will howl about how the Democrats are going against the will of the people. You can just tell its coming, and it is ridiculous. Not only will they have passed this bill with 59% of the Senate, but those 59 Senators represent 61.20% of the population of the United States (based on U.S. Census data). Not only THAT, but I really doubt that if Brown wins it will tell anyone anything about what the population of Massachusetts thinks about Obama or his health care plan. Massachusetts has universal health care, its plan is very similar to the current Senate plan (which is closer to what the final bill will look like), and it polls very highly. The only difference is that the Senate plan controls costs better than the Massachusetts plan that Republican Scott Brown voted for. Guess what Republicans like to pretend is the worst part of the health care bills? Its expense.

Will Fox News or MSNBC or CNN or Mike Allen (from Politico) or Mark Halperin (at Time) or any other MSM political reporter ever bring up any of these facts? No. They will ignore the fact that this election, whether Coakley wins or loses, is mostly about Coakley running a terrible campaign, being a lackluster candidate, Brown running a solid underdog campaign, and the economy being in bad shape due to the lack of any sort of fiscal sanity during President Bush’s term (yes, its still his fault).

But of course, this election is all about Obama, right?

President Obama has nominated a variety of well-qualified officials to fill key posts in the Treasury Department, including positions with jurisdiction over tax policy and international finance. Their nominations would be approved if the Senate were allowed to vote on them.

But that’s not happening, because Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) isn’t satisfied with — get this — enforcement of prohibitions on internet gambling. Kyl wanted enforcement in January, the administration said June, so Kyl effectively responded, “No Treasury Department officials for you.”

As Matt Yglesias points out, it might be a good idea to have an Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs or an Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, especially during a time of world-wide economic crisis. But one Senator who disagrees with a completely unrelated issue can leave one of the most important Departments short-handed just to make a point to the President.

This strikes me as part of a larger issue with the Senate – in a similar fashion to the filibuster. I can’t be the first to make this point, but there is enough ego in the Senate to power the world for years to come after we run out of oil. That’s too much. We need an alternative energy source. It’s not really anything to do with individuals, though some of them are especially egotistical. And I don’t think its necessarily a personal failure of any individual Senators, though certain Senators really don’t help matters much. The real problem is the institution of the Senate – its rules and its history. The rules give each individual Senator too much power and, more importantly, too much incentive to slow down progress, make outrageous demands, or kill bills whenever they want, and that leaves Senators with the need to do these things in order to get what they want, because if they don’t then someone else will and that Senator will be the one that needs to be given something in order to pass a bill. The Senate’s history and sense of tradition keep it from changing any of these rules to make it more efficient and in touch with the world of the 21st century (as opposed to the 19th). I mean, who actually believes that the Senate is actually the worlds “greatest deliberative body” except Senators? The House of Representatives has already passed the stimulus bill, health care reform, an energy bill, financial regulations, and a jobs bill in 2009. The Senate? Just the stimulus package and health care – and both by the slimmest of margins.

Back to Senate holds, this is not a partisan issue – though Republicans are the ones doing all the holding at the moment. This is an example of a Democratic Senator, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan) holding up the confirmation of President Bush’s anti-terrorism nominations. Same situation, just as ridiculous.

It just follows the playbook that every minority party has followed since 1994: stop the majority from accomplishing anything so the public will become frustrated with the majority and vote for the minority in the next election. Forget the fact that the minority could get significant concessions that would legitimately advance their agenda from the majority if they played ball – they just want the P.R. victory that comes with the opposition failing. This favors the status quo and makes it impossible to fix some of the difficult issues that this country needs to deal with. So now a party need insanely big, once in a generation majorities in both chambers of Congress, plus the President to get anything done. And as Democrats have found in 2009 – it’s still very difficult. I blame the Senate for enabling this.

I am here to blog about politics – specifically national politics and the dysfunctions of surrounding many of the politicians and institutions in Washington D.C. Of a particular interest to me is the dysfunctions of Congress, particularly the Senate, and the difference between what the White House is expected to do and what it can actually accomplish. I plan to be opinionated, as I have a pretty solid set of beliefs about the current political actors, trends, and situations. I voted in my first national Presidential election last year (I was a month too young in November 2004) for President Obama, and I got bitten by a bug. I follow the horse-races, the policy debates, and just about anything else that comes out of D.C. So this blog will be about the things I find interesting about politics in the capitol of the United States. My audience is going to be young, engaged adults. I hope to find a public around my age who want to know more about politics and engage in discussion about it with me.

I am very opinionated, but I try to respect intelligence and legitimate difference of opinion, and on this blog will try to engage in these debates that I may find myself in (or purposefully put myself in). You never know, I may come away with a different opinion than I entered with.

The ultimate dream for me is to engage with the writers and thinkers who I follow – the people who have shaped much of my political thinking, who inform me, and who make me think. Wait, when I say the ultimate dream, I mean besides an A in Comm 217. People like Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein, Bill Simmons (well, he writes about sports, not politics, but still…), and many others. These people have taken a new technological platform – blogging – and turned it into a forum for debate, a place thoughtfully engage others about political ideas. They come from many different backgrounds and have many separate specialties, and have all gotten to where they are through different ways, but they have come together online to engage each other. I would love to join into the conversation, and I believe that my ideas and my writing could add something to these discussions. It is the Internet that is has given me a way to realistically interject myself and my thoughts into these incredibly interesting and influential debates.

So this is it – the end of my first blog post. I should warn my classmates in Comm 217 – I may go off topic. Sports, music, TV shows, movies, etc. These are things I love, and I will occasionally write about these subjects. I’ll try to stay on topic, but you know how it is. A particularly good episode of Friday Night Lights (airing Wednesdays on DirectTV) might spawn a blog post. So would a ridiculous NFL game (tonight’s Packers v. Cardinals game being a good example). You get the idea. Professor Rheingold: I promise these will be in addition to the two-posts-per-week limit. Fair warning!

PS: I’m going to try an idea that I’m stealing from Spencer Ackerman’s blog: each post will have a song attached to it that I believe fits with the theme of the post. So for tonight, I’m going with Bruce doing “The Rising“