Monday, April 25, 2005 :::
 
Perhaps no single statement about America has been as wrong as F. Scott Fitzgerald's assertion that there are no second acts to American lives. Just ask Alcee Hastings, the second to last impeached official to be convicted by the Senate. He almost immediately won election to the very House that impeached him.

Or Katherine Harris, the much maligned Florida Secretary of State, whose attention to the details of the law brought her so much hatred from those who maintain that the law courts should determine public policy. She, too, has found a secure home in the House.

Or, perhaps most spectacularly, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who was rejected by the Senate after Ronald Reagan nominated him to the federal bench. He now serves on the Judiciary Committee with some of the very Senators who wished to push him out of public life and were so brutal about it.

There is, however, one sure way to make sure your public life is over fast: be a complete son of a bitch. Not just rude; a lot of people in DC are rude. But when you scream at people who give you the wrong kind of coffee, when you humiliate subordinates in public, when no one can really stand sitting next to you, you are going to bite it. Subordinates and colleagues who agree with you will do you in, not your opponents. Just think of John Tower, the Republican chairman of Senate Armed Services who was so rude that, when Bush 41 nominated him to be Secretary of Defense, even conservative Republican Senators fell all over each other trying to stab him in the back. Two Republicans are about to be shifted off to lobbyist-land for similar offenses, and it is not like they weren't warned.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 4:38 PM


0 comments

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.