If you’re feeling restless and vaguely disgruntled at the amount of fun you’ve had this weekend, treat yourself to quick read by Michael Crowley about the majestically doomed U.S. Senate candidacy of Katherine Harris, the Pasionaria of the Palms who played such a key role in shutting down recounts in Florida in 2000.The Harris campaign has been a particular embarassment for Karl Rove and the national Republican Party for reasons that go well beyond her disastrous standing in general election polls against incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson. She wildly popular among hard-core Florida conservatives–and thus unbeatable in a Republican primary–precisely because her fans believe and don’t mind saying they believe she personally and as a matter of partisan loyalty handed the presidency to George W. Bush (with a later assist, of course, from the U.S. Supreme Court). This is, of course, a story line the Bushies would like to bury forever, as Crowley notes:
Indeed, the GOP’s preferred Bush creation myth really begins on September 11, when a great man’s life intersected with world history. It’s a far better story than the one about the butterfly ballot, the “Brooks Brothers riot,” and a presidency claimed by a disputed 537-vote margin.But there will be no escaping all that now.
No, there won’t, but this time, it’s unlikely there will be a happy ending for Katherine Harris.
This year’s big media narrative has been the confirmation saga of Neera Tanden, Biden’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget. At New York I wrote about how over-heated the talk surrounding Tanden has become.
Okay, folks, this is getting ridiculous. When a vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the nomination of Neera Tanden was postponed earlier this week, you would have thought it presented an existential threat to the Biden presidency. “Scrutiny over Tanden’s selection has continued to build as the story over her uneven reception on Capitol Hill stretched through the week,” said one Washington Post story. Politico Playbook suggested that if Tanden didn’t recover, the brouhaha “has the potential to be what Biden might call a BFD.” There’sbeen all sorts of unintentionally funny speculation about whether the White House is playing some sort of “three-dimensional chess” in its handling of the confirmation, disguising a nefarious plan B or C.
Perhaps it reflects the law of supply and demand, which requires the inflation of any bit of trouble for Biden into a crisis. After all, his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate with a minimum of 56 votes; the second-lowest level of support was 64 votes. One nominee who was the subject of all sorts of initial shrieking, Tom Vilsack, was confirmed with 92 Senate votes. Meanwhile, Congress is on track to approve the largest package of legislation moved by any president since at least the Reagan budget of 1981, with a lot of the work on it being conducted quietly in both chambers. Maybe if the bill hits some sort of roadblock, or if Republican fury at HHS nominee Xavier Becerra (whose confirmation has predictably become the big fundraising and mobilization vehicle for the GOP’s very loud anti-abortion constituency) reaches a certain decibel level, Tanden can get out of the spotlight for a bit.
But what’s really unfair — and beyond that, surreal — is the extent to which this confirmation is being treated as more important than all the others combined, or indeed, as a make-or-break moment for a presidency that has barely begun. It’s not. If Tanden cannot get confirmed, the Biden administration won’t miss a beat, and I am reasonably sure she will still have a distinguished future in public affairs (though perhaps one without much of a social-media presence). And if she is confirmed, we’ll all forget about the brouhaha and begin focusing on how she does the job, which she is, by all accounts, qualified to perform.
