Let me try to keep to my inside voice. Evan Bayh announced his retirement from the Senate, rather than seeking a third term he was pretty much assured of securing and doing so days before the deadline to submit signatures to run and despite the pleading of Harry Reid, Rahm Emanual and Barack Obama (whom he did not inform of his decision beforehand). Okay, I’ll stick to my inside voice and quote Jon Stewart: “Whaaa?”
Bayh explained his reasoning, quoted in this New York Times article: “For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should,” Mr. Bayh said. “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done.”
It’s hard not to lash out a guy who threatened repeatedly not to vote with his party, especially when he did so after missing out on a vice-presidential nod and apparently was not a terribly active Senator, opting for kids’ sporting events above, you know, spending much time on the Senate floor. The words sour grapes crush like so much juice in your mouth, don’t they?
He could prove that assumption a little bit wrong, though. I hope that Senator Bayh forks over his $13 million plus campaign account to the new guy or gal and that he works—if his help is advantageous—to help elect that new guy or gal in his home state, and that he use the fact he’s not campaigning for himself to help other middle-of-the-road candidates. Be a team player not a sore loser, Evan Bayh. It’s better to work for the team, regardless of being disgruntled by the players, the other team or the referees.
Over at the Nation blogs, John Nichols had an intriguing idea: how about singer John Mellencamp for the Indiana seat?
Bayh said, in his news conference, that he believes he can be more effective outside of the Senate than serving. While I am not going to hold my breath on that one, I thought perhaps I could make a couple of suggestions for Bayh’s post-Senate education before he makes his next career move.
I’d like him to make a field trip to the Pioneer Valley on the weekend of April 9-11 for the From Abortion Rights to Reproductive Justice Conference at Hampshire College. Why? He’d learn a lot about a range of reproductive rights and social justice issues, for one thing. For another—and perhaps more important than the conference’s unbelievably impressive content—he’d discover what I do each year (full disclosure: I was one of the conference’s original organizers for its first seven or eight years), which is this: that the future crowds together in the largest space little Hampshire College has to offer (over 1,000 people attend/participate) and learns and shares work already in progress and organizes and well, the energy is electrifying.
At the conference, Mr. Bayh would see that it’s not all lobbyists and big bucks blocking change in this world; he will see that on campuses, in health centers and schools and villages and churches and almost anywhere you can think of, change is happening. The work may be underreported or even unreported, but there is—and I mean this, always—incredible stuff taking place. Learning about it requires some effort, but the effort will be repaid by inspiration.
Since he’ll be up here, I hope he’d be willing to meet with Jo Comerford and her staff at the National Priorities Project. NPP documents the cost of war and military spending and calculates things like what each district is spending on fighting—and what could be bought—schools, teachers, health care and on—for that same amount of money. Whatever issue Mr. Bayh chooses to address next will probably have a price tag, and so I’d respectfully submit that a front-and-center awareness of what our military budget is, and what we’re unable to buy ourselves at this time when everything—infrastructure, education, health care and social services, Main Street—is crumbling merits more than a passing glance.
I think a meeting with Josh Silver and the Free Press staff would be critical, too; Free Press is working on Net Neutrality, advocating to stop the NBC/Comcast merger and generally attending to “wonky” issues around access to information that matter dearly to us all. What’s a democracy without information? You’ve got it; it’s not a democracy. Like campaign finance reform, media reform does not seem flashy, but if Mr. Bayh really wants to break gridlock and politics as usual, this is as crucial an issue as he could find to put his muscle and influence behind (it’s not even exactly partisan). If what Mr. Bayh wants is to make a big splash and questions the efficiency of a kind of geek-ish focus, I think he only look at how very well Climate Change (then, less than “in” worked for former Senator—and not to rub it in, Vice-President—Al Gore; admittedly, he went from possible trivia question to rock star).
Finally, although Mr. Bayh’s sons are a little old for the Very Hungry Caterpillar, if he’s got a little extra time on his hands, I’d love him to swing by the Eric Carle Museum. I’d love for him to meet with the staff there, including Megan Lambert, whose ability to articulate ways to encourage literacy—and remind him of the import that doing so brings, especially for children being raised in households where literacy is not a given. What this arts-infused focus on literacy does is raise the idea of literacy far above test scores or dry fill-in-the-blank worksheets; this museum has an inherent belief that the beauty of art and self-expression go hand-in-hand with the kind of literacy that changes lives for the better. I want him to leave his Western Massachusetts field trip energized and uplifted, ready to do well by his country.
