On Election Night this year, high on most thinking Americans' wish lists were victories for Barack Obama and Al Franken (D-Minn.) and defeats for Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) and Saxby Chambless (R-Ga.). Perhaps guilty of premature exaltation, I felt confident going into the evening that Obama would win, so my compass was set for Minnesota well past midnight. There Franken ended up in a deadlock with the incumbent, Norm Coleman.
That deadlock continues. Minnesota has had counts and recounts since Nov. 5. The situation became so ridiculous that the state's Supreme Court ordered campaign and county officials to reach an agreement on the remaining absentee ballots by Jan. 2 so that a winner could be declared by Jan. 6, the first day of the new Congress. The sticking point was a batch of 1,346 uncounted absentee ballots. The consensus was that these absentees would lean in Franken's favor. Thus Coleman did everything in his power to, in patented GOP style, stop the recount. And the most recent "final recount" did indeed expand Franken's lead to 225 votes.
Were voting extended to all Americans, Franken would win by a landslide. We all know we're going to need comic relief in Washington, D.C. in the coming years. Insider D.C.'s idea of "humor" is the profoundly unfunny Mark Russell, who bangs on a piano and sings forgettable toothless ditties, the equivalent, in political satire, of shooting fish in a barrel. In Franken we'd have a bona fide comedian actually inside the U.S. Capitol.
Because he's Harvard-smart, fast on his feet and guaranteed to rise in the ranks, Franken is on the GOP hit list. The Party That Wrecked America would prefer to return sour-faced Coleman to a job he never earned in the first place. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, vowed to oppose the seating of Franken. Republicans would prefer to make a train wreck of Congress at a time when the nation desperately needs leadership rather than tend to the people's business.
Ever since Coleman got into the Senate as the beneficiary of Sen. Paul Wellstone's death in a plane crash, I have loathed the smarmy little creep. That he is facing an FBI investigation into his possible illegal use of campaign cash even while he fights for his political life makes his current plight all the sweeter.
Franken, on the other hand, has long been a reliably funny, fearless man, dating back to his Saturday Night Live days. He's also got a whole lot of soul (rent his 1995 film Stuart Saves His Family now) and iron in his spine. The fact that he didn't roll over and die on Election Night but refused to concede defeat—in the patented Democratic style—despite Coleman's pleas to do so, the fact that he has fought for his Senate seat and comported himself with dignity all the while, proves he's got character.
If 2009 offers little else in the way of bright spots, think of the humor Franken will deliver. I still flip through his Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot (1996) when I need a lift in spirits. A few Franken-bits from the book: Reacting to a proposed Constitutional amendment to "protect the flag," Franken suggested a few amendments of his own, including one that would "make it illegal for a tourist visiting the Lincoln Memorial to take a picture of a nude child sitting on Lincoln's lap" and another that "makes it an act of treason to dress up the soldiers of the Iwo Jima Memorial as the Andrews Sisters." Another "allows states to prosecute anyone making a jockstrap out of the U.S. Constitution."
Al Franken: your country needs you.
