Now that he's on his way out the door, Evan Bayh is taking a public stand on bipartisan reform. As a senator defined more by unmet expectations than real accomplishments, his New York Times op-ed piece is a welcome bit of advocacy. He advances sound ideas – bipartisan lunches, more disclosure on campaign finances, filibuster reform -- but they would have more weight if he had been fighting for them all along instead of serving them up as justification for leaving the Senate.
The son of a senator, Bayh remembers the camaraderie his father enjoyed with members of the opposing party, and proposes monthly luncheons as a way for Democrats and Republicans to restore some of that comity. Of course, back in the elder Bayh's day, senators hadn't yet discovered the three-day week, and spent more time in Washington where their families got to know each other. That social dynamic is lost to modern life; still, show-and-tell luncheons can't hurt.
On campaign finance reform, Bayh's voting record shows solid support for cleaning up the system, but he's no John McCain or Russ Feingold, the bipartisan duo who pushed through campaign finance reform legislation in 2002. Bayh has been a dutiful soldier in the senate but if he's harbored passion for any one cause, he's hidden it well.
His voice comes through clear on filibuster reform, and the statistics back him up that the procedural hurdle of forcing 60 votes has been abused by both parties, with the Republicans getting the gold not only in number of filibusters but using the tactic against legislation they support, just to slow things down and gum up the works. Here again, Bayh's outrage is well timed to respond to voter frustration, but it's also new for him. It was just last October when Bayh was ready to join Senator Joe Lieberman in backing a Republican- led filibuster against health care reform if it included a public option.
Conservatives laud the filibuster as a cherished tool handed down by the Founding Fathers, but the U.S. Constitution does not enshrine the filibuster. What it does is require each legislative body to set its own rules of parliamentary procedure, and those rules can be changed by a simple majority vote, especially at the start of a new legislative session. And with a friendly presiding officer like Vice President Joe Biden in the chair in his constitutional role as president of the Senate, it should be possible to bring down, as Bayh suggests, the number of votes from 60 to 55 to end a filibuster.
Should this vote take place next January, Bayh won't be there, but in the ten months he has left, he has nothing to lose and the country has plenty to gain if he gives the reforms he has written about more than lip service.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
