Just look at some of those Senate names and their years of service: Edward Kennedy (45), Patrick Leahy (33), Christopher Dodd (27), John Kerry (23), Kent Conrad (21), Tim Johnson (11) and Majority Whip Richard Durbin (11).
And then there’s the coup de grace to Obama’s claim of being best suited for carrying out his pledge to change the ways of Washington. During the 2006 midterm elections, he helped raise almost $1 million online for none other than the master of pork barrel spending – the consummate Washington insider and 49-year (that’s right, almost half a century) Senate veteran Robert C. Byrd. (Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, also happened to have been a Ku Klux Klansman in his younger days.)
During his 1976 run for the presidency, Jimmy Carter pledged to shake Washington out of its habitual sloth. Then he met Tip O’Neill, who showed him who was King of the Hill. Result: The Carter administration went down to historic failure.
Despite his rhetoric, if Obama wins the presidency it is more likely his entrenched, newfound friends will change him as opposed to Obama changing them.
As noted above, Obama seeks the best of both worlds: the luxury of saying what is needed to garner electoral support without having to follow up his bombast with consistent words and actions. In a sense, Obama wants his cake and eat it, too.
Let’s hope We the People don’t eat from his cake by electing him president – or we’re likely to be sick to our stomachs.