HARRY REID, REDUX
Harry Reid, was as “good” as they get.
He’s not dead yet, although he’s nearly 81 and his health travails are well-documented.
I mean as good as they get, in terms of doing his job.
But it depends on one’s perception of the job description and what’s required.
In this case, to achieve the political end.
Mitch McConnell???
Same story; vastly different persona.
There have been others.
Many, many others.
Alben Barkley.
LBJ.
Mike Mansfield.
Robert Byrd.
Howard Baker.
George Mitchell.
Tom Daschle.
McConnell was the Senate Minority Leader in the 110th-113th Congress from 2007–2015, with Harry Reid at the controls as the Majority Leader.
He is one of only three senators (Barkley and Mansfield, the other two) to serve at least eight years as Majority Leader.
In the 114th Congress (2015–2017) the two flipped positions; Reid retired from the Senate on January 3, 2017 and McConnell, at this writing, remains the Senate Majority Leader.
In fact, on June 12, 2018 McConnell broke Senator Robert Dole’s record as longest-serving Republican leader, having occupied space (if I may) since January 3, 2007 for a total of 11 years, 5 months and 10 days or 4,179 days.
Do the math; it’s now 13 years and counting.
And he’s still standing, despite being drunk to the gills with his own power.
I’m surprised he doesn’t topple over on his jowls. (Dewlap? Wattle?)
Harry Reid was never quite that way.
And absence has not made Reid’s heart grow fonder of McConnell. Their relationship grew bitter in the ten years they stood a few feet apart from each other at the leader desks.
Reid believes that the Senate has been changed — irrevocably — no longer an independent institution that could both stand up to the heated passions of the House and block overly ambitious presidents.
According to him, the Republican-led Senate has protected Trump, all the while declining to engage in the weighty debates of the day.
(Perhaps “disengage,” may be more appropriate wording, in an effort to define their position).
“What McConnell and his Republican colleagues have done is irreparably damaged the Senate,” Reid explains.
“And I know what the word irreparably means. The Senate will never be what it was.”
He continued by noting that McConnell’s obstruction of then-President Barack Obama’s appointees was simply impossible to ignore, suggesting that it would have been “legislative malpractice” not to blow up some of the filibuster rules.
But Harry Reid wasn’t perfect either.
Not by a long shot.
He refuses to shoulder blame for the Senate’s deterioration, in spite of the fact that during his last years as Majority Leader, no major work was done by Senate committees, with his leadership team in charge of every decision.
And in November 2013, he executed a partisan rules change making presidential confirmations easier, breaking with decades of precedent.
McConnell has since used that parliamentary move twice.
Let the record reflect that Reid was not exempt from more widespread criticism over his career.
In the late 2000s, liberal critics argued that he didn’t do enough to end the American military presence in Iraq, and bemoaned the fact that he allowed Senate Republicans to create a 60-vote bar for passage of bills without a Democratic filibuster.
Conservatives criticized Reid for his extensive use of “Filling the tree,” a procedural tactic designed to prevent amendments on important bills.
Then there was a litany of allegations regarding potential self-enrichment ploys.
In 2005, Reid earmarked a spending bill to provide for building a bridge between Nevada and Arizona which would raise the land value of property he owned.
In a news release following passage of the 2006 transportation bill, he called funding for construction of a bridge over the Colorado River, among other projects, “incredibly good news for Nevada.”
Maybe he meant, “incredibly good news for Harry”; he owned 160 acres of land several miles from the proposed bridge site in Arizona, and the bridge would undoubtedly add value to his real estate investment.
Typical and age-old political smearing reared its ugly head in the form of allegations against Reid for advancing business interests of friends along with questionable associations with Jack Abramoff and the Indian lobbying scandal, citing that [Reid] had “received more than $50,000 from four tribes with gaming interests between 2001 and 2004 after they hired Abramoff.”
Naturally, Reid denied any wrongdoing and in fact, it was reported that the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group, had produced a comprehensive analysis showing a general increase in the amount and number of contributions by Indian tribes since the late 1990s.
Reid has forever been a man who speaks his mind and pulls no punches, which has occasionally landed him in hot water. (He was a boxer at one time).
There were the racially-tinged remarks he made when Obama was campaigning for president.
In private conversations, Reid remarked that Obama could win because the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as him, to whom he referred as being “light-skinned” and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
He made a public apology, called Obama to apologize and Obama accepted, stating that as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed.
He offended the Hispanic community in a speech he delivered before the National Council of La Raza in August of 2010, by proclaiming that he didn’t “know how any one of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, Ok. Do I need to say more?”
This sat well with neither the noted Dr. Manny Alvarez nor Marco Rubio, among others.
And in the summer of 2012 when, in an interview with The Huffington Post, he claimed to have on good authority that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes for 10 years — and repeated the accusation on the Senate floor on August 2, 2012 — he was happy with himself, even though the charges were proven unfounded.
After the election, Reid called the attack “one of the best things I’ve ever done,” adding, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
Politics is a dirty game and always has been.
Seasoned veterans like Reid and McConnell knew — and know — how to play it and have honed their talents to a fine edge over time.
Donald Trump did not know how to play the game, though he still thinks he did.
Of the three, I care for Trump the least.
McConnell is a very close second.
Harry Reid I’m afraid, brings up the rear.
A distinction perhaps best described as dubious.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in November 2020.]
[Addendum: Harry Reid died on December 28, 2021 in Henderson, Nevada…He was 82…He may have been better than I thought…]
