Evan Bayh: Slinking back home to Indiana

CAN WE ALL be a little sympathetic to Evan Bayh for his torturous days in the U.S. Senate that have prompted him to retire to a safer haven back home in Indiana? I mean, here is a fellow now being held up as a symbol of a tragic hero who insists that he was ambushed in the crossfire of liberals and conservatives. He hasn't had a kind word for anybody in describing his well-perked pain from having to show up in the hostile environment of the Senate chambers every day and couldn't take it any longer. How's that for the high-minded principles of political centrism? Eh, Blue Dogism.

Trouble is, in damning the intolerable system, he has yet to concede that he was part of the problem. In his waffling on whether he would support the administration's major initiatives, Bayh continued to appear to be looking for a way to leave the scene of a crime with an undistinguished record of his own. He also showed little concern for summarily leaving the Indiana Democratic Party unprepared to fill his vacated spot on the ballot on such short notice for the November election.

Even for politics, it was clearly brattish behavior by a guy who always looked a bit better than he sounded. Maybe he preferred the unchallenged security of wealth that will provide him and his wife Susan a well-provided comfort zone in his post-Senate days, even to the point of allowing time to consider running for president in 2012.

Frankly, I never trusted his Periclesan sincerity in soldiering for the best that America can provide its citizens. His wife has served on so many corporate boards, many of them pharmaceuticals and insurers, that Bayh could hardly ignore the revenue flow to his family in his own work on Capitol Hill. (A common moonlighting practice for many other so-called lawmakers working for the people!). A few examples: she was a lawyer for five years for Eli Lilly & Co. and is on the governing board of Wellpoint, a giant in the health insurance field whose subsidiary in California, Anthem Blue Cross, recently jacked up its premiums 39 pct!

When someone like Evan Bayh wants you to believe that he is acting above the fray you have to always ask about the quality of the acting.

Boehner's failures in his attacks on the stimulus

WHAT'S THAT? John Boehner, that forever-dour House Minority Leader, is telling us that the stimulus bill is a whopping "failure"? You'd think that with new evidence of its success being reported these days , he would suspend his own whining opposition that seems to have begun on the day after George Bush left office.

You need only to look at some of the reports on the internet to realize that Boehner isn't a one-day wonder in leading the opposition to its lowly position in the public surveys.(Even below the befuddled congressonal Democrats.) If nothing else, he is icily consistent, having once called the stimulus plan "the worst idea ever." Here is what we should consider from the reports referring to Boehner's own words:

Sept. 29, 2008: The stimulus failed "because of Pelosi's partisan speech".

Jan. 27, 2009: "Boehner to GOP: Vote against stimulus".

July 9, 2009: "GOP declares stimulus a failure".

Aug. 31, 2009: Gingrich and Boehner declare the stimulus a "failure".

Feb. 17, 2010: The American people want Obama to "pivot to stopping the j0b-killing agenda."

Now here's a couple of paragraphs in David Leonhardt's Economic Scene in the New York Times (Ok, so we're quoting from a socialist newspaper, right?):

"Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody's Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative."

Oh? So who are you going to believe? Some impersonal research companies with strange names, or a politically inspired sidewalk economist with a household name like Boehner who simply wants to do what's best for his day job?

As the gurus often tell us: I report. You decide.

(P.S. The only job it appears to have killed is Evan Bayh's. And that was voluntary, for God's

sake.)