The matter of Gordon Smith
It’s something of a cliche that I’ve noticed in Oregon’s liberal blogosphere to say that the Oregonian keeps trumping up Gordon Smith as a moderate. Indeed, the paper does seem to have a feature every few months which delves into what they say a “Gordon Smith” is.
Cue “Senate Wars:Â Revolt of the Smith” May 22, 2005 by David Sarasohn.
Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most quoted people in Washington — who says “I like Gordon Smith a lot” — sketches out the levels of Republican Senate dissent, like someone drawing a star chart.
A handful of Northeasterners clearly are more moderate than the Republican conference. Then, with Arizona’s John McCain somewhere between the two groups, there are the mavericks: Ornstein offers the example of Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. Others in the maverick round-up include Lindsay Graham of South Carolina — skeptical early on the Bush social security idea, and George Voinovich of Ohio, who dropped a sudden and unexpected roadblock in front of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador nominee.
“Gordon’s not quite in that group,” Ornstein says. “Hagel drives the White House to distraction. Gordon doesn’t.”
On a wide range of issues, from taxes to timber to terror strategies, Smith is steadily with the administration and the GOP leadership.
He’s … moderately moderate? Or perhaps moderately moderately moderate. Which is to say, to detect his deviations from Republican whipped lines, you moderate the measure to the nth degree… squint hard enough and you will notice it. He didn’t quite make it to the “Gang of 12”, but should the Gang of 12 have been expanded to be a “Gang of 18”, maybe he’d be in it. The Oregonian would later give a number to the number of straight and out Republicans who do not deviate from Bush’s line one iota — 40 or 45 or something, and again define Gordon Smith as somewhere between the “moderates” and this mass. The articles blur together in my mind, and I don’t want to take the trouble of looking for this other article.
The wikipedia entry on Gordon Smith notes that CQ rates him as #50 on the ideological chart. That should change in the next senate, of course, as probably five people to the right of him on that chart have been dropped and replaced with Democrats. That shallow and arbitrary rating will no longer be at the disposal of the Oregonian when they set out to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless Senator yet again in a few months. They will have to find something else.
Gordon Smith is an inoffensive sort. Which is pretty well how he likes it, I imagine. I cannot hate him or have a strong opinion of him, because if I were to hate him or have a strong opinion of him and remain ntellectually honest, I would have to have a strong opinion on a whole mass of politicians I would not be able to pick out of a line-up. At a Portland Democratic campaign phone-bank in 2002, there was a picture of Gordon Smith on the wall, ready to throw darts at. It takes a special type of partisan for this, and I suppose it is in a sense an admirable trait. Otherwise, how can you hope to get your preferred candidate of your preferred party elected?
I have no insights or original observation about Gordon Smith’s reversal on the Iraq War. It is what it is, whatever that may be. Is he in any position to do anything about it, and if he is will he bother? The answer to both questions appears to be “not really.”