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Which one is the wimp? Sunday, Apr 29, 2007 By John Brummett I don't know who's been calling U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor a wimp, but Michael Teague, the senator's communications aide, says they can stop. A wimp doesn't get the attorney general calling on his office. A wimp doesn't look the nation's chief law enforcement officer in the eye and tell him to quit. A wimp doesn't blow the lid off a Washington scandal. Before I get Teague in too much trouble for defending a charge that Pryor perhaps would prefer not get aired in the first place, let me hasten to lend context. Actually, Teague was referring to the kinds of things you can read in the rabid left-wing blogosphere. I'm talking about these illogical partisans who type tough at their computer screens all day. They decry, usually anonymously, the gutlessness of politicians of Pryor's stripe who sometimes eschew the incendiary polarization of modern politics to seek fair and pragmatic solutions. Anonymous disdain for gutlessness - yes, let us not cover our ears to the screaming irony. There's this notion that "moderate" means mushy, wishy-washy and chicken to take a stand. But that's not necessarily so. Moderation can itself be a stand, sometimes a tough one. True, Pryor's insistence on a "secret" date for withdrawal from Iraq was asking for it. But there's more to him than that. It was not mushy, wishy-washy or chicken, but the precise opposite, for Pryor to support Joe Lieberman even after Lieberman got rejected in the Connecticut Democratic primary and sought re-election as an independent. It was not mushy, wishy-washy or chicken, but the precise opposite, for Pryor, a mere freshman, to venture from the comfortable cloak of the Senate Democratic leadership and, largely by his own initiative, round up that "Gang of 14" to prevent a meltdown over filibustering judicial nominations. I do not know whether I can accurately assert that there would have been no U.S. attorney scandal without Pryor. I'm fairly sure someone else would have started it if he hadn't. The White House and Justice Department were proceeding happily along with their plan to replace at least eight of their own U.S. attorneys whom they didn't so much like and install lapdogs. Using a little-noticed new provision they'd sneaked into the Patriot Act, they presumed to do so without bothering with Senate confirmation. As it happens, they started in Arkansas, where Bud Cummins was proving too reasonable and Karl Rove had a heavy-handed political operative from Magnolia named Tim Griffin whom he wanted to reward. They probably thought they could roll Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, and, anyway, as Stephen Colbert put it, Arkansas is widely considered the state equivalent of your appendix. That is to say it supposedly serves no purpose and you can extract and never miss it. But it was Pryor, before anyone else, who voiced concerns publicly about the very idea that he'd get stuck with a U.S. attorney for whom he'd have no confirmation opportunity. And it was Pryor who dared to say publicly that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had told him by phone he wouldn't try to install Griffin without confirmation. "Lied," Pryor dared to say. Last week when Gonzales was testifying before the Senate and saying he did nothing wrong although he couldn't remember, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a friendly Republican, gently recommended that he go see Pryor about this little misunderstanding. So Gonzales dropped in for a private man-to-man with Pryor on Wednesday, then, after an half hour, scurried past media people. But Pryor came out and accounted for himself. He said Gonzales had said his own memory of what he might have said to Pryor in December was hazy, "but mine is not." He said Gonzales only wanted to mend a fence, not apologize. He said he had told Gonzales to his face he didn't trust him and that he ought to resign. So here are a couple of proposed new definitions: Moderate - a political position sometimes encompassing actual conviction. Wimp - one with a hazy memory. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
