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WASHINGTON – Sen. Evan Bayh was the rare Democrat in Washington last week who not only found fault with the bill to pay for most federal programs this year but also backed up that criticism.
About a dozen other Senate Democrats met to grouse about the size of the $410 billion package, which is an 8 percent increase in what we spent for the same programs last year. But only Bayh and two other Democrats voted against it.
“It’s time for Congress to show middle-class families that we are as committed to living within our means as they are,” he said.
I have no doubt he means it.
However, Bayh is in a business that requires a political calculation on just about everything, from how to vote on important issues to where to go on vacation. That doesn’t mean principled views are non-existent.
But please don’t think the political benefit or detriment of a bold action is not chewed over in advance.
Bayh’s opposition to the spending bill and his explanatory essay offered to several national publications has a twofold political context: 2010 and 2012/2016.
Indiana, where the unemployment rate is 9.2 percent and where darn few people will get anywhere near an 8 percent increase in family income this year, is not likely to find fault with Bayh’s opposition to the bill.
And that’s key. Bayh is up for re-election next year. After years of courting the liberal wing of his party, which plays an important role in presidential nominations, Bayh has some home-state image restoration to address.
His political position is solid: Nearly $11 million in his campaign fund, no potent Republican on the horizon and the approval of nearly six in 10 Hoosiers (as measured a year ago).
But that doesn’t mean Bayh and others are not mindful of 2010.
It’s clear that Republicans will hammer and hammer and hammer at President Obama and congressional Democrats about spending. In fact, Rep. Mike Pence, who is in charge of the House GOP’s public relations, said last week that there will be a daily critique of Obama’s budget proposal.
The Republican Party is gearing up to use votes on the stimulus, the appropriations and the financial-sector bailout as campaign cudgels. Bayh’s vote against the appropriations bill goes some distance toward neutering that tactic for any Republican who decides to run against him next year.
In addition, when Bayh was pursuing a presidential bid (later angling to be Hillary Rodham Clinton’s and then Obama’s VP choice), he staked out positions sure to appeal to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
For instance, Bayh not only opposed the nomination of John Ashcroft as President Bush’s attorney general, he wrote an opinion column in the Washington Post to announce it – and was one of the first Democrats to do so.
He opposed the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts even though Roberts grew up in Indiana, and Bayh – along with Sen. Richard Lugar as the nominee’s home-state senators – escorted Roberts and introduced him at the Judiciary Committee nomination hearing.
So Bayh has a bit of burnishing to do to reclaim his moderate-to-conservative credentials among Hoosiers. A vote against the $410 billion spending bill starts the process.
Using a longer lens to examine the appropriations vote gets us to 2012 or 2016.
Since the day he came to Congress, Bayh’s orientation has been far broader than Indiana.
He wanted to be president and, if not that, vice president.
His setback last year hardly dimmed those ambitions. At 53, Bayh has several presidential election cycles to go before he’s too doddering to make a run.
It is Bayh’s M.O. to be cautious about taking controversial stands. When he does so – and especially when he does on a national platform – it is not unfair to think he’s trying to send a message.
Hence, Bayh shopped around his “I’m against the appropriations bill” essay to national publications, not Hoosier newspapers. He is trying to reclaim the leadership of the Senate’s moderate Democrats, make them a potent force within his party – a group the White House has to reckon with.
If the economy doesn’t improve and Obama’s popularity tanks, Democrats may be in the market for a nominee whose fiscal conservatism is well established. If Obama isn’t ready for replacement in four years … well, 2016 will come around soon enough.
